CHAPTER VI.

THE DANISH KINGS IN ENGLAND.[818]

1017–1042.

I have thought it right to narrate the course of events by which the

Danish power was established in England at nearly as great detail as I

purpose to narrate the central events of my history. The Danish and

Norman Conquests are so closely connected with one another as cause and

effect that the history of the one is an essential part of the history

of the other. I now come to a period of nineteen [Sidenote: Character of

the reign of Cnut.] years of a widely different character. The reign of

Cnut[819] was, as regards the isle of Britain, almost a repetition of

the reign of Eadgar. Within the realm of England itself we do not hear

of a single disturbance. And the forces of England had now but seldom to

be employed against Celtic enemies within her own island. One Scottish

invasion of England, one English invasion of Wales, make up nearly the

whole of the warfare of this reign within our own seas. There was indeed

warfare enough elsewhere, warfare in which Englishmen had their share.

But the details of Cnut’s wars in the Scandinavian North are often not a

little doubtful, and, even if they were far better ascertained, they

would not call for any minute attention at the hands of an historian

either of England or of Normandy. After Cnut’s power was once fully

established in England, we have next to no purely English events to

record. Still there are few periods of our history which call for more

attentive study. We have to contemplate the wonderful character of the

man himself, his almost unparalleled position, the general nature of his

government and policy. A few particular events which directly connect

English and Norman history will also need a special examination. Of one

event, more important than all in its results, no man could discern the

importance at the moment. While [Sidenote: 1027 or 1028.] Cnut sat on

the throne of England, William the Bastard first saw the light at

Falaise.

[Sidenote: Character of the reigns of the sons of Cnut.]

The remainder of the period contained in this Chapter, taking in the

reigns of the two sons of Cnut, is of a different character. The reigns

of those two worthless youths were short and troubled, and the accounts

which we find in our best authorities are singularly contradictory. But

the seven years between the death of Cnut and the election of Eadward

are highly important in many ways. Several men who were to play the most

important part in the times immediately following, men formed under

Cnut, but who, while he lived, were overshadowed by their sovereign, now

come forth into full prominence. Foremost among them all is the renowned

name of Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons. These reigns also prepared the

way for the Norman Conquest in a most remarkable, though an indirect

manner. The great scheme of Cnut, the establishment of an

Anglo-Scandinavian Empire, fell to pieces after his death through the

divisions and misgovernment of his sons. Harold and Harthacnut disgusted

Englishmen with Danish rule, and led them to fall back on one of their

own countrymen as their King. But the English King thus chosen proved to

be, for all practical purposes, a Frenchman, and his French tendencies

directly paved the way for the coming of William. Now it is not likely

that any power whatever could have permanently kept all Cnut’s crowns

upon the same head. But had his sons been at all worthy of him, a

powerful dynasty, perhaps none the less English in feeling because

Danish in blood, might well have been established in England. Under such

a dynasty it is still possible that England might have been conquered in

the open field. But it is quite impossible that the path of the

Conqueror should have been made ready for him in the way that it

actually was by the weakness of Eadward and the intrigues of the foreign

favourites with whom he surrounded himself.

§ 1. _The Reign of Cnut in England._ 1017–1035.

[Sidenote: Cnut’s position at Eadmund’s death.]

The death of Eadmund left Cnut without a rival.[820] He had already been

twice chosen to the English crown; once by the voice of the Danish host

on the death of his father [Sidenote: February, 1014.] Swegen,[821] and

a second time, more regularly, by the vote [Sidenote: April, 1016.] of

the majority of the English Witan after the death of Æthelred.[822] He

was also most likely entitled by the Treaty of Olney to succeed to the

dominions of Eadmund. He was in actual possession of the larger half of

the kingdom. But Cnut, if valiant, was also wary; it might be too much,

especially at this stage of his life, to attribute to him any actual

shrinking from bloodshed; but he at least fully understood the value of

constitutional forms, and he had no wish to resort to violence when his

purpose could be better accomplished by peaceful means. He was

determined to be King of all England;[823] he was equally determined not

to parade the right of conquest offensively before the eyes of his new

subjects, but to rest his claim to the crown on an authority which no

man [Sidenote: Witenagemót of London. Christmas, 1016–1017.] could

gainsay. He accordingly assembled the Witan of all England in

London,[824] no doubt at the usual Midwinter festival. Before this

assembly the King of the Mercians [Sidenote: Cnut claims the crown by

virtue of the Treaty of Olney.] and Northumbrians[825] set forth his

claim to the kingdom of Wessex and East-Anglia, as the designated

successor of Eadmund according to the Treaty of Olney. The danger lay

from a possible competition, not so much on the part of the infant

children of Eadmund as on that of his [Sidenote: Testimony of the

witnesses to the treaty.] brothers.[826] The witnesses of the Olney

compact were brought forward and questioned by Cnut. They affirmed that

no portion of the kingdom had ever been assigned to the brothers of

Eadmund; those princes had received no portion during his life, and they

were entitled to no right or preference at his death. As for his sons,

Cnut, the adopted brother of Eadmund, had been named by him as

[Sidenote: Cnut chosen King of all England. January, 1017.] their

guardian during their minority.[827] Cnut was then formally acknowledged

as King of all England, his recognition, it would seem, being

accompanied by a formal exclusion of the brothers and sons of

Eadmund.[828] How far the electors acted under constraint, we know not;

but it is certain that no act was ever more regular in point of form,

and in no recorded transaction do the popular principles of the ancient

English constitution stand forth more clearly. The usual compact[829]

between King and people was gone through, with a further mutual promise

on the part of Danes and English to forget all old grudges. Money was,

as a matter of course, to be paid to the Danish army. The new King was

crowned, no doubt in Saint Paul’s minster, by Archbishop Lyfing.[830]

Measures [Sidenote: Outlawry of the two Eadwigs.] for the security of

the new dynasty were taken. With regard to the Ætheling Eadwig, who is

described as a prince of high character and the object of universal

esteem, the jealousy of Cnut was not satisfied with his exclusion from

the crown. A decree of outlawry was passed against him, as also against

another Eadwig, who is unknown to us, except that he bears the strange

title of King of the Churls.[831] This last Eadwig is said to have made

his peace [Sidenote: Murder of the Ætheling Eadwig.] with the King; but

Eadwig the Ætheling—so at least the rumour of the time said—was

treacherously murdered by Cnut’s order before the year was out.

In this important Gemót a division of England was made which shows how

thoroughly at home the new King [Sidenote: Cnut’s preference for

England,] already felt in his new kingdom. It is clear from the whole

course of Cnut’s reign that of all his dominions England was that which

he most prized. In the midst of his most brilliant victories England was

always his favourite dwelling-place, better loved than his native

Denmark, better loved than any of the other lands which he brought under

his power. In the roll-call of his titles England held the first place.

England was his home; she was, as it were, the love of his youth; her

crown was the prize which he had won with his own right hand, when he

had as yet neither inherited the ancestral kingship of Denmark nor

spread his dominion over Norwegians, Swedes, and [Sidenote: and for the

Saxon part of England.] Wends. And he not only made himself at home in

England; he made himself specially at home in the purely Saxon part of

England. Already King of the Northumbrians and Mercians, it would not

have been wonderful if he had fixed the seat of his rule in his own

half-Danish realm, and had dealt with East-Anglia and the Saxon shires

as conquered dependencies. And we may conceive that the future history

of England might have been different in many ways, if York had been

permanently established by Cnut as the capital of the kingdom. But Cnut,

when once chosen King by the Witan of all England, was determined to

fill in everything the place of the Kings of the English who had been

before him. Those Kings were primarily Kings of the West-Saxons; the

other English kingdoms were dependencies of the West-Saxon state. They

had gradually been more or less closely incorporated with the dominant

realm, but they still remained distinct governments, each with its own

Ealdorman and its own Gemót. This form of administration was continued,

and was more definitely [Sidenote: His fourfold division of the

kingdom.] organized by Cnut. England was divided into four great

governments, answering to the four most powerful and permanent among the

seven ancient kingdoms.[832] For his [Sidenote: He retains Wessex in his

own hands, and appoints Earls over Northumberland, Mercia,] own

immediate share he kept, not Northumberland or Mercia, but Wessex, the

cradle of the royal house which he had supplanted. Over the others he

appointed Earls, a title which now throughout the kingdom displaces the

more ancient name of Ealdormen.[833] Thurkill obtained or [Sidenote: and

East-Anglia. January, 1017.] kept East-Anglia. Eric the King’s

brother-in-law was confirmed in, or restored to, the government of

Northumberland, with which he had been invested a year before.[834]

Eadric, as the reward of his treasons and murders, was again appointed

to his old earldom of Mercia. But the signatures to the charters show

that the title of Earl was by no means confined to these three great

[Sidenote: Other Earls.] viceroys. As before with the title of

Ealdorman, so now its equivalent Earl was the title borne alike by the

governor of an ancient kingdom and by the subordinate governor of one or

more shires.[835] We can trace the names of several such Earls, both

English and Danish, [Sidenote: First appearance of Earl GODWINE.]

through the charters of Cnut’s reign. And among them we see, as filling

a marked and special position, the name of one who was presently to

become the first man in the English Empire—one who rose to power by the

favour of strangers, only to become the champion of our land against

strangers of every race—one who, never himself a King, was to be the

maker, the kinsman, the father of Kings. From an early stage of the

reign of Cnut we see a high and special place among the great men of the

realm filled by the deathless name of Godwine the son of Wulfnoth.

We feel that we are at last drawing near to the real centre of our

history when we bring in the name of the great champion of England

against Norman influence, the father of the King who died as her

champion against Norman invasion. The sudden and mysterious rise of this

great man is one of the most striking features of our history, and his

origin is perhaps the most obscure and difficult question of all the

obscure and difficult questions [Sidenote: Sudden promotion of Godwine

by Cnut.] which our history presents. With no certain explanation of so

singular a promotion, we find, from the very beginning of the reign of

Cnut, Godwine, an Englishman, whose parentage and whose rank by birth

are utterly doubtful, holding high office under the Danish monarch,

honoured with a connexion by marriage with the royal house, and before

long distinctly marked out as the first [Sidenote: Different statements

as to Godwine’s origin.] subject in the realm. One account makes him a

kinsman of the traitor Eadric; another makes him the son of a churl,

seemingly on the borders of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, who won the

favour of the Danish Earl Ulf by incidental services done to him after

the battle of Sherstone.[836] But, whatever was his origin, it is clear

that his advancement was one of the first acts of the reign of Cnut.

[Sidenote: Godwine wins Cnut’s favour, and is raised to the rank of

Earl. [Before 1018.]] Among the foremost men of his newly won kingdom,

Godwine recommended himself to the discerning conqueror by his valour in

war, his prudence in counsel, his diligence in business, his eloquence

in speech, his agreeable discourse and equable temper.[837] I infer that

Godwine had distinguished himself in the war on the side of Eadmund, but

that he was early in offering his allegiance to the conqueror.[838] The

rank of Earl—with what jurisdiction we know not—was the reward of these

merits. We find him holding that dignity in the second year of Cnut’s

reign,[839] and it is not unlikely to have been conferred upon him in

the very Gemót of which we have just been speaking. He became a personal

favourite with the King, high in his confidence, and he soon rose to

greater power and dignity still.

[Sidenote: Cnut’s marriage with Ælfgifu-Emma.]

Cnut’s power now seemed firmly established; at the same time he thought

it expedient to resort to more than one means of strengthening it. In

the month of [Sidenote: July, 1017.] July in this year he contracted a

marriage which is one of the most singular on record. The widow of

Æthelred, Ælfgifu-Emma, was asked to share the English throne a second

time. Nothing loth, she came over from Normandy, married the new King,

and took up her old position as Lady of the English.[840] Fifteen years

before, she had in her youth crossed the sea on the same errand; now, a

mature widow, she gave herself to a man who was much younger than

herself, who had overturned the throne of her first husband, and had

driven her children [Sidenote: Motives for the marriage.] into

banishment. Cnut’s motives for this singular marriage are not very

clear, unless, as one historian suggests, it was part of his system of

reconciliation. He wished, we are told, to win the hearts of the

English, and to make as little change as possible in the appearance of

the English court, by putting again in her old place a Lady to whom they

were accustomed.[841] But this would seem to imply that Emma enjoyed a

popularity among the English, which the foreign woman, the cause of so

many evils, was not likely to have won. If a connexion with the ducal

house of Normandy was all that Cnut aimed at, a marriage with one of

Duke Richard’s daughters would have seemed a more natural alliance for

the young conqueror than a marriage with their dowager aunt. But it is

possible, after all, that personal preference may really have led to

this strange match. There is some slight reason to think that Cnut and

Emma may have met for the purposes of negotiation during the siege of

London.[842] And Emma, though much older than Cnut, may still have kept

much of the beauty which won her the title of the Gem of the

Normans.[843] The marriage was, after all, less strange than one which

had scandalized the West-Frankish court two generations earlier.

Eadgifu, the daughter of Eadward, the sister of Æthelstan, the widow of

Charles, the mother of Lewis, had, when already [Sidenote: 951.] a

grandmother of some standing, eloped with the young and handsome Count

Herbert, and had bestowed two half-brothers on her royal son.[844] At

any rate, whatever may have been Cnut’s motive in his marriage with the

royal widow, it is certain that at the time of his forming this more

exalted connexion he was, like so many of the Norman Dukes, already

hampered by an earlier connexion of that doubtful kind of which I have

often spoken.[845] [Sidenote: Cnut’s relations with Ælfgifu of

Northampton.] Cnut had already taken as his concubine or Danish wife,

Ælfgifu of Northampton, the daughter of Ælfhelm the murdered Earl of the

Northumbrians. By her Cnut believed himself to be the father of two

sons, Harold and Swegen, who after his death succeeded to two of his

kingdoms. But scandal affirmed that neither of them was really of kingly

birth. The barren Ælfgifu successively passed off on her confiding

husband or lover two children whom she affirmed to be their common

offspring, but of whom Swegen was in truth the son of a priest and

Harold the son of a shoemaker. Ælfgifu was certainly living at the time

of Cnut’s marriage with her namesake; whether either of her supposed

sons was born after that date is not so clear. But it was doubtless the

existence of one or other of these children which made Emma stipulate,

as she is said to have done, that the throne should pass to Cnut’s

children by her, to the exclusion of those by any other wife. The King

agreed, no doubt only so far as he constitutionally could; the marriage

took place, and was blessed with the births of Harthacnut and Gunhild.

Emma seems to have utterly forgotten, not only the memory of Æthelred,

but the existence of her children by him; her whole love was transferred

to the young Danish King and to the children whom she bore to him.

The marriages of Emma would seem to have needed a bloodbath as their

necessary attendant. Her bridal with Æthelred was almost immediately

followed by the great massacre of the Danes;[846] her second bridal with

Cnut was followed in the like sort, if not by an actual massacre, yet by

a considerable slaughter of Englishmen who were felt to be dangerous to

the Danish monarch. The whole course of the year was marked by

executions [Sidenote: Fate of the children of Æthelred.] and

banishments. The Ætheling Eadwig, the most dangerous of Cnut’s possible

competitors, was removed as we have seen.[847] The rumour of his

assassination at least implies that he died during the year in some way

or other. Of the other sons of Æthelred’s first marriage we can give no

account, except of those who seem to have been already dead. His

children by Emma were safe in Normandy, and they did not come back to

England with their mother. The romantic marriage of Eadmund Ironside

with Ealdgyth the widow of Sigeferth[848] had given him two sons,

Eadmund and Eadward, who were of course mere babes, and who, from the

date of their [Sidenote: The sons of Eadmund sent to Sweden, and thence

to Hungary.] mother’s marriage, would seem to have been twins. These

children were now sent out of the kingdom. The scandal of the time

affirmed that Eadric, the common author of all evil, counselled their

death.[849] Cnut shrank from the shame of slaying them in England;

but—according to one version, by the advice of Emma[850]—he sought means

to have them put out of the way in some distant land. His half-brother,

Olaf or James, the son of his mother Sigrid,[851] now reigned over

Sweden. To him he sent the babes, begging him to put them to death. The

Swede, a zealous propagator of Christianity in his own dominions,[852]

abhorred the crime, but stood in fear of his brother’s power. He

therefore sent the children to the King of the Hungarians, the sainted

Stephen,[853] to be saved alive and brought up. Both lived, and one will

appear again in our history, to become the source through which the old

kingly blood of Wessex found its way into the veins of the later rulers

of England and Scotland.

