Eadric Streona

Eadric, the son of Ethelric, started as a relative unknown. His father was at the court of Æthelred the Unready, but was not distinguished. Something in Eadric caused him to get the attention of Æthelred, and somehow became the king's enforcer.This seems to have started in 1006 when he arranged the death of Ælfhelm, the Ealdorman of Northumbria. The Worcester Chronicle, which borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and supplemented the information, says:The crafty and treacherous Eadric Streona, plotting to deceive the noble ealdorman Ælfhelm, prepared a great feast for him at Shrewsbury at which, when he came as a guest, Eadric greeted him as if he were an intimate friend. But on the third or fourth day of the feast, when an ambush had been prepared, he took him into the wood to hunt. When all were busy with the hunt, one Godwine Porthund (which means the town dog) a Shrewsbury butcher, whom Eadric had dazzled long before with great gifts and many promises so that he might perpetrate…