CANUTE THE DANE.
"He doth bestride the world
Like a Colossus: and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves."--SHAKSPERE.
By the death of Edmund, Canute became king of all England in the
twentieth year of his age. Before his coronation took place, he
assembled the Saxon nobles and bishops, and Danish chiefs in London,
who had been witnesses to the treaty entered into between himself and
Edmund, when the kingdom was divided; and either by intimidation,
persuasion, or presents, succeeded in obtaining their unanimous assent
to his succession to the crown. In return for this acknowledgment, he
promised to act justly and righteously, and placed his bare hand upon
the hands of his chiefs and nobles as a token of his sincerity. But in
spite of these promises, the commencement of his reign was marked by
acts of unnecessary severity and cruelty. Those who had been in any
way related to either Ethelred or Edmund, he banished; and many who
had taken a prominent part in the late struggles to support the Saxon
monarchy, he put to death. He also decreed that Edwig, the half-brother
of Edward, should be slain. The late king had left two children, one
of whom was named Edmund after himself, and the other Edward; Canute,
with the approbation of the Saxon nobles, became their guardian;
and no sooner were they placed within his power, than he meditated
their destruction; but a fear that his throne was not sufficiently
established to prevent the Saxons from rising to revenge their death,
caused him to postpone it; and under the plea of securing their safety,
the children were committed to the charge of the king of Sweden; the
messenger who accompanied them at the same time giving instructions
that they were to be secretly killed. But the Swedish sovereign was not
willing to become a murderer at the bidding of Canute, and therefore
committed the children to the care of the king of Hungary, by whom they
were preserved and educated. Edmund died, but Edward lived to marry
the daughter of the emperor of Germany, and from their union sprang
Edgar Atheling, a name that afterwards figures in the pages of History.
Edward and Alfred, the remaining sons of Ethelred, were still safe
at the court of their uncle, Richard, duke of Normandy, with their
mother, Emma, the dowager queen; and scarcely was Canute seated upon
the throne before the Norman duke despatched an embassy to the English
court, demanding that the crown of England should be restored to his
eldest nephew. Emma, it will be remembered, was herself a Norman,
and although she became the wife of Ethelred, her sympathies never
seem to have leaned much on the side of the Saxons. As early as the
time of the invasion of Swein, she had fled to her brother's court
with her children, nor does it appear that she returned with her
husband, Ethelred, when he was reinstated upon the throne. Whether the
proposition first emanated from Canute, or her brother, the Norman
duke, is somewhat uncertain; but whichever way it might be, it was
soon followed up by the marriage of Emma, the widow of Ethelred, the
dowager-queen of the Saxons, with Canute, the Danish king, and now the
sole sovereign of England. The murdering, the banishing, the usurping
Dane, became the husband of "The Flower of Normandy." After her union,
it is said that she paid no regard to the Saxon princes whom she left
at her brother's court, but, like an unnatural mother, abandoned them
to chance; and that, as they grew up, they forgot even the language
of their native country, and followed the habits and customs of the
Normans, for Emma soon became the mother of a son by Canute, and
disowned for ever her Saxon offspring.
After his marriage with Emma, Canute disbanded the greater portion
of his Danish troops, and reserving only forty of his native ships,
sent back the remainder of his fleet to Denmark. Canute then chiefly
confined his government to that part of the island which Alfred
the Great had reigned over; for it is on record that he ever held
in the highest veneration the memory of this celebrated king. He
made Turketul, to whom he was greatly indebted for the subjection
of England, governor of East Anglia. To Eric, the Norwegian prince,
he gave the government of Northumbria, and to the traitor, Edric,
Mercia. Although he had in turn deserted Ethelred, Edmund, and even
Canute himself, he entrusted to him the government of this kingdom.