[Sidenote: Executions at the Christmas Gemót of 1017–1018.]

The Ætheling Eadwig, whatever was his end, clearly did not die by any

judicial sentence. But the Christmas Gemót of this year, held in

London,[854] was marked by the deaths of several men of high rank, some

of whom at least, whatever may have been their guilt or innocence, seem

to have died in a more regular way by the hand of the executioner. These

were Æthelweard, the son of Æthelmær distinguished as the Great;[855]

Brihtric, the son of Ælfheah of Devonshire, and Northman, the son of the

Ealdorman Leofwine. This last name introduces us to a family which was

to play a most important part in the times immediately before and

immediately after the Norman Conquest.[856] Of Leofwine personally we

know nothing; the fate of his son Northman is in one of our accounts

specially connected with the fate of Eadric.[857] One thing is plain,

that Northman’s offence, whatever it was, was something wholly personal

to himself and in no way touched the rest of his family.[858] This fact,

together with the advancement of Godwine, should be carefully borne in

mind. Whatever was the justice or injustice of these executions,[859]

they were at least no part of any deliberate plan for exterminating the

English nobility and substituting Danes in their place.[860] We shall

soon see that the policy of Cnut led him to an exactly opposite course.

[Sidenote: Treatment of the sons-in-law of Æthelred.]

The new King however kept a careful eye on all who were in any way

connected with the English royal family. The sons-in-law of Æthelred

seem to have awakened the suspicions of Cnut almost as strongly as his

sons. Of the daughters of Æthelred three were certainly married, to

Eadric, to Uhtred, and to an unknown Æthelstan.[861] A fourth is said to

have been the wife of Ulfcytel, and to have passed with his East-Anglian

government to the Dane Thurkill. All these men were gradually got rid of

by death or banishment. Æthelstan and Ulfcytel had had the good luck to

die in open battle. We have already seen how easily Cnut was led to

consent to the death of [Sidenote: Thurkill banished. 1021.]

Uhtred,[862] and we shall presently see Thurkill himself, to whom Cnut

in a great measure owed his crown, driven [Sidenote: Eadric put to

death. Christmas, 1017.] into banishment. The remaining son-in-law of

Æthelred, the infamous Eadric, met the reward of all his crimes in this

same Christmas Gemót. So short a time had he enjoyed the dignity which

he had kept or recovered by so many treasons. That he was put to death

at this time is certain, but that is nearly all that can be said. The

renown, or rather infamy, of his name drew special attention to his end,

and the retributive justice which lighted on the traitor became a

favourite subject of romance.[863] [Sidenote: Motives for his

execution.] The immediate cause or pretext of his death can hardly be

ascertained; but the feelings of Cnut towards him may easily be guessed.

Eadric, notwithstanding all his crimes, was an Englishman of the highest

rank; in the absence of available male heirs, his marriage made him in

some sort the nearest representative of the royal house; the very

success of his repeated crimes shows that he must, somehow or other,

have obtained the lead of a considerable party. In all these characters

he was dangerous; Cnut must have felt that a man who had so often

betrayed his former masters would have as little scruple about betraying

him;[864] he could hardly avoid confirming him in his earldom in the

assembly of the former winter, but he had doubtless already made up his

mind to seize on the first opportunity to destroy him. We may believe

that Cnut, as we are told in most versions of the story, gave himself

out as the avenger of his adopted brother; but the removal of the

arch-traitor was a step which prudence, as prudence was understood by

Cnut at that stage of his reign, called for fully as much as justice.

[Sidenote: Character and influence of Eadric.]

The character and career of Eadric, like those of Ælfric, his

predecessor in office and in crime,[865] form one of the standing

puzzles of history. It is hard to understand the motives for such

constant and repeated treasons on the part of one who had, solely by

royal favour, risen from nothing to the highest rank in the state. It is

equally difficult to understand by what sort of fascination he could

have found the means either to work his treasons or to blind the eyes of

those who suffered by them. That both his crimes and his influence have

been much exaggerated is highly probable. It is likely enough that he

has been made the scape-goat for many of the sins both of other

individuals and of the whole nation. A tendency of this kind to lay all

blame upon some one man is not uncommon. Thus in our Norman history we

have seen all the mischief that happened attributed at one time to

Arnulf of Flanders, and at another to Theobald of Chartres.[866] But

exaggeration of this kind must have had some substantial ground to go

upon. Without necessarily believing that Eadric personally wrought all

the countless and inexplicable treasons which are laid to his charge, it

is impossible to doubt that he knew how to exercise an extraordinary

influence over men’s minds, and that that [Sidenote: Two classes of

treasons ascribed to Eadric.] influence was always exerted for evil. It

may be observed that the crimes attributed to him fall into two classes.

His treasons on the field of battle, at Sherstone and at Assandun, were

wrought openly in the sight of two armies, and, asserted as they are by

contemporary writers, we [Sidenote: Difference in the credibility of the

two kinds of charges.] cannot do otherwise than accept them. But there

is another class of charges which do not rest on the same firm ground.

Such are his supposed share in the deaths of Eadmund and Eadwig, his

advice to destroy the children of Eadmund, and other cases where his

counsel is said to have led to various crimes and mischiefs, or to have

thwarted the accomplishment of wise and manly purposes. Some of these

charges are not found in our best authorities, and, of those which are,

some may well be merely the surmises of the time, going on the general

principle that, whenever any mischief was done, Eadric must needs be the

doer of it. The annalists could not well be mistaken as to Eadric’s

conduct on the field of Assandun; they might easily be mistaken as to

any particular piece of advice said to have been given by him to

Æthelred, to Eadmund, or to Cnut. In these last cases their statements

prove little more than the universal belief that Eadric was capable of

every wickedness. But that universal belief, though it proves little as

to this or that particular action, proves everything as to Eadric’s

general character. After making every needful deduction, enough is left,

not only to brand the name of Eadric with infamy, but to brand it with

infamy of a peculiar kind, which holds him up as a remarkable study of

human character as well for the philosopher as for the historian. We

have much more both of crime and of sorrow to go through in the course

of our history; it is at least some comfort that no sinner of the

peculiar type of Eadric will occur again.

[Sidenote: Leofwine succeeds Eadric in Mercia. Christmas, 1017.]

By the death of Eadric his earldom of Mercia became vacant. It was most

likely conferred on Leofwine, the father of the slain Northman, who had

seemingly hitherto held the ealdormanship of the Hwiccas under the

superior rule of Eadric.[867] And an earldom held by Northman, perhaps

that of Chester, is said to have been conferred on his brother Leofric,

who some years later succeeded his father in the government of all

Mercia.

The next year we hear that a fleet of thirty pirate ships, seemingly

coming to attack England, was cut off by Cnut. Thus, as a contemporary

writer says, he who had once been the destroyer of the land had now

become its [Sidenote: Payment of Danegeld. 1018.] defender.[868] In the

same year a heavy Danegeld was paid, doubtless that which had been

agreed upon in the treaty between Cnut and Eadmund at Olney.[869] London

paid ten thousand five hundred[870] pounds, and the rest of England paid

seventy-two thousand. This is something like a measure of the position

which the great merchant city [Sidenote: Cnut dismisses the greater part

of his fleet.] held in the kingdom. Cnut was thus able to satisfy the

claims of his fleet, and he now kept only forty ships in his pay,

sending the rest back to Denmark. The crews of these ships seem to have

been the germ of the famous force of the _Thingmen_ or _Housecarls_, of

whom, and of the peculiar legislation which affected them, I shall

presently have [Sidenote: Witenagemót of Oxford. 1018.] much to say.

This same year a Witenagemót was held, which marks an æra in the reign

of Cnut, and which may be looked upon as the winding up of the

severities which almost necessarily followed upon the conquest. A large

body of the chief men of both nations, Danish and English, assembled at

Oxford, the town where a like assembly, [Sidenote: 1015.] three years

before, had been dishonoured by the murder [Sidenote: Renewal of

“Eadgar’s Law.”] of Sigeferth and Morkere.[871] Danes and English alike

united in a decree for the observance of the laws of King Eadgar.[872]

This is the first time that we have met with this formula in England,

though we have already come across it in Norman history, when Cnut’s

grandfather [Sidenote: Import of the phrase.] Harold is said to have

restored the laws of Rolf.[873] It has here the same meaning which it

has in earlier and in later examples. The renewal of the laws of Eadgar

has the same meaning as the renewal of the laws of Rolf after the

expulsion of the French from Normandy, as the renewal of the laws of

Cnut after the expulsion of Tostig from Northumberland, as the often

promised and often evaded renewal of the laws of Eadward in the days of

the Norman Kings of England. It does not always imply that the princes

spoken of were specially looked on as lawgivers. Eadgar and Cnut had

undoubtedly some claim to that title, but we know not that Rolf had any,

and Eadward certainly had none. But the demand does not refer to codes

of law issued, or believed to be issued, by any of these princes. The

cry is really, as an ancient writer explains it,[874] not for the laws

which such a King enacted, but for the laws which such a King observed.

It is in fact a demand for good government in a time of past or expected

oppression or maladministration. It is, as in this case, a demand that a

foreign King should take the best of his native predecessors as his

model. The name of the last King who left behind him a name for just and

mild government is taken as the embodiment of all just and mild

government. The people in effect demand, and the King in effect

promises, that his government shall be as good as that of the popular

hero whose name is put forward. Now, with a foreign conqueror for their

King, with the ancient kingly house cut down to a few exiled children,

with the flower of the ancient nobility cut off in the carnage of

Assandun, Englishmen looked back with yearning to the days of their

native rulers. The reign of Æthelred was a time which the national

memory would be [Sidenote: The memory of Eadgar acceptable both to the

English and to the Danes.] glad to deal with as a blank. English

imagination leaped back to the glorious and happy days of the peaceful

Basileus, when Englishmen beat their swords into ploughshares and their

spears into pruning-hooks, when the mountains brought peace and the

little hills righteousness, when the Lord of Wessex could boast that,

within the four seas of Britain, all Kings fell down before him and all

nations did him service. And the name of Eadgar was one which would be

hardly less acceptable to the Danes than to the English themselves. When

their King was more and more throwing off the feelings of a conqueror,

when he was more and more closely making himself at one with the realm

which he had won, when the Earls and Thegns of the conquered land stood

around his throne on a perfect level with the proudest of their

conquerors, when the mass of the victorious army had just been sent away

to their own homes, the Danish followers of Cnut might well tremble, not

only for their supremacy over the vanquished English, but almost for

their equality with them. To them the name of Eadgar may well have

represented a prince who was raised to the throne in a great measure by

Danish swords, who, while he defended his island against Danish

invasions, did full justice to the Dane within his own realm, who

guaranteed to his Danish subjects every right that they could desire,

and whose fondness for them, among other strangers, was the only fault

with which Englishmen could reproach him.[875] Danes and Englishmen

therefore joined in looking back to Eadgar as the ideal of kingship, and

in demanding of their common sovereign that he should take that

incomparable[876] example as the model of his government. Men of both

nations looked back to the happy days of Eadgar, as in after days the

Northumbrians, groaning under the tyranny of Tostig, looked back to the

happy days of Cnut himself [Sidenote: Contrast between Cnut and the

Norman Kings.] and demanded the renewal of his law. They looked back to

them, as Englishmen under the Norman yoke looked back to the happy days

of Eadward, and put forth the vain demand that their foreign lords

should rule them, not merely according to the same formal enactments,

but in the same spirit of justice and mercy in which the royal saint was

held to have ruled. That prayer was not, and could not be, granted, till

the swords of Robert Fitzwalter and Simon of Montfort had won back for

us more than the laws of Eadward in another shape. The great Dane was

more happily placed. With him the renewal of the ancient laws was

neither an empty nor an impossible promise. If by renewing the laws of

Eadgar was meant the establishment of a rule as strong and as just and

as safe against foreign invasion as that of Eadgar, King Cnut fully kept

his word.[877]

Cnut had now been absent from his native country for five years. He had

stayed in England ever since his return [Sidenote: 1014–5.] thither

after he had been driven out by the solitary military exploit of King

Æthelred the Unready.[878] It was clearly his intention to make England

the seat of his empire,[879] but as he was now, by the death or

deposition of his brother Harold, sovereign of Denmark,[880] and as

[Sidenote: Cnut visits Denmark. 1019.] England was perfectly quiet and

reconciled to his government, he deemed it expedient to pay a visit to

the land of [Sidenote: He is accompanied by Godwine, who is said to have

distinguished] his birth.[881] He took with him Godwine, whose conduct

in this foreign journey, perhaps in one of Cnut’s northern wars,

procured him a still higher degree of his sovereign’s esteem.[882]

According to one account, it was by a gallant [Sidenote: himself in a

Wendish war.] action in an expedition against the Wends that the English

Earl gained Cnut’s special favour. An English contingent under Godwine’s

command served in the Danish army. The two armies lay near together, and

a battle was expected the next day. Godwine, without the King’s

knowledge, attacked the enemy by night at the head of his countrymen,

routed them utterly, and occupied their camp. In the morning Cnut missed

the English portion of his army, and hastily inferred that they had

deserted, or even gone over to the enemy. He marched however to the

Wendish camp, and there, to his surprise, found Godwine and the English

in possession, and nothing left of the Wends but their dead bodies and

their spoil. This exploit, we are told, greatly raised both Godwine and

the English in general in the opinion of Cnut. The tale has a mythical

sound; but, whatever may be the truth or falsehood of its details, that

Godwine rose still higher from the time of this Danish expedition is

beyond doubt. Cnut [Sidenote: Godwine marries Gytha, sister of Earl

Ulf.] now admitted him to his most secret counsels, and gave him in

marriage Gytha, the sister of the Danish Earl Ulf, the husband of his

own sister Estrith. This Ulf, the son of Thurgils Sprakaleg, is one of

the most famous characters in the Danish history or romance of the time.

Like some other heroes of the North, his parentage was not wholly human.

The father of Thurgils, Biorn, was the offspring of a bear, who carried

off a human damsel.[883] Ulf himself is said to have served in Cnut’s

English wars, and according to one version, it was to him that Godwine

owed his earliest introduction to Cnut.[884] But in English history he

plays hardly any part.[885] His marriage we shall have to speak of again

as one of the events which connect England and Denmark and Normandy; but

his real or imaginary exploits and treasons,[886] and his death by order

of his brother-in-law, belong wholly to [Sidenote: Her long and

chequered life.] Scandinavian history. But his sister Gytha, the wife of

the greatest of living Englishmen, became thoroughly naturalized in

England. She shared the momentary banishment of her husband in the days

of Norman intrigue, and she lived to undergo an eternal banishment in

the days of Norman dominion. No mother was ever surrounded by a fairer

or more hopeful offspring; none ever underwent a longer series of

hopeless bereavements. She saw a nephew on the throne of Denmark, a

daughter and a son on the throne of England. She saw her other children

and kinsfolk ruling as princes in England and allying themselves with

princes in foreign lands. But she also saw her brother cut off by the

hand of his kinsman and sovereign; she saw one son stained with the

blood of a cousin, and another son stained with treason against his

house and country. Of her remaining sons she saw three cut off in one

day by the most glorious of deaths, while the sole survivor dragged on

his weary days in a Norman prison. No tale of Grecian tragedy ever set

forth a sadder and more striking record of human vicissitudes, of

brighter hopes in youth, of more utter desolation in old age, than the

long and chequered life of her whom our notices are at least enough to

set her before us as a wife worthy of Godwine, a mother worthy of

Harold.

