Chapter VI · THE DANISH KINGS IN ENGLAND.[818] 1017–1042.

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 402are 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 |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, 403we 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 |1027 or 1028.| Cnut sat on the throne of England, William the Bastard first saw the light at Falaise.

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 404crowns 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.

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 |February, 1014.| Swegen,^[821] and a second time, more regularly, by the vote |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 405purpose 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 |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 |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 |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 |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 406of 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 |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 |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 |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 407nor spread his dominion over Norwegians, Swedes, and |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 |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 |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 408|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 |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, |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 409great 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 |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 |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. |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] 410and 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.

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 |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 |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 411conqueror 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 |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] |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 412successively 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 |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 413with 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 |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 414in 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.

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 415plan 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.

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 |Thurkill banished. 1021.| Uhtred,^[862] and we shall presently see Thurkill himself, to whom Cnut in a great measure owed his crown, driven |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] |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 416crimes, 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.

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 417kind 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 |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 |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, 418proves 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.

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 |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 419paid seventy-two thousand. This is something like a measure of the position which the great merchant city |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 |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, |1015.| three years before, had been dishonoured by the murder |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 |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 420Kings 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 |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 421seas 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 |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 422vain 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 |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 |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 |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 423|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 |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 424marriage 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 |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.

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, 425at which took place the last recorded instance of |Witenagemót at Cirencester. April, 1020.| severity on Cnut’s part towards any Englishman. An |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. |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 |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 426analogous 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.

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 427region 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 428its 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 |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 |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 |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 |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 429almost 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 |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, |Eric banished. 1023?| evidently as a hostage. Eric also, the Danish Earl of the Northumbrians, was banished a few years later than 430Thurkill, on what occasion, and at what exact time, is |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 |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 |1046.| Earl, Harold,^[905] and was herself, in her second widowhood, 431banished from England when England had again a native |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 |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 432land, 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.

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, 433plundering, 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 |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, 434perhaps even by treacherous assassinations, was, when once established, emphatically the throne of righteousness and peace. As an English King, he fairly ranks beside |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.

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 435and 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 436and 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 437established, we hear no complaint against his government |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 438offended 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.

Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy.

In ecclesiastical matters Cnut mainly, though not exclusively, favoured the monks. His ecclesiastical appointments, |1020.| especially that of good Archbishop Æthelnoth;^[936] who had baptized or confirmed him, do him high honour. |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 439an 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. |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 |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” 440hallowed 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 |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 441translated 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 |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 442was his bounty confined to England, or even to his own |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 |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. 443The 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 |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 444of 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 |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 445ships 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 |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 |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 446among 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. |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.

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 447be 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 |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, |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 |1035?| fact, except that in one of the last years of Cnut’s reign, a Welsh prince, Caradoc son of Rhydderch, was slain by 448the 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 |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 |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 |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 |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, 449of 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 |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 |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 450eminently 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 |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 |[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 |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 451of the elder Malcolm King Cnut received also the homage of Macbeth.

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. |Death of Malcolm. 1034.| Malcolm, already an old man, survived the ceremony only three years, and died in the year before the death of 452his 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]

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 |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 |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 |1000.| the death of Olaf Tryggvesson,^[979] formed part of the 453dominions of Swegen, and it was entrusted to the government of his son-in-law Eric, who afterwards held the |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 |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 454enemies, 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, |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 |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 |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 |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]

Cnut’s friendly relations with the Empire.

455Cnut, 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 |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]

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 456bulwark 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, |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.

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 457|[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 |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] 458And no wonder; for it is plain that the Norman Duke |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 |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 |1006.| Imperial and royal saints united their forces against the city of Valenciennes, and the more purely temporal help of |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 |1008.| the two princes. Richard married Judith of Britanny,^[1002] and Hadwisa of Normandy became the wife of Geoffrey, 459on 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 |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. 460And, 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 |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 |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 461be 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 |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, |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]