When in 1016 Edmund Ironside died, there could be little question that Canute must be sole King of England. It was true that Edmund had left two sons, Edmund and Edward, but they were mere babes and it was no time for a protracted regency. In the older generation, of the numerous progeny of the redeless Ethelred (nine sons and six daughters), there were still left only three whose claims could deserve consideration. These were Edwy, the son of his first marriage, and two boys, Alfred and Edward, sons of Emma. These latter, however, besides the disadvantage of their youth—they cannot have been more than twelve years of age—were still absent from England, at the court of their uncle Richard, Duke of Normandy. They seem therefore to have been left altogether out of the reckoning at this juncture, though one of them a generation later was to ascend the throne of England, and to be known under the name of Edward the Confessor. There remained, therefore, as claimant, of the immediate family of Ethelred, only his elder son, Edwy, who was probably in his twentieth year, or thereabouts, but who seems to have borne a high character for wisdom and prudence. But there was another shadowy competitor for the crown who also bore the name of Edwy, with the strange epithet, “King of the Churls”. In our complete ignorance of this man’s previous history we can only guess from whence he emerged. One such guess is that he claimed to be descended from his namesake, the brother of Edgar, and that, having put himself forward as champion of the free tillers of the soil (a class doubtless sorely suffering from thirty years of anarchy), he was called in derision “King of the Ceorls”. However this may be, neither Edwy could stand for a moment against the might of the young Dane, already the acknowledged sovereign of all England north of the Thames, and with the terrible “army” at his back, ready at the giving of a signal to break loose from their winter quarters and resume their terrible harryings of the land. Canute had apparently no difficulty in decreeing that both the Edwys should be banished the realm, nor shortly after in putting the son of Ethelred to death.

The two infant sons of Edmund Ironside were sent by Canute to the King of Sweden, it is said with a request that they might be quietly put out of the way. The Swedish king, however, declined to make himself the Dane’s executioner, and passed the children on to the King of Hungary. Forty years after our present date, one of them having returned to England became, not indeed himself a king, but father of a Scottish queen, and ancestor, through her, of many generations of English sovereigns. As to the manner in which Canute acquired the power of dealing thus summarily with the descendants of Cerdic, there is some uncertainty. One version of the Chronicle says that he was “chosen to be King of all England,” and so far confirms the elaborate account of Florence of Worcester. This author says that there was a great meeting of the witan in London, and that Canute interrogated them as to the nature of the agreement made between him and Edmund Ironside at Olney, whereof they had all been witnesses. “Was anything then said about the right of brothers or sons to succeed Edmund in Wessex, if he should die in Canute’s lifetime?” Thus interrogated, they said that they knew for certain that Edmund destined no portion of his kingdom for his brothers, either in his lifetime or after his death, but that he looked to Canute as the future helper and protector of his sons till they should reach the age of kingship. “But herein they called God to witness of a lie,” hoping to win the king’s favour thereby. According to this story, Canute’s election to the throne by the witan of London was the result of hard swearing; but the Scandinavian authorities assert, and some modern historians believe, that the exclusion of Edmund’s brothers from the succession was really part of the compact of Olney. The question must probably be left unsettled. What is not doubtful is the full and undisputed power which the young Danish conqueror ever thereafter wielded in England, and the peace and comparative prosperity which for near twenty years she enjoyed under his sway. Wisely distrustful of his own ability to direct personally the details of government throughout the whole kingdom, Canute at once divided it into five districts, four of which he placed under rulers with delegated power. East Anglia he placed under the government of Thurkill the Dane, once the ally of Ethelred, but now his own henchman. What was once Deira was assigned to Yric or Eric, also a Dane, who seems, as before, to have made York his capital. In old Bernicia English lords of the family of Uhtred still held sway. Mercia was handed over to the notorious Edric Streona, while Wessex, the heart and centre of Anglo-Saxon monarchy, was reserved for Canute’s own especial rule. Here, and not in any of the Scandinavian lands across the sea, he resolved to make his home for the remainder of his life. All these great lords-lieutenant (as we should call them) were probably called earls, a title copied from the Danish jarl which was now gradually supplanting the old English ealdorman.

Two of these newly appointed earls did not long enjoy their dignities. In 1017 the old traitor Edric Streona was put to death by Canute: “most justly,” says the latest recension of the Chronicles. Florence of Worcester asserts that “Canute ordered him to be killed within the palace, because he feared that he might one day be circumvented by his plots, as had often been the fate of his former lords, Ethelred and Edmund”. He may have been, as he is depicted in the Chronicle, one of the vilest of men, or he may have been merely a great opportunist, the Talleyrand or the Sunderland of a shifting and difficult period; but even so, it is hard for a man of that stamp to convince his new employer that he has really changed front for the last time. Thurkill of East Anglia fell into disgrace in 1021 and was banished. After two years he was restored to favour, yet not brought back to England, but entrusted with the regency of Denmark. There is some evidence that he, like Edric, had married a daughter of Ethelred; and there is reason to suppose that not only the sons, but even the sons-in-law, of the late king were viewed with suspicion by Canute.198

