The Queen, who now came back from Normandy to marry her husband's old enemy, was also a masterful woman. If heredity can be stated in arithmetical terms, she was more than half Danish, as her mother Gunnor was clearly a Danish, woman while her father had a non-Danish mother and also inherited some non-Danish blood on the paternal side. She was evidently beautiful, gifted, and attractive: her flattering Encomiast describes her as of great beauty and wisdom.[179] But the finer instincts that we commonly associate with womanhood cannot have been highly developed in her case; what we seem to find is love of life, a delight in power, and an overpowering ambition to rule. At the time of her second marriage she was a mature woman; it is not likely that she was less than thirty years old, perhaps she was nearer forty. At all events, she must have been several years older than Canute. Two children were born to this marriage: Harthacanute, who ruled briefly in Denmark and England after the death of his father and of his half-brother Harold; and Gunhild, who was married to the Emperor Henry III. Emma lived to a ripe old age and died in 1052, fifty years after her first marriage.
The wedding was celebrated in July, 1017, the bride presumably coming from Normandy. The object sought was attained: for more than ten years there seems to have been unbroken peace between England and Normandy. When trouble finally arose after the accession of Robert the Devil, Canute was strong enough to dispense with further alliances.
One of the chief necessities was some form of a standing army, a force that the King could depend upon in case of invasion or revolt. Much reliance could obviously not be placed on the old military system; nor could the army of conquest be retained indefinitely. In 1018, or perhaps late in the preceding year, steps were taken to dismiss the Scandinavian host.[180] It has been conjectured that this was done out of consideration for the Saxon race; the presence of the conquerors was an insult to the English people. It had clearly become necessary to disband the viking forces, but for other reasons. A viking host was in its nature an army of conquest, not of occupation, except when the warriors were permitted to seize the land, which was evidently not Canute's intention. In a land of peace, as Canute intended England to be, such a host could not nourish. It should also be remembered that a large part was composed of borrowed troops furnished by the rulers of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; these could not be kept indefinitely. Another Danegeld was levied, 82,500 pounds in all, to pay off the host; and most of the Northmen departed, to the evident satisfaction of all concerned.
The dismissal of one host was followed by the immediate reorganisation of another. Far more important than the departure of the fleet is the fact that the crews of forty ships remained in the royal service: this would mean a force of between three thousand and four thousand men. But the North knew no continuous body of warriors except the military households of chiefs and kings; such a household was now to be organised, but one that was far greater and more splendid than any organisation of the sort known in Scandinavia. According to Sveno's history, Canute had it proclaimed that only those would be admitted to his new guard who were provided with two-edged swords having hilts inlaid with gold.[181] Sveno also tells us that the wealthy warriors made such haste to procure properly ornamented weapons that the sound of the swordsmith's hammer was heard all through the land. In this way, the King succeeded in giving his personal guard an aristocratic stamp.
The guard of housecarles or "thingmen," as they were called in the North, was organised as a guild or military fraternity, of which the King ranked as a member, though naturally a most important one. In many respects its rules remind us of the regulations enforced in the Jomburg brotherhood, though its organisation was probably merely typical of the viking fraternities of the age. The purpose of the guild laws, as reported by Sveno and Saxo, was to promote a spirit of fellowship among the members, to secure order in the guard, and to inculcate proper behaviour in the royal garth. When the housecarles were invited to the King's tables, they were seated according to their eminence in warfare, priority of service, or nobility of birth. To be removed to a lower place was counted a disgrace. In addition to daily fare and entertainment, the warriors received wages which were paid monthly, we are told. The bond of service was not permanent, but could be dissolved on New Year's Day only. All quarrels were decided in an assembly of the housecarles in the presence of the King. Members guilty of minor offences, such as failing to care properly for the horse of a fellow guardsman, were assigned lower places at the royal tables. If any one was thrice convicted of such misdeeds, he was given the last and lowest place, where no one was to communicate with him in any way, except that the feasters might throw bones at him if they were so disposed. Whoever should slay a comrade should lose his head or go into exile. Treason was punished by death and the confiscation of the criminal's property.[182]
These laws were put into writing several generations after the guard was formed, and it is not likely that all existed from the very beginning. There is, however, nothing in the rules that might not have applied in Canute's own day. It is said that the King himself was the first who seriously violated the guard-laws, in that he slew a housecarle in a moment of anger. Repentance came swiftly; the guard was assembled; kneeling the King confessed his guilt and requested punishment. But the laws gave the King the power of judgment in such cases, and so it must be in this instance as in others. Forty marks was the customary fine, but in this case the King levied nine times that amount and added nine marks as a gift of honour. This fine of 369 marks was divided into three parts: one to go to the heirs of the deceased; one to the guard; and one to the King. But Canute gave his share to the Church and the poor.[183]
Though the housecarles are presumed to have possessed horses, the guard was in no sense a cavalry force. Horses were for use on the march, for swift passage from place to place, not for charging on the field. The housecarles were heavily armed, as we know from the description of a ship that Earl Godwin presented to Harthacanute as a peace offering a few years after Canute's death. Eighty warriors, housecarles no doubt, seeing that it was a royal ship, manned the dragon,
of whom each one had on each arm a golden arm-ring weighing sixteen ounces, a triple corselet, on the head a helmet in part overlaid with gold; each was girded with a sword that was golden-hilted and bore a Danish ax inlaid with silver and gold hanging from the left shoulder; the left hand held the shield with gilded boss and rivets; in the right hand lay the spear that the Angles call the œtgar.[184]
It is not to be supposed that the whole guard was always at the court—it was distributed in the strong places throughout the kingdom,[185] especially no doubt in the South. It seems likely that individual housecarles might have homes of their own; at any rate, many of them in time came into possession of English lands as we know from Domesday.[186] No doubt Anglo-Saxon warriors were enrolled in the guard, but in its earlier years, at least, the greater number must have been of Scandinavian ancestry. In the province of Uppland, Sweden, a runic monument has been found that was raised by two sons in memory of their father, who "sat out west in thinglith."[187] As thinglith was the Old Norse name for Canute's corps of housecarles, we have here contemporary mention of a Swede who served in the guard. Another stone from the same province records the fact that Ali who raised it "collected tribute for Canute in England."[188] Housecarles were sometimes employed as tax collectors, and it seems probable that Ali, too, was a member of the great corps. It is likely that housecarles are also alluded to in the following Scanian inscription:
Sweyn and Thurgot raised this monument in memory of Manna and Sweyn. God help their souls well. But they lie buried in London.[189]