The traitor, however, was not allowed to retain the dignities of his
new dukedom long: a quarrel is said to have taken place between him
and Canute, in the palace which overlooked the Thames at London. Edric
is said to have urged his claim to greater rewards, by exclaiming, in
the heat of his passion, "I first deserted Edmund to benefit you, and
for you I killed him." Canute paced the apartment, angrily, coloured
deeply, bit his lips, and while his eyes, which were always unnaturally
fierce and bright, seemed to flash fire, he replied, "'Tis fit, then,
you should die, for your treason to God and me. You killed your own
lord! him who by treaty and friendship was my brother! Your blood be
upon your own head for murdering the Lord's anointed; your own lips
bear witness against you." Such a sentence came but with an ill grace
from one who had encouraged, countenanced, and rewarded villany;
but Canute, though young, was a deep adept in the blackest arts of
kingcraft. He either called in, or gave a secret signal to Eric, the
Norwegian, who most likely was present at the interview; for, having
killed one king, we should hardly think Canute considered himself
safe, alone with a murderer; but be this as it may, Eric laid him
lifeless with one blow from his battle-axe; and, without creating any
disturbance in the palace, the body of Edric was thrown out of the
window into the Thames. The old historians considerably differ in their
descriptions of the manner of his death, though the majority agree that
the deed was done in the palace at London.
In 1019, so firmly had Canute established himself upon the throne
of England, that he paid a visit to his native country of Denmark,
where he passed the winter. But the government of England appears not
to have been conducted to his satisfaction during his absence, for
on his return he banished the duke Ethelwerd, whom he had left in a
situation of great trust, and, shortly after, Turketul, the governor
of East Anglia. A Swedish fleet, soon after this period, is said to
have attacked the forces of Canute, and the victory, on the side of the
English, is rumoured to have been owing to the valour of Godwin, who,
at the close of the reign of Edmund, was a humble cowherd, but had, in
the space of a few brief years, risen to the dignity of an earl. In his
conflict with the Swedes, Ulfr, the patron of Godwin, was instrumental
in saving Canute's life. After this they quarrelled at a feast. It
appears that they were amusing themselves with some game at the time,
and that Ulfr, well acquainted with the natural irritability of the
Dane's temper, had either retired, or was about to retreat, when Canute
accused him of cowardice. Ulfr, ill-brooking an accusation which he
seems never to have merited, angrily exclaimed, "Was I a coward when
I rescued you from the fangs of the Swedish dogs?" As in the case of
Edric, the Dane liked not to have those about him to whom he had been
obliged; it was indifferent to him whether they did his work by valour
or treachery; thus, shortly after, Ulfr was stabbed by the command of
Canute, while performing his religious duties in a neighbouring church.
He next turned his attention towards Norway, over which Eglaf, or St.
Olave, as he has been called by some, now reigned. The Dane is said to
have commenced his attack by corrupting the Norwegian subjects with
presents of money. This done, he went boldly over, with a fleet of
fifty ships, carrying with him many of the bravest of the Saxon nobles.
From the preparations which he had made, and the formidable force
with which he appeared, he was received with that apparent welcome
which necessity is sometimes compelled to accord, and, wherever he
approached, was hailed as "Lord." After having carried away with him as
hostages the sons and relations of the principal Norwegian chiefs, he
appointed Haco, the son of that Eric whose battle-axe was ever ready to
do his bidding, governor of the kingdom. Haco returned to England for
his wife, who was residing at the castle of his father, the governor
of Northumbria, but a heavy storm coming on, he was unable to land.
His ship was last seen looming in the evening sunset, off Caithness,
in Scotland, while the wind was blowing heavily in the direction of
Pentland Frith, but neither Haco, his crew, nor his ship, were ever
beheld again, after the sun had sunk behind the billows.
After this, Eglaf returned to the throne of Norway, and was put to
death by the hands of his subjects for making laws and founding
institutions which were calculated to accelerate the progress of
learning and civilization. Norway, which had for centuries sent from
its stormy shores such swarms of sea-kings and pirates, could not be
brought to understand that they should ever reap such benefits, if
they changed their habits of rapine and robbery for those of honesty
and industry, and the more rational pleasures of civilized life. They
understood the laws of "strandhug," and they acknowledged no other.