In the first year of his reign, on July 31, 1017, the young Danish king, now about twenty-two years of age, took to wife Emma of Normandy, widow of Ethelred, and probably thirteen years his senior. As to the motives for this somewhat surprising marriage we have no sufficient information. It may have been due to a politic desire to secure the friendship of Normandy; it may have been Canute’s wish to present to his English subjects an appearance of continuity in the domestic life of the palace of Winchester; or there may have been—who knows?—a romantic passion engendered when the future bride and bridegroom met during the negotiations after the siege of London.199 The new queen certainly seems to have faithfully complied with the spirit of the Scriptural precept about the bride’s forgetting of former ties, but need she also have forgotten the children of her former marriage? The son whom she bore to Canute, and who was named Harthacnut, was the object of her fondest affection. Canute evidently ousted the memory of the inglorious Ethelred, whose sons Alfred and Edward lingered on at their uncle’s court, apparently forgotten by their mother, and with no effort on her part to bring about their return from exile.

It was perhaps only a coincidence, though an unfortunate one, that the second marriage of Emma, like her first, was accompanied, if not by a massacre, by a considerable sacrifice of human life. In 1017 Canute ordered the execution not only of Edwy, of the seed royal, and of Edric the traitor, but of “Northman, son of Leofwine the ealdorman, and Ethelweard, son of Ethelmaer the Fat, and Brihtric, son of Elfheah in Devonshire”. The last name is for us meaningless: Ethelweard is interesting as denoting the grandson of Ethelweard the Chronicler, the “Patrician,” as he calls himself; the man of royal descent and of pompous diction. The name of Northman, son of Leofwine, deserves further notice as being our first introduction to a family which was to play an important part in the next half-century of English history. For five generations, since the very beginning of the eighth century, the family of Leofwine had borne a high place in the kingdom of Mercia. This Leofwine himself in 997 signed charters as dux, that is ealdorman, of the province of the Hwiccas. It was his son Northman who now, we know not on what pretext or under what cloud of suspicion, was put to death by Canute. The king’s wrath seems not to have extended to the other members of Northman’s family; for his father Leofwine at once received the earldom of Mercia, vacated by the death of Edric, and there are some indications that his son Leofric received a minor earldom, possibly that of Chester, which may have been previously held by the slain Northman.200

About the same time as the family of Leofwine, a rival family, one which was to engrave its name yet more deeply on the pages of English history, begins to make its appearance, not yet indeed in the Chronicles, but in those invaluable charters which show us by the names of the attesting witnesses who at any given period were the most prominent personages in the English court. Godwine, son of Wulfnoth, is a man over whose ancestry there hangs a cloud of mystery, the result partly of the poverty of Anglo-Saxon nomenclature, which makes it often difficult to identify the particular Wulfnoth or Edric or Ethelweard of whom we are in quest. There are stories about him of a romantic kind, according to which he, as a cowherd’s son, had the good fortune to meet a king or an earl who had lost his way after one of the battles between Canute and Edmund; gave him a night’s shelter, and was rewarded by patronage which enabled the future Earl Godwine to get his foot planted on the first rung of the official ladder. For these stories, which we find chiefly in chroniclers of a much later age, there appears to be no sufficient foundation. On the whole it seems probable that he was the offspring neither of a thegn nor of a theow, but sprang from some middle stratum of Anglo-Saxon society. Whatever his origin may have been, he was evidently a man of energy and capacity, and he rose rapidly in the favour of Canute, who was perhaps glad to obtain the services of new men, neither suspected of too strong an attachment to their former master, Ethelred, nor branded with the shame of his betrayal. Already, in 1018, he had the rank of earl, of what district we are not informed. He is said to have accompanied Canute in 1019 on a visit which he paid to Denmark; and to have distinguished himself in a war against the Wends, probably in Pomerania, and on his return to England he was raised to the high and novel position of Earl of the West Saxons. Up to this time the kings of Cerdic’s line, while ruling other parts of England by ealdormen or earls, had kept Wessex, the cradle of their dynasty, under their own personal control: and their example was followed by Canute himself at the beginning of his reign. He had now, however, by the death of his obscure and contemptible brother Harold (1016), become the wearer of the Danish crown; and possibly cherishing visions of other and more widely reaching Scandinavian conquests, he determined to keep his hands free from the mere routine of government even in royal Wessex, and therefore handed that province over to the administration of his young and loyal henchman, Godwine. About the same time he further secured the new earl’s attachment to the Danish dynasty by marrying him to Gytha, daughter of his cousin, Thurgils Sprakalegg, and sister of his own brother-in-law, Ulf the Jarl. Such a connexion brought the new man, Godwine, very close to Danish royalty. It is possible201 that, during all the earlier part of his career, Earl Godwine seemed to the English people almost more of a Dane than a Saxon.

