This battle of Carham, fought in the second year of Canute’s reign, deserves more attention than it has generally received from English historians. It was more important than Brunanburh, we might perhaps say only a little less important than Hastings, for by it the Border between England and Scotland, which had fluctuated through many centuries, was finally fixed at its present limitary streams and mountains. Edinburgh, it is true, seems to have been lost to the Scots some sixty years before the time that we have now reached,[204] but the rich and beautiful country of the Lothians was only now finally abandoned by the English, “surrendered” (says the anonymous chronicler) “by the very base and cowardly Eadwulf, who feared lest the Scots should revenge upon him the death of all the men of their nation who had fallen in battle against his brother. Thus was Lothian added to the kingdom of the Scots.” It was for us English a loss disastrous and irretrievable. Our only compensation is to be found in the fact that the large Anglian population thus transferred to the northern kingdom so leavened its speech, its institutions, its national character, that the Scotland of the Middle Ages was Anglian rather than Gaelic in its dominating tendencies.[205]
Towards the end of his reign—in 1031 according to the authority, here somewhat doubtful, of the Saxon Chronicle—“Canute went to Scotland, and the Scots’ king Malcolm submitted to him and became his man, but that held only a little while. Also two other kings, Maelbaethe and Jehmarc.” Of the last of these two kings we know nothing. Maelbaethe seems to be the same person as the Macbeth of Shakespeare’s tragedy.[206] He was not yet a king, but obtained the Scottish crown in the year 1040 by slaying the young king Duncan, grandson and successor of Malcolm II. It will be seen that the chronicler says nothing about fighting on Canute’s part. Malcolm II. seems to have bowed to the inevitable and quietly acknowledged the claim of Canute as English king to the homage of his Scottish neighbour, a claim which might mean anything or nothing according to the characters of him who demanded that homage and him who rendered it. It is interesting to observe that the author of the Heimskringla, in his account of the negotiations between Canute and St. Olaf, King of Norway, puts into the mouth of the latter these words: “And now it has come to this, that Cnut rules over Denmark and over England, and moreover has broken a mickle deal of Scotland under his sway”. The parleyings here described are supposed to have taken place five or six years before 1031, the actual date of Canute’s Scottish expedition, but from traditional history such as this is, minute accuracy as to dates is not to be looked for.
(2) Towards the end of the year 1026[207] Canute made his memorable pilgrimage to Rome, a journey which certainly was an important event in itself, and is almost unique in the history of English royalty. It is true that Ceadwalla, Ine and Ethelwulf had made the same pilgrimage, but after Canute the next crowned English king to visit Rome was His now reigning Majesty, Edward VII. We have, unfortunately, no details of Canute’s journey, but we know from foreign sources that he was present at a ceremony of high political importance, the crowning of the “Roman” Emperor Conrad II. and his Empress Gisela on Easter day, 1027.
The line of Saxon emperors, made memorable by the great deeds of the three Ottos, came to an end in 1024 on the death of the ascetic emperor, St. Henry II. The dukes, counts and bishops of the empire, assembled under the open sky on the meadows of Kamba, after some debate chose as his successor Conrad the Salic, a nobleman of Franconia, that beautiful land watered by the Main which now forms the northern half of the kingdom of Bavaria. The dynasty inaugurated by his election lasted for another century (1024–1125), and then gave place to the nearly allied Hohenstauffens of Swabia. This Franconian dynasty it was which, under three emperors bearing the name of Henry, fought with the Papacy the stubborn fight of the Investitures, which “went to Canossa” and warred with Hildebrand. Conrad, the new emperor, was a strong, masterful, knightly man. The pope who crowned him and before whom Canute kneeled in reverence, was John XIX., one of the series of cadets of the house of Tusculum whom the counts of that little hill-fortress intruded for half a century on the chair of St. Peter. But though this pope’s elevation was sudden and irregular—the same day saw him a layman, prefect of the city, and pope—he seems to have borne a respectable character, quite unlike that of his nephew and successor, the dissolute lad who took the name of Benedict IX. (1033–1046). No doubt the aristocratic count-pope bore himself with becoming dignity in the solemn ceremony of the emperor’s coronation, which was graced by the presence of two sovereign princes, our own Canute (the splendour of whose retinue and the liberality of whose almsgiving excited general admiration) and Rudolf III., descendant of Charlemagne and last king of Burgundy. There were, however, troubles and disorders in the somewhat anarchic capital of Christendom. The archbishops of Milan and Ravenna had a dispute about precedence, which ended in a street-brawl between their followers and in the flight of him of Ravenna. Worse still, the German soldiers of the emperor had a fight with the people of Rome, in which many lives were lost, and by which Conrad’s wrath was so fiercely kindled that it could only be appeased by the appearance of the Roman citizens barefooted and disarmed before the German Augustus, abjectly entreating his forgiveness. All this Canute must have witnessed, but nothing seems to have weakened the impression of awe and reverence for the apostolic city, made by his residence in Rome.