[Sidenote: Cnut returns to England.]

The next year Cnut came back to England as his real home and

abiding-place, the seat of his Anglo-Scandinavian Empire. At Easter a

Witenagemót was held at Cirencester, at which took place the last

recorded instance of [Sidenote: Witenagemót at Cirencester. April,

1020.] severity on Cnut’s part towards any Englishman. An [Sidenote:

Æthelweard banished.] Ealdorman Æthelweard—which, among all the bearers

of that name, we can only guess—was banished.[887] But it must have been

at this same Gemót that an appointment was made which showed how

thoroughly at home the stranger King had made himself in his new

country. The last banishment of an Englishman by the Danish conqueror

was accompanied by the exaltation of another Englishman to a place in

the realm second only to kingship. [Sidenote: Godwine appointed Earl of

the West-Saxons. [1020–1052.]] It was now that Godwine received a title

and office which no man had borne before him, but which, saving the few

months of his banishment, he bore for the thirty-two remaining years of

his life, the title and office of Earl of the West-Saxons.[888] Cnut, it

will be remembered, in his fourfold division of the kingdom, while he

appointed Earls over Northumberland, Mercia, and East-Anglia, kept

Wessex under his own immediate government. He was now already King of

two kingdoms, and he had no doubt by this time began to meditate a

further extension [Sidenote: Nature and import of the office.] of his

dominion in the North. He found, it would seem, that the King of all

England and all Denmark needed a tried helper in the administration of

his most cherished possession, and a representative when his presence

was needed in other parts of his dominions. Wessex then, the ancient

hearth and home of English kingship, now for the first time received an

immediate ruler of a rank inferior to that of King. Godwine became the

first, and his son Harold was the second and last, of the Earls of the

West-Saxons. To reduce the ancient kingdom to an earldom was not, as has

been sometimes imagined, any badge of the insolence of a conqueror; the

act was in no way analogous to the change of Northumberland from a

kingdom to an earldom under Eadred. The case is simply that the King of

all England and all Denmark, King in a special manner of the old

West-Saxon realm, found the need of a special counsellor, and in absence

of a viceroy, even in this his chosen and immediate dominion. No man of

the kindred or nation of the conqueror, but Godwine, the native

Englishman, was found worthy of this new and exalted post. Through the

whole remainder of the reign of Cnut, the great Earl of the West-Saxons

ruled in uninterrupted honour and influence. The wealth which he

acquired, mainly, it may be supposed, by royal grant, was enormous. His

possessions extended into nearly every shire of the south and centre of

England. Whether the son of the churl or the great-nephew of the

traitor, he was now, three years after the completion of the Danish

Conquest, beyond all doubt the first subject in the realm.

[Sidenote: Consecration of the church on Assandun. 1020.]

The year of Cnut’s return and of Godwine’s great promotion beheld the

King engaged in a remarkable solemnity on the spot which had witnessed

his last battle, his only distinct victory, in his great struggle with

English Eadmund. On the hill of Assandun, Cnut, in partnership with

Thurkill, at once as Earl of the district and as his chief comrade in

the battle, had reared a church, which was consecrated, in the presence

of the King and the Earl, by Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, and several

other bishops. That the ceremony was performed by the Northern

Metropolitan was probably owing to a vacancy in the see of Canterbury.

Lyfing, who had crowned Cnut, died in the course of the year, and was

succeeded by Æthelnoth the Good,[889] who had baptized or confirmed

him.[890] The ceremony at Assandun doubtless took place between these

two events. In Essex, a region rich in woods, but poor in good building

stone, timber was largely used both in ecclesiastical and in domestic

buildings for ages after this time. Cnut however employed the rarer

material, and the fact that his church was built of stone and lime was

looked on as something worthy of distinct record.[891] The stone church

of Assandun was something remarkable in Essex, exactly as the wooden

church of Glastonbury[892] was something remarkable in Somerset. But the

building was small and mean, at least as compared with the stately pile

which the next conqueror of England reared in memory of his victory. The

foundation of Cnut and Thurkill, for a single priest,[893] was poor and

scanty, compared with the lordly Abbey of Saint Martin of the Place of

Battle.[894] But the minster of Battle simply spoke of the subjugation

of a land by a foreign conqueror; the minster of Assandun told a nobler

tale. It was reared as the hallowing of his victory, as the atonement

for his earlier crimes, by a prince who, conqueror as he was, had

learned to love the land which he had conquered, to feel himself one

with its people, and to reign after the pattern of its noblest princes.

The Abbot of Battle and his monks were strangers, brought from a foreign

land to fatten on the [Sidenote: First appearance of STIGAND, [Priest of

Assandun, 1020; Bishop of Elmham, 1044; of Winchester, 1047; Archbishop

of Canterbury, 1052].] spoils of England.[895] The single priest of

Assandun lived to show himself one of the stoutest of Englishmen.

Stigand, the first priest of Cnut’s new minster, now the friend and

chaplain of the Danish conqueror, in after years displaced a Norman

intruder on the throne of Augustine, and was himself hurled therefrom at

the bidding of a Norman King.[896]

The consecration on Assandun might pass as the formal act of

reconciliation between the Danish King and his [Sidenote: Later years of

Cnut. 1020–1035.] English subjects. From that day the internal history

of England, for the remaining fifteen years of the reign of Cnut,

becomes a blank. We now hear only of the King’s wars abroad, of his acts

of piety at home, of several instances in which his hand was heavy upon

his own countrymen; but, after the outlawry of Æthelweard, we find no

record of the death or banishment of a single [Sidenote: Danes make way

for Englishmen.] Englishman. In fact these years form a time of the

gradual substitution of Englishmen for Danes in the highest offices,

while no doubt Danes of lower degree were, like their sovereign, fast

changing themselves into Englishmen. Nearly all the Danish holders of

earldoms whom we find at the beginning of Cnut’s reign vanish [Sidenote:

Thurkill banished from England. November, 1021.] one by one. Of the

outlawry of the two greatest of their number we find distinct accounts.

The year after the ceremony at Assandun, Thurkill, the co-founder with

the King, who, in the account of their joint work, appears almost as the

King’s peer, was driven into banishment.[897] With him his English wife

Eadgyth had to leave her country; if she was the daughter of Æthelred,

and the widow of either Ulfcytel or Eadric,[898] we are almost driven to

infer that the marriage was contracted after the consecration on

Assandun, that the connexion with the ancient royal family awakened

Cnut’s jealousy, and was in fact the cause of Thurkill’s banishment. One

cannot help feeling a certain interest in the fate of one who had so

long played an important and, on the whole, not a dishonourable, part in

English history. The savage pirate gradually changed into the civilized

warrior; if at one time he was the enemy, he was at another the

defender, of England. The heathen who had striven to save a Christian

martyr from his persecutors had developed the good seed within him till

he grew into a founder and restorer of Christian churches. With the

banishment which I have just recorded the history of Thurkill, as far as

England is concerned, comes to an end. But his banishment was merely

local; he was held to be dangerous in England, and he was therefore

removed from the country, but his removal was little more than an

honourable ostracism. He kept, or soon won back, his sovereign’s favour;

there is no evidence that he ever came back to England; but two years

later he was formally [Sidenote: Thurkill made Viceroy of Denmark.

1023.] reconciled to Cnut; he was established as his viceroy in Denmark,

seemingly as guardian to one of the King’s sons who was meant to succeed

him in that kingdom.[899] The only sign of suspicion shown on Cnut’s

part was his bringing back the son of Thurkill with him to England,

[Sidenote: Eric banished. 1023?] evidently as a hostage. Eric also, the

Danish Earl of the Northumbrians, was banished a few years later than

Thurkill, on what occasion, and at what exact time, is [Sidenote: Hakon

banished. 1029.] unknown.[900] Somewhat later again we find the

banishment of Eric’s son Hakon, “the doughty Earl.” Hakon was doubly the

King’s nephew, as the son of his sister and as the husband of his niece

Gunhild, the daughter of another sister and of Wyrtgeorn King of the

Wends.[901] We have no details, but we are told that Cnut feared to be

deprived by him of his life or kingdom.[902] Hakon seems however not to

have been formally outlawed, but to have been merely sent away to fill

the post which his father had held as viceroy in Norway.[903] This fact,

coupled with Thurkill’s similar viceroyalty in Denmark, shows that Cnut

could trust men in other countries whom he thought [Sidenote: His death.

1030.] dangerous in England. The year after his removal from England

Hakon died at sea, or, according to another account, was killed in

Orkney.[904] His widow seems to have stayed in England; she married

another Danish [Sidenote: 1046.] Earl, Harold,[905] and was herself, in

her second widowhood, banished from England when England had again a

native [Sidenote: Ulf put to death. After 1025.] King.[906] Cnut’s

brother-in-law Ulf came to a worse end still; that he died by the

command of Cnut there is no reason to doubt, but we have no certain

information as to the circumstances. According to our Danish historian

it was a perfectly righteous execution, while the romantic tale of the

Norwegian saga represents it as a singularly [Sidenote: The banished

Danish chiefs succeeded by Englishmen.] base and cold-blooded

assassination.[907] The point of importance for us is that these eminent

Danes had no successors of their own nation in their English offices.

There remained plenty of Danish Thegns and some Danish Earls; but in the

later years of Cnut the highest places were all filled by Englishmen.

Ranig retained the subordinate earldom of the Magesætas; Thored was

Staller, and, at least in Harthacnut’s reign, he held the earldom of the

Middle-Angles.[908] But Godwine and Leofric held the first rank in

southern and in central England, and, on the banishment of Eric, the

government of Northumberland went back to the family of its ancient

Earls.[909] It is most remarkable, in tracing the signatures to the

charters, to trace how the Danish names gradually disappear, and are

succeeded by English names.[910] The Danes who remain seem to have been

all in quite secondary rank. No doubt Cnut had largely rewarded his

followers with grants of land, and we can well believe that some of

these new Danish thegns often behaved with great insolence to their

English neighbours.[911] But the general principle of Cnut’s government

is not affected by any local wrongs of this kind. Cnut, from the very

beginning, admitted Englishmen to high office; still, in the earlier

years of his reign he appears mainly as a foreign conqueror surrounded

by those whose arms had won his crown for him. He gradually changes into

a prince, English in all but actual birth, who could afford to dispense

with the dangerous support of the chieftains of his own nation, who

could venture to throw himself on the loyalty of those whom he had

subdued, and to surround himself with the natural leaders of those whom

he had learned to look on as his own people.

[Sidenote: Character of Cnut.]

This gradual change in the disposition of Cnut makes him one of the most

remarkable, and, to an Englishman, one of the most interesting,

characters in history. There is no other instance—unless Rolf in

Normandy be admitted as a forerunner on a smaller scale—of a barbarian

conqueror, entering a country simply as a ruthless pirate, plundering,

burning, mutilating, slaughtering, without remorse, and then, as soon as

he is firmly seated on the throne of the invaded land, changing into a

beneficent ruler and lawgiver, and winning for himself a place side by

side with the best and greatest of its native sovereigns. Cnut never

became a perfect prince like Ælfred. An insatiable ambition possessed

him throughout life, and occasional acts of both craft and violence

disfigure the whole of his career. No man could charge him with that

amiable weakness through which Eadmund lent so ready an ear to

protestations of repentance and promises of amendment even from the lips

of Eadric. Cnut, on the other hand, always found some means, by death,

by banishment, by distant promotion, of getting rid of any one who had

once awakened his suspicions. Reasons of state were as powerful with

him, and led him into as many unscrupulous actions, as any more

civilized despot of later times. But Englishmen were not disposed to

canvass the justice of wars in which they won fame and plunder, while no

enemy ever set foot on their own shores. They were as little disposed to

canvass the justice of banishments and executions, when, for many years,

it was invariably a Dane, never an Englishman, who was [Sidenote: Cnut’s

position typical of that of the Danes in England.] the victim. The law

by which the Dane settled in England presently became an Englishman

received its highest carrying out in the person of the illustrious

Danish King. As far as England and Englishmen were concerned, Cnut might

seem to have acted on the principle of the Greek poet, that

unrighteousness might be fittingly done in order to win a crown, but

that righteousness should be done in all other times and places.[912]

The throne of Cnut, established by wasting wars, by unrighteous

executions, perhaps even by treacherous assassinations, was, when once

established, emphatically the throne of righteousness and peace. As an

English King, he fairly ranks beside [Sidenote: Cnut’s letter from Rome.

1027.] the noblest of his predecessors. His best epitaph is his famous

letter to his people on his Roman pilgrimage.[913] Such a pilgrimage was

an ordinary devotional observance according to the creed of those times.

But in the eyes of Cnut it was clearly much more than a mere perfunctory

ceremony. The sight of the holy places stirred him to good resolves in

matters both public and private, and, as a patriotic King, he employed

his meeting with the Pope, the Emperor, and the Burgundian King, to win

from all of them favours which were profitable to the people of his

various realms. No man could have written in the style in which Cnut

writes to all classes of his English subjects, unless he were fully

convinced that he possessed and deserved the love of his people. The

tone of the letter is that of an absent father writing to his children.

In all simplicity and confidence, he tells them the events of his

journey; he tells them with what honours he had been received, and with

what presents he had been loaded, by the two chiefs of Christendom, and

what privileges for his subjects, both English and Danish, he had

obtained at their hands. He confesses the errors of his youth, and

promises reformation of anything which may still be amiss. All

grievances shall be redressed; no extortions shall be allowed; King Cnut

needs no money raised by injustice. These are surely no mere formal or

hypocritical professions; every word plainly comes from the heart.

England had more than led captive her conqueror; she had changed him

into her King and father.

[Sidenote: The Laws of Cnut. 1028–1035.]

The same spirit which breathes in Cnut’s letter breathes also in the

opening of his laws.[914] The precept to fear God and honour the King

here takes a more personal and affectionate form. First above all things

are men one God ever to love and worship, and one Christendom with one

mind to hold, and Cnut King to love with right truthfulness.[915] The

laws themselves deal with the usual subjects, the reformation of

manners, the administration of justice, the strict discharge of all

ecclesiastical duties and the strict payment of all ecclesiastical dues.

The feasts of the two new national saints, Eadward the King and Dunstan

the Primate, are again ordered to be kept, and the observance of the

former is again made to rest in a marked way on the authority of the

Witan.[916] The observance of the Lord’s day is also strongly insisted

on; on that day there is to be no marketing, no hunting; even the

holding of folkmotes is forbidden, except in cases of absolute

necessity.[917] All heathen superstition is to be forsaken,[918] and the

slave-trade is again denounced.[919] The whole fabric of English society

is strictly preserved. The King legislates only with the consent of his

Witan.[920] The old assemblies, the old tribunals, the old magistrates,

keep all their rights and powers. The Bishop and the Ealdorman[921]

still fill their place as joint presidents of the Scirgemót, and joint

expounders of the laws, ecclesiastical and secular.[922] The King, as

well as all inferior lords,[923] is to enjoy all that is due to him; the

royal rights, differing somewhat in the West-Saxon and the Danish

portions of the kingdom, are to be carefully preserved, and neither

extended nor diminished in either country.[924] No distinction, except

the old local one, is made between Danes and Englishmen. The local

rights and customs of the Danish and English portions of the kingdom are

to be strictly observed.[925] But this is only what we have already seen

in the legislation of Eadgar.[926] The Danes spoken of in Cnut’s laws,

as in Eadgar’s, are the long-settled Danish inhabitants of

Northumberland and the other countries of the _Denalagu_; no kind of

preference is made in favour of Cnut’s own Danish followers; we cannot

doubt that a Dane who held lands in Wessex had to submit to English law,

just as a West-Saxon who held lands in Northumberland must, under Eadgar

no less than under Cnut, have had to submit to Danish law. On one point

the legislation of the great Dane is distinctly more rational and

liberal than the legislation of our own day. Trespasses on the King’s

forests are strictly forbidden; but the natural right of every man to

hunt on his own land is emphatically asserted.[927] And as Cnut’s theory

was, so was his practice. No King was more active in what was then held

to be the first duty of kingship, that of constantly going through every

portion of his realm to see with his own eyes whether the laws which he

enacted were duly put in force.[928] In short, after Cnut’s power was

once fully established, we hear no complaint against his government

[Sidenote: Personal traditions of Cnut.] from any trustworthy English

source.[929] His hold upon the popular affection is shown by the number

of personal anecdotes of which he is the hero. The man who is said, in

the traditions of other lands, to have ordered the cold-blooded murder

of his brother-in-law, and that in a church at the holy season of

Christmas,[930] appears in English tradition as a prince whose main

characteristic is devotion mingled with good humour.[931] In the best

known tale of all, he rebukes the impious flattery of his courtiers, and

hangs his crown on the image of the crucified Saviour.[932] He bursts

into song as he hears the chant of the monks of Ely,[933] and rejoices

to keep the festivals of the Church among them. He bountifully rewards

the sturdy peasant who proves the thickness of the ice over which the

royal sledge has to pass.[934] One tale alone sets him before us in a

somewhat different light. He mocks at the supposed sanctity of Eadgyth

the daughter of Eadgar; he will not believe in the holiness of any child

of a father so given up to lust and tyranny. It is needless to add that

the offended saint brings the blasphemer to a better mind by summary

means.[935] This tale is worth noting, as it illustrates the twofold

conception of the character of Eadgar which was afloat. Cnut is

represented as accepting the Eadgar of the minstrels, not the Eadgar of

the monks, nor yet the Eadgar of history, who is somewhat different from

either. But even in this tale Cnut is described as showing something of

the spirit which breathes in his Roman letter. The King who loathed the

supposed tyranny of Eadgar could hardly have been conscious of any

tyranny of his own.

