Canute the Great Part 11

[185] Saxo, _Gesta Danorum_, 351.

[186] Larson, _The King's Household in England_, 163-167.

[187] The Kolstad Stone. Montelius, _Kulturgeschichte Schwedens_, 267.

[188] The osseby Stone. Montelius, _ibid._.

[189] The Valleberga Stone. Wimmer, _De danske Runemindesmaerker_, iii., 165.

[190] _Chronicon_, viii., c. 5. Thietmar's account is strictly contemporary.

[191] _Annales Cambriae_, 23.

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNINGS OF EMPIRE

1019-1025

The first three or four years of Canute's government in England can have given but little promise of the beneficent rule that was to follow. To the conquered Saxon they must have been a season of great sorrow. On the throne of Alfred sat an alien king who had done nothing as yet to merit the affectionate regard of his subjects. In the shire courts ruled the chiefs of the dreaded Danish host, chiefs who had probably harried those same shires at an earlier date. A heavy tax had been collected to pay the forces of the enemy, but a large part of those forces still remained. The land was at peace; but the calm was the calm of exhaustion. The young King had shown vigour and decision; thus far, however, his efforts had been directed toward dynastic security rather than the welfare of his English subjects.

But with Canute's return from Denmark in 1020 begins the second period in the history of the reign. After that date, it seems that more intelligent efforts were made to reconcile the Saxons to foreign rule.

For one thing, Canute must have come to appreciate the wonderful power of the Church; for an attempt was made to enlist its forces on the side of the new monarchy. Perhaps he had also come to understand that repression could not continue indefinitely.

This change in policy seems to be the outgrowth princ.i.p.ally of the new situation created by Canute's accession to the Danish throne. Harold, his older brother, king of Denmark, appears to have died in 1018.[192]

Little is known of Harold; he died young and evidently left no heirs.

For a year there seems to have been no recognised king in Denmark, as Canute did not leave England before 1019. In that year he sailed to the Baltic to claim the throne in person, taking with him nine ships, fewer than one thousand men; the rest of the new force of housecarles was doubtless left in Britain as a matter of security. Thurkil, Earl of East Anglia, seems to have been left behind as English viceroy.

Various reasons may be a.s.signed for this delay in securing the ancestral crown. Harold died in the year when Canute was reorganising the military forces of the realm; before his great corps of housecarles was complete, it would not have been safe to leave the country. Perhaps the King also felt that he must take some steps to reconcile the two racial elements of his kingdom. He may have concluded that with two kingdoms to govern it would be impossible to give undivided attention to English affairs and movements. To prevent rebellion in his absence, it might be well to remove, so far as possible, all forms of hostility; we read, therefore, of a great meeting of the magnates, both Danes and Angles, at Oxford in 1018, where the matter of legislation was evidently the princ.i.p.al subject. At this a.s.sembly, it was agreed to accept Edgar's laws as the laws for the whole land.[193] It is significant that the comparatively large body of law that was enacted in Ethelred's day was ignored or rejected. The chief reason for this may have been that Canute was not yet willing to enforce the rigid enactments against heathen practices that were such a distinctive feature of Ethelred's legislation. There can be small doubt that in the Scandinavian settlements and particularly in the alien host heathendom still lingered to some extent.

The delay was also due, perhaps, in large part to a serious trouble with Scotland. The term Northumbria is variously used; but in its widest application it embraced territories extending from the Humber to the Forth. The northern part of this kingdom, the section between the Tweed and the Forth, was known as Lothian; on this region the kings of Scotland had long cast covetous eyes. In 1006, while the vikings were distressing England, King Malcolm invaded Lothian, crossed the Tweed, and laid siege to Durham. The aged Earl Waltheof made practically no attempt at resistance; but his young son Uhtred placed himself at the head of the Northumbrian levies and drove the invader back into Scotland.[194] Uhtred succeeded to his father's earldom and was apparently recognised as lord throughout the entire ancient realm. While Uhtred lived and ruled, the neighbours to the north seem to have kept the peace; but in 1016, as we have seen, the great warrior was slain, probably at Canute's instigation and his earldom was a.s.signed to Eric.

Whatever Canute's intentions may have been, it seems likely that the new Earl did not come into immediate and undisputed control of the entire earldom; for we find that in the regions north of Yorkshire, the old kingdom of Bernicia, Uhtred's brother, Eadulf Cudel, "a very sluggish and timid man," sought to maintain the hereditary rights of the family.

