“[Ethelred] was perhaps the only thoroughly bad King among all the Kings of the English of the West-Saxon line; he seems to have been weak, cowardly, cruel, and bad altogether. He was always doing things at wrong times and leaving undone what he should have done, so that he is called Ethelred the Unready, that is the man without rede or counsel.”
—Freeman, Edward. Old English History for Children pg. 190