If they landed upon a hospitable shore, amongst a nation with whom
they were at peace, and found their provisions growing short, they
recruited their stock from the flocks and herds they saw grazing in the
neighbouring pastures, paid whatever amount they pleased as the value
of the animals they had slaughtered, carried off corn and drink under
the same free-trade tariff; and sometimes, when remonstrated with on
the smallness of the amount paid, settled the balance by the blow of a
battle-axe.
Although Canute was the son of a pagan, he became a zealous Christian,
rebuilt many of the monasteries which his father had burnt, endowed
others, and, either from a feeling of piety, or to ingratiate himself
with the Saxons, he erected a monument to Elfeg, the archbishop, at
Canterbury, whose violent death had doubtless been accelerated by those
very veterans who had assisted him in conquering the Saxons.
Not content with honouring the murdered archbishop with a monument,
he resolved that the body should be placed in the abbey which had
witnessed the services of so pious a primate; so he demanded the body
of the bishop from the inhabitants of London, who had purchased it from
the Danes, and buried it in their own city. The Londoners, however,
refused to deliver it up; when the Dane, mingling the old habits of the
sea-king with his devotions, put on his helmet and breastpiece, placed
himself at the head of his troops, carried off the coffin by force,
and, between two long lines of his armed soldiers, that were drawn up
on each side of the street which led from the church to the Thames,
had the dead body of the archbishop borne to the war-ship, which stood
ready to receive it. There is something of magnificence in such an
act of barbarous veneration as this, which was accomplished without
either injury or bloodshed; and we can imagine that in every corner of
the London of that day, nothing was talked of but the daring piety of
Canute, which had led him to carry off the body of their reputed saint;
that public opinion would be divided in the motives it attributed to
such an act; that little groups would assemble at the corners of the
streets, and that long after twilight had settled down upon the old
city, their conversation would still be about Canute and his soldiers,
and the enormous war-ship, with its gilt figure-head, that resembled a
dragon, and the dead bishop it would carry away; then the city-gates
would be closed, and over all would reign the ancient midnight silence
and darkness, while the dragon-headed ship and the Danes went slowly
down the silver Thames, freighted with the king, and the coffin, and
the murdered man.
There appears, at a first glance, something incongruous in such an act
as that of Canute's carrying off the dead body of the bishop by force,
when it was done with the intent of making a favourable impression upon
the Saxons; yet we must not forget the stout resistance made by the
capital in the defence of Edmund, which the Danish king seems also to
have borne in mind, when he exacted from the city the sum of eleven
thousand pounds.
Canute seems to have been a man in whom the elements of refinement and
barbarism, which our ancient writers love to dwell upon in their moral
masks, were oddly blended; he was one who believed that cruelty was
necessary in the administration of justice, but looked with horror upon
a deed that was committed without the pale of this shadowy boundary.
In a moment of unguarded passion, he with his own hand slew one of his
soldiers; thereby committing a deed which, according to his own laws,
the penalty was, in its mildest form, a heavy mulct. After reflecting
upon the crime he was guilty of, and the evil example he was setting
to others, he assembled his army, and, arrayed in his royal robes,
descended from his gorgeous throne in the midst of the armed ranks;
expressed his sorrow for the deed he had done, and demanded that he
should be tried and punished like the humblest subject over whom he
reigned. He further offered a free pardon to his judges, however severe
might be the judgment they passed upon him; then throwing himself
prostrate upon the ground, in silence awaited their verdict. Many a
hardy soldier, whose weather-beaten cheeks were seamed with the scars
of battle, is said to have shed tears as he beheld the royal penitent
thus prostrate at his feet. Those who were appointed judges retired
for a few moments to deliberate; but either believing that Canute was
not sincere, or having the example of those before their eyes who
had formerly done his bidding, they timidly resolved to allow him to
appoint his own punishment. This he did, and as the fine for killing a
man was then forty talents of silver, he sentenced himself to pay three
hundred and sixty, beside nine talents of gold. It would, perhaps, be
uncharitable to say that the whole affair was a mere mockery; but when
we remember that a word from his lips could wring a thousand times that
amount from the oppressed Saxons, and that he himself had compelled
them to pay heavier taxes than had ever been demanded by their own
native kings, we are surely justified in concluding, that after all, he
acquitted himself on very moderate terms.