[Sidenote: Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy.]

In ecclesiastical matters Cnut mainly, though not exclusively, favoured

the monks. His ecclesiastical appointments, [Sidenote: 1020.] especially

that of good Archbishop Æthelnoth;[936] who had baptized or confirmed

him, do him high honour. [Sidenote: His ecclesiastical foundations.] He

was also, after the custom of the age, a liberal benefactor to various

ecclesiastical foundations. According to one account, not Assandun only,

but all his battle-fields were marked by commemorative churches.[937]

But as Assandun was Cnut’s only undoubted victory on English soil, and

as men do not usually commemorate their defeats, we may conclude that,

in England at least, Assandun was his only foundation of that kind. That

church, as we have seen, was a secular foundation, seemingly for one

priest only. A more splendid object of Cnut’s munificence throws an

interesting light on the workings of his mind. The special object of his

reverence was Eadmund, the sainted King of the East-Angles, a King

martyred by heathen Danes, a saint who was the marked object of his

father’s hatred, and by whose vengeance his father was held to have come

to his untimely end.[938] The Christian Dane, King of all England, was

eager to wipe away the stain from his house and nation. He made

provision for the restoration of all the holy places which had in any

way suffered during his own or his father’s wars.[939] But the first

rank among them was given to the great foundation which boasted of the

resting-place of the royal martyr. [Sidenote: Saint Eadmund’s Bury

rebuilt and the foundation changed. 1020–1032.] The minster of Saint

Eadmund was rebuilt, and, in conformity with the fashionable notions of

reformation, its secular canons had to make way for an Abbot and monks.

Some of the new inmates came from Saint Benet at Holm,[940] another

foundation which was enriched by Cnut’s bounty.[941] One hardly knows

whether Cnut most avoided or incurred suspicion by his special devotion

to the resting-place of [Sidenote: Cnut’s visit to Glastonbury. 1032.]

another Eadmund. He visited Glastonbury in company with Archbishop

Æthelnoth, once a monk of that house. There, in the building which

tradition points to as the first Christian temple raised in these

islands, the building which history recognizes as the one famous holy

place of the conquered Briton which lived unhurt through the storm of

English Conquest, in the “wooden basilica” hallowed by the memory of so

many real and legendary saints, did the Danish King confirm every gift

and privilege which his English predecessors had granted to the great

Celtic sanctuary.[942] A hundred and fifty years after the visit of

Cnut, the wooden basilica, which had beheld so many revolutions, gave

way to the more powerful influence of a change of taste and feeling, and

on its site arose one of the most exquisite specimens of the latest

Romanesque art, now in its state of desolation forming one of the

loveliest of monastic ruins.[943] At some distance to the east of this

primæval sanctuary stood the larger minster of stone reared by Saint

Dunstan. In Cnut’s days it was doubtless still deemed a wonder of art,

though it was doomed before the end of the century to give way to the

vaster conceptions of the Norman architects. The invention and

translation of the legendary Arthur were as yet distant events, and the

new tomb of King Eadmund Ironside still kept the place of honour before

the high altar.[944] There the conqueror knelt and prayed, and covered

the tomb of his murdered brother with a splendid robe on which the

gorgeous plumage of the peacock was reproduced [Sidenote: Translation of

Saint Ælfheah. June, 1023.] by the skilful needles of English

embroideresses.[945] Equal honours were paid by Cnut to another victim

of the late wars, in his devotion to whom he was expiating the crimes of

his nation, though not his own or those of his father’s house. The body

of the martyred Ælfheah was translated from Saint Paul’s minster in

London to his own metropolitan church, in the presence, and with the

personal help, of the King and of all the chief men of the realm, lay

and clerical. The ceremony was further adorned with the presence of the

Lady Emma and her [Sidenote: His gifts to Winchester, Ely, and Ramsey.]

“kingly bairn” Harthacnut.[946] That the two monasteries of the royal

city of Winchester came in for their share of royal bounty it is almost

needless to mention. But towards them the devotion of Emma, who claimed

the city as her morning-gift, seems to have been more fervent than that

of her husband.[947] Cnut’s personal tastes seem to have led him to the

great religious houses of the fen country, where the dead of Maldon and

Assandun reposed in the choirs of Ely and Ramsey.[948] Nowhere was his

memory more fondly cherished than in the great minster which boasted of

the tomb of Brihtnoth. There he was not so much a formal benefactor as a

personal friend. But he was held in no less honour at Ramsey, the

resting-place of Æthelweard. There he built a second church,[949] and

designed the foundation of a society of nuns, which he did not bring to

perfection. The local historian of the house rewards his bounty with a

splendid panegyric, which however is fully borne out by his recorded

acts.[950] Nor was his bounty confined to England, or even to his own

[Sidenote: Cnut plants English Bishops in Denmark.] dominions. In his

native Denmark he showed himself a diligent nursing-father to the infant

Church, largely providing it with bishops and other ecclesiastics from

[Sidenote: His gifts to foreign churches, &c.] England.[951] On his

Roman pilgrimage, the poor and the churches of every land through which

he passed shared his bountiful alms. It is also said that, by the

counsel of Archbishop Æthelnoth, he gave gifts to many foreign churches.

One special object of his favour was the church of Chartres, then

flourishing under its famous Bishop Fulbert.[952] Emma too, the foreign

Lady, was not backward in her gifts to churches, both English and

foreign. She gave to the metropolitan church of Canterbury an arm of the

Apostle Bartholomew, bought of an Archbishop of Beneventum whom the fame

of the wealth of England had led hither to dispose of his holy

treasure.[953] She had also a great share in rebuilding the famous

minster of Saint Hilary at Poitiers, where a large portion of her work

still remains.[954]

Such then was Cnut’s internal government of England. The conqueror had

indeed changed into a home-born King. At no earlier time had the land

ever enjoyed so long a term of such unmixed prosperity. We have now to

behold the great King in his relations to foreign lands. And, if a

series of ambitious wars and aggressions forms a less pleasing picture

than a tale of peaceful and beneficent government, we shall at least see

England raised to a higher position in the general system of Christendom

than she held at any earlier, perhaps at any later time.

§ 2. _The foreign Relations of Cnut._ 1018–1035.

Cnut had come into England as a conqueror and destroyer; but his reign,

as far as the internal state of England [Sidenote: Unparalleled internal

peace during the reign of Cnut.] is concerned, was a time of perfect

peace.[955] No invasion from beyond sea, no revolt, no civil war, is

recorded during the eighteen years of his government. A single Scottish

inroad and victory of which we shall presently hear was wiped out by the

more complete submission of the northern vassal of England. Within

England itself we read of no district being ravaged either by rebels or

by royal command; we read of no city undergoing, or even being

threatened with, military chastisement. This is more than can be said of

the reign either of Eadgar the Peaceful or of Eadward the Saint. No

doubt the whole nation was weary of warfare; after a struggle of

thirty-six years, England would have been glad of a season of repose,

even under a far worse government than that of Cnut. But a period of

seventeen years in which we cannot see that a sword was drawn within the

borders of England was something altogether unparalleled in those

warlike ages, something which speaks volumes in favour of the King who

bestowed such a blessing on our land. It is true that the old enemies of

England were now the fellow-subjects of Englishmen, and that the first

attempt of her new enemies came to nought without a blow being struck.

Danish invasions ceased when Denmark and England had the same King, and

the first Norman invasion, as we shall presently see, ignominiously

failed. But a great deal is proved by the absence of any recorded

attempt on the part of any Englishman to get rid of the foreign King. No

one thought of taking advantage of Cnut’s frequent absences from England

in the way in which men did take advantage of the similar absences of

William the Norman. It is quite impossible that England and all Cnut’s

other kingdoms should have been kept down against their will by the

King’s [Sidenote: The Housecarls or Thingmen.] Housecarls. It is now

that we first hear of this famous force, the name of which will be often

heard during the following reigns, even after the Norman Conquest.

Hitherto England had possessed nothing that could be called a standing

army. When a war had to be waged, the King or Ealdorman called on his

personal followers, attached to him by the ancient tie of the

_comitatus_, and on the general levy, the _fyrd_ or militia, either of

the whole kingdom or of some particular part of it. But no English King

or Ealdorman had hitherto kept a standing military force in his pay. But

Cnut now organized a regular paid force, kept constantly under arms, and

ready to march at a moment’s notice.[956] These were the famous

Thingmen, the Housecarls, of whom we hear so much under Cnut and under

his successors. This permanent body of soldiers in the King’s personal

service seems to have had its origin in the crews of the forty Danish

ships which were kept by Cnut when he sent back the greater part of his

fleet in the second year of his reign. In his time the force consisted

of three thousand, or at most of six thousand, men, gathered from all

nations. For the power and fame of Cnut drew volunteers to his

[Sidenote: A revival of the _Comitatus_.] banner from all parts of

Northern Europe. The force was in fact a revival of the earliest form of

the _comitatus_, only more thoroughly and permanently organized. The

immediate followers, the hearth company, of earlier Kings and Ealdormen

had been attached to them by a special tie, and were bound to bear to

them a special fidelity in the day of battle.[957] The Housecarls or

Thingmen of Cnut were a force of this kind, larger in number, kept more

constantly under arms, and subjected to a more regular discipline than

had hitherto been usual. Receiving regular pay, and reinforced by

volunteers of all kinds and of all nations, they doubtless gradually

departed a good deal from the higher type of the _comitatus_, and came

nearer to the level of ordinary mercenaries. So far as the force

consisted of foreigners, they were mercenaries in the strictest sense;

so far as it consisted of Englishmen, they were mercenaries in no other

sense than that in which all paid soldiers are mercenaries. The

housecarls were in fact a standing army, and a standing army was an

institution which later Kings and great Earls, English as well as

Danish, found it to be their interest to continue. Under Cnut they

formed a kind of military guild with [Sidenote: The military laws of

Cnut.] the King at their head. A set of most elaborate articles of war

determined the minutest points of their duty.[958] Fitting punishments

were decreed for all offences great and small, punishments to be awarded

by tribunals formed among the members of the guild. But all the

provisions of the code relate wholly to the internal discipline of the

force and to the relations of its members to one another. Of the

position in which they stood to the community at large we hear

absolutely nothing. And it should be remembered that all our details

come from Danish writers and those not contemporary. Our English

authorities tell us nothing directly about the matter. [Sidenote: The

institution continued by later Kings.] From them we could at most have

inferred that some institution of the sort arose about this time; we

never read of housecarls before the reign of Cnut, while we often read

of them afterwards. That a body of soldiers, many of them foreigners,

were guilty of occasional acts of wrong and insolence, we may take for

granted even without direct evidence. That under a bad King they might

sometimes be sent on oppressive errands we shall presently see on the

best of evidence. But that under the great Cnut they were the

instruments of any general system of oppression, that they held the

nation in unwilling submission to a yoke which it was anxious to throw

off, is proved by no evidence whatever. And when England was again ruled

by Kings of her own blood, the housecarls became simply a national

standing army, and an army of which England might well be proud. The

name of the housecarls of King Harold became a name of fear in the most

warlike regions of the North,[959] and it was this brave and faithful

force which was ever foremost in fight and nearest to the royal person

alike in the hour of victory and in the hour of overthrow.

[Sidenote: Foreign policy of Cnut.]

We have still to speak of Cnut’s relations with lands beyond the bounds

of England. This subject starts several important points in the history

of foreign lands; but, as far as English history is concerned, most of

them may be passed by in a few words. Within our own island, we hear

little of Wales, and out of it, Cnut’s wars with the other Scandinavian

powers and his relations to the Empire, though highly important, have

hardly any bearing on English history. The case is different with his

dealings both with Scotland and with Normandy, both of which, the latter

especially, call for a somewhat fuller examination.

Cnut, as King of all England, alike by formal election and by the power

of the sword, of course assumed the same Imperial claims and Imperial

style which had been borne by the Kings who had gone before him. As King

of all England, he was also Emperor of all Britain, Lord [Sidenote:

Relations with Wales.] of all Kings and all nations within his own

island. Of his relations with his Welsh vassals we are driven to pick up

what accounts we can from their own scanty annals. Early in Cnut’s

reign, on what provocation we know not, [Sidenote: Eglaf plunders Saint

David’s. 1022?] the exploit of Eadric Streona[960] was repeated. Wales

was invaded by Eglaf, a Danish Earl in Cnut’s service, probably the same

who had joined in Thurkill’s invasion of England, and who, according to

some accounts, was brother of that more famous chief.[961] He ravaged

the land of Dyfed and destroyed Saint David’s.[962] This is our sole

[Sidenote: 1035?] fact, except that in one of the last years of Cnut’s

reign, a Welsh prince, Caradoc son of Rhydderch, was slain by the

English.[963] Our own Chroniclers do not look on these matters as worthy

of any mention. With Scotland the case is somewhat different, especially

as the affairs of that kingdom are closely mixed up with those of the

great [Sidenote: Affairs of Northumberland and Scotland.] earldom of

Northumberland. We have seen that, on the fourfold division of England,

the great Northern government was entrusted to the Dane Eric, who seems

however [Sidenote: Earldom of Eric;] not to have disturbed the actual

English possessors.[964] He most likely kept a superiority over them

till his own banishment,[965] after which it is clear that the family of

the [Sidenote: of Eadwulf Cutel.] former Earls remained in possession.

The reigning Earl, Eadwulf, the son of the elder Waltheof and brother of

Uhtred, is spoken of as a timid and cowardly man, who, according to one

account, now surrendered Lothian to King Malcolm for fear that he might

avenge the victories won over him by his brother.[966] But if any

cession was made to the Scots at this time, it was most likely

[Sidenote: Battle of Carham. 1018.] extorted by Malcolm by force of

arms. For the second year of Cnut was marked by a Scottish invasion and

a Scottish victory of unusual importance.[967] King Malcolm entered

England, accompanied by Eogan or Eugenius, seemingly an Under-king of

Strathclyde. A great battle took place at Carham on the Tweed, not far

from the scene of the more famous fight of Flodden, in which the Scots

gained a decisive victory over the whole force of the Bernician earldom.

The slaughter, as usual, fell most heavily upon the English nobility.

