ABSTRACT
It is all very well to talk o f an age o f Aelfric and Wulfstan, and yet a political historian m ay then take reasonable exception to the apparent neglect of w hat was surely one of the critical events in the flow o f English history, the Danish Conquest effected by Sweyn and his young son, C nut, between 1014 and 1016. Justification can come through an insistence on the con tinuity of ecclesiastical life, somewhat in contrast to happenings during the first D anish onslaught in the days of K ing Alfred and Edward the Elder, when large sections of the English C hurch in the Danelaw suffered severe dislocation. This continuity is m arked in the career o f Archbishop Wulfstan. W e have already discussed the im portance o f the laws given to the N orthum brian priests, bu t the influence and forceful guidance of W ulfstan is evident elsewhere throughout the land. He lived on until 1023, seven years after C nut’s success in battle had settled the immediate political future of England.
