A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

The Danes acknowledged Cnut as King, but the bulk of the English wished to retain the House of Cerdic, if Æthelred would pledge himself to rule better. This he promised to do, and his cause for a time was successful. Cnut had to retreat to his ships. Nevertheless, we hear of another large tribute, but it was paid probably to a fleet of Danish auxiliaries serving upon the English side. Eadric had of course again joined the victorious party; but again his persistent treachery was the destruction of the country. He enticed Sigeferth and Morkere, Thegns of the Five Danish Burghs, to Oxford, and there murdered them. Sigeferth’s widow was kept a prisoner, and taken in marriage by Edmund Ironside, Æthelred’s son. This prince thus acquired possession of the Five Burghs, and secured an influence which enabled him to take up a position in opposition to Eadric. On the renewal of the invasion by Cnut both Eadric and Edmund collected their forces; but, angry at the new rivalry he was experiencing, Eadric led his troops to join Cnut. Wessex was thus thrown open, and by a strange inversion of affairs, Edmund, with Utred of Northumberland, occupied the northern part of England, while the Danes, under Cnut and Eadric, held Wessex and the South. In 1016, Æthelred died.

Edmund Ironside. April to Nov. 1016.

Five great battles.

Division of England.

The Witan of the South immediately, under the influence of the conquerors, elected Cnut as his successor, but London and the rest of the Witan chose Edmund. It was plain that Wessex could acknowledge Cnut only through fear, and thither Edmund betook himself, and collected troops. As if to prove what the English could do if well commanded, in a few weeks he fought, on the whole successfully, five great battles. At Pen Selwood in Somerset; at Sherstone, where the English were only prevented from winning by a trick of Eadric’s, who, raising the head of another man, declared it was the head of the slain English king; at Brentford; and afterwards, when Eadric had again changed sides, at Otford in Kent; and Assandun in Essex. In this last battle the whole forces of England were arrayed. The sudden withdrawal of Eadric, who was commanding the Magesætas, or men of Hereford, secured a victory for the Danes, and Edmund had to retreat across England into the country of the Hwiccas, or Gloucestershire. Not yet wholly beaten, he was preparing for a sixth battle, when he was persuaded to make an arrangement similar, though not identical, with that which Alfred had made with Guthrum. He surrendered to Cnut Northumberland and Mercia, retaining for himself Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, and London. On St. Andrew’s Day of the same year, Edmund Ironside died, a misfortune, like most other acts of villainy of the time, attributed to Eadric. With him fell the hope of the English. The treachery of Eadric, the folly of Æthelred, met with their reward, and Cnut was acknowledged King of England.

Cnut. 1017.

The four Earldoms.

Cnut’s patriotic government.

Indeed, Edmund’s sons were so young that it was not probable that the Witan would elect them. The only other claimant was Edwy, Edmund’s brother. To secure himself against him, Cnut is said to have employed Eadric to put him to death; and though he escaped on that occasion, he was certainly outlawed, and all the old members of the royal family were kept abroad. The children of Æthelred and Emma, Edward and Alfred, were in Normandy with their mother. The children of Edmund Ironside, Edward and Edmund, were sent first to Sweden, and then to Hungary, where Edward married Agatha, niece of the Emperor Henry II. Cnut’s object, on finding himself King of England, appears to have been to obliterate, as far as possible, the idea of conquest, to rule England as an English king, and making that country the centre of his government, to form a great Scandinavian Empire. To this end, pursuing the policy of Dunstan, he divided England into four great earldoms, representing the old kingdoms. Northumberland and East Anglia were intrusted to Danes; Mercia was given to Eadric; Wessex he kept in his own hands. Eadric’s influence had compelled Cnut thus to promote him, but he so mistrusted him, that within a year he caused him to be put to death. In the same year he sent for Queen Emma from Normandy, and married her, though she must have been much older than himself, with the object apparently either of connecting himself with the late dynasty, or of securing the friendship of the Normans. The next year the Danish fleet was sent home. Englishmen were again put in high office. Thus Leofric was made Earl of the Mercians, and Godwine, of whom we now first hear, and whose origin and rise is variously related, was made Earl of Wessex, presumably the second man in the country. Thus, too, Cnut flattered the feelings of the English by moving the body of St. Alphege, who had been killed by the Danes twelve years before, with all honour to his own Church at Canterbury; and thus, too, he did not scruple to fill the English bishoprics with Englishmen, and even to promote them to high office in Denmark. During his reign England was at peace within its own borders, while Scotland was brought to submission. In 1031, Malcolm, King of the Scotch, and two under-kings, did homage to the English King. A strong, well-ordered government was established, supported for the first time by a standing body of troops, known as the House-carls. Early in the reign Eadgar’s law had been renewed with the advice of the Witan, and, in 1028, Cnut promulgated a code of his own, which is little else than repetition of former laws and customs. But the proof of his good government is this, that just as the law of the great Eadgar was looked on as typical, and demanded by Cnut’s Witan, and as after the Conquest the Confessor’s law was demanded, so we find the people of the North demanding Cnut’s law,—in each case law meaning system of government. His importance as a king is marked by the respect shown him on his pilgrimage to Rome in the year 1027. There, as he tells his people in a letter which he sent them, he negotiated with the Pope, the Emperor, and King Rudolph of Burgundy, for the free passage of English pilgrims and merchants; he received large gifts from the Emperor, and made the Pope promise to lessen his extortions upon granting the Pallium or Archiepiscopal cloak. His daughter by Queen Emma, Gunhild, was, moreover, thought a fitting wife for Henry, afterwards the Emperor Henry III. Cnut died still young in 1035.

Disputed succession.