Bishop Ealdhun is said to have fallen sick on hearing the news, and to

have died in a few days. His great work was all but done. The height of

Durham was now crowned by a church, stately doubtless after the standard

of those times, of which only a single tower lacked completion.[968] It

was doubtless owing to the confusion which followed the Scottish inroad

that three years passed between the death of Ealdhun and the succession

of the next Bishop Eadmund.[969] According to one theory, which I shall

discuss elsewhere,[970] the annexation of Lothian to the Scottish

kingdom was the result of this battle. It is equally strange that a

prince like Cnut should have consented to the cession of any part of his

dominions, and that he should have allowed a Scottish victory to pass

unrevenged. But we do not, in our English authorities, find any mention

of Scottish [Sidenote: Affairs of Cumberland.] affairs till a much later

stage of his reign. According to the Scottish account, Duncan, the

grandson of Malcolm through his daughter Beatrice, who now held the

under-kingdom of Cumberland or Strathclyde, refused, though often

summoned, to do homage to Cnut.[971] His refusal was cloked under a show

of feudal loyalty; his homage was due only to the lawful King of the

English; he would do no kind of service to a Danish usurper. Cnut, after

his return from his Roman pilgrimage, marched against his refractory

vassal, with the intention of incorporating [Sidenote: Submission of

Duncan.] his dominions with the English kingdom. Certain Bishops and

other chief men stepped in to preserve peace, and a compromise was

brought about. Duncan withdrew his claim to independence; Cnut

relinquished his design of complete incorporation; the Under-king of

Cumberland was again to hold his kingdom on the old terms of vassalage.

Such is the Scottish story, which characteristically puts Cumberland in

the foreground, and leaves out all mention both of Scotland proper and

of Lothian. It may very likely be true in what it asserts; it is

eminently false in what it conceals. For there is no doubt that Cnut’s

dealings with his northern neighbours were by no means confined to

Cumberland, but touched Scotland itself quite as nearly. It is just

conceivable that both Duncan and his grandfather Malcolm refused homage

to Cnut on the ground that the Dane was an usurper of the English

kingdom. If so, they were perhaps brought to reason at an earlier time

than would appear from our own Chronicles only. According to a French

historian, an expedition of Cnut against the Scots was hindered, and

peace was restored, by the intercession of the Lady Emma and her brother

Duke Richard. According to a Norwegian saga, two Scottish Kings,

probably Malcolm and Duncan, submitted to [Sidenote: Submission of

Scotland. 1031.] Cnut in the early years of his reign. However all this

may be, it is certain, on the highest of all authorities, that the whole

kingdom of Scotland did in the end submit to his claims. Cnut, like

William after him, was not minded to give up any right of the crown

which he had won. The more famous ceremony of Abernethy forty [Sidenote:

[1073.]] years later was now forestalled. As the younger Malcolm then

became the man of the Norman, so now the elder Malcolm became the man of

the Dane.[972] Cnut, after his return from Rome—in the very year of his

return, according to those who give the later date to that event—marched

into Scotland, meeting, it would seem, with no [Sidenote: Malcolm,

Jehmarc, and Macbeth do homage to Cnut. 1031.] opposition. Malcolm now,

if not before, rendered the long-delayed homage, and he was joined in

his submission by two other Scottish chiefs, the lords of Argyle and of

Moray, on both of whom our Chronicles bestow the title of King. With the

otherwise obscure Jehmarc is coupled a name which holds no small place

in history, but which is far more famous in romance. Along with the

homage of the elder Malcolm King Cnut received also the homage of

Macbeth.

[Sidenote: Import of the homage of the Under-kings.]

This fact that the Under-kings, or princes of whatever rank, within the

kingdom of Scotland, did homage to Cnut is worthy of special notice. It

seems to be a step beyond the terms of the original commendation to

Eadward the Elder. It seems to be a step towards the more complete

submission made by William the Lion to Henry the Second and to the

homage done by all Scotland to the Lord Paramount Edward. The choice of

the English King as Father and Lord over the King and people of the

Scots did not make this or that Scot his “man.”[973] But now, not only

King Malcolm, but Jehmarc and Macbeth became the “men” of the King of

all England. Yet the fact may perhaps be explained another way. When we

remember the later history, we shall perhaps be inclined to look for the

cause of this change in the slight authority possessed by Malcolm over

the lesser Scottish princes. His legendary character paints him as a

King who granted away all his domains, and left himself nothing but the

hill of Scone, the holy place of the Scottish monarchy.[974] And more

authentic history shows that Jehmarc and Macbeth, princes ruling on the

western and eastern shores of the island, were so far independent of the

King of Scots that the homage of Malcolm alone would have been no

sufficient guaranty for the retention of the Scottish kingdom in its

proper submission to the Imperial crown. Macbeth indeed was the

representative of a line which had claims on the Scottish crown itself.

Cnut therefore prudently exacted the homage of Malcolm’s dangerous

vassals as well as that of Malcolm himself. [Sidenote: Death of Malcolm.

1034.] Malcolm, already an old man, survived the ceremony only three

years, and died in the year before the death of his far younger

over-lord.[975] He was succeeded by his grandson Duncan, whose son

Malcolm, surnamed Canmore, afterwards so famous, received, as usual, the

apanage of Cumberland.[976]

[Sidenote: Cnut’s Northern wars.]

Cnut’s wars in the North of Europe have but little connexion with

English history, and there are few events for [Sidenote: Authorities

for their history.] which our historical materials are more

unsatisfactory. Our own Chronicles help us to the dates of some of the

more prominent events; the Norwegian sagas[977] and the rhetorical

Latin of the Danish historian help us to abundance of details, if we

could only accept them as authentic; the Danish chronicles are meagre

beyond words. Happily, to unravel the difficulties and contradictions

of their various statements is no part of the business of an English

historian. It may be enough for our purpose to keep ourselves to those

events which the contemporary chroniclers of England thought worthy of

a place in our own [Sidenote: Revolutions of Norway.] national annals.

The most important among them is the loss and reconquest of Norway by

Cnut, and his wars with its renowned King Olaf the Saint.[978] Norway

had, after [Sidenote: 1000.] the death of Olaf Tryggvesson,[979]

formed part of the dominions of Swegen, and it was entrusted to the

government of his son-in-law Eric, who afterwards held the [Sidenote:

1015.] earldom of Northumberland.[980] When Eric went to England with

Cnut, Hakon the son of Eric remained as Earl in Norway, but was soon

driven out by Olaf Haraldsson. Of this prince, afterwards canonized as

a saint and martyr, we have heard somewhat already;[981] but the part

assigned to him in English affairs evidently belongs to romance and

not to history. His career in his own country is more [Sidenote: Reign

of Saint Olaf. 1015–1028.] authentic and more important. The rule of

Olaf was at first acceptable to the country; but both his virtues and

his faults gradually raised up enemies against him. He was

preeminently a reformer. His strictness in the administration of

justice, the first of virtues in a prince of those times, is highly

praised.[982] He was moreover a zealous Christian; his whole soul was

devoted to spreading throughout his kingdom the blessings of religion

and civilization, and to reforming the manners and morals of his

people in every way. He brought bishops and other churchmen from

England, and, not satisfied with the evangelization of his own

kingdom, he employed them as missionaries in Sweden, Gothland, and the

neighbouring islands.[983] But, just like the elder Olaf, his choice

of means was often less praiseworthy than the excellence of his

objects. The reformer tried by harshness and violence to force on a

rude people manners and institutions for which they were not ready,

and the Christian missionary sank into a persecutor of those who clave

to the creed of their fathers. In his lofty ideas of kingly power,

Olaf set little store by the rights either of the ancient chiefs or of

the free peasantry of the land, and, in dealing with these enemies, he

did not shrink from acts of merciless cruelty.[984] Meanwhile Cnut was

keeping as careful an eye on Norway as his father had kept on England;

but, like his father, he knew how to bide his time. A summons to Olaf

to hold the crown of Norway as his vassal was rejected;[985] war

followed, [Sidenote: Cnut’s defeat at the Helga. 1025.] and Cnut’s

first expedition was unsuccessful. Olaf allied himself with the

Swedish King Omund, and their joint forces inflicted a defeat on

Cnut’s combined Danish [Sidenote: Cnut’s intrigues in Norway. 1027.]

and English army at the river Helga in Scania.[986] Two years later,

by dint of bribes and promises and by studiously taking advantage of

Olaf’s growing unpopularity, Cnut contrived to raise up a powerful

party in Norway which was prepared to accept his own pretensions.[987]

In the next year, when Cnut sailed to Norway with fifty ships, Olaf

was completely forsaken by his people, and [Sidenote: Cnut expels

Olaf, and is chosen King of all Norway. 1028.] had to take refuge in

Russia. Cnut was everywhere welcomed, and he was chosen King of all

Norway by the Thing at Trondhjem, just as he had been, eleven years

before, chosen King of all England by the Gemót at London.[988] A

later attempt of Olaf to recover his kingdom [Sidenote: Olaf killed at

Stikkelstad. 1030.] was resisted by the Norwegians themselves; he fell

in the fight of Stikkelstad, and the Church looked on him as a

martyr.[989]

[Sidenote: Cnut’s friendly relations with the Empire.]

Cnut, King of five or, as some reckon, six kingdoms, seems to have

looked upon himself as Emperor of the North, and to have held himself in

all respects as the peer of his Roman brother.[990] Earlier and later

Danish Kings were fain to own themselves the vassals of Cæsar; but

before the power of Cnut the Roman Terminus himself had to give way.

With the Frankish Emperor Conrad the mighty ruler of Northern Europe was

on the best terms. Cnut, as we have seen, made his acquaintance and

friendship in his Imperial capital, and bore a part in the splendours of

his Imperial consecration. The alliance was cemented by a treaty of

marriage between their children, and by a cession of territory on the

part of the potentate [Sidenote: Marriage of Gunhild to King Henry of

Germany. 1036.] higher in formal rank. Gunhild, the daughter of Cnut and

Emma, was betrothed to Conrad’s son King Henry, afterwards the renowned

Emperor Henry the Third. The marriage however did not take place till

after the death of the bride’s father, and Gunhild, like her predecessor

Eadgyth, was destined to be neither the wife nor the mother of an

Emperor. Gunhild, like Eadgyth, died before her husband succeeded to the

Empire, and his successor was the offspring of his second and better

known marriage with Agnes of Poitiers.[991]

[Sidenote: Cnut recovers the frontier of the Eider.]

The more strictly political result of the friendship between Cnut and

Conrad was the restoration of the ancient frontier between Denmark and

Germany. After the victorious expedition of Otto the Second into

Denmark, a German mark had been established beyond the Eider, extending

from that river to the Dannewirk, the great bulwark which Gorm and Thyra

had reared against the Southern invader. This was the first step in that

process which has gradually Germanized a part of Southern Jutland,

[Sidenote: 1864–6.] and which has at last handed over an unwilling

Scandinavian population as the victims of Prussian greed of territorial

aggrandizement. Cnut, by treaty with the Emperor, and seemingly as the

price of his daughter, recovered the ancient frontier with which Charles

the Great had been content, and which remained the boundary of the two

realms till that general removing of ancient landmarks which belongs

only to the more refined diplomacy of modern times.

[Sidenote: Affairs of Normandy.]

We have now, last of all, to look to the position of Cnut with reference

to the Duchy of Normandy. I have already, in speaking of Cnut’s

ecclesiastical policy, had occasion to mention the close connexion which

he kept up with more than one part of Gaul. He was the special friend of

Duke William of Aquitaine, surnamed the Great, a prince whose tastes

were in many respects congenial with his own. He sent him embassies and

gifts, among them a splendid book of devotions in golden letters.[992]

But Cnut’s most important relations among the states of Gaul were with

the great duchy which lay opposite to his southern shores, and where his

banished stepsons were being brought up as his possible rivals. The last

event in the internal history of Normandy which I recorded was the

[Sidenote: [997.]] great revolt of the Norman peasantry at the beginning

of the reign of Richard the Good. The new Duke was, in the full sense of

the word, a Frenchman. Whatever had become of the original homage of

Rolf, the commendation of Richard the Fearless to Hugh the Great[993]

was still in [Sidenote: Friendly relations with France. 996–1031.] full

force. Richard was the loyal vassal and faithful ally of the Parisian

King; his friendship with Robert, the second King of that house, seems

to have always remained unbroken, and the two princes acted together in

various expeditions. The Normans were by this time thoroughly

naturalized in their Gaulish possessions. In the records of the time

they appear as recognized and honoured members of the French monarchy.

The memory of their foreign and heathen descent is forgotten; their

prince is no longer the mere Duke of Pirates,[994] whom a loyal

Frenchman spoke of as seldom as he could; the cherished ally of the

Parisian King is now spoken of with every respect as the Duke of

Rouen.[995] The chief French historian of the time is as ready to

exaggerate the external power and influence of the second Richard as

ever his own Dudo was to exaggerate those of his father.[996] Richard,

on the other hand, did not hesitate to have his gifts to his own Fécamp

confirmed by his over-lord,[997] and he dated his public acts by the

regnal years of the King.[998] And no wonder; for it is plain that the

Norman Duke [Sidenote: Strict alliance between King Robert and Duke

Richard.] was the mainstay of the French kingdom. Robert, though the

most pious of men, could not avoid either temporal warfare,

ecclesiastical censures, or domestic oppression.[999] In the last two

classes of afflictions Norman help could hardly avail him, but in all

Robert’s wars Richard proved a steady and valuable ally. The help of the

Norman [Sidenote: 1003.] Duke enabled his over-lord to maintain his

claims over the ducal Burgundy,[1000] and Norman troops served along

with those both of the French King and of the German Cæsar in a war

against their common vassal of Flanders. The [Sidenote: 1006.] Imperial

and royal saints united their forces against the city of Valenciennes,

and the more purely temporal help of [Sidenote: Friendly relations with

Britanny.] the Norman Duke was arrayed on the same side.[1001] With his

Breton neighbours or vassals Richard was on good terms. The friendship

between him and the Breton Count Geoffrey was cemented by an exchange of

sisters between [Sidenote: 1008.] the two princes. Richard married

Judith of Britanny,[1002] and Hadwisa of Normandy became the wife of

Geoffrey, on whose death her sons, Alan and Odo, were placed under the

guardianship of their uncle and lord.[1003] With another neighbour and

brother-in-law Richard found it less easy to remain on friendly terms.

His sister Matilda had married Odo the Second, Count of Chartres, the

grandson of the old enemy Theobald. The town and part of the district of

Dreux had been given to Odo as her marriage [Sidenote: War with Odo of

Chartres.] portion,[1004] and this, on her death, he refused to give

back. A war followed, which was made conspicuous by the foundation of

the famous castle of Tillières,[1005] which long remained a border

fortress of Normandy. Of course every effort of Odo to take or surprise

the Norman outpost was rendered hopeless by Norman valour, and yet we

are told that Richard found it expedient to resort to help of a very

questionable kind to support him against his enemy. The Normans were now

Frenchmen; Duke Richard and his court of gentlemen[1006] had doubtless

quite forgotten their Scandinavian mother-tongue; some traces of the old

nationality may still have lingered at Bayeux, but, as a whole, Normandy

was now French in language, feeling, and religion. But the old connexion

with the North was still cherished. We have already seen how the

friendly reception which the Danish invaders of England met with in the

Norman ports had led to hostile relations between Normandy and

England.[1007] So now we have the old story of Harold Blaatand over

again.[1008] Richard, like his father, does not scruple to bring heathen

invaders into Gaul to help him against his Christian enemies. And, just

as in the second appearance of Harold Blaatand, this shameful help is

called in at a time when there seems to be no need for if, at a time

when the Norman arms are completely victorious. Odo could surely have

been crushed by the combined forces of Normandy and Britanny,[1009] even

if King Robert was not disposed to repay [Sidenote: Brittany ravaged by

two heathen Kings, Lacman and Olaf. 1013?] in kind the services of his

loyal vassal. The tale however, as we find it, represents the Norman

Duke as entering into a league with two heathen Kings, who were engaged

in inflicting the most cruel ravages on his own vassals and allies of

Britanny, having just taken and burned the frontier city of Dol.[1010]

These Kings are described as Lacman of Sweden and Olaf of Norway. With

regard to the former there must be a mistake of some kind, as no King

bearing any such name occurs in Swedish [Sidenote: Identity of this Olaf

with Saint Olaf Haraldsson.] history. But we are given to understand

that the Olaf spoken of was no other than the famous Olaf Haraldsson the

Saint.[1011] One story of the early life of Olaf seems to be about as

mythical as another; but something is proved when two independent

narratives agree. Of the busy career in England which the Northern

legend assigns to Olaf not a trace is to be found in any English writer.

