Canongate

“ It is only natural that Canute should reserve the rule of Wessex to himself, at least for a time. Provision naturally had to be made for Thurkil; and as the earl of East Anglia had fallen at Ashington, it was convenient to fill the vacancy and honour the old viking at the same time. [154]
It seems never to have been Canute's policy to keep England permanently divided into four great provinces; what evidence we have points to a wholly different purpose. During the first decade [Pg 116] of the new reign, fifteen earls appear in the charters as witnesses or otherwise. ”

“ Thus fell Canonchet, the last great chief of the Narragansets. A man so noble and chivalric in his spirit that his life and death commanded the admiration of his worst enemies. They vainly imagined that some disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the vast physical and mental proportions of Canonchet.
Forty years before, the friendship of his father, Miantonomo, and the qualified hostility he assumed towards Sassacus and the Pequots had saved the infant colonies from destruction. ”

“ The only information that we have of Canute's childhood comes from late and not very reliable sources: it is merely this, that he was not brought up at the Danish court, but was fostered by Thurkil the Tall, one of the chiefs at Jomburg and brother of Earl Sigvaldi. [47] The probabilities favour the accuracy of this report. It was customary in those days to place boys with foster-fathers; prominent nobles or even plain franklins received princes into their households and regarded the charge as an honoured trust. ”

“ And occasionally the sources may permit a glimpse into the private life of the subject which will help us to understand him as a man.
The present study has presented many difficulties. Canute lived in an age when there was but little writing done in the North, though the granite of the runic monument possesses the virtue of durability. There is an occasional mention of Canute in the Continental chronicles of the time; but the chief contemporary sources are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Encomium Emmæ, and the praise lays of the Norse and Icelandic scalds. ”

“ Other kings have gloried in new foundations as monuments to religious zeal; Canute selected the long-established, the widely-influential shrines and houses and gave his favour chiefly to them. In return he doubtless expected the favour of Saints Cuthbert, Alphege, Edmund, Felix, and Dunstan, and the support of Canterbury, Evesham, Winchester, and the other great institutions that he [Pg 177] endowed. It is to be noted that nearly all the institutions that shared the royal bounty were located in the Anglo-Saxon South where Canute especially needed to build up a personal following. ”

“ The campaign was swiftly carried through, for by Easter (April 1) , Canute was again with his ships. Wessex and Northumbria were now both pacified. In the Midlands there can have been but little active hostility. London alone showed the old determination to resist; here were Ethelred and Edmund with a number of the English magnates. Canute immediately began preparations for a last descent upon the stubborn city; but before his dragons had actually left harbour, England had lost her king.
April 23, 1016, Ethelred died. To say anything in real praise of the unfortunate King is impossible. ”

“ On the afternoon of December 19, this year 1675, the bold English and their allies struck the great fortified village at Sunke-Squaw. Out from the heat and smudge of the blazing wigwams fled Philip and Wetamoo and Canonchet, with their shrieking people, into the wintry swamp where the snowy branches of the cedars and hemlocks were their only refuge. Canonchet had lost a third of his nation; large numbers surrendered to the English; but, like his friend Philip, with his warriors who remained true he carried the war to the English themselves. ”

“ The years following his coronation in Rome saw four serious revolts in Germany; not till 1033 was real order restored in Conrad's kingdom.
There was another power that Canute could not afford to antagonise or even ignore: no mediæval monarch could long flourish if he overlooked the needs of the Church. During the first years of his English kingship, Canute does not seem to have sought to conciliate the clergy; but after a few years he apparently adopted a new policy and strove to ally himself with the priesthood. It was as king of England that he first succeeded in forming such an alliance ”

“ London, the great rallying point of the national party, was in Canute's hands. Beyond the Thames were the camps of the dreaded host that had come from the North the year before. The Danish fleet still sailed the British seas. No trusted leader appeared to take up the fight for the house of Alfred; Ethelred's many sons seem nearly all to have perished, and only children or princes of doubtful ability remained as possible candidates for the kingship. In addition there was no doubt a feeling that England should be one realm. The accession of Canute was therefore inevitable. ”

“ On his own contemporaries Canute made a profound impression which succeeding generations have shared. In Britain he was called the Great; in Scandinavia the Rich, the Mighty or the Powerful. The extent of his possessions, the splendour of his court, the size of his navy, his intimate relations with Pope and Emperor—all these things gave him a position and a prestige that was unheard of in the Northlands. And it was indeed a marvellous achievement for a pirate chief from a nation just emerging from heathendom to gather into his power the realms and territories that made up the Knytling empire. ”

“ As early as possible in the spring of 1020, he returned to England. Evidently certain rebellious movements had made some headway during his absence, for Canute immediately summoned the lords to meet in formal assembly at the Easter festival. The plotting was apparently localised in the south-western shires, as we infer from the fact that the gemot sat in an unusual place, Cirencester in the Severn country. Its chief act seems to have been the banishment of Ethelwerd, earl in the Devon country, and of a mysterious pretender whom the Chronicler calls Edwy, king of churls. ”

“ You have one of equal rank here with myself. He is Oneka, son of Uncas. His father killed my father. Let Oneka kill me. He is a sachem."
"You must die."
"I like it well. I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything of which Canonchet shall be ashamed."
Even his enemies admired him. The English compared him to some old Roman.
He was not killed here. Forty-three of his people, men and women, had been taken by the troops and scouts; a number of these were given over to death by the scout Indians. But Canonchet was borne in triumph to Stonington, Connecticut. ”

