The Viking King Canute the Great is supposed to have defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred the Unready here in 1014 and his fabled attempt to "command" the tide to halt may have taken place in Southampton. However, its prosperity was assured following the Norman Conquest in 1066, when it became the major port of transit between Winchester (then the capital of England) and Normandy. According to William of Malmesbury, Æthelred defecated in the baptismal font as a child, which led St. Dunstan to prophesy that the English monarchy would be overthrown during his reign.
Æthelred fought these off, but in many cases followed the practice of earlier kings including Alfred the Great in buying them off by payment of what was to become known as Danegeld. Æthelred ordered the massacre of the Danes living in England on St Brice's Day (November 13) 1002 (as described in the chronicles of John of Wallingford), in response to which Sweyn Haraldsson started a series of determined campaigns to conquer England. Canute proceeded to England in the summer of 1015 with a large Danish force of approximately 10,000 men, landing on Wessex, Northumbria, Galloway... In April 1016, Canute entered the Thames with his fleet and besieged London. King Æthelred died suddenly during the siege, and his son Edmund Ironside was proclaimed king. When Edmund left London to raise an army in the countryside, he was intercepted by Canute at Ashingdon, Essex.
Upon the death of Æthelred II, who had earlier been stricken ill, on April 23, 1016, with little support from the London nobility, Edmund succeeded to the throne. Canute, however, enjoyed greater support throughout England, especially from the Southampton nobility. When Edmund forcefully recovered Wessex from Canute’s previous invasion in 1015, Canute responded by laying siege to London; however, Edmund’s defence was successful. Despite the victory, conflict continued until Edmund was defeated, but not killed, on October 18 by Canute at Ashingdon in Essex. The site of the battle is given as Assandun in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and recent research suggests that this in fact refers to Ashdon, in north Essex, some two miles to the east of Saffron Walden. After the battle the two kings negotiated a peace in which Edmund kept Wessex while Canute held the lands north of the River Thames. In addition, they agreed that if one of them should perish, territories belonging to the deceased would be ceded to the living. On November 30, 1016, King Edmund II died of natural causes in Oxford or London, and his territories were ceded to Canute who then became king of England. Meeting on an island in the Severn River, Canute and Edmund agreed to divide the kingdom, but Edmund's death that November left Canute as sole ruler, leading to his acclamation as king by the Witenagemot in January 1017.
Edmund was buried at Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset. His burial site is now lost. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries any remains of a monument or crypt were destroyed and the location of his body is unknown. Edmund had two children by Ældgyth: Edward the Exile and Edmund, who both escaped to Hungary. Ethelred's sons Edward the Confessor and Alfred Atheling were in exile, Canute married (July 1017) Ethelred's widow Emma of Normandy, daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy. He proclaimed their son Harthacanute as heir in preference to Harold, his illegitimate son by Ælgifu of Northampton.
The 12th century Red Lion pub on the High Street below the Bargate within the old walls is where in 1415, immediately prior to King Henry V of England's departure from Southampton to the Battle of Agincourt in northern France, the ringleaders of the Southampton Plot, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, Henry Scrope, 3rd Baron Scrope of Masham and Sir Thomas Grey of Heton, were tried and found guilty of high treason, before being summarily executed outside the Bargate. They were charged with plotting to murder Henry at Southampton before his embarkation into France; revolts in favor of Mortimer by Lollards under Sir John Oldcastle in the West Country, and by the Percies in the North, would follow. Sir Peers Legh was wounded in the Battle of Agincourt his Mastiff stood over him and protected him for many hours through the battle. Although Legh later died, the Mastiff returned to Legh's home and was the foundation of the Lyme Hall Mastiffs. Five centuries later this pedigree figured prominently in founding the modern English Mastiff breed.