But the presence of Olaf in Normandy is asserted alike [Sidenote:

Richard allies himself with them.] by Norman and by Norwegian tradition.

According to the Norman tale, the ravagers of Britanny left their prey,

sailed to Rouen in answer to the Duke’s summons, [Sidenote: Mediation of

King Robert.] and were there honourably received by him. But if Duke

Richard did not shrink from such guests at Rouen, King Robert was

naturally afraid of their appearance at Paris. After the treatment which

the Bretons had received, all Gaul was endangered by their

presence.[1012] The King then held, what is so rare in the history of

France, so common in that of England and Germany, an assembly of the

Princes of his realm.[1013] The royal summons was obeyed both by the

Duke of the Normans and by the Count of Chartres. Peace was made by the

mediation of the King; Count Odo kept his town of Dreux, and Duke

Richard kept his new fortress of Tillières. The heathen Kings were to be

got rid of as they might. Duke Richard persuaded them by rich gifts to

go away then, and to promise to come again if they were wanted. One of

them, Olaf, was converted to Christianity with many of his comrades. He

was baptized by Archbishop Robert, and his career of sanctity begins

forthwith.[1014]

[Sidenote: Amount of truth to be found in these stories.]

Stories of this kind can hardly be admitted into history without a

certain amount of dread lest the historian may prove to have opened his

text for the reception of a mere piece of romance. They are stories

which we cannot venture unhesitatingly to accept, but which we are not

at all in a position unhesitatingly to deny. They are stories of which

it is safest to say that the details are sure to be mythical, but that

there is likely to be some groundwork of truth at the bottom. It is

impossible to read this tale of the alliance of Richard the Good with

Olaf and Lacman, without a lurking feeling that it may be the tale of

Richard the Fearless and Harold Blaatand moved from its old place and

fitted with a new set of names. If we get thus far, it is hardly

possible to avoid going a step further, and asking whether the mythical

element is not strong in the tale of Harold Blaatand himself. And it is

hardly less difficult to read the story of the two heathen Kings, of

whom one is converted, while the other seemingly goes away stiffnecked

in his old errors, without asking whether the tale is not merely a

repetition of the history of the dealings of Æthelred with Swegen and

Olaf Tryggvesson twenty years before.[1015] Still we are hardly

justified in altogether rejecting stories which we cannot disprove, and

which rest on authority, certainly not first-rate, but still such as we

are generally content to accept for statements which have no inherent

[Sidenote: Their witness to the abiding connexion between Normandy and

the North.] unlikelihood about them. And after all, in this particular

case, the mere existence of the stories proves something of more

importance than the particular facts which they profess to relate.

Whether the tales either of Harold or of Olaf be historically true or

not, the fact that such tales could obtain belief, and could find a

place in recognized Norman history, shows that a strong feeling of

connexion between Normandy and the Scandinavian mother-land must have

lived on, even after all outward traces of Scandinavian descent had

passed away.

[Sidenote: Foreign expeditions and conquests of the Normans.]

Another feature in Norman history, which has its beginning in the reign

of Richard the Good, is still more closely connected with our immediate

subject. It was in the days of this prince that the Normans of the

Norman duchy began to play an independent part beyond their own borders,

and to enter on that series of foreign expeditions and foreign conquests

of which the Norman Conquest of England was the last and greatest

example.[1016] The earlier Dukes had founded the duchy; they had

enlarged its borders; they had defended it against aggression from

without, and had developed its resources within. The alliance between

Richard the Good and King Robert had caused the Norman arms to be felt

and dreaded throughout the length and breadth of Gaul. But now the

limits both of the Norman duchy and of the French kingdom became too

narrow for the energies both of the sovereigns of Normandy and of their

subjects. The part played by the Normans in Europe had hitherto been

partly defensive and partly secondary. They had withstood French,

English, and German invasions, and they had aided their lords, ducal and

royal, at Paris in a variety of military adventures. But now that no

invader was to be feared, now that the Norman state held a fully

established position in France and in Europe, the old Scandinavian

spirit of distant enterprise and distant conquest awoke again. The

Christian and French-speaking Norman was now as ready to jeopard his

life and fortune in distant lands as ever his heathen and Scandinavian

forefathers had been. The days of the actual crusades had not yet come,

but already, while warfare of all kinds had charms, warfare against

misbelievers was beginning to be clothed with a special charm in the

eyes of the Christian chivalry of Normandy. As yet no distant conquest

had been undertaken by any Norman Duke. Yet even under Richard the Good

we find the power of Normandy employed beyond the bounds of the French

kingdom, and in a cause which was not that of any immediate interest

[Sidenote: Burgundian War. 1024.] of the Norman duchy. Besides the

campaign in which Duke Richard vindicated the claim of his over-lord

over the ducal Burgundy, he carried his arms beyond the frontier of the

Western Kingdom into that further Burgundy which still kept its own line

of Kings, and which was soon to return to its allegiance to Cæsar.

Reginald, Count of the Burgundian Palatinate, had married Richard’s

daughter Adeliza. Towards the end of Richard’s reign, this prince fell

into the hands of his turbulent neighbour, Hugh, Count of Challon[1017]

and Bishop of Auxerre. Hugh was a vassal of France, while Reginald’s

dominions were held in fief of the last Burgundian King, the feeble

Rudolf, himself little better than a vassal of the Emperor. But neither

King nor Cæsar stepped forward to chastise the wrong-doer or to set free

the captive. It was a Norman army, under the young Richard, son of the

Duke, which presently taught the Count-prelate that a son-in-law of the

Duke of the Normans could not be wronged with impunity.[1018]

But far greater and more enduring exploits than these were wrought

during the reign of Richard, not by the public force of the Norman

duchy, but by the restless energy of private Norman adventurers. An

attempt to establish a Norman settlement in Spain came to nought; but in

this period were laid the foundations of that great Norman settlement in

Southern Italy which had such an [Sidenote: Exploits of Roger of Toesny

in Spain. 1018.] important effect on the future history of Europe. Roger

of Toesny was the first to carry the Norman arms into the Spanish

peninsula. Spain had long before attracted the attention of a Norman

sovereign; it was to Spain, as a heathen land, to which Richard the

Fearless had persuaded the unbelieving portion of his Scandinavian

allies to depart.[1019] It was in Spain, as the battle-ground of

Christian and Saracen, that Roger now sought at once to wage warfare

against the misbeliever and to carve out a dominion for himself. Roger

was of the noblest blood of Normandy, boasting a descent from Malahulc,

uncle of Rolf,[1020] and he may well have looked down upon the upstart

gentlemen whose nobility had no higher source than the tardy bridal of

their kinswoman Gunnor.[1021] Roger fought manfully against the

infidels, and marvellous tales are told of his daring, his hard-won

victories, his deeds of cannibal ferocity.[1022] He married the daughter

of the widowed Countess of Barcelona, a princess whose dominions were

practically Spanish, though her formal allegiance was due to the

Parisian King. This marriage was doubtless designed as the beginning of

a Norman principality in Spain; but the scheme failed to take any

lasting root.

[Sidenote: Norman Conquest of Apulia and Sicily. 1016–1090.]

The exploits of the Normans in Italy, which began in the reign of

Richard, form a theme of the highest interest, but one on which it is

dangerous to enter, lest I should be drawn too far away both from my

central subject and from those which directly bear upon it. On English,

and even on Norman, affairs the influence of these great events was

[Sidenote: The Conquest of England perhaps partly suggested by it.]

merely indirect. One can hardly doubt that the wonderful successes of

their countrymen in the South of Europe did much to suggest to the minds

of those Normans who stayed at home that a still greater conquest nearer

home was not wholly hopeless. The unsuccessful attempt of Duke Robert,

which we shall presently have to mention, and the successful attempt of

his greater son, may well have been partly suggested by the exploits of

the sons of Tancred in Apulia. When private adventurers thus grew into

sovereigns, what might not be done by the sovereign of Normandy himself,

wielding the whole force of the land which gave birth to men like them?

For it must be remembered that the Norman conquest of Apulia was no

national enterprise, no conquest made in regular warfare waged by the

Duke of the Normans against any other potentate. Private Norman

adventurers, pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, Norman subjects

under the displeasure of their own Duke,[1023] gentlemen of small estate

whom the paternal acres could no longer maintain, gradually deprived the

Roman Empire of the East[1024] of the remnant of its Western

possessions, and won back the greatest of Mediterranean islands from the

dominion of Mahomet to that of Christ. The sons of Tancred of Hauteville

began as wikings who had changed their element; they gradually grew into

Counts, Dukes, Kings, and Emperors. And, when the first horrors of

conquest were over, no conquerors, not even Cnut himself, ever deserved

better of the conquered. The noble island of Sicily, so long the

battle-field of Europe and Africa, the land which Greece, Rome,

Byzantium, had so long striven to guard or to recover from the

incursions of the Carthaginian and the Arab, became, under her Norman

Kings, the one example of really equal and tolerant government which the

world could then show. Under the Norman sceptre the two most civilized

races of the world,[1025] the Greek and the Saracen, could live together

in peace, and could enrich their common country with the results of

skill [Sidenote: Conquest of Sicily by Henry the Sixth. 1194–5.] and

industry such as no Northern realm could rival. For once we are driven

to blush for our common Teutonic blood, when we see how this favoured

portion of the world, the one spot where contending creeds and races

could display their best qualities under the sway of a common and

impartial ruler, was enslaved and devastated and trodden under foot by

the selfish ambition of a Teutonic invader.

The relations of Richard with England, his war with Æthelred,[1026] his

dealings with Swegen,[1027] his reception of his fugitive brother-in-law

and his children,[1028] have been already [Sidenote: Unbroken peace

between Richard and Cnut.] spoken of. With Cnut he seems to have

maintained perfect peace. His nephews, the sons of Æthelred and Emma,

found shelter at his court, but only shelter. Of any attempt on their

behalf, of any interference in the internal affairs of England, the wary

Duke seems never to have thought. We must hasten on to the reign of

another Norman prince, whose relations to our island were widely

different.

[Sidenote: Death of Richard. 1026.]

Richard died after a reign of thirty years. Before his death he

assembled the chief men of his duchy, and by their advice he settled the

duchy itself on his eldest son Richard, and the county of Hiesmes on his

second son [Sidenote: Reign of Richard the Third.] Robert as his

brother’s vassal.[1029] Disputes arose between the brothers; Robert was

besieged in his castle of Falaise, and when peace was made by the

submission of Robert, the Duke did not long survive his success. After a

reign of two years he died by poison,[1030] as was generally believed,

[Sidenote: Robert succeeds. 1028.] and was succeeded by his

brother.[1031] Robert, known as the Magnificent,[1032] is most familiar

to us in English history as the father of the Conqueror. But he has no

small claims on our notice on his own account. What the son carried out,

the father had already attempted. Robert was in will, though not in

deed, the first Norman conqueror of England.[1033] In the early part of

his reign he had to struggle against several revolts in his own

dominions. [Sidenote: He suppresses revolts at home.] We are not

directly told what were the grounds of opposition to his government; but

we are at least not surprised to hear of revolts against a prince who

had attained to his sovereignty under circumstances so suspicious. But

Robert overthrew all his domestic enemies,[1034] and he is at least not

charged with any special cruelty in the reestablishment [Sidenote: He

reduces Britanny to submission.] of his authority. With Britanny he did

not remain on the same friendly terms as his father. His cousin Alan

refused his homage, but he was brought to submission.[1035] In this

warfare Neal of Saint-Saviour, who had so valiantly beaten off the

English in their invasion of the Côtentin, appears side by side with a

warrior whose name of Ælfred raises the strongest presumption of his

English birth. The banishments of the earlier days of Cnut will easily

account for so rare an event as that of an Englishman taking service

under a foreign prince.[1036] But it was as the protector of unfortunate

princes that Robert seems to have been most anxious to appear before the

[Sidenote: He restores Baldwin of Flanders.] world. Baldwin of Flanders,

driven from his dominions by his rebellious son, was restored by the

power of the Norman Duke.[1037] A still more exalted suppliant presently

implored his help. His liege lord, Henry, King of the French, was driven

to claim the support of the mightiest of his vassals against foes who

were of his own household. [Sidenote: King Robert and his sons.] King

Robert had at first designed the royal succession for his eldest son

Hugh, whom, according to a custom common in France, though unusual in

England, he caused [Sidenote: Hugh is crowned and dies before him.] to

be crowned in his lifetime.[1038] Hugh, a prince whose merits, we are

told, were such that a party in Italy looked to him as a candidate for

the Imperial crown,[1039] was, after some disputes with his father,

reconciled to him, and died before him. Robert then chose as his

successor his second son Henry, who was already invested with the

[Sidenote: Henry crowned in his father’s lifetime.] duchy of Burgundy.

Henry was accordingly accepted and crowned at Rheims.[1040] But the

arrangement displeased Queen Constance, who was bent on the promotion of

her [Sidenote: Death of King Robert.] third son Richard. On King

Robert’s death, Constance and Richard expelled Henry, who took refuge

with his [Sidenote: Henry expelled, and restored] Norman vassal, and was

restored by his help, Richard being allowed to receive his brother’s

duchy of Burgundy.[1041] [Sidenote: by Duke Robert. 1031.] The policy of

Hugh the Great had indeed won for his house a mighty protector in the

descendant of the pirates.

[Sidenote: The English Æthelings in Normandy.]

But there were other banished princes who had a nearer claim upon Duke

Robert than his Flemish neighbour, a nearer personal claim than even his

lord at Paris. The English Æthelings, his cousins Eadward and Ælfred,

were still at his court, banished from the land of their fathers, while

the Danish invader filled the throne of their fathers. Their mother had

wholly forgotten them; their uncle had made no effort on their behalf;

Robert, their cousin, was the first kinsman who deemed it any part of

his business to assert their right to a crown which seemed to [Sidenote:

Contradictory evidence as to the relations between Cnut and Robert.]

have hopelessly passed away from their house. That Robert did make an

attempt to restore them, that the relations between him and Cnut were

unfriendly on other grounds, there seems no reason to doubt. But when we

ask for dates and details, we are at once plunged into every kind of

confusion and contradiction. The English writers are silent; from the

German writers we learn next to nothing; the Scandinavian history of

this age is still at least half mythical; the Norman writers never held

truth to be of any moment when the relations of Normandy and England

were concerned. That Robert provoked Cnut by threats or attempts to

restore the Æthelings, and also by ill-treating and repudiating Cnut’s

sister, seem to be facts which we may accept in the bare outline,

whatever we say as to their minuter details. That Cnut retaliated by an

invasion of Normandy, or that the threat of such an invasion had an

effect on the conduct of the sovereigns of Normandy, are positions which

are strongly asserted by various authorities. But their stories are

accompanied by circumstances which directly contradict the witness of

authorities which are far more trustworthy. In fact, the moment we get

beyond the range of the sober contemporary Chronicles of our own land,

we find ourselves in a region in which the mythical and romantic

elements outweigh the historical, and moreover, in whatever comes from

Norman sources, we have to be on our guard against interested invention

as well as against honest error.

[Sidenote: Marriages of Estrith with Ulf and Robert.]