The country was now so tranquilly settling down under Canute’s rule that he felt himself able to dispense with the presence of “the army”. To him, as the chosen and anointed ruler of England, the marches and counter-marches, the harryings and the burnings of these fierce “sea-people” would be as little agreeable as to Alfred or Ethelred. One last and fearfully heavy gafol, no less than 72,000 pounds of silver, the equivalent probably of £1,500,000 sterling in our day, had to be raised and paid them, besides a further sum of 10,500 pounds, paid by the citizens of London alone. The army then, in 1018, returned to Denmark, only forty ships and their crews remaining with their peacefully triumphant king. Everything showed Canute’s desire to banish the memories of rapine and bloodshed which for so many years had been gathering round his father’s name and his own. He is said by one writer to have erected churches on all his battle-fields: he certainly did so (in 1020) on the bloodiest of them all, on Assandune. Earl Thurkill (not yet fallen into disgrace) with the archbishop of York, and many bishops, abbots and monks, joined in hallowing the minster there erected, a ceremony in which some have seen not only a commemoration of Canute’s “crowning mercy” but also an act of reparation for some share, direct or indirect, in the death of his Iron-sided rival. Another object of his devotion was East Anglian Edmund, who had been so barbarously done to death by Ingwar and Hubba. To this saint, it may be remembered, old Sweyn was said to have had a particular aversion, and from his ghostly apparition he was believed to have received his death-stroke. To appease the spirit of this royal martyr was now one of Canute’s most cherished desires. He reverenced his memory with a devotion as especial as his father’s hatred, and he, apparently, first gave to the great monastery of St. Edmundsbury that character of magnificence which distinguished it for so many centuries and gave it a place in the foremost rank of English sanctuaries.

In the seventh year of the new reign, 1023, Canute made the greatest of all reparations, that to the memory of the good archbishop whom drunken Danish seamen had brutally slain. The body of St. Alphege had been for some eleven years resting in St. Paul’s Church at London. It was more fitting that it should be laid in his own metropolitan church of Canterbury, and thither accordingly it was translated by the king’s orders. The delight with which Englishmen saw this tardy reparation to their dead countryman’s memory, rendered by a Danish king, shines forth in the enthusiastic pages of the Chronicle. The writer describes how “by full leave” of the king, archbishop Ethelnoth and Bryhtwine, bishop of Sherborne, took up the body from the tomb; how “the glorious king and the archbishop and suffragan bishops and earls and a great multitude, clerical and lay, carried on a ship St. Alphege’s holy body over the Thames to Southwark, and committed the holy martyr to the care of Ethelnoth and his companions, who then with a goodly band and with winsome joy bare him to Rochester. Then on the third day came the Lady Emma with her kingly bairn Harthacnut [aged five], and they all with great pomp and gladness and singing of psalms bare the holy archbishop into Canterbury.” The whole proceedings occupied seven days, and on June 15, 1023, the martyr’s body was finally deposited on the north side of the altar in Christ Church.

In like manner as Canute had honoured the memory of St. Edmund of East Anglia and St. Alphege of Canterbury, is he said to have dealt with the sepulchre of Edmund Ironside at Glastonbury. Towards the end of his reign he determined (says William of Malmesbury in his classical style) “to visit the Manes of him whom he was wont to call his brother Edmund. Having offered up his prayers, he placed upon the tomb a pallium inwoven with divers colours, representing figures of peacocks, which may still be seen there.” By his side stood Ethelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, the seventh monk who had gone forth from Glastonbury to preside over the English Church. Before leaving the venerable minster in which rested the bones of so many of his predecessors, Canute gave a charter confirming to the church of the Virgin Mary in Glastonbury all its previous privileges. This charter was said to be given “by the advice of Ethelnoth, the bishops and my nobles, for love of the heavenly kingdom, for the pardon of my crimes and the forgiveness of the sins of my brother King Edmund”.

With the description of these expiatory rites our information as to the internal history of England under Canute comes to an end. This part of the Chronicle is extremely meagre, but probably its very sterility is partly an illustration of the proverb, “Happy is the nation that has no annals”. After all the agonies of the Danish invasions, now that a wise and masterful Dane sat upon the English throne, the land had rest for twenty years. In external affairs Canute played an important part, which we shall have to consider in relation to (1) Scotland, (2) the Empire and the Papacy, and (3) Norway.

