Ethelred II was born c. 968 . He was also known as Ethelred the Unready or Aethelred the Unready (Old English Æþelræd Unræd). He was King of England from 978 until 1013, and from 1014 until 016. The majority of his reign (991–1016) was marked by a defensive war against Viking invaders.
It is not true that contemporaries considered him ill-prepared. Rather, his nickname "the unready" derives from the Anglo-Saxon Unræd, which means "without counsel", "ill-advised" or "indecisive". This can be seen as a pun on his name, Æþelræd, which may be understood to mean "noble counsel" in Old English. So he was 'Noble counsel, No counsel'. There are 2 spellings of his name, the one here being 'Ethelred', and the second being 'Aethelred', which is closer to the original Anglo-Saxon spelling 'Æþelræd'. Books about him will use one of the two spellings, but they both refer to the same person.
According to William of Malmesbury, Ethelred defecated in the baptismal font as a child, which led St. Dunstan to prophesy that the English monarchy would be overthrown during his reign. This story is, however, almost certainly a complete fabrication (a similar story is told of Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus, another medieval monarch who was unpopular among certain of his subjects).
Following the death of his father King Edgar and subsequent murder of his half-brother Edward the Martyr by servants of Ethelred's mother, Ethelred succeeded to the throne at about age ten.
England had experienced a period of peace after the re-conquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century. However, a new wave of raids began in 980 and a sizable Danish force began a sustained campaign in 991. During the next quarter of a century England was devastated by a succession of large Danish armies, either under the leadership of King Sweyn I of Denmark or of other commanders such as Olaf Tryggvason and Thorkell the Tall, which Ethelred's government failed to combat effectively. He was only able to halt the depredations of these armies by the payment of large sums of money known as Danegeld. Each payment led to the withdrawal of the Danes, but on each occasion a fresh onslaught began after a year or two, and each Danegeld payment was much larger than the last. Ethelred's most desperate response was the massacre of the Danes living in England on St Brice's Day on 13th November 1002. Finally in 1013 English resistance collapsed and Sweyn conquered the country, forcing Ethelred into exile, but after his victory Sweyn lived for only another five weeks. In 1014, Canute the Great was proclaimed King of England by the Danish army in England but was forced out of England that year. Canute launched a new invasion in 1015 and Ethelred's control of England was collapsing once again when he died at London on 23rd April 1016. He was buried in St Paul's and was succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside.
Ethelred married firstly Ælfgifu, daughter of Thored, the ealdorman of York, by whom he had six sons:
Æthelstan Ætheling died in 1011
Ecgberht Ætheling
Eadred Ætheling
Eadwig Ætheling killed in 1017
Eadgar Ætheling the Elder.
They also had as many as four daughters:
Edith who married Eadric Streona, ealdorman of Mercia
Ælfgifu who married Uchtred the Bold, ealdorman of Bamburgh.
Less certainly there may also have been a daughter named Wulfhild married to Ulfcytel Snillingr, and perhaps a fourth daughter, whose name is not recorded, who was abbess of Wherwell.
His second marriage, in 1002, was to Emma of Normandy, whose grandnephew, William I of England, would later use this relationship as the basis of his claim on the throne. They had two sons:
Eadweard, later King of England, and known now as Edward the Confessor
Ælfred Ætheling
By this marriage, he also had
Goda of England who married Drogo of Mantes, Count of Vexin
Despite the total failure of his government in the face of the Danish threat, Ethelred's reign was not without some achievements. The quality of the coinage, a good indicator of the prevailing economic conditions, significantly improved during his reign due to his numerous coinage reform laws.
His formation of an investigative body charged with the duty of accusing no innocent person and sheltering no guilty one is credited as being the historical root of the grand jury