During the ravages of the Danes, the tribute which the Saxons paid
to Rome had been suspended. This Canute resolved to revive; and, as
if to make up for the ravages of his countrymen, the sea-kings, for
the monks they had murdered, and the churches they had destroyed,
he inflicted a tax of a penny on every inhabited house, which was
called Peter's-pence; thus further punishing the poor Saxons, by
levying a fine upon them "to the praise and glory of God," for so was
the royal ordinance worded, that they might show their gratitude to
mother church, through the hands of those who had been instrumental in
slaughtering their priests, overthrowing their altars, and desolating
their land. In brief, it was the descendant of the murderer levying a
tax upon the relatives of the murdered to purchase forgiveness for the
slayer--one of those crooked paths by which, in that barbarous age, men
hoped to reach Heaven.
The plan he adopted to reprove his flattering courtiers displayed, at
best, much unnecessary show. A man who, by his valour and abilities,
had ascended a throne which had been occupied by a long line of
kings, and although an open enemy, had compelled a powerful nation to
acknowledge him as their sovereign--one who had himself ridden over
the stormy sea, and been tossed like a weed from billow to billow,
can never be supposed to have entertained the thought for a moment
that the angry ocean with its rising tide would obey him, or roll back
its restless waves when he commanded. It was the same love of display
which caused him to erect the throne in the midst of his army, and
step forth in his royal robes, the haughty king, while he assumed the
part of the humble penitent for having slain one of his soldiers. The
same theatrical display which caused him to order his lumbering throne
to be placed beside the sea-shore, and to sit down in all his kingly
dignity, robed, crowned, and sceptered--the gilt and tinsel that are
so effective beyond the footlights--induced him to adopt this stage
effect; for Canute, in the dress of a common man, with his foot in the
spray, would not have produced half that impression upon his audience,
many of whom, we can readily imagine, must have felt disgusted at such
useless parade. In a pompous manner, he is said to have thus addressed
his courtiers:--"Confess ye now how frivolous and vain is the might of
an earthly king compared to that Great Power who rules the elements,
and can say unto the ocean, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.'"
We should not probably err much if, instead of the words uttered by the
Danish king, something like the following was the real language of his
inward thought, and that, as he looked sternly upon them, he said to
himself, "Think not that I believe you such idiots as to suppose that
the sea will obey my bidding--a breath of mine would sever the proudest
head that now rises above the beach. I alone am king, more powerful
than any present, and I only want to prove that there is but One
mightier than I am, and that while the waves wash my feet, they would
surely drown such common rascals as you all are." In a word, the whole
scene is too rich a piece of mockery to be treated seriously. It is as
if a man mounted a lofty steeple, and threw down his hat, merely to
convince the spectators below that if his head had been in it, it would
assuredly have been broken. It is but the old cry of the Mahometan
fruit-seller, which ends with, "In the name of the prophet--figs."
Another proof of his overbearing vanity is given in his conduct to
Thorarin, the Danish bard. The poet had written some verses in praise
of Canute. It appears that the king was either engaged or seated at the
banquet when the scald intreated of him to listen to the verses which
he had written, urging as a reason, what a patron in modern times would
most likely have listened to--namely, that they were but short. The
Dane, however, true to his character, in a love of display and praise,
turned round indignantly upon Thorarin, and in an angry tone exclaimed,
"Are you not ashamed to do what none but yourself would dare--to write
a _short_ poem upon me? Unless by to-morrow at noon you produce above
thirty verses on the same subject, your head shall be forfeited."