(1) Events of great and lasting significance took place on the Scottish border in the reign of Canute, but to understand them we must go back into the reign of his predecessor, and take up for the last time the story of the wanderings of the incorruptible body of St. Cuthbert. For 112 years that precious relic had reposed at Chester-le-Street, but in 995 Bishop Aldhun, who had for five years presided over the diocese which still bore the name of deserted Lindisfarne, filled with fear of Danish invasions and “forewarned by a heavenly oracle,” carried the body farther inland, to the abbey of Ripon. After four months it was considered safe to re-transport it to its former home; but when the bearers reached a certain place on the banks of the Wear, called Wrdelau, the holy body became immovable as a mountain and refused to be carried an inch farther. It was revealed to a monk named Eadmer that the neighbouring hill of Dunhelm, splendidly and strongly placed in the midst of a fruitful land, and overlooking the windings of a beautiful river, was meant to be the saint’s next and final resting-place. Thither accordingly, with joy and gladness, the holy body was carried. The little wattled church which was erected over it was the predecessor of a noble cathedral, the grandest specimen of Norman architecture that our country can boast: and Bishop Aldhun, who lived for twenty-four years after the translation, was the first of the long line of bishops of Durham.

Almost at once we find the prelates of this see important factors in Northumbrian politics. Aldhun gave his daughter, Ecgfrida (born no doubt before he became an ecclesiastic), in marriage to “a youth of great energy and skilled in military affairs,” named Uhtred, who was practically taking the management of affairs out of the hands of his father, Earl Waltheof, as that aged man, self-immured in Bamburgh, was doing naught for the defence of his country. Thus, when in 1006 Malcolm II., King of Scots, taking advantage, doubtless, of the distracted state of England during the Danish invasions, collected the whole army of Scotland, entered Northumbria, laid it waste with fire and sword, and then besieged the new city of Durham, it was Uhtred who gathered troops together and went to the help of the bishop, his father-in-law. As old Waltheof still continued inactive he, on his own responsibility, summoned the fyrd of Northumberland, joined it to that of the citizens of York, and with the large army thus collected fell on the Scottish besiegers of Durham and won a complete victory. King Malcolm only escaped with difficulty, and a multitude of his followers were slain. The anonymous chronicler202 who relates these events, tells us that “the daintier heads of the slain, with their hair inwoven according to the then prevalent fashion, were by Uhtred’s orders carried to Durham, fixed on stakes, and placed at intervals round the circuit of the walls, having first been washed by four women, to each of whom he gave a cow as the reward of her labours”. That little detail concerning the women’s payment for their ghastly toil looks like a bit of genuine tradition.

Such was the great English victory of 1006. Now for its fatal reversal twelve years later. The victorious Uhtred, who had become in the meantime Earl of Northumbria and son-in-law of Ethelred, was, as we have seen,203 put to death by order of Canute, or rather perhaps assassinated at his instigation by a private enemy, just as the struggle between the Danish and English kings was coming to a crisis. The Danish earl, Eric, whom Canute had set over Deira, and the Englishman, Eadwulf Cutel, who had succeeded to some portion of his brother Uhtred’s power over Bernicia, were probably known by Malcolm to be inefficient men, not likely to combine for the common defence. In 1018, having made his preparations and formed an alliance with Eugenius the Bald, King of the Cymri of Strathclyde, Malcolm crossed the Firth of Forth and marched through Bernicia as far as the Tweed. The men of Northumbria were already disheartened by the appearance of a comet which for thirty nights had been hanging, ominous, in the midnight sky; and too truly were their forebodings justified. At Carham, a place on the southern bank of the Tweed, a little above Coldstream, almost within sight of the future battlefield of Flodden, the two armies met in fight. “Then were the whole people” (says Symeon of Durham) “from Tees to Tweed on one side, and there was an infinite multitude of Scots on the other.” Malcolm’s victory on this occasion was far more decisive than his defeat had been twelve years earlier. “Almost the whole English force with its leaders perished.” To Aldhun, the aged Bishop of Durham, the tidings of this defeat—all the more bitter because sustained at a place which for three centuries had formed part of the patrimony of St. Cuthbert—came as an actual death-stroke. “Me miserable!” said he, “that I should have lived so long, to behold this lamentable slaughter of St. Cuthbert’s men. Now, O Confessor! beloved of the Lord, if I have ever done aught pleasing in thy sight, repay me, I pray thee, by not suffering me any longer to survive thy people.” His prayer was granted. After a few days he died: the first but not the last Bishop of Durham to have his life made burdensome by the incursions of the Scots.

