Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as the king's chief legal draftsman on into the reign of the Danish king Cnut the Great. It is both remarkable and puzzling that Wulfstan was able to play so central a role in politics under both Æthelred's and Cnut's reigns, especially as it was under Æthelred's reign that Wulfstan, in his "Sermo Lupi", so vehemently decried the depredations of the Danish and Norwegian Vikings. King Æthelred II — nicknamed Æthelred 'The Unready' - ruled England from 978-1016. For virtually his entire reign, England was the object of successive Viking raids. Between the period of 980-1016, few areas of southern
Stigand would not have a son from his marriage, and he and his advisors began to search for an heir. Edward the Atheling, the son of King Edmund Ironside (reigned 1016), had been exiled from England in 1017, after his father's death. Although Ealdred, the Bishop of Worcester, went to the Continent in search of Edward the Exile, Ian Walker, the biographer of King Harold Godwinson, feels that Stigand was behind the effort. In the end, although Edward did return to England, he died soon after his return, leaving a young son Edgar the Ætheling. King Edward, on his deathbed, left