CANUTE AND HIS SONS.
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 possible[201] 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 chronicler[202] 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 1026[207] 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:--
Cheerly sang the monks of Ely
As Cnut the king was passing by.
“Row to the shore, knights!” said the king,
“And let us hear these churchmen sing,”
--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:--
Some they blinded; some they maimed;
Some they scalped, some bound with chain;
Some were sold to grievous thraldom;
Many were with tortures slain,
Never was a bloodier deed done
Since to England came the Dane.
There is a persistently repeated story that a cruel parody of the
Roman decimation was inflicted on these unfortunates. By that old
custom lots were cast, and every tenth man so selected was handed
over to the executioner. Now nine out of ten were slain and only
the tenth survived, nor was even he certain of life; for after the
massacre it seemed to the tyrant’s agents that too many still survived
and the sword devoured anew. As for the unhappy Etheling himself,
he was taken round by sea to the Isle of Ely and there imprisoned.
An order having been received for his blinding, he was held down by
four men while the cruel deed was done. He seems to have survived
for some weeks or months, and moved about, a saddening figure, among
the once cheery monks of Ely; but ere long he died, either from the
shock of the operation, or, as one author hints, from insufficiency
of food. It seems clear that these cruelties were not perpetrated by
Godwine himself, who judiciously disappeared as soon as he had left
the slenderly guarded prince at his supper table at Guildford; but
neither the judgment of his contemporaries nor that of posterity, with
one eminent exception,[211] has acquitted the great Earl of Wessex of
complicity in the crime.
The abortive expedition of Alfred, and the defection of Earl Godwine,
left the dowager-queen in a precarious position. Moreover, the hearts
of Englishmen had begun to turn away from Harthacnut who, as they
thought, tarried too long in Denmark, and towards Harold, who was,
after all, the son of a Saxon mother (whether gentle or base born),
and who, notwithstanding the cruelty and craft which he had shown in
the affair of the Etheling Alfred, had qualities of physical strength
and fleetness which gained for him a sort of rude popularity with his
subjects. Thus it came to pass that in 1037 “Queen Emma was driven out
of the country,” as the chronicler laments, “without any tenderness
of heart, against the raging winter”. She went to the court of the
hospitable Baldwin, her nephew by marriage, who assigned to her a
dwelling in the city of Bruges and a princely maintenance. Of this,
however, she took only a small part, sufficient for her absolute needs,
and gratefully refused the rest, saying that she could do without it.
So says the Flemish priest, who doubtlessly met her about this time,
and who, in gratitude for favours received, composed the _Encomium
Emmæ_, on which, in the absence of better sources, we have to rely for
many details of her history.
The election of Harold as king of the whole of England, which now
took place, did not pass without some opposition, especially from
the archbishop of Canterbury, Ethelnoth. When ordered to perform the
ceremony of consecration, he flatly refused, declaring that at Canute’s
command he had vowed to recognise only Emma’s son as his lawful
successor. He would not presume to keep, in defiance of the king, the
crown and sceptre, which had been committed to his charge, but, laying
them on the altar he left them to Harold to deal with as he would,
only declaring that none of his suffragan bishops should presume, on
pain of excommunication, to crown this king or to grant him episcopal
benediction. How the dispute ended Emma’s partisan does not inform us.
Probably Harold, like Napoleon, crowned himself; but we are told that
the refusal of the episcopal benediction so rankled in the young king’s
breast that he relapsed into something like paganism. When others in
Christian fashion were silently gliding into church for Divine worship,
he (the swift-footed hunter) would be surrounding the woods with his
dogs and cheering them on to the chase, or sometimes indulging in less
innocent occupations. Clearly, here was a monarch who had little love
for the Church, and whose character may therefore have been painted a
little too darkly by ecclesiastical chroniclers.
After making an ineffectual appeal for help to Edward, her surviving
son by Ethelred, Emma at last succeeded in inducing Harthacnut to leave
his beloved Denmark and attempt the invasion of England. He arrived at
Bruges, probably towards the end of 1039, with sixty-two ships, and
having no doubt made other large preparations for a hostile expedition,
but none of these were needed. Harold Harefoot died on March 17, 1040,
and was buried at Westminster. On his death a deputation was sent
to Bruges to invite HARTHACNUT to assume the crown, “and men deemed
that they did well in doing so”. Sore, says the encomiast, was the
lamentation of the widows and orphans of Bruges, who deemed that by the
departure of the Lady Emma they were losing their best friend; but she
of course accompanied her son.
Too soon the men of both nations found that they had not done so well
as they supposed, in inviting the lad from Denmark to reign over them.
The crews of his ships were clamouring for money, and to appease them
the new king laid upon his subjects a heavier Danegeld than had been
exacted all through the reigns of Canute and Harold. Then the Danegeld
had been for sixteen ships, at the rate of eight marks for each rower;
now Harthacnut claimed the same rate of pay for his whole fleet of
sixty-two ships. It was indeed “a stern geld,” and the attempt to
levy it caused violent popular commotions. A terrible hurricane had
blown the previous year, probably injuring the harvest, and the high
price of corn resulting therefrom caused the _gafol_ to be felt the
more bitterly. “Thus all men that had before yearned after Harthacnut
became unfriendly to him. He devised no kingly deed during all his
reign, and he caused the dead body of Harold to be taken up and shot
into the marsh.” Worse than this, he took a cruel revenge on the whole
of Worcestershire for the murder of two of his house-carls whom he
had sent to exact the “stern geld” from the citizens of Worcester.
An insurrection had broken out; the house-carls had taken refuge in
a turret of the minster, but had been discovered, dragged forth and
slain. Hereupon, the enraged king ordered Godwine, Leofric and all the
great earls, to assemble their forces; and sent them, six months after
the murder, with orders to harry both city and shire. The inhabitants,
forewarned, took refuge on an island in the Severn, and made so
vigorous a defence that their lives were of necessity spared; but the
minster was burnt, the country was laid waste and the house-carls of
the king, with the followers of the earls, returned laden with booty to
their homes.
Now at last, during the short reign of Harthacnut, a brighter day
dawned for the banished son of Ethelred. Edward was invited over from
Normandy and was “sworn in as king”; that is, probably, associated
in some way with Harthacnut as ruler of the land, and recognised as
his destined successor in the event of his early death, which seems
to have been considered not improbable. The only other event recorded
of the reign of Harthacnut, “the king who devised nothing kingly,” is
his complicity in the murder of Eadwulf,[212] earl of Bernicia, who
had possibly made himself conspicuous as one of Harold’s partisans.
He seems to have been invited to court that he might be formally
reconciled to the new king, but on his way he was murdered by his
nephew, Siward the Strong, who was already earl of Deira, and now,
receiving as the reward of his crime his victim’s earldom of Bernicia,
ruled once again as the kings of Northumbria had ruled aforetime, over
the whole wide region from Humber to Tweed.
Harthacnut’s end was worthy of his life. On a day of June, 1042, a
great feast was given by a Danish nobleman, Osgod Clapa, in honour of
the marriage of his daughter. To this banquet the king was, of course,
invited, and “as he stood at his drink he suddenly fell to the ground
and was seized with dreadful convulsions. Those who were near took
him up, but he never after spake a word. He died on the 8th of June,
and all the people accepted Edward as their king, as was his right.”
Harthacnut died in the twenty-fifth year of his age, having not quite
completed the second year of his reign. Like the old Saxon kings, and
like Canute his father, he was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester.