The king had had such frequent experience of perfidy among his subjects, that he had lost all confidence in them: he remained at London, pretending sickness, but really from apprehensions that they intended to buy their peace, by delivering him into the hands of his enemies.

The army called aloud for their sovereign to march at their head against the Danes; and, on his refusal to take the field, they were so discouraged, that those vast preparations became ineffectual for the defence of the kingdom.

Edmond, deprived of all regular supplies to maintain his soldiers, was obliged to commit equal ravages with those which were practised by the Danes; and, after making some fruitless expeditions into the north, which had submitted entirely to Canute's power, he retired to London, determined there to maintain to the last extremity the small remains of English liberty.

He here found every thing in confusion by the death of the king, who expired after an unhappy and inglorious reign of thirty-five years.

{1016.} He left two sons by his first marriage, Edmond, who succeeded him, and Edwy, whom Canute afterwards murdered.