In a letter to his people, written from Rome and preserved for us by two of the twelfth century historians, William and Florence, Canute sends greeting to the two archbishops, the bishops and nobles, and all the English people, gentle and simple. He informs them that his long-cherished desire to visit Rome, there to pray for the forgiveness of his sins and the welfare of his people, has at length been gratified. He has visited the sepulchres of Peter and Paul and every other sanctuary within or without the city. At the great Easter festival he has met not only Pope John and the Emperor Conrad, but all “the princes of the nations,” from Mount Garganus (in Apulia) to the Tyrrhene Sea, and has received gifts from all, especially from the emperor; vessels of silver and gold, mantles and robes exceeding precious. Further, from the emperor and from King Rudolf, he has obtained an assurance that none of his subjects, whether English or Dane, shall any longer be harassed with the heavy payments at the mountain passes or the exorbitant customs-duties with which they have been hitherto afflicted. Nor shall future archbishops, visiting Rome in quest of the pallium, pay the immense sums which have heretofore been demanded of them. Finally, the king assures his loving subjects of his desire to administer equal justice to all. Let no shire-reeve or bailiff think to curry favour with him by the oppression of his subjects. “I have no need that money be accumulated for me by unjust exactions.” “But let all the debts which according to ancient custom are due from you [to the Church] be regularly paid; the penny for every carucate ploughed; the tithe of the increase of your flocks and your herds; the penny for St. Peter at Rome; the tithe of corn in the middle of August, and the Church-scot at the feast of St. Martin. If all these dues are not regularly paid, I shall on my return to England execute unpitying justice on the defaulter.”
The new emperor was evidently struck by the statesmanlike character of the Anglo-Danish king, and thought it good policy to draw closer the relations between them. Canute’s daughter, Gunhild, was betrothed to Conrad’s eldest son, and in 1036, when she had attained a suitable age, the marriage was consummated. She died, however, after two years of wedlock, leaving an infant daughter who afterwards became Abbess of Quedlinburg. A year after her death her husband ascended the imperial throne under the title of Henry III. Conrad the Salic also ceded to Canute such rights—perhaps even then vague and ill-defined—as the empire claimed to possess over the frontier province of Sleswick, thus making the river Eider the acknowledged boundary between Germany and Denmark. Hence, and from the later union between the provinces of Sleswick and Holstein, sprang in the course of ages that bitter controversy which was cruelly solved in our own day (1864) by the cannonade of Düppel.
(3) The pilgrimage to Rome came midway between two expeditions to Norway, one, a failure, in 1025–1026, the other, in 1028, triumphantly successful.
The most renowned King of Norway in Canute’s time, and the great champion of her newly recovered independence, was that strangely compounded man who was known by his contemporaries as Olaf the Thick, but whom after ages have reverenced as Saint Olaf (1015–1031). “In stature scarce of the middle height, but very thick-set and strong of limb: with light-red hair, broad-faced, bright and ruddy of countenance, fair-eyed and swift-eyed, so that it was terrible to look him in the face when he was angry,” this energetic descendant of Harold Fair-hair, after many reverses, succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of Norway, and at once set to work to destroy the lingering remains of heathenism in the north of his kingdom, smashing idols, making diligent inquiry into the secret “blood-offerings” of horses and oxen, slaying, banishing, fining all who still persisted in idolatrous practices. To strengthen himself against the inevitable revival of the Danish claim of sovereignty, Olaf wooed the elder, and married the younger daughter of his namesake the King of Sweden, and formed a fairly stable alliance with that neighbour state. In the early years of his reign, according to the story of the Heimskringla (in which much fiction is, doubtless, blended with fact), Canute the Rich sent an embassy to Olaf, calling upon him peacefully to submit to his claims, to become his man, and thus save him the necessity of coming with war-shield to assert his right. To this demand Olaf sent an indignant negative. “Gorm the Old thought himself a mighty king, ruling over Denmark alone. Why cannot his descendant be satisfied with Denmark, England and a mickle deal of Scotland? Is he minded to rule alone over all the Northlands, or does he mean, he alone, to eat all the kale in England?”
For the time Canute had to be satisfied with this bold reply; but in 1025 he set forth with a great naval armament from England. A great battle followed, at the mouth of the Holy River, at the extreme south of what is now Sweden.[208] Here, by a clever manœuvre of the allied Kings of Norway and Sweden, Canute’s great ship, The Dragon, was caught in mid-stream and well-nigh sunk by an avalanche of suddenly unloosed floating timbers. He was delivered by the timely appearance of Jarl Ulf with his squadron of ships, but the battle was lost. “There fell many men,” says the Chronicle, “on the side of King Canute, both Danes and Englishmen. And the Danes held the place of slaughter.”
Soon after this unsuccessful expedition came the event which has left perhaps the deepest of all the stains on the memory of Canute, the murder of his brother-in-law and deliverer, Jarl Ulf, “the mightiest man in Denmark after the king”. At a noble banquet which Ulf had prepared for his kinsman, the king sat scowling gloomily. To lighten his mood Ulf suggested a game of chess, in the course of which one of the king’s knights was placed in jeopardy. “Take back your move,” said Canute, “and play something else.” Indignant at this style of playing, Ulf knocked over the chess-board and rose to leave the room. “Ha!” said the king, “runnest thou away now, Ulf the Craven?” He turned round in the doorway and said: “Craven thou didst not call me when I came to thy help at the Holy River, when the Swedes were barking round thee like hounds”. Night fell: both slept: but next morning Canute said to his page: “Go to Jarl Ulf and slay him”. The page went, but returned with bloodless sword, saying that the Jarl had taken refuge in the church of St. Lucius. Another man, less scrupulous, slew him in the church-choir and came back to boast of the deed. After this desecration the monks would fain have closed their church, but Canute insisted on their singing the Hours of divine service there, as if nothing had happened. As usual, his penitence took the form of liberality. So great were the estates with which he endowed the church, that far and wide over the country-side spread the fame of St. Lucius.