Cnut

“ Cnut alone seemed downcast, but I knew not why; and then the snow came. One morning we awoke and the farm was as white as the mountains. I said to him, ‘Now you are here for the winter,’ and he laughed and said, ‘No, I will stay till the new-year. I have business then in England, and I must go.’ And I turned, and her face was like sunshine, for she knew that none but Cnut and I had ever passed the Devil’s Ledge in the snow, and the other way by which I took the Doctor home was worse then, though easier in the summer, only longer. But Cnut looked gloomy, at which I chid him ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cnut said presently, as a distant howl was heard between the lulls of the storm. The guide muttered some word which Cuthbert did not understand. But he said to Cnut, "I doubt not that it is wolves. Thank God that we are safe within this refuge, for here not even the most ravenous beasts could make their way."
"Pooh!" Cnut said contemptuously. "Wolves are no bigger than dogs. I have heard my grandfather say that he shot one in the forest, and that it was no bigger than a hound. We should make short work of them." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By a treat arranged by Archbishop Unwan, Cnut's daughter Gunhild was betrothed to the emperor's son Henry, and Conrad gave the Danish king the march of Sleswic and accepted the Eider as the boundary between Denmark and Germany (Adam Brem. ii. 54) .
When Cnut was firmly established on the English throne, he sent messages to Olaf Haroldsson, demanding that he should hold Norway as his earl and pay him tribute. On Olaf's refusal he set about creating a party for himself in Norway, and spent money freely in bribing the Norwegians to be faithless to their king (Sighvat, 4) . ”

“ His death, however, was unexpected, and the gifts Cnut afterwards made to the monastery of Bury seem to show that he shared the general belief that it was due to the vengeance of St. Eadmund. Sweyn died on the road from Gainsborough to Bury on 3 Feb. 1014. His son Harold succeeded him in Denmark, and the Danish fleet chose Cnut to be king of England. The ‘witan,’ however, sent after Æthelred, and declared every Danish king an outlaw. Æthelred returned to England during Lent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevertheless, the marriage need not have been one of mere policy, for she was remarkably beautiful. Cnut was already the lover of another Ælfgifu, sometime, it is said, the mistress of Olaf of Norway [see Ælfgifu of Northampton] . By her he had two sons, Harold and Sweyn. Emma, therefore, before she accepted his offer, stipulated that, should she bear the king a son, no other woman's son should succeed to the kingdom, and to this Cnut agreed (Enc. Emmæ, ii., 16) . ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cnut of Denmark, who had twice sailed up117 the Humber, never quite gave up the thoughts of conquering or delivering England. When he himself became king, he made great preparations, and was joined by his father-in-law Robert of Flanders, and by Olaf of Norway, the son of Harold Hardrada. In 1085 Cnut got together a great fleet, and William brought over a vast host of mercenaries to guard the land. But a quarrel arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf, and the next year Cnut was killed in a church by his own men, and was called a saint and martyr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cnut gave England the peace which she had not known since Pg 56 the death of Eadgar, for no one dared to stir up war against a king who was not only Lord of Britain, but ruled all the lands of the Northmen, as far as Iceland and the Faroes and the outlying Danish towns in Ireland. The Welsh and Scots served Cnut as they had served Aethelstan and Eadgar, and were his obedient vassels. In reward of the services of Malcolm of Scotland Cnut gave him the district of Lothian, the northern half of Bernicia, to hold as his vassal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then the maiden answered, "Connla speaks to a young, fair maid, whom neither death nor old age awaits. I love Connla, and now I call him away to the Plain of Pleasure, Moy Mell, where Boadag is king for aye, nor has there been complaint or sorrow in that land since he has held the kingship. Oh, come with me, Connla of the Fiery Hair, ruddy as the dawn with thy tawny skin. A fairy crown awaits thee to grace thy comely face and royal form. Come, and never shall thy comeliness fade, nor thy youth, till the last awful day of judgment." ”

“ Learning from trustworthy books that at a certain stage of development the nut contains a delicious beverage like lemonade, I sent one of my heroes up a tree for a nut, through the shell of which he bored a hole with a penknife. It was not till long after the story was published that my own brother—who had voyaged in Southern seas—wrote to draw my attention to the fact that the cocoanut is nearly as large as a man’s head, and its outer husk is over an inch thick, so that no ordinary penknife could bore to its interior! ”