This change in policy seems to be the outgrowth principally 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 assigned 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 principal subject. At this assembly, 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 assigned 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 passage 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 assist 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 assist.
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 vassal 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 Macolm 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 God'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 assembly 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 associate 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.