The St. Brice's Day Massacre

Clashes with Danes and England resulted in establishing the Danelaw, originally just the set of Danish laws agreed upon with Alfred the Great (848 - 899) wherein Danes could ruler themselves while living on English soil. It later came to refer to a specific geographical territory (the pink area in the illustration).This created a time of relative peace, with each group largely staying out of the other's way. In the 980s, however, Danes started making raids into English territory. In 991 after the Battle of Maldon, King Æthelred the Unready paid Danegeld, a tribute to the Danes to stop their attacks.The attacks did not stop, however, and from 997 to 1001 there were savage raids by Danes across Southern England, burning towns and killing Anglo-Saxons.Then Æthelred learned of a rumor, that the Danes intended to kill him, all his councilors, and then possess the entire kingdom. To put it in the words of the (translated) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:in the same year the king gave an order to slay…