Two years after Uhtred's death, Malcolm the son of Kenneth reappeared in Lothian at the head of a large force gathered from the western kingdom of Strathclyde as well as from his own Scotia. The Northumbrians had had ample warning of troubles to come: for thirty nights a comet had blazed in the sky; and after the pa.s.sage of another period of thirty days, the enemy appeared. An army gathered mainly from the Durham country met the Scotch forces at Carham on the Tweed, near Coldstream, but was almost completely destroyed.[195] There is no record of any further resistance; and when Malcolm returned to the Highlands he was lord of Lothian, Eadulf having surrendered his rights to all of Northumbria beyond the Tweed.

Canute apparently acquiesced in this settlement. So far as we know, he made no effort to a.s.sist his subjects in the North, or to redeem the lost territory. We cannot be sure of the reason for this inactivity; but the general situation on the island appears to offer a satisfactory explanation. It will be remembered that 1018 was the year when Canute disbanded his Scandinavian army. As we are told that the bishop of Durham, who died in 1019, took leave of earth a few days after he had heard the news of the great defeat,[196] it seems likely that the battle of Carham was fought late in the year 1018, and after the host had departed for Denmark. Canute, therefore, probably had no available army that he could trust; to call out his new subjects would have been a hazardous experiment. There is also the additional fact that the sluggish Eadulf was in all probability regarded as a rebel, whom Canute was not anxious to a.s.sist.

As to the terms of the surrender of Lothian, nothing definite is known.

Our only authority in the matter puts the entire blame on Eadulf, and apparently would have us believe that Malcolm merely stepped into the earl's position as va.s.sal of Eric or Canute. If such were the case, Canute could hardly have been left in ignorance about the cession, and he may have cherished certain pretensions to overlordship, which Malcolm evidently did not regard very seriously. In one way the cession of Lothian was a great loss to England; on the other hand, it added an Anglian element to the Caledonian kingdom, which in time became the controlling factor, and prepared the northern state for the union of the kingdoms that came centuries afterwards.

The following year, Canute was finally in position to make the deferred journey to Denmark. The Danish situation must have had its difficulties.

In a proclamation issued on his return, the King alludes to these, though in somewhat ambiguous terms:

Then I was informed that there threatened us a danger that was greater than was well pleasing to us; and then I myself with the men who went with me departed for Denmark, whence came to you the greatest danger; and that I have with G.o.d's help forestalled, so that henceforth no unpeace shall come to you from that country, so long as you stand by me as the law commands, and my life lasts.[197]

Most probably, the difficulty alluded to was some trouble about the succession. There may have been a party in Denmark to whom the thought of calling a king from England was not pleasant; or it may be that a conservative faction was hoping for a ruler of the old faith. Any form of invasion from Denmark at this time, when the nation was even kingless, is almost beyond the possible. But no doubt there had been a likelihood that Canute would have to call on his English subjects for military and financial support in the effort to secure his hereditary rights in the North.

Canute chose to spend the winter in Denmark, as during the winter season there was least likelihood of successful plots and uprisings. As early as possible in the spring of 1020, he returned to England. Evidently certain rebellious movements had made some headway during his absence, for Canute immediately summoned the lords to meet in formal a.s.sembly at the Easter festival. The plotting was apparently localised in the south-western shires, as we infer from the fact that the gemot sat in an unusual place, Cirencester in the Severn country. Its chief act seems to have been the banishment of Ethelwerd, earl in the Devon country, and of a mysterious pretender whom the Chronicler calls Edwy, king of churls.[198] It seems natural to a.s.sociate the destinies of these two men and to conclude that some sort of conspiracy in the pretender's favour had been hatching, but we have no definite information.

It was probably at this gathering that Canute issued his proclamation to the English nation; at least there seems to be no doubt that it was given in 1020. It is a remarkable doc.u.ment, a message to a restless people, an apology for the absence in Denmark, and a promise of future good government. It hints darkly at what may have been the disturbances in the Southwest and the measures taken at Cirencester in the following terms:

Now I did not spare my treasures while unpeace was threatening to come upon you; with the help of G.o.d I have warded this off by the use of my treasures.[199]

In a measure the Proclamation of 1020 contains the announcement of a new governmental policy in England, one that recognises the English subjects as citizens who may be trusted with some share in the administration of the realm, and not merely as conquered provincials whose rebellious instincts can be kept down by a continuous policy of coercion only.

