ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE
Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless King at first. After
he had clasped the hands of the Saxon chiefs, in token of the sincerity
with which he swore to be just and good to them in return for their
acknowledging him, he denounced and slew many of them, as well as many
relations of the late King. ‘He who brings me the head of one of my
enemies,’ he used to say, ‘shall be dearer to me than a brother.’ And
he was so severe in hunting down his enemies, that he must have got
together a pretty large family of these dear brothers. He was strongly
inclined to kill Edmund and Edward, two children, sons of poor
Ironside; but, being afraid to do so in England, he sent them over to
the King of Sweden, with a request that the King would be so good as
‘dispose of them.’ If the King of Sweden had been like many, many other
men of that day, he would have had their innocent throats cut; but he
was a kind man, and brought them up tenderly.
Normandy ran much in Canute’s mind. In Normandy were the two children
of the late king—Edward and Alfred by name; and their uncle the Duke
might one day claim the crown for them. But the Duke showed so little
inclination to do so now, that he proposed to Canute to marry his
sister, the widow of The Unready; who, being but a showy flower, and
caring for nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children
and was wedded to him.
Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valour of the English in his
foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble him at home, Canute had
a prosperous reign, and made many improvements. He was a poet and a
musician. He grew sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at
first; and went to Rome in a Pilgrim’s dress, by way of washing it out.
He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his journey; but he took
it from the English before he started. On the whole, however, he
certainly became a far better man when he had no opposition to contend
with, and was as great a King as England had known for some time.
The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day disgusted
with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he caused his chair to
be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to command the tide as it came up
not to wet the edge of his robe, for the land was his; how the tide
came up, of course, without regarding him; and how he then turned to
his flatterers, and rebuked them, saying, what was the might of any
earthly king, to the might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea,
‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther!’ We may learn from this, I
think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king; and that
courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of a liking for
it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known, long before, that the
King was fond of flattery, they would have known better than to offer
it in such large doses. And if they had not known that he was vain of
this speech (anything but a wonderful speech it seems to me, if a good
child had made it), they would not have been at such great pains to
repeat it. I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together; the King’s
chair sinking in the sand; the King in a mighty good humour with his
own wisdom; and the courtiers pretending to be quite stunned by it!
It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go ‘thus far, and no
farther.’ The great command goes forth to all the kings upon the earth,
and went to Canute in the year one thousand and thirty-five, and
stretched him dead upon his bed. Beside it, stood his Norman wife.
Perhaps, as the King looked his last upon her, he, who had so often
thought distrustfully of Normandy, long ago, thought once more of the
two exiled Princes in their uncle’s court, and of the little favour
they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of a rising cloud in
Normandy that slowly moved towards England.