Even Gunilda, sister to the king of Denmark, who had married Earl Paling, and had embraced Christianity, was, by the advice of Edric, earl of Wilts, seized and condemned to death by Ethelred, after seeing her husband and children butchered before her face.

This unhappy princess foretold, in the agonies of despair, that her murder would soon be avenged by the total ruin of the English nation.
{1003.} Never was prophecy better fulfilled; and never did barbarous policy prove more fatal to the authors.

Sweyn and his Danes, who wanted but a pretence for invading the English, appeared off the western coast, and threatened to take full revenge for the slaughter of their countrymen.

Exeter fell first into their hands, from the negligence or treachery of Earl Hugh, a Norman, who had been made governor by the interest of Queen Emma.

They began to spread their devastations over the country, when the English, sensible what outrages they must now expect from their barbarous and offended enemy, assembled more early, and in greater numbers than usual, and made an appearance of vigorous resistance.