There was, it is true, little need of coercion after 1020; the natural leaders of the native population were gone. But the importance of the union with Denmark with respect to politics in England must not be overlooked: it removed what fear had remained as to the stability of Canute's conquered throne. At the first indication of an uprising, it would be possible to throw a Danish force on the British coast, which, combined with the King's loyal partisans in England, could probably stifle the rebellion in a brief campaign.

The purpose to make larger use of the native energies is indirectly shown in the command to the local functionaries that they heed and follow the advice of the bishops in the administration of justice:

And I make known to you that I will be a kind lord and loyal to the rights of the Church and to right secular law.

And also my ealdormen I command that they help the bishops to the rights of the Church and to the rights of my kingship and to the behoof of all the people. And I also command my reeves, by my friendship and by all that they own, and by their own lives, that they everywhere govern my people justly and give right judgments by the witness of the shire bishop, and do such mercy therein as the shire bishop thinks right and the community can allow.[200]

The significance of this appears when we remember that the local prelates were probably English to a man.

There is, however, no evidence for the belief so frequently expressed, that Canute by this time, or even earlier, had concluded to dispense with his Scandinavian officials, and to rule England with the help of Englishmen only. In the Proclamation the King speaks of Danes and Angles, not of Angles and Danes. Among the thegns who witnessed his charters, Danes and Saxons continue to appear in but slightly changed ratio till the close of the reign. The alien guard was not dismissed.

Local government continued in the hands of Norse and Danish earls. Time came when these disappeared from their respective earldoms, but for reasons that show no conscious purpose of removal because of nationality or race. As the field of his operations widened, as the vision of empire began to take on the forms of reality, Canute found it necessary to use his trusted chiefs in other places and in other capacities. Consequently the employment of native Englishmen in official positions became more common as the years pa.s.sed.

The following year about Martinsmas (November 11, 1021), came the first real break in Canute's political system: Thurkil the Tall, who stood second to the King only in all England, was outlawed. Florence of Worcester adds that his wife was exiled with him.[201] The reason for this act is not clear; but we may perhaps a.s.sociate it with a lingering dislike for the old dynasty. If Edith was actually Ethelred's daughter, Thurkil's marriage may have been a source of irritation or even supposed danger to Canute and possibly also to the lady's stepmother, the callous Queen Emma.

It is also possible that the King in this case simply yielded to pressure from the native element, particularly from the Church.

Thurkil's prominence in the kingdom can hardly have been a source of pleasure to the men who recalled the part that he had played in the kingdom at various times. In the Proclamation he is entrusted with the task of enforcing the laws against heathen and heretical practices. But to a.s.sign such a duty to the man who was in such a great measure responsible for the martyrdom of Saint Alphege must have seemed a travesty upon justice to the good churchmen of the time. The conjecture that the banishment of the Earl was not wholly the result of royal disfavour receives some support from the fact that, a few months later, Canute and Thurkil were reconciled, and the old Earl was given a position in Denmark a.n.a.logous to the one that he had held in England.[202] Canute still found him useful, but not in the western kingdom. At the same time, the shrewd King seems not to have felt absolutely sure of the Earl's loyalty, for we read that he brought Thurkil's son with him to England, evidently as a hostage.

In 1023 another great name disappears from the doc.u.ments: Earl Eric is mentioned no more. Later stories that he, too, suffered exile are not to be believed. Eric seems to have died in possession of all his Northumbrian dignities and of the King's favour at a comparatively advanced age; for the warrior who showed such signal bravery at Hjorunga Bay nearly forty years before could not have been young. In all probability he had pa.s.sed the sixtieth milestone of life, which was almost unusual among the viking chiefs of the period. We are told that in his last year he contemplated a visit to Rome which was probably never made. Most reliable is the story that he died from the effects of primitive surgery. Just as he was about to set out on the Roman journey, it was found necessary for him to have his uvula treated. The surgeon cut too deep and a hemorrhage resulted from which the Earl died.[203]

That the story is old is clear, for some of the accounts have the additional information that the leech acted on the suggestion of one who can be none other than Canute. This part of the story is probably mythical.

