Cnut the Great

“ Edmund only lived a few months and Cnut then became king of all England. For twenty years the land enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 1018 the greater part of the Danish army and fleet returned to Denmark, some forty ships and their crews sufficing Cnut for the defence of his kingdom. During the next four years he received the submission of the king of Scotland and made a memorable pilgrimage to Rome. The most important event of his later years was however his struggle with Olaf the Stout, the great St Olaf of Norway. ”

“ He did so, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says: "He held his kingdom with great toil and great difficulty the while that his life lasted." After his death and that of his son Edmund, Cnut was finally elected and crowned. Freeman, [12] in recording the event, says that: "At the Christmas of 1016-1017, Cnut was a third time chosen king over all England, and one of the first things that he did was to send to Normandy for the widowed Lady Emma, though she was many years older than he was. She came over; she married the new king ”

“ The assertion of William of Jumièges that Cnut soon afterwards offered half his kingdom to the æthelings may safely be disregarded. In 1036, when Cnut was dead, and Harold ruled over the northern part of England, while Harthacnut, though still in Denmark, reigned probably as an under-king over Weasex, the æthelings made an attempt to enforce their claim. Eadward is said to have sailed with forty ships, to have landed at Southampton, and to have defeated a force of English with great loss (Will, of Poitiers, p. 78) . ”

“ The wars of her kings lay far from her shores, in France or Normandy, or, as with Cnut, in the more distant lands of the north. The stern justice of their{119} government secured order within. The absence of internal discontent under Cnut—perhaps, too, the exhaustion of the kingdom after the terrible Danish inroads—is proved by its quiet during his periods of absence. Everything witnesses to the growing wealth and prosperity of the country. ”

“ Cnut was forced to march westwards with part of his army to meet Eadmund, and after two engagements the Danes broke up the siege; it was again formed and again broken up, and Cnut, foiled in his attempt to take London, seems to have made the Medway the headquarters of his fleet, and to have thence sent out expeditions to plunder. A vigorous attack was made on his army in Kent by the English under Eadmund, who drove him and his men into Sheppey with great loss. ”

“ It is likely that Elfric will be archbishop ere long, and that will be well for us all. So great is the name of Cnut the king that hereafter it will be that all that was wrought of wisdom in his time will be laid to his account; but he would not have it so, for he knows what he owes to Elfric. But also I think that the cruel deeds wrought by the jarls while he was yet but a child will be thought his work also, for men will forget how young he was when the crown came to him, seeing that in utmost loyalty the jarls spoke of him ever as commanding, as the old viking ways bade them. ”

“ Cnut was now the mightiest of all Scandinavian kings, but on his death in 1035 his empire fell apart; Norway went to his son Svein, Denmark to Harthacnut and England to Harold Harefoot. Harold was succeeded by Harthacnut in 1040, but neither king was of the same stamp as Cnut and they were both overshadowed by the great Godwine, earl of Wessex. When Harthacnut died in 1042 the male line in descent from Cnut was extinct, and though some of the Danes were in favour of choosing Cnut's sister's son Svein, Godwine secured the election of Edward the Confessor. ”

“ For the next year Swegen the Danish king died. Then the Danes chose his younger son Cnut or Canute to be king in England, while his elder son Harold reigned in Denmark. War followed between Cnut and Æthelred, in which at last Æthelred showed some little spirit, but in which the great leader on the English side was his son Edmund, called Ironside. He was not the son of Emma, whose children, Alfred, Edward, and Godgifu, were still quite young, but of an earlier wife of Æthelred. Then in the beginning of 1016 Æthelred died. Many of the English now thought that it was best to accept Cnut as king ”

“ We made him welcome and we loved him. He knew the world and could tell us many-things. He knew the story of Norway and the Vikings, and the Sagas were on his tongue. Cnut loved him and followed him, and she (the pause which always indicated her who filled his thoughts) —she, then but a girl, laughed and sang for him, and he sang for her, and his voice was rich and sweet. And she went with him to fish and to climb, and often, when Cnut and I were in the field, we would hear her laugh, clear and fresh from the rocks beside the streams, as he told her some fine story of his England. ”

“ His love for monks broke out in a song which he composed as he listened to their chaunt at Ely. "Merrily sang the monks of Ely when Cnut King rowed by" across the vast fen-waters that surrounded their abbey. "Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we these monks sing." A letter which Cnut wrote after twelve years of rule to his English subjects marks the grandeur of his character and the noble conception he had formed of kingship. "I have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things," wrote the king, "to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgement to all. ”

“ Whatever headship England had among the dominions of the Danish king, it was not to give the church of Canterbury metropolitan rights over them (Adam Brem. ii. 53) . Cnut's munificence extended to foreign churches, and by the advice of Æthelnoth he greatly helped the building of the cathedral of Chartres. His devout liberality took men by surprise. Both he and his father Sweyn seem to have been looked on as heathens by Christendom at large until Cnut exhibited himself as the most zealous of christian kings. ”

“ The story seems to imply that he was older than was the case in 1025, the date of Cnut's visit. At a later date he was certainly under-king of Denmark (Thorarin, i. 1. 28, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ii. 159) , and was there at the time of his father's death in 1035, when he became full king. Although Cnut intended that he should succeed in England, and his claims were urged by Earl Godwin [q. v.] , it was decided at a meeting of the witan held at Oxford that he should reign only over Wessex, his half-brother Harold [q. v.] being king in the north, with probably a supremacy over the south. ”

“ This is a lonesome place, and strange fancies weigh down a man's mind when all he may hear is the wind singing to the surges. Maybe these are but dreams. What matters it if Cnut reigns over the old Danelagh as Guthrum reigned, if Ethelred is overlord? It will be again as in Alfred's days, and once more an English king over the English folk, when Cnut is gone. ”

