The year 1017, which witnessed the exaltation of the foreigners into English officialdom, also beheld a series of executions that still further weakened the English by removing their natural leaders. Most of these are associated with a Christmas gemot, when Canute was celebrating the first anniversary of his rule as king of England. Of the victims the most famous was Eadric, the Earl of Mercia. For ten years he had been a power in his region, though at no time does it appear that his word of honour or his pledge of loyalty could have had any value. In all the English sources he is represented as endowed with the instincts of treason, though the Encomiast, is careful to apply no term stronger than turncoat. At the same time, it is clear that Eadric the Grasper was a man of real abilities; in spite of the fact that he held allegiance lightly, he seems to have retained his influence to the last. He was, says one writer,
a man of low origin, one whom the tongue had brought riches and rank, clever in wit, pleasant in speech, but surpassing all men of the time in envy, perfidy, crime, and cruelty.[168]
The murder of Eadric was directly in line with Canute's policy of building up a new Scandinavian aristocracy, devoted to himself, and endowed with large local authority. The new order could not be built on such men as Eadric; by his marriage to Ethelred's daughter he was too closely connected with the old order of things. Furthermore, a man who found it so easy to be disloyal could not safely be entrusted with such great territorial authority as the earlship of Mercia. There had been in this same year extensive plotting among the survivors of the Anglian nobility, and it is likely that Eadric was involved in this. It is also related that the Earl was not satisfied with the King's reward,[169] which may mean that he objected to having independent earldoms carved out of Western Mercia. At any rate, Canute was not reluctant to remove him. Eric appears to have acted as executioner; and the career of the Grasper came to a sudden end. The murder, so far as we can see, was popular; among the men of power Eadric can have had few friends or perhaps none at all.
Three other lords are mentioned as having suffered death on the same occasion: Northman, the son of Leofwine, and two lords from the Southwest.[170] There can be little doubt that these men were convicted of treacherous plotting and that the punishment was regarded as merited. It is a remarkable fact that Northman's death did not alienate his family from the new dynasty: his father Leofwine succeeded to Eadric's dignities and his brother Leofric to Northman's own place of influence; "and the king afterwards held him very dear."[171]
Some of these executions should probably be placed in connection with certain measures taken against the former dynasty. Here again we have anxious care to secure the new throne. Six sons appear to have been born to Ethelred before his marriage to the Norman Emma; but of these only two or at most three seem to have survived their father. After Edmund Ironside's death, Edwy alone remained[172]; he is said to have been Edmund's full brother and a youth of promise. Evidently Canute intended to spare his life, but ordered him to go into exile. But the Etheling secretly returned to England and hid for a time in Tavistock monastery. He was evidently discovered, and Canute procured his death.[173] As Tavistock is in Devonshire, the execution of the two magnates from the Southwest may readily be explained on the supposition that they were plotting in Edwy's favour.
The London assembly seems to have assumed that certain rights were reserved to the infant sons of Edmund, but that the guardianship of the children had been given to Canute. They were scarcely a problem in 1017; still, it was necessary to make them permanently harmless. It will be remembered that Edmund married Sigeferth's widow some time in the year 1015, perhaps in early summer. It is, therefore, extremely doubtful whether the two boys, Edward and Edmund, were both the sons of the unfortunate Aldgyth; if they were they must have been twins, or the younger must have been born a posthumous child, some time in 1017, the year of their banishment. But if Florence's account is trustworthy, the status of the two was discussed at the Christmas gemot following Edmund's death in 1016.
To slay the children of a "brother" who had committed them to his care and protection must have seemed to Canute a rude and perhaps risky procedure; it was therefore thought best to send them out of the land. Accordingly the ethelings were sent to the "king of the Slavs,"[174] who was instructed to remove them from the land of the living. This particular king was evidently Canute's maternal uncle, the mighty Boleslav, duke and later king of Poland. Boleslav took pity on the poor children and failed to dispose of them as requested. In 1025, he was succeeded by his son Mieczislav, who entered into close relations with King Stephen of Hungary.[175] It was probably some time after 1025, therefore, that the ethelings were transferred to the Hungarian court, where they grew to manhood. After forty years of exile, one of them returned to England, but died soon after he had landed.
It seems to have been Canute's purpose finally to destroy the house of Alfred to the last male descendant. The two most dangerous heirs were, however, beyond his reach: the sons of Ethelred and Emma were safe with their mother in Normandy. There was close friendship between the lords of Rouen and the rulers of the North; still, Duke Richard could not be expected to ignore the claims of his own kinsmen. So long as the ethelings remained in Normandy, there would always be danger of a Norman invasion combined with a Saxon revolt in the interest of the fugitive princes, Alfred and Edward.
Canute was a resourceful king: these princes, too, could be rendered comparatively harmless. If their mother Emma should be restored to her old position as reigning queen of England, her Norman relatives might find it inconvenient to support an English uprising. This seems to be the true motive for Canute's seemingly unnatural marriage. Historians have seen in it a hope and an attempt to conciliate the English people, as in this way the new King would become identified with the former dynasty. But such a theory does scant justice to the moral sense of the Anglo-Saxons. Furthermore, neither Ethelred nor Emma had ever enjoyed real popularity. There is no doubt that a princess of the blood royal could have been found for a consort, if the prime consideration had been to contract a popular marriage. It seems rather that in this matter Canute acted in defiance of English public sentiment and for the express purpose of averting a real danger from beyond the Channel. Apparently, Emma took kindly to Canute's plans, for she is said to have stipulated that if sons were born to them, they should be preferred to Canute's older children[176]; thus by inference the rights of her sons in Normandy were abandoned.
Earlier in his career, Canute had formed an irregular connection with an English or Anglo-Danish woman of noble birth, Elgiva, the daughter of Elfhelm, who at one time ruled in Deira as ealdorman. Her mother's name is given as Ulfrun, a name that is Scandinavian in both its component parts.[177]The family was evidently not strictly loyal to the Saxon line, for in 1006, just after Sweyn's return to Denmark, Elfhelm was slain and his two sons blinded by royal orders.[178] Elgiva must have had relatives at Northampton, for the Chronicler knows her as the woman from Northampton. She was a woman of great force of character, ambitious and aggressive, though not always tactful, as appears from her later career in Norway. She was never Canute's wife; but, in the eleventh century, vague ideas ruled concerning the marriage relation, even among Christians. Her acquaintance with Canute doubtless began in 1013, when he was left in charge of the camp and fleet at Gainsborough. Two sons she bore to him, Harold Harefoot and Sweyn. On Emma's return to England, Elgiva seems to have been sent with her children to Denmark. We find her later taking an active part in the politics of Wendland, Norway, and probably of England.