We have seen that Estrith, a sister of Cnut, was married to the Danish

Earl Ulf, the brother-in-law of Godwine, to whom she bore the famous

Swegen Estrithson, afterwards King of the Danes, one of the most

renowned princes in Danish history. We are told by a crowd of

authorities that, besides her marriage with Ulf, Estrith was married to

the Duke of the Normans, that she was ill-treated by him in various

ways, and was finally sent back with ignominy to her brother. Most of

the writers who tell this story place this marriage before her marriage

with Ulf, and make the Danish Earl take the divorced [Sidenote: Supposed

wars between Cnut and Robert.] wife of the Norman Duke. With this story

several writers connect another story of an invasion, or threatened

invasion, of Normandy undertaken by Cnut in order to redress his

sister’s wrongs. The most popular Danish writer even makes Cnut die, in

contradiction to all authentic history, while besieging Rouen. We read

also how the Norman Duke fled to Jerusalem or elsewhere for fear of the

anger of the lord of six Northern kingdoms. Details of this kind are

plainly mythical; but they point to some real quarrel, to some war,

threatened if not actually waged, between Cnut and Robert. And

chronology, as well as the tone of the legends, shows that the whole of

these events must be placed quite late in Cnut’s reign. [Sidenote:

Robert probably married Estrith.] The natural inference is that the

marriage between Robert and Estrith took place, not before Estrith’s

marriage with Ulf, but after Ulf’s death. The widow was richly

[Sidenote: after Ulf’s death. c. 1026.] endowed; her brother had atoned

for the slaughter of her husband by territorial grants which might well

have moved the greed of the Norman. A superior attraction nearer his own

castle may easily account for Robert’s neglect of his Scandinavian

bride, a bride no doubt many years older than the young Count of

Hièsmes. Within three years after Estrith’s widowhood, Robert became the

father of him who was preeminently the Bastard.[1042]

[Sidenote: Robert’s intervention on behalf of the Æthelings. 1028–1035.]

It seems impossible to doubt that Robert’s intervention on behalf of his

English cousins was connected with these events. The reign of Robert

coincides with the last seven years of the reign of Cnut, so that any

intervention of Robert in English affairs must have been in Cnut’s later

days. Each prince would doubtless seize every opportunity of annoying

the other; the tale clearly sets Robert before us as the aggressor; but

as to the order of events we are left to guess. It would be perfectly

natural, in a man of Robert’s character, if the repudiation of Estrith

was accompanied, or presently followed, by the assertion of the claims

of the Æthelings to her brother’s crown. The date then of the first

contemplated Norman invasion of England can be fixed only within a few

years; but the story, as we read it in the Norman accounts, seems

credible enough in its general outline.[1043] The Duke sends an embassy

to Cnut, demanding, it would seem, the cession of the whole kingdom of

England to the rightful heir. That Cnut refused to surrender his crown

is nothing wonderful, though the Norman writer seems shocked that the

exhortation of the Norman ambassadors did not at once bring conviction

to [Sidenote: Robert’s unsuccessful attempt] the mind of the

usurper.[1044] The Duke then, in great wrath, determines to assert the

claims of his kinsmen by force of [Sidenote: to invade England.] arms.

An assembly of the Normans is held, a forerunner of the more famous

assembly at Lillebonne, in which the invasion of England is determined

on. A fleet is made ready with all haste, and Duke Robert and the

Ætheling Eadward embark at Fécamp. But the wind was contrary; instead of

being carried safely to Pevensey, the fleet was carried round the

Côtentin and found itself on the coast of Jersey.[1045] All attempts

were vain; the historian piously adds that they were frustrated by a

special Providence, because God had determined that his servant Eadward

should make his way to the English crown without the shedding of

blood.[1046] The Duke accordingly gave up his enterprise on behalf of

his cousin of England, and employed his fleet in a further harrying of

the dominions of his cousin of Britanny.[1047] At last Robert,

Archbishop of Rouen, the common uncle of Robert and Alan,[1048]

reconciled the two princes, and the fleet seems now to have sailed to

Rouen.[1049] Thus far we have a story, somewhat heightened in its

details, but which may be taken as evidence that Robert, who had

restored the fugitive sovereigns of France and Flanders, really thought

of carrying on his calling of King-maker beyond the sea. Robert, a

thorough knight-errant, doubtless designed the restoration of his cousin

in perfect good faith, and with no more intention of any gain to himself

than he had shown in the [Sidenote: Probable results of the success of

such an invasion.] restorations of Baldwin and Henry. But if a Norman

army had once landed in England, it would not have been so easy to bring

it home again as it was to bring home an army which had simply marched

into France or Flanders. Cnut, with no Tostig, no Harold Hardrada, to

divert him from the main danger, and with the force of his other

kingdoms ready to back him, would most likely have speedily crushed the

invader. But had it been otherwise, one can hardly fancy that the

results of the English expedition would have been of as little moment as

the results of the French and the Flemish expedition. In France and

Flanders Robert had simply turned the scale between two princes of the

same house. But if a Norman army had set one of the sons of Æthelred on

the English throne, the result would have been something more than a

mere personal change of sovereign. Had Eadward held his crown by virtue

of a victory won by Norman troops over Cnut’s Danes and Englishmen, the

practical aspect of such a revolution could have hardly differed at all

from the revolution which did take place under William. The prince thus

established in his kingdom would have been, according to formal

pedigrees, the _cyne-hlaford_, the descendant of Ælfred, Cerdic, and

Woden. But half-Norman by birth, wholly Norman in feeling, raised to his

throne by Norman swords, Eadward would have reigned still more

thoroughly as a Frenchman than he did reign when, a few years later, he

came to the crown in a more peaceable way. The storm, or whatever it

was, which kept back Duke Robert from his invasion of England, put off

the chances of a Norman Conquest for nearly forty years.

[Sidenote: Cnut said to have offered the succession of Wessex to the

Æthelings.]

The Norman writers wind up their story with an assertion which is much

less credible than their account of the expedition itself. Robert, on

his return from his Breton expedition, was met in the very nick of

time[1050] by ambassadors from Cnut offering half of the kingdom of

England to the sons of Æthelred. The lord of Northern Europe was sick,

and felt himself near his end; he therefore wished for peace during the

remnant of his days.[1051] Of course this is not to be understood as an

offer of an immediate surrender of any part of his dominions. What is

meant is that Cnut offered to secure peace with Normandy by

acknowledging Eadward as his successor in the kingdom of Wessex. The

Norman and the Danish accounts may be set one against another. Any

number of embassies may have passed between the two princes; any amount

of mutual threatenings may have been exchanged; but Cnut’s fear of

Robert and Robert’s fear of Cnut may [Sidenote: Improbability of the

story.] be set aside as equally mythical. The Norman story is utterly

improbable. Nothing could be more unlikely than a disposition made by

Cnut in favour of either of his stepsons. He could have no personal

motive for alienating any portion of his dominions from his own

children. In almost any other case the influence of his wife would

supply a natural and sufficient motive for such an arrangement. But all

that we hear of Emma leads us to believe that her whole heart was set on

Harthacnut and Gunhild, and that she was not at all likely to use her

influence on behalf of her sons by Æthelred. And had Cnut made any such

disposition in favour of Eadward or Ælfred, it could hardly have failed

to leave some trace in English history. But among all the disputes which

followed on the death of Cnut, we hear not a word of the claims of the

Æthelings, we hear nothing of any single voice raised in their

favour.[1052] Still that tale may have been the distortion of something

which really happened. We must not forget that Harthacnut was Robert’s

cousin no less than Eadward. It may be that some announcement or

confirmation of Cnut’s intentions in his favour, as opposed to the

succession of Harold or Swegen, may have been made by Cnut to the Norman

Duke. Such an announcement might easily have been mistaken by Norman

writers, ill informed about English affairs, for a disposition in favour

of another son of Emma.

[Sidenote: Deaths of Cnut and Robert.]

Whatever the relations between Cnut and Robert may have been, the two

princes died in the same year.[1053] When Cnut made his pilgrimage to

Rome, religious motives were doubtless the leading cause of his journey.

But the politic King knew how to make use of the errand which was to

profit his soul in order to advance at once his own power and credit and

the interests of the many nations over which he ruled. A fit of purer

religious enthusiasm, a fierce impulse of penitence for past sins,

carried Robert of Normandy on the more distant pilgrimage to

Jerusalem.[1054] On his return he died at the [Sidenote: Robert dies at

Nikaia. July 2, 1035.] Bithynian Nikaia; some say by the same fate by

which he was suspected of having made away with his own brother.[1055]

In his lifetime he had begun to rear the noble abbey of Cerisy, where,

after many changes and mutilations, some parts still remain to witness

to the severe grandeur of the taste of Robert and his age.[1056] But the

bones of its founder were not destined to rest among its massive pillars

or beneath the bold arches which span the width of its stately nave. The

relics which he had collected in the East were borne by his chamberlain

Toustain to the sanctuary which he had founded,[1057] but the great Duke

of the Normans[1058] himself found his last home in the lands beyond the

Hellespont, beneath the spreading cupolas of a Byzantine basilica at

Nikaia.[1059] The Norman thus died a stranger and a pilgrim in a land of

another tongue [Sidenote: Cnut dies at Shaftesbury. November 12, 1035.]

and another worship. The Dane too ended his days in a land which was not

his by birth; but it was in a land in which, if he had entered it as a

destroyer, he had truly reigned as a father. Cnut, Emperor of six

kingdoms, but in a special manner King of the old West-Saxon realm, died

within the West-Saxon border, at a spot hallowed by memories of Ælfred,

beneath the shadow of his minster at Shaftesbury.[1060] As an English

King by adoption, if not by birth, he found a grave among the English

Kings who had gone before him, in the Old Minster of his West-Saxon

capital. The two rivals, if rivals they were, passed from the Western

world almost at the same moment; the death of Cnut happened about the

time when the death of Robert must have become known in England and in

Normandy. The dominions of both rulers passed away to their spurious or

doubtful offspring. The son of Herleva succeeded in Normandy; the

supposed son of “the other Ælfgifu” succeeded in [Sidenote: Contrast

between their successors.] England. But if there be a wide difference

between the fame of the two fathers, it is far more than overbalanced by

the difference between the fame of their sons. A reign of a few obscure

years of crime and confusion forms the sole memory of the Bastard of

Northampton, while the world has ever since rung, and while it lasts it

can hardly ever fail to ring, with the mighty name of the Bastard of

Falaise.

§ 3. _The Reign of Harold the Son of Cnut._ 1035–1040.

[Sidenote: Extent of Cnut’s Empire.]

The good fortune of Cnut had raised him up an Empire in Northern Europe

to which there was no parallel before or after him. Setting aside

descriptions of his power which are manifestly gross exaggerations, he

united the kingdom of England and its dependencies with the kingdoms of

Denmark and Norway. As to his intentions with regard to the disposition

of these vast dominions after his death our information is unfortunately

most [Sidenote: Comparison between the partition of the Empire of Cnut

and that of Charles.] meagre. It seems clear that, like Charles the

Great, he designed a partition among his children; it is not clear

whether, like Charles, he designed to keep up any kind of connexion

among his various kingdoms, by the investiture of one among his sons

with any Imperial superiority over the others.[1061] Like Charles, he

had established his sons as kings during his lifetime in his subordinate

[Sidenote: England the centre of Cnut’s Empire.] kingdoms. I say

subordinate kingdoms, because nothing can be plainer than that, in

Cnut’s eyes, Denmark and Norway were little more than dependencies of

England. [Sidenote: The Scandinavian States ruled by Under-kings.]

England was the seat of his own dominion, while the Scandinavian

kingdoms were entrusted to viceroys or Under-kings. Swegen, with his

mother Ælfgifu, had reigned in Norway; Denmark, it would seem, had been

placed at one time under Harold and at another under Harthacnut. In both

countries we see signs of disaffection towards Cnut’s government, while

we see none such in England. The rule of Swegen and his mother is said

to have been highly oppressive in Norway. In Denmark we even hear of an

attempt, headed by Earl Ulf and said to be favoured by Queen Emma, to

displace Cnut in favour of Harthacnut. The reason assigned is the

preference shown [Sidenote: Impossibility of retaining the connexion

between England and Scandinavia.] by Cnut to England and Englishmen. If

then Cnut had any idea of permanently annexing his Scandinavian

possessions to his English Empire, any idea, in short, of reducing

Denmark and Norway to the condition of Wales and Scotland, such schemes

had very little chance of any lasting success. Wales and Scotland were

part of the same island with England, yet to keep them in any lasting

subjection was always hard; to keep countries so remote as [Sidenote:

Ephemeral nature of such] Denmark and Norway was hopelessly impossible.

Empires like those of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut are in their own

[Sidenote: Empires in general.] nature ephemeral. The process of their

formation may, as in the cases of Alexander and Charles, leave results

behind it which affect the whole later history of the world; but the

Empires themselves are ephemeral. As united dominions, swayed by a

single will, they last only as long as there is an Alexander or a

Charles at their head; they fall to pieces as soon as the sceptre of the

great conqueror passes into weaker hands. So it was with the

Anglo-Scandinavian Empire of the great Cnut. With our scanty knowledge,

we cannot positively either assert or deny that he dreamed of preserving

any kind of union [Sidenote: Cnut’s designs not carried out.] among his

vast and widely severed dominions. If he did entertain such thoughts,

his designs were scattered to the winds immediately upon his own death.

When he died, Swegen was in possession of Norway, and Harthacnut in

possession of Denmark. It appears that England also was designed for the

son of Emma, Cnut’s specially royal offspring, the one son who was the

child of a crowned King and his Lady. What provision, if any, was made

for Harold by his father’s last dispositions does not appear. But things

turned out far otherwise than Cnut had [Sidenote: Swegen expelled from

Norway. 1036.] intended. Swegen was almost immediately driven out of

Norway, and Magnus, the son of Saint Olaf, was received as King. In

Denmark Harthacnut kept possession, though the aspect of Magnus was

threatening. In England, as usual, all attempts to influence the free

choice of the Witan before the vacancy came to nothing. If Cnut tried to

do more than exercise that vague power of recommending a successor which

the law vested in him, his bequest went for as little as the older

bequest of Æthelwulf had gone.[1062]

[Sidenote: State of England on the death of Cnut.]

The events which immediately followed the death of Cnut are told with

much contradiction and confusion; but, by closely attending to the most

trustworthy authorities, it is not very hard to make out the general

order [Sidenote: The West-Saxons for Harthacnut.] of events.[1063] It

appears that the will of the late King in favour of Harthacnut was

upheld by the West-Saxons with Godwine their Earl at their head. That

the English were divided, some being for Harthacnut and some for one of

the sons of Æthelred, is a statement which seems hardly to rest on

sufficient authority.[1064] On the other hand, Harold, the supposed son

of Cnut and of Ælfgifu of Northampton, also appeared as a candidate.

[Sidenote: Northumberland, Mercia, and London for Harold.] He seems to

have been supported by Earl Leofric of Mercia, by the great body of the

thegns north of the Thames, and by the “lithsmen,” the sea-faring folk,

of London. It would even seem that he ventured on a daring act, whether

we call it an act of sovereignty or [Sidenote: Harold spoils Emma.] of

violence, before the election was held. He sent to Winchester and

despoiled the Lady Ælfgifu-Emma of the treasures which had been left her

by Cnut.[1065] Personally, as the event proved, both candidates were

equally worthless; but each had strong political motives on his side,

and it is clear that men’s passions were deeply stirred by the struggle.