The poor bard retired, and having whipped his muse into the finest
order for lying and flattering, he by the next day produced such a
splendid piece of adulation, that the praise-loving monarch rewarded
him with fifty marks of silver.
[Illustration: _Canute rebuking his Courtiers._]
Following the example of the Saxon kings, Canute made a pilgrimage
to Rome, to visit the tombs of the saints: although accompanied by a
large train of attendants, he himself bore a wallet upon his shoulder,
and carried a long pilgrim's staff in his hand. On every altar he,
with his own hand, placed rich gifts--doubtless, wrung from many a
poor Saxon--pressed the pavement with his lips, and knelt down before
the shrines; he purchased the arm of St. Augustine, for which he paid
a hundred talents of gold and the same number of talents in silver,
and this he afterwards presented to the church of Coventry. He then
despatched a letter to England, which has been frequently quoted by
ancient historians. It is curious as a specimen of early epistolary
art, and places the character of Canute in a much more favourable light
than the incidents which we have above described; and as we obtain
through it glimpses of the manners and customs of this remote period,
we shall present it entire:--
"Knut, king of England and Denmark, to all the bishops and primates
and all the English people, greeting. I hereby announce to you that I
have been to Rome for the remission of my sins, and the welfare of my
kingdoms. I humbly thank the Almighty God for having granted me, once
in my life, the grace of visiting in person his very holy apostles
Peter and Paul, and all the saints who have their habitation, either
within the walls, or without the Roman city. I determined upon this
journey because I had learned from the mouths of wise men, that the
apostle Peter possesses great power to bind or to loose, and that he
keeps the keys of the celestial kingdom; wherefore, I thought it useful
to solicit specially his favour and patronage with God.
"During the Easter solemnity was held here a great assembly of
illustrious persons,--namely, pope John, the emperor Kunrad, and all
the chief men of the nations from Mount Gargano to the sea which
surrounds us. All received me with great distinction, and honoured
me with rich presents. I have received vases of gold and silver,
and stuffs and vestments of great price; I have conversed with the
emperor, the lord pope, and the other princes, upon the wants of all
the people of my kingdoms, English and Danes. I have endeavoured to
obtain for my people justice and security in their pilgrimages to
Rome, and especially that they may not for the future be delayed on
their road by the closing of the mountain passes, or vexed by enormous
tolls. I also complained to the lord pope of the immensity of the sums
extorted, to this day, from my archbishops, when, according to custom,
they repair to the apostolical court to obtain the pallium. It has been
decided that this shall not occur for the future.
"I would also have you know that I have made a vow to Almighty God to
regulate my life by the dictates of virtue, and to govern my people
with justice. If during the impetuosity of my youth I have done
anything contrary to equity, I will for the future, with the help of
God, amend this to the best of my power; wherefore, I require and
command all my councillors, and those to whom I have confided the
affairs of my kingdom, to lend themselves to no injustice, either in
fear of me, or to favour the powerful. I recommend them, if they prize
my friendship and their own lives, to do no harm or violence to any
man, rich or poor: let every one, in his place, enjoy that which he
possesses, and not be disturbed in that enjoyment, either in the king's
name, or in the name of any other person; nor under pretext of levying
money for my treasury, for I need no money obtained by unjust means.
"I propose to return to England this summer, and as soon as the
preparations for my embarkation shall be completed. I intreat and order
you all, bishops and officers of my kingdom of England, by the faith
you owe to God and to me, to see that before my return all our debts
to God be paid--namely, the plough dues, the tithe of animals born
within the year, and the pence due to Saint Peter from every house in
town and country; and further, at mid-August, the tithe of the harvest,
and at Martinmas, the first fruit of the seed; and if, on my landing,
these dues are not fully paid, the royal power will be exercised upon
defaulters, according to the rigour of the law and without any mercy."
Canute died in the year 1035, and was buried at Winchester.