“ It was not long before Earl Ulf came up alongside with his ships and men and the battle was now joined in earnest. Canute's forces now came up from all sides. Then the Kings Olaf and Anund realised that they had now won as much as fate had allowed them for this time; so they ordered a retreat, withdrew from Canute's fleet, and separated from the fight. [313]
In its disorganised condition Canute's host could make no effective pursuit. ”

“ Canute had inherited the imperialistic ambitions of his dynasty, and piracy and empire are mutually exclusive terms.
It is scarcely necessary to say anything further in justification of a biographical study of such an [Pg viii] eminent leader, one of the few men whom the world has called "the Great." But to write a true biography of any great secular character of mediæval times is a difficult, often impossible, task. The great men of modern times have revealed their inner selves in their confidential letters ”

“ The first three or four years of Canute's government in England can have given but little promise of the beneficent rule that was to follow. To the conquered Saxon they must have been a season of great sorrow. On the throne of Alfred sat an alien king who had done nothing as yet to merit the affectionate regard of his subjects. In the shire courts ruled the chiefs of the dreaded Danish host, chiefs who had probably harried those same shires at an earlier date. A heavy tax had been collected to pay the forces of the enemy, but a large part of those forces still remained. ”

“ When the sea, however, reached his feet, he turned with an angry frown to his panic-stricken courtiers, and exclaimed—
"Every being in the world is feeble and impotent; omnipotent power exists with God, in whose hands are all the elements of nature. He only can say to the sea—Thus far shalt thou go and no further; and his power will level with a nod the towering piles of ambition and greatness."
The only remarkable action which Canute performed after his return from Rome, was an expedition against Scotland in A.D. 1031. ”

“ Canute’s fist struck his chair-arm lightly. “Nothing more to my mind has occurred for a long time, and I welcome it! Better will both of us succeed if we declare openly that friendship between us must always be rather shallow. I love not men of your nature, neither is it possible for me to forget what you have cost me. Hatred would come much easier to me,—and I will not deny that you will feel it if ever you give me fair cause for anger.” For an instant an edge of his Viking savagery made itself felt through his voice ”

“ King Canute was dead, but the great king-thought that he lived for, the policy of his dynasty, their ambition to unite the Northern peoples in the old and new homes under one sceptre persisted after his death. Historians have generally believed that Canute had realised the impossibility of keeping long united the three crowns that he wore in his declining years, and had made preparation for a division of the empire among his three sons. In the year of his death one son is found in England, one in Denmark, and one in Norway ”

“ Canute said, reaching out and opening the mallet-like fist that he might make his choice. Then, as he fitted on his prize and held it critically to the light, he added with more sympathy: “I will arrange for you a more profitable revenge than that. I will make a condition with Edmund that the Etheling’s odal shall not be included in the land which is peace-holy, and that to ravage it shall not be looked upon as breaking the truce. Then can you betake yourself thither and sit down with your following, and have no one but yourself to blame if you fail a second time. ”

“ Canute's forest-laws were meant as a liberal concession to public feeling on the subject; they are more definite than Edgar's, but terribly stringent; if a freeman killed one of the king's deer, or struck his forester, he lost his freedom and became a penal serf (white theowe) — that is, he ranked with felons. Nevertheless, Canute allowed bishops, abbots, and thegns to hunt in his woods—a privilege restored by Henry III. The nobility, after the Conquest, being excluded from the royal chases, petitioned to enclose parks, as early even as the reign of William I. ”

“ It will be remembered that 1018 was the year when Canute disbanded his Scandinavian army. As we are told that the bishop of Durham, who died in 1019, took leave of earth a few days after he had heard the news of the great defeat, [196] it seems likely that the battle of Carham was fought late in the year 1018, and after the host had departed for Denmark. Canute, therefore, probably had no available army that he could trust; to call out his new subjects would have been a hazardous experiment. ”

“ Historians generally have appeared to believe that in governing his English kingdom, Canute pursued a conscious and well-defined course of action, a line of political purposes originating early in his reign. He is credited with the purpose of making England the central kingdom of an Anglo-Scandinavian empire, of governing this kingdom with the aid of Englishmen in preference to that of his own countrymen, of aiming to rule England as a king of the Saxon type. It is true chat before the close of his reign Canute made large use of native chiefs in the administration of the monarchy ”

“ In his early years Canute was a viking; when he died the viking age had practically come to its close. Various influences contributed to this result: the new creed with its new conceptions of human duty; new interests and wider fields of ambition in the home lands; and the imperial position of Canute. We do not know that Canute at any time issued any decree against the practice of piracy; but he gained the same end by indirect means. The viking chiefs evidently entered his service in large numbers either in the English guard or in the government of the eastern domains. ”

“ Turning to his courtiers, Canute said:
"Learn how feeble is the power of earthly kings. None is worthy the name of king but He whom heaven and earth and sea obey."
During Canute's reign England had peace and prosperity and the English people have ever held his memory dear.
Page 155 THE CID Late one sunny afternoon one and twenty knights were riding along the highway in the northern part of Spain. As they were passing a deep mire they heard cries for help, and turning, saw a poor leper who was sinking in the mud. One of the knights, a handsome young man, was touched by the cries. ”

“ Canochet immediately waving to his men, ordered them to advance in pursuit of the foe, and no sooner had he uttered the word of command than a hundred warriors, bow in hand, were rushing through the forest at a rate with which the party of English found it a hard matter to keep up. Every instant they expected to come in sight of their flying foe, but on reaching the border of the forest, not an Indian was to be seen. Canochet, with some of his men, sagacious braves, searched in vain for the trail of the enemy ”