The spirit of chivalry was not strong in the viking; but, so far as it existed, it found its best representative in Eric, the son of Hakon the Bad. He was great as a warrior, great as a leader in the onslaught. He possessed in full measure the courage that made the viking such a marvellous fighter; the joy of the conflict he seems to have shared with the rest. But when the fight was over and the foeman was vanquished, n.o.bler qualities ruled the man; he could then be merciful and large of soul. As a statesman, on the other hand, he seems to have been less successful; in Norway he permitted the aristocracy to exercise local authority to a greater extent than the welfare of Norse society could allow. As to his rule in Northumbria we know nothing.

The next year we have the closing record of still another Scandinavian earl in England: Eglaf signs a grant for the last time in 1024.[204]

Doubtless some trouble had arisen between him and the King, for two years later he appears to be acting the part of a rebel. Still later, he is said to have joined the Varangian guard of Scandinavian warriors at Byzantium, where he closed his restless career in the service of the Greek Emperor.[205]

There still remained Norse and Danish earls in England, such as Ranig and Hakon; but the men who were most intimately a.s.sociated in the English mind with conquest and cruel subjection were apparently out of the land before the third decade of the century had finished half its course. It is probable that Hakon succeeded his father in the Northumbrian earldom, as Leofwine of Mercia seems to be in possession of Hakon's earldom in Worcestershire in 1023,[206] the year when Hakon's father presumably died.

After the banishment of Thurkil, we should expect to find Eric, while he still lived, as the ranking earl in the kingdom and the chief adviser to the King. But Eric's earldom was in the extreme north; his subjects were largely Norwegian immigrants and their descendants, as yet, perhaps, but imperfectly Anglicised; he was himself an alien and his circle of ideas scarcely touched the field of Saxon politics. He could, therefore, be of small a.s.sistance in governing the kingdom as a whole. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether Canute really felt the need of a grand vizier at this time. An excellent a.s.sistant, however, he seems to have found in the Saxon G.o.dwin. It has been thought that G.o.dwin's exalted position of first subject in the realm belongs to a date as early as 1020[207] But this is mere conjecture. It is evident that his influence with Canute grew with the pa.s.sage of time; still, it is likely that historians have projected his greatness too far back into his career.

A position a.n.a.logous to that of the tall earl he could not have held before the closing years of the reign. If Canute left any one in charge of the kingdom during his absences after 1020, it could not have been G.o.dwin. When the fleet sailed against the Slavs on the south Baltic sh.o.r.es in 1022, G.o.dwin appears to have accompanied the host. Tradition tells us that he fought valiantly in the Swedish campaign of 1026. A Norse runic monument records his presence in some expedition to Norway, presumably that of 1028.[208] Canute did not employ English forces to a large extent in any of his foreign wars, possibly because he was distrustful of them: only fifty English ships made part of that vast armada that overawed the Norwegians in 1028. Canute's probable reluctance about arming the Saxons after the battle of Carham and the consequent loss of Lothian has already been referred to. The presence of G.o.dwin as a chief in Canute's host may, therefore, be taken as a mark of peculiar confidence on the King's part.

G.o.dwin was never without his rival. In the Midlands Leofwine and after him his son Leofric were developing a power that was some day to prove a dangerous barrier to the ambitions of the southern Earl and his many sons. The family of Leofwine had certain advantages in the race for power that made for stability and a.s.sured possession of power once gained: it was older as a member of the aristocracy; it seems to have had Anglo-Danish connections, presumably Danish ancestry; it was apparently controlled by a spirit of prudence that urged the acceptance of de-facto rule. But in the matter of aggressive abilities and statesmanlike ideas the Mercians were far inferior to their Saxon rivals; the son and grandsons of Leofwine never attained the height of influence and power that was reached by G.o.dwin and his son Harold.

While these changes were going on in England, an important advance had been made in the direction of empire. In his message from Rome to the English people (1027) Canute claims the kingship of England, Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden. The copies of the doc.u.ment that have come down to us are, however, not contemporary, and it is not likely that the sweeping claim of the salutation was found in the original. For at no time was Canute lord of any Swedish territory as the term was understood and the frontier drawn in the eleventh century. It has been pointed out that in this case we probably have a scribal error of Swedes for Slavs.[209] As King of Denmark, Canute inherited pretensions to considerable stretches of the south Baltic sh.o.r.e lands, and consequently could claim to rule a part of the Slavic lands. Early in his reign he made an expedition to these regions, of which we have faint echoes in both English and Scandinavian sources.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SOUTH BALTIC COAST IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.]