“ I sat down in the snow and thought; for I could not think at once. Cnut had not wished to murder, or else he had flung the Englishman from the narrow ledge with one blow of his strong arm. He had waited until they had stood on the Devil's Seat, and then he had thrown off his pack and faced him, man to man. The Englishman was strong and active, taller and heavier than Cnut. He had Harald's name, but he had not Harald's heart nor blood, and Cnut had carried him in his arms over the cliff, with his false heart like water in his body. ”

“ Cnut now appears in the light of a model sovereign for those days. He had renounced all his pagan ideas, and been christened and received into the Church. We might expect that he would have pushed his own countrymen forward and all the Danish interests, but it was quite the other way. At the beginning of his reign he had executed several powerful English nobles whose influence and antagonism he had reason to fear; but now he favored the English in a marked way, and even ordered his ships and all the pirates and fighting men back to the North. ”

“ And I thought that in time they would marry and have the farm, and that there would be children about the house, and the valley might be filled with their voices as in the old time. And I was content. And one day he came! (the reference cost him an effort) . Cnut found him fainting on the mountain and brought him here in his arms. He had come to the village alone, and the idle fools there had told him of me, and he had asked to meet me, and they told him of the mountain, and that none could pass the Devil’s Ledge but those who had the old blood, and that I loved not strangers ”

“ Cnut's Empire.—Beyond the Tweed Malcolm, king of the Scots, ruled. He defeated the North-humbrians at Carham, and Cnut ceded Lothian to him, either doing so for the first time or repeating the act of Eadgar, if the story of Eadgar's cession is true. At all events the king of the Scots from this time ruled as far south as the Tweed, and acknowledged Cnut's superiority. Cnut also became king of Denmark by his brother's death, and king of Norway by conquest. He entered into friendly relations with Richard II., Duke of the Normans, by marrying his sister Emma, the widow of Æthelred. [6]
11. ”

“ There seems no reason for doubting that the king met a violent death; that he was slain by Eadric is certainly probable, and while there is nothing to prove that Cnut instigated the murder, it was done in his interest by men who believed that they had good cause to expect that he would reward them for it. On the death of Eadmund, Cnut immediately called the witan to London, and, when the assembly had met, bade those who were present at the conference at Olney declare what had been settled there about the succession. ”

“ Cnut’s first kingdom, the prize of his youthful valour, was his centre and his home, of which his Scandinavian realms, even his native Denmark, were mere dependencies. Whatever he might be when he revisited them, in his island-kingdom he was an Englishman among Englishmen. The heir of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda of Normandy, on the other hand, was virtually of no nationality, no country; but if he could be said to have a home at all, it was certainly not on this side of the sea—it was the little marchland of his fathers. ”

“ The Witan recalled "their own born lord," and Æthelred returned to see the Danish fleet under Swein's son, Cnut, sail away to the North. It was but to plan a more terrible return. Youth of nineteen as he was, Cnut showed from the first the vigour of his temper. Setting aside his brother he made himself king of Denmark; and at once gathered a splendid fleet for a fresh attack on England, whose king and nobles were again at strife, and where a bitter quarrel between ealdorman Eadric of Mercia and Æthelred's son Eadmund Ironside broke the strength of the realm. ”

“ It was here, he says, that Cnut sat in his arm-chair, to show his courtiers (after he gave up drinking and murder) that though he was a mighty prince, he could not control the sea. “Well, what Canute could not do, your dock company has accomplished. ”

“ English and Danes alike obeyed him, and for eighteen years the troubled land had peace. His reign came to an end in 1036.
Cnut had married Emma of Normandy, Ethelred’s widow, and by her had two sons, Harold and Harthacnut, who in turn succeeded him. They were wild, vicious, and brutal young men. Fortunately their reigns were soon over, Harthacnut, the last to rule, dying in 1042. The English then sent over to France for Edward, the son of Ethelred and Emma, and once more an English king ruled in England. ”

“ She was as good as she was beautiful, and each day she grew more and more so. She was a second Igenborg. Knowing that she needed other companionship than an old man, I sought and brought her Cnut (he spoke of him as if I must know all about him) . Cnut was the son of my only kinsman, the last of his line as well, and he was tall and straight and strong. I loved him and he was my son, and as he grew I saw that he loved her, and I was not sorry, for he was goodly to look on, straight and tall as one of old, and he was good also. ”

“ He again went into Wessex to raise another army, and Cnut renewed the siege of London, but after a short time gave it up, and after bringing his ships into the Medway employed his men in plundering expeditions, which showed that his hopes of conquest were dashed by the constant success of the English king. The fourth army raised by Eadmund was made up of men from every part of the country (Flor. Wig.) ; he again crossed the Thames at Brentford, marched into Kent, fought a fifth battle at Otford, where the Danes made little resistance, and compelled the enemy to take refuge in Sheppey. ”

“ Which treachery so wrought on the honest Mercians that they would fight not at all, and so disbanded in sight of the enemy, leaving Eadmund with but enough men to make good his retreat. And Cnut was master of all the land from Kent to Severn shores, Ethelred's own country. So Edric Streone went over to Cnut, and with him many thanes who despaired of help from Ethelred, and chose rather peace under a king who was strong enough to give it them. ”

“ The highest offices in church and state were open to Englishmen. Æthelnoth was archbishop of Canterbury, Godwine earl of Wessex. During his later years, indeed, when he saw fit to banish certain Danish earls from England, he filled their places with Englishmen, and so 'Danish names gradually' disappear from the charters and are succeeded by English names' (Norman Conquest, i. 476) .
Having set in order his new kingdom, Cnut visited Denmark in 1019, using for his voyage the forty ships he had retained. ”