This battle of Carham, fought in the second year of Canute’s reign, deserves more attention than it has generally received from English historians. It was more important than Brunanburh, we might perhaps say only a little less important than Hastings, for by it the Border between England and Scotland, which had fluctuated through many centuries, was finally fixed at its present limitary streams and mountains. Edinburgh, it is true, seems to have been lost to the Scots some sixty years before the time that we have now reached,204 but the rich and beautiful country of the Lothians was only now finally abandoned by the English, “surrendered” (says the anonymous chronicler) “by the very base and cowardly Eadwulf, who feared lest the Scots should revenge upon him the death of all the men of their nation who had fallen in battle against his brother. Thus was Lothian added to the kingdom of the Scots.” It was for us English a loss disastrous and irretrievable. Our only compensation is to be found in the fact that the large Anglian population thus transferred to the northern kingdom so leavened its speech, its institutions, its national character, that the Scotland of the Middle Ages was Anglian rather than Gaelic in its dominating tendencies.205

Towards the end of his reign—in 1031 according to the authority, here somewhat doubtful, of the Saxon Chronicle—“Canute went to Scotland, and the Scots’ king Malcolm submitted to him and became his man, but that held only a little while. Also two other kings, Maelbaethe and Jehmarc.” Of the last of these two kings we know nothing. Maelbaethe seems to be the same person as the Macbeth of Shakespeare’s tragedy.206 He was not yet a king, but obtained the Scottish crown in the year 1040 by slaying the young king Duncan, grandson and successor of Malcolm II. It will be seen that the chronicler says nothing about fighting on Canute’s part. Malcolm II. seems to have bowed to the inevitable and quietly acknowledged the claim of Canute as English king to the homage of his Scottish neighbour, a claim which might mean anything or nothing according to the characters of him who demanded that homage and him who rendered it. It is interesting to observe that the author of the Heimskringla, in his account of the negotiations between Canute and St. Olaf, King of Norway, puts into the mouth of the latter these words: “And now it has come to this, that Cnut rules over Denmark and over England, and moreover has broken a mickle deal of Scotland under his sway”. The parleyings here described are supposed to have taken place five or six years before 1031, the actual date of Canute’s Scottish expedition, but from traditional history such as this is, minute accuracy as to dates is not to be looked for.

(2) Towards the end of the year 1026207 Canute made his memorable pilgrimage to Rome, a journey which certainly was an important event in itself, and is almost unique in the history of English royalty. It is true that Ceadwalla, Ine and Ethelwulf had made the same pilgrimage, but after Canute the next crowned English king to visit Rome was His now reigning Majesty, Edward VII. We have, unfortunately, no details of Canute’s journey, but we know from foreign sources that he was present at a ceremony of high political importance, the crowning of the “Roman” Emperor Conrad II. and his Empress Gisela on Easter day, 1027.

The line of Saxon emperors, made memorable by the great deeds of the three Ottos, came to an end in 1024 on the death of the ascetic emperor, St. Henry II. The dukes, counts and bishops of the empire, assembled under the open sky on the meadows of Kamba, after some debate chose as his successor Conrad the Salic, a nobleman of Franconia, that beautiful land watered by the Main which now forms the northern half of the kingdom of Bavaria. The dynasty inaugurated by his election lasted for another century (1024–1125), and then gave place to the nearly allied Hohenstauffens of Swabia. This Franconian dynasty it was which, under three emperors bearing the name of Henry, fought with the Papacy the stubborn fight of the Investitures, which “went to Canossa” and warred with Hildebrand. Conrad, the new emperor, was a strong, masterful, knightly man. The pope who crowned him and before whom Canute kneeled in reverence, was John XIX., one of the series of cadets of the house of Tusculum whom the counts of that little hill-fortress intruded for half a century on the chair of St. Peter. But though this pope’s elevation was sudden and irregular—the same day saw him a layman, prefect of the city, and pope—he seems to have borne a respectable character, quite unlike that of his nephew and successor, the dissolute lad who took the name of Benedict IX. (1033–1046). No doubt the aristocratic count-pope bore himself with becoming dignity in the solemn ceremony of the emperor’s coronation, which was graced by the presence of two sovereign princes, our own Canute (the splendour of whose retinue and the liberality of whose almsgiving excited general admiration) and Rudolf III., descendant of Charlemagne and last king of Burgundy. There were, however, troubles and disorders in the somewhat anarchic capital of Christendom. The archbishops of Milan and Ravenna had a dispute about precedence, which ended in a street-brawl between their followers and in the flight of him of Ravenna. Worse still, the German soldiers of the emperor had a fight with the people of Rome, in which many lives were lost, and by which Conrad’s wrath was so fiercely kindled that it could only be appeased by the appearance of the Roman citizens barefooted and disarmed before the German Augustus, abjectly entreating his forgiveness. All this Canute must have witnessed, but nothing seems to have weakened the impression of awe and reverence for the apostolic city, made by his residence in Rome.

