St Brice's Day massacre

Fresh fleets from Scandinavia, unconnected to the earlier Danelaw settlements, looking for the same profitable targets their predecessors had found a century before ethelred's response settled into a pattern of paying them to leave the payment was called danegeld and it was raised through a nationwide tax and distributed to the norse fleets in quantities that grew with each successive demand The strategy had the practical flaw of demonstrating reliably that England was both wealthy enough to produce large sums quickly and willing enough to pay them without sustained military resistance, which was a combination that tended to encourage return visits rather than permanent departure.

In 1002 AD, Æthelred ordered the killing of all Danes living in England on the feast day of St. Brice, an act of catastrophic political miscalculation that included, among its victims, the sister of the Danish king, Swain Forkbeard.

Swain's response was to bring his army to England in earnest.

By 1013 AD, Æthelred had fled to Normandy.