As far as we can see, Harold was the candidate of the North, Harthacnut

of the South; Harold was the candidate of the Danes, Harthacnut of

[Sidenote: Apparent motives of the two parties.] the English. At first

sight this division of parties seems exactly opposite to what might have

been expected. Harthacnut, the son of a Danish father and a Norman

mother, had not a drop of English blood in his veins. Harold, if he was

what he professed to be, the son of Cnut by the other Ælfgifu, was

English at least by the mother’s side; if he was what scandal asserted

him to be, the son of a shoemaker by some nameless mother, he was

doubtless English on both sides. The election of Harthacnut involved the

continuation of the connexion with Denmark; the election of Harold would

again make England an independent and isolated kingdom. Yet English

feeling lay with Harthacnut, Danish feeling lay [Sidenote: Attachment of

the West-Saxons to Harthacnut as the legatee of Cnut.] with Harold. The

explanation is probably to be found in the personal position of Cnut

towards his West-Saxon subjects. He had lived more habitually among them

than among the people of any other part of his dominions; the greatest

of living Englishmen had been his minister and representative; he had in

every way made Wessex his home, and Wessex had flourished under his

government as it had never flourished before. It was no wonder then if

the wishes of Cnut with regard to the succession or to anything else

were looked on by the West-Saxon people as a sacred law. Harthacnut too,

if not the descendant of their ancient rulers, was at least a kingly

bairn, the son of a crowned King and his Lady. Who was Harold the

bastard, whose parents no one knew for certain, that he should rule over

them? If Harthacnut was at this moment in Denmark, his earliest days had

been spent in England, while we have seen reason to believe that the

earliest days of Harold had been spent in [Sidenote: Aspect of the

connexion with Denmark.] Denmark. The continued connexion with Denmark

which was implied in the choice of Harthacnut might even appear to

patriotic Englishmen as an argument in favour of the Danish King.[1066]

In the later days of Cnut the connexion with Denmark had taken a form

which must have been distinctly gratifying to English, and above all to

West-Saxon, national feeling. The lord of all Northern Europe had worn

his Imperial crown in the old West-Saxon capital; he had thence sent

forth his earls and his sons to govern his dependent realms of Denmark

and Norway. As it had been in the days of Cnut, so men deemed that it

would be in the days of Harthacnut. Denmark, like Mercia or

Northumberland, would be only another earldom whence homage, and perhaps

tribute, would be paid to the Imperial court and the Imperial

treasure-house at Winchester. The sons of Æthelred were strangers; no

man in England had seen them since their childhood; their claims had

been made the pretext for a threatened foreign invasion; no sentiment

attaching to their remoter ancestry could at all counterbalance the

sentiment which attached to the undoubted, the royal, the chosen, son of

the King who had given England eighteen years of peace, prosperity, and

foreign dominion. West-Saxon feeling therefore took the shape of loyalty

to the undoubted son of the late King, of obedience to his declared

wishes as to the succession. Earl Godwine and all the men of his earldom

were for Harthacnut.

[Sidenote: Motives in favour of Harold among the Danes and Northern

English.]

On the other hand, it is not hard to see how Harold might appeal to a

very intelligible line of feeling in the minds of the Danish and

half-Danish inhabitants of Northern England. His bastardy would in their

eyes be no objection. Whether we look on his mother as a mere concubine

or as bound to Cnut by an irregular or uncanonical marriage, her

children would, according to Danish notions, be as fit to reign as the

children of the Norman Lady. Indeed a powerful vein of Northumbrian

sentiment might not unnaturally attach to the grandson of the murdered

Earl Ælfhelm. Harold’s election might seem to be the overthrow of the

West-Saxon dominion over Danes and Angles; a day might seem to be coming

in which Winchester would have to bow to York. And if the son of Ælfgifu

thus had a local connexion with Northumberland, he had also a local

connexion with Mercia. Whether by birth, by residence, or by maternal

descent, the daughter of Ælfhelm was in some way Ælfgifu of Northampton,

and her son might call on Mercian local feeling to support the claims of

a countryman. Again, if Harold, after having been designed for the crown

of Denmark and brought up in Denmark as a future Danish King, had been

deprived by his father’s later arrangements of any share in either

England or Denmark, Danish and Northumbrian feelings would centre round

him still more strongly. He would become the embodiment of any

jealousies which had been called forth by Cnut’s open preference of

England to Denmark, by his preference of the Saxon part of England to

the Anglian and Danish lands. It was better to have a King who should

reign over England without Denmark, better to have a King who should

reign over Northumberland and Mercia without Wessex, than for a

West-Saxon King, of whatever ancestry, to hold both Northumberland and

Denmark as dependencies. The old provincial feelings, often concealed

but never completely stifled, ever ready to break out on any strong

provocation, now broke out in their fulness. The Danish provinces sided

with Harold. And with them we find a new element, the “lithsmen,” the

nautic multitude [Sidenote: Danish settlement in London.] of London. The

great city still kept her voice in the election of Kings, but that voice

would almost seem to have been handed over to a new class among her

population. We hear now, not of the citizens, but of the sea-faring

men.[1067] Every invasion, every foreign settlement of any kind within

the kingdom, has in every age added a new element to the population of

London. As a Norman colony settled in London later in the century, so a

Danish colony settled there now. Some accounts tell us, doubtless with

great exaggeration, that London had now almost become a Danish

city.[1068] But it is certain that the Danish element in the city was

numerous and powerful, and that its voice strongly helped to swell the

cry in favour of Harold. Northumberland, Mercia, and London thus

demanded that the son of Ælfgifu of Northampton should, if possible, be

King over all England; in the worst case they would have him, like

Eadgar and like Cnut, for King over all Northumberland and Mercia.

There was perhaps no country except England in which such a question

could have been settled in that age otherwise than at the cost of a

civil war. But the firmly rooted principles of English law, the habit of

constant meeting and discussion, had already produced some germs of the

feeling to which the great English historian of Greece has [Sidenote:

The controversy peacefully decided in the Witenagemót.] given the name

of “constitutional morality.”[1069] The controversy was a sharp one; but

it was decided, not on the field of battle, but in the debates of the

Witenagemót. The usual midwinter meeting may, or may not, have been

[Sidenote: Gemót of Oxford. Christmas, 1035?] forestalled by a few

weeks; certain it is that, soon after the death of Cnut, the Witan of

all England met in full Gemót at Oxford. That town was, no doubt, on

this as on other occasions, recommended for the purpose by its position

on the frontiers of the two great divisions of the kingdom. The national

council proceeded to debate [Sidenote: Godwine maintains the claims of

Harthacnut.] the claims of the two candidates. The great Earl of the

West-Saxons, supported by the whole force of his earldom, strove to play

the same part which Dunstan had played in the last recorded debate of

the kind in a full and free Assembly of the Wise.[1070] His eloquent

tongue set forth the claims of Harthacnut, the candidate recommended

alike by undoubted kingly birth and by the wishes of the glorious

sovereign whom they had lost. But this time the charmer charmed in vain.

All that Godwine could gain for the son of the Lady was a portion of his

father’s [Sidenote: The division of the kingdom proposed by Leofric,]

kingdom. The proposal of a division seems to have come from Leofric, now

Earl over all Mercia,[1071] who on all occasions appears as a mediator

between the extreme parties of the North and the South. To this course

he was prompted alike by his personal temper and by the geographical

position of his earldom. Godwine and his party withstood for a while

even this proposal; but the majority [Sidenote: and voted by the

assembly.] was against them; the assembly decreed the division of

England between the two candidates.[1072] Once more, but now for the

last time in English history, the land had two [Sidenote: Harthacnut

reigns in Wessex; Harold reigns north of Thames,] acknowledged Kings.

Harold reigned to the north of the Thames and Harthacnut to the south.

We are not distinctly told whether the two Kings were to be perfectly

independent of each other, or whether, as in the case of Cnut and

Eadmund, any Imperial supremacy was reserved [Sidenote: seemingly as

superior lord.] to either of the half-brothers.[1073] But several

indications seem to show that such a supremacy was reserved to Harold,

and this supposition may perhaps help to explain some of the

difficulties in the narrative which follows. Nor are we told of any

stipulations as to the succession. It would follow, almost as a matter

of course, that, if either of the brothers died childless, the survivor

would be elected to [Sidenote: Rumoured refusal of Archbishop Æthelnoth

to crown Harold.] his share of the kingdom. According to one account,

Archbishop Æthelnoth, the friend of Cnut, still refused to consecrate

Harold as King. He placed the crown and sceptre on the altar; Harold

might seize them if he dared; but while a son of Emma lived, he,

Æthelnoth, would crown no King but a son of Emma, and every Bishop of

his province was equally forbidden to perform the rite. If this tale be

true, it was an assertion of independence on the part of the

ecclesiastical power for which we might in vain seek a parallel in the

English history of those times. Æthelnoth, as a member of the Gemót,

might give his vote for whichever candidate he thought good; but when

the election was once made, he had clearly no right as Archbishop to

refuse to consecrate the King chosen by the majority. But the tale is

most likely a fiction. There seems to be little doubt that Harold was

regularly crowned at Oxford by Æthelnoth, either now or after his later

election to the whole kingdom.[1074] But, if the tale be true, and if it

belongs to this time, it plainly implies the Imperial supremacy of

Harold. With a mere King of the Mercians and Northumbrians, whether an

Under-king or an altogether independent sovereign, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, a West-Saxon subject, could have nothing to do.

[Sidenote: Harthacnut remains in Denmark.]

The kingdom was thus divided. The King-elect of the West-Saxons was in

no hurry—the affairs of his Northern kingdom did not allow him to be in

a hurry—to take personal possession of the fragment of a realm which was

[Sidenote: Regency of Emma and Godwine in Wessex. 1035–1037.] all that

Godwine had been able to keep for him. Emma appears to have been

invested with a kind of regency in her son’s name, while Godwine still

held his office as Earl, and with it the administration of the

West-Saxon kingdom. It is specially mentioned that Harthacnut’s

housecarls remained with Emma.[1075] The housecarls of Harthacnut had

doubtless been the housecarls of Cnut; their loyalty was personal to

their master, and it would naturally pass to his widow and her son. But

that their presence was allowed in the West-Saxon kingdom and capital

under the administration of Godwine clearly shows that they had not been

employed during the late reign as instruments of oppression, and that

they were not looked on with any general hatred by the people at large.

It was in the course of the next year that an event happened of which

advantage has ever since been taken by hostile tongues and pens to stain

the character of the great Earl of the West-Saxons with a charge of the

blackest treachery. But even in the period on which we are now entering,

a period in which we have at every step to weigh the conflicting

statements of national and political partizanship, there is no event as

to which the various versions of the tale are more utterly at variance

with each other. The story is told with every conceivable variety of

time, place, and person, and even our earliest and best authorities

contain statements which cannot be reconciled [Sidenote: Attempt in

favour of the Æthelings. 1036.] with one another. Thus much seems

certain; first, that, about this time, one or both of the sons of

Æthelred and Emma made an attempt to recover their father’s kingdom;

secondly, that Ælfred, the younger of the two Æthelings, fell into the

power of Harold and was cruelly put to death; thirdly, that Godwine was

suspected of being an accomplice. [Sidenote: Conflicting versions of the

story.] But beyond this, there is hardly a detail of the story which can

be asserted with any confidence.[1076] The first point, that the

attempt, whatever was its nature, took place soon after the death of

Cnut and the first election of Harold, is placed beyond all doubt by the

complete agreement of the best authorities. But very respectable

secondary authorities have altogether misplaced the date, and they have

thus given occasion for a lower class of compilers to load the story

with endless mythical and [Sidenote: _Norman Version._] calumnious

details. According to the Norman account, both the Æthelings had a share

in the attempt. As soon as the death of Cnut was known in Normandy,

Eadward [Sidenote: Invasion of England by Eadward.] set sail with forty

ships and landed at Southampton. But the English, whether for love or

for fear[1077] of their Danish King Harold, met them as enemies. Eadward

fought a battle and defeated the English with great slaughter. But,

reflecting how great was the strength of England and how small was the

force which he had brought with him, he presently sailed away, taking

with him great plunder. Soon after Eadward’s return, Ælfred set sail

from Wissant[1078] and landed at Dover. As he went onwards into the

country, Godwine met him, received him friendly, and seemingly did

homage to him.[1079] The Earl and the Ætheling supped together, and

talked over their plans. But in the night Godwine seized Ælfred, tied

his hands behind his back, and thus sent him and some of his companions

to London to King Harold. Others he put in prison, others he

embowelled.[1080] Among those who were sent to London, Harold caused

Ælfred’s chief companions to be beheaded, and the Ætheling himself to be

blinded. In that state he was sent to Ely, naked and with his legs tied

under his horse’s belly. He had not been long at Ely when he died, as

the weapon with which his eyes had been cut out had wounded the

brain.[1081]

[Sidenote: In this version his coming is hostile.]

In this Norman version the coming of Ælfred is simply part of a Norman

invasion. Eadward had come with a force large enough to fight a battle;

Ælfred’s force, we [Sidenote: _Version in two of the Chronicles._] are

told, was still larger.[1082] The oldest English version, which it must

not be forgotten takes the form of a ballad, knows nothing of any

warlike expedition, and speaks of [Sidenote: Ælfred’s companions slain

[by Godwine].] Ælfred only. According to this account, Ælfred came to

England, whence or under what circumstances we are not told, and wished

to go to his mother at Winchester. In this purpose he was hindered by

men who were powerful at the time, and who unjustly favoured Harold. In

one version these men are nameless; in another Godwine is named as their

chief.[1083] Then the Ætheling and his companions are seized; some are

killed outright, some are put in bonds, some sold as slaves, others

blinded or put to various tortures and horrible deaths.[1084] No worse

deed had ever been done since the Danes came into the land.[1085] All

this was done, according to one version, by Godwine, according to the

other, by Harold. The Ætheling still lived; so he was taken to Ely in a

ship, blinded while still on board, given thus blinded to the monks,

with whom he lived till he died soon after, and then was buried

honourably in the minster.[1086]

There is yet quite another version, that of the special panegyrist of

Emma, according to whom, it must be remembered, Eadward and Ælfred are

not sons of Æthelred, but younger sons of Cnut and Emma, sent over to

Normandy [Sidenote: Harold forges a letter from Emma to the Æthelings.]

for education.[1087] Harold, anxious to destroy his half-brothers,

forges a letter to them in the name of their mother. She tells them that

she is Lady, only in name; Harold has usurped the kingdom and is daily

strengthening himself; he is winning over the chief men by gifts,

threats, and prayers. Yet the feeling of the nation is still in their

favour rather than in that of Harold. Let one of her sons come over to

her quickly and secretly; she can then consult with him what is to be

done.[1088] The Æthelings fell into the snare; Ælfred, the younger of

the brothers, went with a few comrades into Flanders; there he stayed a

short time with the Marquess Baldwin, and increased his company by some

adventurers from Boulogne.[1089] He then set sail, and came near to some

point of the English coast which is not further described. But, as the

inhabitants came down to the shore with evidently hostile intentions, he

changed his course to another point equally undetermined. There he

landed, and tried to go to his mother; on the way he was met by Godwine,

who swore oaths to him and became his man.[1090] By the Earl’s advice he

turned [Sidenote: Ælfred received by Godwine,] aside from London,[1091]

and lodged at Guildford. There Godwine quartered Ælfred’s comrades in

different houses in the town, leaving a few only to attend on the

Ætheling himself. He feasted Ælfred and his companions, and withdrew to

his own house, evidently in or near Guildford, promising to return in

the morning to do his due service [Sidenote: but seized by the agents of

Harold.] to his lord.[1092] But in the night the emissaries of Harold

suddenly appeared in the town, seized the comrades of Ælfred, and sold,

slew, or tortured them according to the usual story. The Ætheling was

taken to Ely; there he was first mocked by the soldiers, then loaded

with heavy fetters, brought before some kind of tribunal, and, by its

sentence, blinded and finally put to death.[1093] The monks of Ely took

his body and buried it, and miracles were of course wrought at his tomb.

[Sidenote: Estimate of the evidence.]

These are the main versions of the tale, the details of which, as well

as some other accounts, I shall discuss elsewhere. Now when we come to

compare them with one another, what is the judgement to which we ought

to come? That Ælfred landed, that he and his comrades were cruelly put

to death, there can be no doubt; but had Godwine any share in the deed?

Before we examine the evidence, we must first try and understand what

the real state of the case was. The unhappy fate of Ælfred caused him,

according to the universal English instinct, to be looked on as a

martyr; his tale became a piece of hagiology, to which, as to other

pieces of hagiology, ordinary ways of thinking were not to be applied.

This way of looking at the matter began very early; but, in order really

to get to the bottom of the question, we must try and understand how

things must have looked at the moment of Ælfred’s landing.

[Sidenote: Statement of the case.]