In a letter to his people, written from Rome and preserved for us by two of the twelfth century historians, William and Florence, Canute sends greeting to the two archbishops, the bishops and nobles, and all the English people, gentle and simple. He informs them that his long-cherished desire to visit Rome, there to pray for the forgiveness of his sins and the welfare of his people, has at length been gratified. He has visited the sepulchres of Peter and Paul and every other sanctuary within or without the city. At the great Easter festival he has met not only Pope John and the Emperor Conrad, but all “the princes of the nations,” from Mount Garganus (in Apulia) to the Tyrrhene Sea, and has received gifts from all, especially from the emperor; vessels of silver and gold, mantles and robes exceeding precious. Further, from the emperor and from King Rudolf, he has obtained an assurance that none of his subjects, whether English or Dane, shall any longer be harassed with the heavy payments at the mountain passes or the exorbitant customs-duties with which they have been hitherto afflicted. Nor shall future archbishops, visiting Rome in quest of the pallium, pay the immense sums which have heretofore been demanded of them. Finally, the king assures his loving subjects of his desire to administer equal justice to all. Let no shire-reeve or bailiff think to curry favour with him by the oppression of his subjects. “I have no need that money be accumulated for me by unjust exactions.” “But let all the debts which according to ancient custom are due from you [to the Church] be regularly paid; the penny for every carucate ploughed; the tithe of the increase of your flocks and your herds; the penny for St. Peter at Rome; the tithe of corn in the middle of August, and the Church-scot at the feast of St. Martin. If all these dues are not regularly paid, I shall on my return to England execute unpitying justice on the defaulter.”

The new emperor was evidently struck by the statesmanlike character of the Anglo-Danish king, and thought it good policy to draw closer the relations between them. Canute’s daughter, Gunhild, was betrothed to Conrad’s eldest son, and in 1036, when she had attained a suitable age, the marriage was consummated. She died, however, after two years of wedlock, leaving an infant daughter who afterwards became Abbess of Quedlinburg. A year after her death her husband ascended the imperial throne under the title of Henry III. Conrad the Salic also ceded to Canute such rights—perhaps even then vague and ill-defined—as the empire claimed to possess over the frontier province of Sleswick, thus making the river Eider the acknowledged boundary between Germany and Denmark. Hence, and from the later union between the provinces of Sleswick and Holstein, sprang in the course of ages that bitter controversy which was cruelly solved in our own day (1864) by the cannonade of Düppel.

(3) The pilgrimage to Rome came midway between two expeditions to Norway, one, a failure, in 1025–1026, the other, in 1028, triumphantly successful.

The most renowned King of Norway in Canute’s time, and the great champion of her newly recovered independence, was that strangely compounded man who was known by his contemporaries as Olaf the Thick, but whom after ages have reverenced as Saint Olaf (1015–1031). “In stature scarce of the middle height, but very thick-set and strong of limb: with light-red hair, broad-faced, bright and ruddy of countenance, fair-eyed and swift-eyed, so that it was terrible to look him in the face when he was angry,” this energetic descendant of Harold Fair-hair, after many reverses, succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of Norway, and at once set to work to destroy the lingering remains of heathenism in the north of his kingdom, smashing idols, making diligent inquiry into the secret “blood-offerings” of horses and oxen, slaying, banishing, fining all who still persisted in idolatrous practices. To strengthen himself against the inevitable revival of the Danish claim of sovereignty, Olaf wooed the elder, and married the younger daughter of his namesake the King of Sweden, and formed a fairly stable alliance with that neighbour state. In the early years of his reign, according to the story of the Heimskringla (in which much fiction is, doubtless, blended with fact), Canute the Rich sent an embassy to Olaf, calling upon him peacefully to submit to his claims, to become his man, and thus save him the necessity of coming with war-shield to assert his right. To this demand Olaf sent an indignant negative. “Gorm the Old thought himself a mighty king, ruling over Denmark alone. Why cannot his descendant be satisfied with Denmark, England and a mickle deal of Scotland? Is he minded to rule alone over all the Northlands, or does he mean, he alone, to eat all the kale in England?”

For the time Canute had to be satisfied with this bold reply; but in 1025 he set forth with a great naval armament from England. A great battle followed, at the mouth of the Holy River, at the extreme south of what is now Sweden.208 Here, by a clever manœuvre of the allied Kings of Norway and Sweden, Canute’s great ship, The Dragon, was caught in mid-stream and well-nigh sunk by an avalanche of suddenly unloosed floating timbers. He was delivered by the timely appearance of Jarl Ulf with his squadron of ships, but the battle was lost. “There fell many men,” says the Chronicle, “on the side of King Canute, both Danes and Englishmen. And the Danes held the place of slaughter.”

Soon after this unsuccessful expedition came the event which has left perhaps the deepest of all the stains on the memory of Canute, the murder of his brother-in-law and deliverer, Jarl Ulf, “the mightiest man in Denmark after the king”. At a noble banquet which Ulf had prepared for his kinsman, the king sat scowling gloomily. To lighten his mood Ulf suggested a game of chess, in the course of which one of the king’s knights was placed in jeopardy. “Take back your move,” said Canute, “and play something else.” Indignant at this style of playing, Ulf knocked over the chess-board and rose to leave the room. “Ha!” said the king, “runnest thou away now, Ulf the Craven?” He turned round in the doorway and said: “Craven thou didst not call me when I came to thy help at the Holy River, when the Swedes were barking round thee like hounds”. Night fell: both slept: but next morning Canute said to his page: “Go to Jarl Ulf and slay him”. The page went, but returned with bloodless sword, saying that the Jarl had taken refuge in the church of St. Lucius. Another man, less scrupulous, slew him in the church-choir and came back to boast of the deed. After this desecration the monks would fain have closed their church, but Canute insisted on their singing the Hours of divine service there, as if nothing had happened. As usual, his penitence took the form of liberality. So great were the estates with which he endowed the church, that far and wide over the country-side spread the fame of St. Lucius.

