Thorkell the Tall's Danish army besieged and sacked Canterbury, capturing the Archbishop Alphege among other hostages. Alphege refused to allow ransom to be raised from his impoverished people and was pelted with ox bones at a drunken feast at Greenwich and then killed with an axe — the famous martyrdom. His body was later transferred to Canterbury. The episode galvanised English resistance and apparently moved Thorkell himself to switch sides to Ethelred.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
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