Meantime, the Saxon prince was carried captive to London, when, after having endured the insults and reproaches of Harold, he was hurried off to Ely, to be tried by a mock court of Danish judges, who, after having offered him every insult they could invent, cruelly sentenced him to lose his eyes. The barbarous sentence was fulfilled, and a day or two after its execution death put an end to the sufferings of Alfred.

After the death of Alfred, Emma was banished from England by the command of Harold; an act which goes far to prove that she had been instrumental in tempting her ill-starred son to visit England, though it seems somewhat strange that she should take up her residence at Bruges, while her son Edward, who was the true heir to the English throne, yet resided in Normandy. She, however, despatched messengers to Denmark, intreating her son Hardicanute to revenge the death of his maternal brother Alfred, who, she said, had been betrayed by earl Godwin, and assassinated by the command of Harold. During the remainder of the reign of Harold Harefoot, we lose sight of earl Godwin, so that if even he had any share in the plot which terminated in the murder of the young prince, it appears not to have advanced his interests at the court of Harold; who, before the close of his reign, attained the full title of king of England. Nor does it appear that Hardicanute ever set foot on the territory allotted to him by the council of Oxford, on the south of the Thames; and which, as we have shown, was held for a time on his behalf by Godwin, and his mother, Emma of Normandy. The son of Canute was at Bruges with his mother, having retired thither to consult her previous to his meditated invasion of England, when a deputation arrived there, from England, announcing the death of Harold. He had already left a strong fleet at the mouth of the Baltic, ready at his command, when the first favourable wind blew, to commence hostilities against Britain; nine ships, well armed, had also accompanied him on his visit to his mother, in Flanders, when, just as his plan of attack was decided upon, and all was in readiness for the invasion, Harold's brief and blood-stained reign terminated, in the year 1040, and he was buried at Westminster.

Nearly the first act that disgraced the reign of Hardicanute, was his disinterment of the body of Harold; which, after having exhumed and decapitated, he commanded to be thrown into the Thames, from which it was taken out by a Danish fisherman, and again interred in a cemetery in London, where the Danes only buried their dead. His next act was to summon earl Godwin before a court of justice, in which he was accused of being instrumental in procuring the death of Alfred. At the appointed day Godwin appeared; and, according to a law which was at that period extant, procured a sufficient number of witnesses to swear that they believed he was innocent of the crime of which he was accused. Godwin stepped forward, and swore, by the holy sacrament, "In the Lord: I am innocent, both in word and deed, of the charge of which I am accused." The witnesses then came forward, and taking the oath, exclaimed, "In the Lord: the oath is clean and upright that Earl Godwin has sworn." Simple and inefficient as such a mode of trial may appear, it must be borne in mind that perjury was in those days visited with the severest punishment; not confined merely to bodily pain, the infliction of a heavy penalty, or the loss of worldly goods—but a perjured man was classed with witches, murderers, sorcerers, the wolf heads, and outcasts of society; and if slain, no one took cognizance of his death; he was debarred even from the trial of ordeal, and whether he was murdered or died, was refused the rites of Christian burial. Although Alfred had established the trial by jury, such a judicial custom as Godwin availed himself of continued to exist after the Norman conquest.

Such a legal proof, however, was not sufficient to satisfy the cupidity of Hardicanute; and the earl was compelled to purchase his favour by presenting him with a splendid ship, richly gilt, and manned by eighty warriors, armed with helmet and hauberk, each bearing a sword, a battle-axe, and a javelin, and their arms ornamented with golden bracelets, each of which weighed sixteen ounces. A Saxon bishop was also accused of having been leagued with Godwin, and he followed the example of the earl, by purchasing the king's favour with rich presents, which at this period appear to have been the readiest mode of procuring an acquittal. The two brief years that Hardicanute reigned, he seems to have passed in feasting and drinking; his banqueting table was spread out four times a-day, and his carousals carried far into the night. Such excesses could only be kept up by constant supplies of money; his "Huscarles," or household troops, were ever out levying taxes; and as these armed collectors were all Danes, many of them descendants of the old sea-kings, it will be readily imagined that the Saxons were the greatest sufferers, and compelled to contribute more than their share to this infamous Dane-geld, as the tax was called. But these marauders, although armed by kingly authority, did not always escape scathless. The inhabitants of Worcester rose up and killed two of the chiefs, who were somewhat too arbitrarily exceeding their duty. Hardicanute ordered a Danish army to march at once against the rebels, but when the authorized forces came up, they found the city abandoned; the inhabitants had forsaken their houses, and strongly entrenched themselves in a neighbouring island, and though a great part of the city was destroyed, the people remained unconquered. Such a brave example was not lost upon the Saxons. Opposition was now offered in many quarters, and the Danish yoke at last became lighter; for Hardicanute seemed to care but little how his kingdom was ruled, so that his table was every day laden with good cheer, and his wine-cup filled whenever he called for it; for he had been nursed in the cradle of the sea-kings, and his chief delight was to sit surrounded by these stormy sons of the ocean, and to drink healths three fathom deep. Altogether, Hardicanute seems to have been a merry thoughtless king. He invited his half-brother, Edward, the son of Ethelred, over to England, and gave him and his Norman followers a warm welcome at his court; left his mother Emma, and earl Godwin, to manage the kingdom as they pleased, and died as he had lived, a hard-drinker, with the wine-cup in his hand.

It was at a marriage-feast, somewhere in Lambeth, in the year 1042, when Hardicanute drank his last draught. At a late hour in the night he rose, staggering, with the wine-cup in his hand, and pledged the merry company that were assembled—then drinking such a draught as only the son of a sea-king could swallow, he fell down senseless upon the floor, "and never word again spake he." He was buried near his father Canute, in the church of Winchester. With his death ended the Danish race of kings; and Edward, the son of Ethelred, the descendant of a long line of Saxon monarchs, ascended the throne of England.

[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
ACCESSION OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

"It is the curse of kings to be attended by slaves."

"Favourites, made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against the power that bred it."

"Thou wouldst be great. What thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily: wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win."—Shakspere.