When Canute recommenced operations in 1028 after his pilgrimage to Rome, not war but internal revolution gave him the victory. He seems to have had a superiority in naval forces over both the allied kings. The Swedes, being home-sick, scattered back to their own dwellings. Olaf fled to Russia, and a Thing, summoned by Canute at Trondhjem, proclaimed him king over all the land of Norway. It is evident that Olaf’s forceful, sometimes even tyrannical, proceedings had alienated many of his subjects; but moreover Canute the Rich had, we are told, for years been lavishing gifts on the Norwegian nobles. “For it was indeed the truth to say of King Cnut that whenever he met with a man who seemed likely to do him useful service, such a man received from him handfuls of gold, and therefore was he greatly beloved. His bounty was greatest to foreigners, and especially to those who came from furthest off.” This description, given us in the Heimskringla, of Canute’s practisings with the subjects of St. Olaf, suggests the question whether similar arguments had not been used with Edric Streona, and whether the decision of the Saxon Witenagemot in Canute’s favour may not have been bought in the same manner as that of the Norwegian Thing.

We must not further follow in detail the fortunes of the dethroned King of Norway. Two years after Olaf’s expulsion from the kingdom he returned (1030), but fell in battle with his own hostile countrymen. When the inevitable reaction in favour of his memory set in, his body was carried to Trondhjem and buried under the high altar of the cathedral church. Miracles soon began to be wrought by his relics: there was a tide of pity and remorse for their fallen hero in the hearts of his people, who found themselves harshly dealt with by their Danish rulers. Before long Norway recovered her independence, and then Olaf was universally recognised as not only patriot but saint. The Church gave her sanction to the popular verdict, and St. Olaf, or St. Olave, as he was generally called in England, was accepted as one of the legitimate saints in her calendar, July 29 being set apart for his honour. Though not to be compared for holiness of character with our own St. Oswald, or even with Edwin of Deira, he soon became an exceedingly popular saint, especially with his old Danish antagonists. More than a dozen churches were dedicated in his name in England, chiefly in the district where Danes predominated. The most celebrated of these was St. Olave’s in Southwark, which gave its name, corrupted and transformed, to the “Tooley Street” of inglorious memory.

Of the closing years of the reign of Canute little is recorded. There are stories, uncertain and mutually contradictory, of hostilities between England and Normandy, arising out of Duke Robert’s championship of the claims of the English Ethelings, sons of his aunt Emma. Whatever truth there may be in these narratives, they must be referred to the latter part of Canute’s reign, as Duke Robert did not come into possession of the duchy till 1028. We may, if we please, assign to the same period the well-known story of his vain command to the sea to retire, a story which is told us for the first time by Henry of Huntingdon, about 120 years after the death of Canute. As Henry tells it, the courtiers, the blasphemous flatterers of the monarch, disappear from the scene, and it almost seems as if Canute himself, in one of those attacks of megalomania to which successful monarchs are liable, really thought that he could command Nature as if she were one of his own thegns. Learning better doctrine from the voice of the sea, he thenceforth abjured the vain ensigns of royalty and hung his crown on the cross of the Redeemer. To the same peaceful years we may assign the equally well-known incident of Canute being rowed in his barge over the fens in the cold days of early February, and hearing the song of the monks of Ely as they celebrated the Purification of the Virgin Mary:—

—an interesting ditty for us, as showing that the word “knights” still kept that meaning of “servants” or “retainers” which it had when the New Testament was translated into Anglo-Saxon. In the Gospels the disciples of Christ are always called His “leorning-cnichtas”.

King Canute died at Shaftesbury on November 12, 1035, and was buried at Winchester in the Old Minster where rested so many of the descendants of Cerdic. Owing to his early appearance on the scene and the various parts which he had played, we unconsciously attribute to him a greater age than he actually attained. He was probably little, if at all, over forty years of age when he died. The transformation of character which he underwent, from the hard, unscrupulous robber chieftain to the wise, just and statesmanlike king, is one of the most marvellous things in history. Perhaps the nearest approach to it is to be found in the change wrought in the character of Octavian. Both Canute and Augustus were among the rare examples of men improved by success.

