"...Fearfully was that doom fulfilled by the Danish invasions. Three years after little Ethelred's coronation the "dreadful banner of the Raven was again unfurled." Sweyne came with an army; Southampton was plundered, and the inhabitants carried off into slavery. Chester was taken; London was burnt down; and the whole coast from the Mersey to the Thames was ravaged.
Elfrida, miserable and despised, tried to expiate her crimes by building and endowing two nunneries - those of Amesbury in Wiltshire, and Wherwell in Hampshire. She took the nun's habit in the latter, and spent the rest of her life in great austerity, confessing on her death-bed another most atrocious secret murder. Her servants appear to have been a band of assassins."
Valentine (undated)
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