Canute the Great

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ While Canute was organising the Church in Denmark, Olaf was striving to reshape Norwegian society and uproot the old faith. With force and [Pg 196] fair words he won many for the new order, but many more refused to receive baptism. Ten years passed with growing discontent; so long as the nation was still heathen in morals and view of life, resistance was inevitable. Finally the partisans of the old rites and practices turned to Canute, the great Christian King. And he who should have been a defender of the faith heard their complaints with unfeigned joy. ”

“ Canute The Great, by Michael Field, is in many respects a really remarkable work of art. Its tragic element is to be found in life, not in death; in the hero’s psychological development, not in his moral declension or in any physical calamity; and the author has borrowed from modern science the idea that in the evolutionary struggle for existence the true tragedy may be that of the survivor. Canute, the rough generous Viking, finds himself alienated from his gods, his forefathers, his very dreams. ”

“ 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 ”

“ There is often a large conception, that we overlook to examine interminable minutiæ of parts, and mostly parts repeated; his figures are always injurious. His "Canute the Great rebuking his Courtiers" would have been a fine picture had he contented himself with the real subject—the sea. It is, indeed, crude in colour, and the coldness to the right ill agrees with the red heat on the left; but still, in chiaroscuro, it would have been a fine picture, if completed according to his first intention, but Canute and his courtiers spoil it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the visit to the Eternal City was of considerable importance for the future career of the Anglo-Danish King. Doubtless Rome began to realise what a power was this young monarch who up to this time had probably been regarded as little better than a barbarian, one of those dreaded pirates who had so long and so often terrorised the Italian shores. Here he was next to the Emperor the most redoubtable Christian ruler in Europe. Probably Canute returned to the North with the Pope's approval of his plans for empire in Scandinavia,—tacit if not expressed. ”

“ The principle of equality before the law is distinctly stated: the magnates were to have no unusual privileges in the courts of justice.
Many a powerful man will, if he can and may, defend his man in whatever way it seems to him the more easy to defend him, whether as freeman or as theow (serf) . But we will not suffer that injustice. [395]
With the legislation of Canute, the development of Old English law comes to a close. Various tracts or customals of considerable importance were composed in the eleventh century, some of which may have been put into form after the close of Canute's reign ”

“ To analyse a character such as that of Canute is a difficult task, as character analysis always must be. There was so much that was derived from a heathen time and ancestry, and also so much that had been acquired by contact with Christian culture and influences, that the result could be only a strange composite out of which traits and characteristics, often contradictory and hostile, would come to the surface as occasion would suggest. ”

“ At the same time it was found impossible to separate the man from his time, from the great activities that were going on in the lands about the North Sea, and from the purposes of the dynasty that he belonged to. Before it is possible to give an intelligent account of how Canute led [Pg xi] the viking movement to successful conquest, some account must be given of the movement itself. The first chapter and a part of the second consequently have to deal with matters introductory to and preparatory for Canute's personal career, which began in 1012. ”

“ Where two vigorous peoples representing differing types or different stages of civilisation come into more than temporary contact, the reciprocal influences will of necessity be continued and profound.
The viking movement had, therefore, its aspects of growth and development as well as of destruction. The best representative of the age and the movement, when considered from both these viewpoints, is Canute the Great, King of England, Denmark, and Norway. Canute began as a pirate and developed into a statesman. ”

“ Do you think the King does not know how to handle his weapon? If only his strength—”
Her sentence was not finished, and the man next to her drew in his breath with a great whistling rush. Canute’s weapon, playing with the lightness of a sun-beam, had evaded a stroke of the great flail and touched for an instant the shoulder of its wielder. Had he put a pound more force into the thrust—A groan crept down the Danish line when the bright blade rose, as lightly as it had fallen, and continued its butterfly dance. ”

“ His great rival of years to come, Olaf the Stout, who can have been only two years older than Canute, had already sailed the dragon for six or seven years. It is likely that the young Dane had also experienced the thrills of viking life, but on this matter the sagas are silent. But it is easy to see why Canute should favour the proposed venture: as a younger son he could not hope for the Danish crown. The conquest of England might mean not only fame and plundered wealth, but perhaps a realm to govern as well. ”

“ Of Canute's diplomacy the sources afford us only an occasional glimpse; but the information that we have indicates that he entered into diplomatic relations with almost every ruler of importance in Northern and Western Europe. The King of Scotland became his vassal. The sagas tell of an embassy to Sweden in the years preceding the attack on Norway. During the same period Canute's cousin, the King of Poland, apparently sought his alliance against the Germans. With the Emperor he maintained the closest relations. The Norman dukes were bound to the Danish dynasty by the noble ties of marriage. ”

“ Canute was yet a young man—he had not advanced far into the thirties—but prudence, perhaps also wisdom, had developed with the years. He realised that his own person was really the only bond that held his realms together; but he also understood that direct rule was impracticable. The Norse movement was essentially a revolt from Olaf, not a popular demand for union with Denmark. Among the Danes, too, there was opposition to what smacked of alien rule, as is shown by the readiness with which the magnates had received the revolutionary plans of Earl Ulf. ”

“ In some of these gifts, too, we see clearly a desire to atone for past wrongs. Canterbury, which had suffered heavy losses at the hands of Thurkil and his wild comrades, was assured of its liberties and immunities early in the reign. [243] Another act of expiation was the visit and gift to Glastonbury, the famous monastery that had received the bones of Edmund Ironside. A century after Canute's time Edmund's grave was covered with a "pall of rich materials, embroidered with figures of peacocks." Legend ascribes the gift to Canute, and may in this case be trustworthy. ”

“ The historians of Old English times, both Saxon and Norman, were ecclesiastics and saw the reign of Canute from their peculiar view-point. To them the mighty Dane was the great Christian King, the founder of monasteries, the giver of costly gifts and valuable endowments to the houses of God. To the undisputed traits of Christian liberality, they added those of piety and humility, and told stories of the visit to the monks of Ely and of Canute's vain attempt to stem the tides and compel their obedience. ”

“ But Canute did not forget that in this way his dynasty was robbed of one of its earliest possessions outside the Dane-lands. A clash between the great rivals was inevitable. For the present, however, Olaf's throne was safe; there was much to do before Canute could seriously think of proceeding against his virile opponent, and more than a decade passed before the young King of England could summon his chiefs and magnates into solemn imperial councils in the new capital of Nidaros. ”

“ We may then conjecture that the struggle for the English crown in the winter following Canute's death was at bottom a fight between the two women who bore Canute's children, each with a [Pg 334] son to place in the high seat, each with a party devoted to her cause, each with a section of the country ready to follow her lead. Elgiva had her strength in the Danelaw; there were her kinsmen, and there her family had once been prominent. Queen Emma was strongest in the south; on her side were Earl Godwin and the housecarles. ”

“ The removal of Edmund's children into so distant a country as Hungary was, next to their death, regarded by Canute as the greatest security to his government: he had no further anxiety, except with regard to Alfred and Edward, who were protected and supported by their uncle Richard, Duke of Normandy. Richard even fitted out a great armament, in order to restore the English princes to the throne of their ancestors; and though the navy was dispersed by a storm, Canute saw the danger to which he was exposed from the enmity of so warlike a people as the Normans. ”