He left four children, Sweyn and Harold Harefoot by a wife or concubine named Elgiva of Northampton; Harthacnut and Gunhild by Emma of Normandy. The gossip of the day alleged that Sweyn and Harold were not really Elgiva’s children, but the sons of ignoble parents foisted by her on her credulous husband. This tale, however, though echoed by the Chronicle, may have been an invention of the partisans of their rivals. What is certain is that both Elgiva and Emma survived Canute. Either, therefore, the former was no legally married wife, or else she was divorced to make room for the Norman “Lady”. But the marriages of these Scandinavian princes, Norse and Norman, were regular only in their irregularity.

Whatever may have been the testamentary intentions of the dying Canute, the practical result of his death was to divide his great empire in the following manner: Norway to Sweyn (who died a few months after his father), Denmark to Harthacnut, and England to Harold Harefoot. Of the latter, the Peterborough text of the Chronicle says: “Some men said that Harold was son of King Canute and Elgiva, daughter of Ealdorman Elfhelm; but this seemed very incredible to many men”. Of the two surviving sons of Canute who now for a few years fill the chief place in English history, it must be said that they represent only the first and worst phase of their father’s character, displaying none of the nobler, statesmanlike qualities of his later years. We sometimes see in modern life a man who has struggled upwards from the lowest ranks of society, acquiring a refinement and a culture which he fails to transmit to a wealthy but coarse-fibred son. So was it with the sons of Canute, two dissolute young barbarians who degraded by their vices the ancient throne which they were permitted to occupy.

The events which immediately followed the death of Canute, obscure in themselves, are variously stated by our different authorities; but it seems clear that the old division between Mercia and Wessex again made itself manifest and was connected with another division, that between the two great houses of Godwine and of Leofwine. An assembly of the witan was held at Oxford, at which “Earl Leofric (son of Leofwine) and nearly all the thegns north of the Thames and the sailors in London, chose Harold as king over all England,” leaving to Harthacnut the rule over Denmark, in which country he was then living and reigning. There was apparently no talk of a reversion to the old line, to the sons of Ethelred or Edmund. The dynasty of Canute represented peace with the Danes, a respite from the terrible ravages of the previous generation; and it was probably valued and clung to for this reason, even as, 500 years later, English parliaments clung to the house of Tudor, notwithstanding all the flaws in their title, as a security against the revival of the Wars of the Roses.

This conclusion, however, was not unanimous. The witan at Oxford had to reckon with the opposition of Wessex, under its powerful earl Godwine, with that of “the Lady” Emma, surrounded by a strong body of her dead husband’s house-carls or body guards (an organisation of which the Chronicle now first makes mention); and with such force as the lad Harthacnut from distant Denmark might be able to bring to bear for the vindication of his claims. A compromise was arranged, which amounted in substance, though perhaps not in form, to a division of the kingdom. “It was decided that Emma, Harthacnut’s mother, should sit at Winchester with the house-carls of the king, her son, and hold all Wessex under his authority, and Earl Godwine was her most devoted servant.”

This arrangement had in it no element of permanence and might at any moment be upset by the arrival of Harthacnut. He was, however, but a lad of eighteen, much involved apparently in the cares of his Danish kingdom. To Harold Harefoot, the Norman exiles, sons of Ethelred and Emma, full-grown men, with a hope of possible support from their cousin, the great Duke of Normandy, might well seem the most dangerous competitors for his crown. In order to entice these rivals into his power, Harold is said to have caused a letter to be forged, purporting to come from “Queen Emma, a queen only in name,” and complaining of the daily growing strength of the usurper, “who is incessantly touring about among the cities and villages, and by threats and prayers making for himself friends among the nobles”. “But they would much rather,” said the letter, “that one of you reigned over them, than he to whom they yield enforced obedience. Wherefore I pray that one of you will come to me swiftly and secretly to receive wholesome counsel from me, and to learn in what way the thing upon which I have set my heart can be accomplished.”209 On the receipt of this message Alfred, the younger of the two brothers, betook himself to the friendly coast of Flanders and thence to England, accompanied by a small band of followers, recruited from among the inhabitants of Boulogne, instead of the large body of troops which Baldwin of Flanders offered him. Finding one part of the coast occupied by a hostile force, he sailed to another, probably nearer to Winchester; and set forth to meet his mother, thinking that he had now escaped from all danger. He had not reckoned, however, with the astute Earl Godwine, who was now no longer the zealous adherent of the queen-dowager, but was prepared to make his peace with Harold by the sacrifice of her son.210 He met the young Etheling, swore to become his “man,” guided him to Guildford, billeted his followers about in various inns, caused them to be supplied with meat and drink—especially the latter—in great abundance, and so left them, promising to return on the morrow.

That night, while they were all sleeping the deep sleep of well-plied banqueters, the men of Harold came upon them, stealthily removed their arms, and soon had them all fast in handcuffs and fetters. The cruel vengeance which followed, taken upon disarmed and helpless prisoners, excited the deep indignation of Englishmen, and found vent in a ballad, some lines of which have made their way into that manuscript of the Chronicle which is attributed to Abingdon:—