The sagas are evidently correct in stating that the force of housecarles "had been chosen from many lands, though chiefly from those of the Danish [Old Norse] tongue."
So long had the wealth of England been regarded as legitimate plunder, that the Scandinavian pirates found it difficult to realise that raids in South Britain were things of the past. They now had to reckon, not merely with a sluggish and disorganised militia, but with a strong force of professional warriors in the service and pay of a capable and determined king. In the year 1018, says the German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg,
the crews of thirty viking ships have been slain in England, thanks be to God, by the son of Sweyn, the king of the English; and he, who earlier with his father brought invasion and long-continued destruction upon the land, is now its sole defender.[190]
This seems to have been the first and last attempt at piracy in England during the reign of Canute. So far as his dominions extended, viking practices were outlawed. The check that the movement received in 1018 was the beginning of a rapid decline in its strength, and before the close of Canute's reign, the profession of the sea-king was practically destroyed.
The Welsh, too, seem to have found it hard to repress their old habits of raiding the English frontier. It was probably this fact that induced Canute to establish so many earldoms in the Southwest, particularly in the Severn Valley. A few years after the signal defeat of the viking fleet, apparently in 1022, Eglaf, one of the earls on the Welsh border, harried the lands of Southwestern Wales.[191] As the sources nowhere intimate that Canute ever planned to conquer Wales, and as this was evidently the year of Canute's absence in the Baltic lands, the conclusion must be that this expedition was of a punitive character. The Angles and Saxons were soon to learn that the new régime meant a security for the property as well as the persons of loyal and peaceful citizens, such as they had not enjoyed for more than a generation.
FOOTNOTES:
[146] The evidence is late and not of the best; the earliest authority to mention it is Ralph de Diceto who lived a century and a half later. But see Freeman, Norman Conquest, i., Note tt.
[147] Florence of Worcester, Chronicon, i., 179.