the right time, nor fight with them, but when they had done all the ill they could, then they bought peace of them." 66 Archbishop 19th April 1012. In 101 Canterbury was betrayed to Earl Thurcytel and his buccaneers, and Archbishop Ælfheah taken. They wished to put him to ransom, but he would Elfheah not have the Church or the poor robbed for murdered, his sake, and refused. This made them very angry, and on Saturday evening, in the octave of Easter, when they were all drunk with wine they had got from Gaul, they took the archbishop to their husting," and though Thurcytel offered them all that he had save his own ship to let the old man go, pelted him with ox-heads and bones till one of them in pity slew him outright with an axe. Thurcytel was so angry that he and many of his followers left the rest and made peace with the king and entered his service. archbishop's body was given up to the Londoners, who buried it in state and paid honours to Elfheah as a saint and martyr ever after. Swegen The 4. At last, in 1013, all England began to see that it would be better to obey a foreign king than bear what they were now bearing for such a man as Æthel- Forkbeard, red, and the whole land submitted to Swegen; 1013-1014. Æthelred going on board Thurcytel's ships with his family and sailing to Normandy, where he stayed till Swegen died. When this happened, in 1014, the Danish army chose Cnut, Swegen's son, as king, but the English Wise Men sent to Æthelred and told him “that they loved no lord better than their own natural lord, if he would rule them rightlier than he did before." And he answered "that he would be their true lord and right that they misliked, and forgive all that had been said or done against him." So he came back, and every Danish king was declared an outlaw in England. But Eadric the Grasper quarrelled with Eadmund Ironside, Æthelred's son, and joined Cnut with his Eadmund IronMarchmen. Thurcytel also changed sides, and side, 1016. as the Londoners chose Eadmund for their king in 1016, when Æthelred died, the whole country was torn in two by their partisans. Six pitched battles were fought, the last of which at Ashington Cnut won, after a struggle in which Ulfcytel the Swift was killed by Thurcytel (in revenge for his brother Heming, whom the East English alderman had slain), and nearly all the English nobles fell. After this Eadric and the Wise Men brought the kings together at Olney, and made them agree to divide the realm, Cnut taking Northumberland and the March, and Eadmund East Eng land and Wessex. So matters stood till the end of the year (November 30), when Eadric had his noble young brotherin-law murdered and Cnut was left sole king. Eadmund's body was laid at Glastonbury. Cnut the 5. Cnut was wise and faithful, and made up his mind to rule England like an English-born king. As soon, therefore, as he made his crown safe, by 1016-1035. marrying Ælfgifu, Æthelred's widow, killing such traitors as Eadric and banishing the kinsmen of the last kings, he paid off and sent home nearly all his Danish troops, and dividing England into four great earldoms (Northumberland, Marchland, East England, and Wessex), put an earl over each under himself. Having such a mighty empire, for when he died he was king of the Ostmen, Northmen, and Danes, as well as the English, he was often away warring abroad, where his English thegens (especially Godwine, whom he made Earl of Wessex and married to his kinswoman) showed great skill and bravery. But Cnut paid the greatest attention to his English kingdom, making laws for it, and protecting it from the inroads of the Scottish kings, whom he compelled to swear faithfulness to him. To the Church he was a generous friend, building up the minsters and churches that suffered in the wars, raising stone chapels at Ashington and other places where he had won battles, and giving many gifts to cathedrals and minsters at home and abroad. He also took the body of Ælfheah from London to Canterbury with great state. It is well known how he rebuked his courtiers for their flattery by Southampton Water when the tide was coming in, and it is said that after this he never wore his crown again, but hung it on the Rood at Winchester, and set out for Rome to pray there for the forgiveness of his sins and the welfare of his people. The Pope and Emperor were glad to see him, and promised to let all English pilgrims henceforward pass freely through their dominions, and gave him many costly gifts. He wrote home from Rome a letter to his people, in which he says, "I have vowed to God Almighty Himself to amend my life from this day in all ways, and to rule with righteousness and mercy, giving upright judgments. I therefore bid all my sheriffs and servants throughout my kingdom, as they care for my goodwill and their own safety, to use no unrighteous violence against any man rich or poor, but that all alike, high or low, shall enjoy fair law. Nor let any man turn aside therefrom, either for the favour of the king, or the power of the great, or to get money wrongfully, for I have no need to heap up wealth by unrighteousness. I have sent this letter before me that my people may be gladdened by my welfare, for as ye yourselves know, I have never spared, nor will I ever spare, myself or my labour in taking care for the needs of all my people." And it is certain that under his good rule England recovered from the misfortunes of Æthelred's reign, and enjoyed peace and safety. Like other great kings, Cnut took delight in useful works, going on with the drainage of the Fens, and building towers and bridges and churches of stone (little used till his day save for church-building). A great deal of Cnut's success was owing to his guard of House-carles, two or three thousand picked men (many of them Thurcytel's buccaneers), whom he paid highly and held strictly under laws which he himself gave them. This little standing army, which he always kept up, was held the finest body of soldiers in the world. 1035-1042. In 1035 Cnut died at Shaftesbury, and was buried at Winchester. He was a little man, but strong of body, pleasant spoken, but keeping his thoughts to himself till he was ready to act, fond of riches, yet spending them wisely, a good judge of men and not easily deceived. He was fond of hunting, and of poetry and singing. The verses he is said to have made about the monks of Ely's chanting are well known. 6. Soon after Cnut's death the Wise Men all met at Oxford, and Earl Leofric of Marchland and most of all the Harold Harethegens north of the Thames, and the men of foot and Harthe fleet at London, made Harold regent, but tha-Cnut, Earl Godwine and the West Saxon lords withstood this as far as they could, but could not prevail. Their favourite, Hartha-Cnut, was, however, made King to please them; but as he was also chosen king in Denmark, he did not come to England, his mother Emma and Earl Godwine ruled the West Saxons for him. Harold (the son of Cnut and a Northamptonshire lady) hated Emma, his stepmother, took away the jewels his father had given her, and sent for her two sons by Ethelred, who were living in Normandy, to come to England, entrapping them by false words. When they came Godwine seized Ælfred and his followers and gave them up to Harold's men, who put most of them to death very cruelly, and blinded the Etheling so that he died of the wounds. Edward his brother was luckily able to leave England unhurt and sail back to Normandy. Next year the West Saxons got tired of Hartha-Cnut's staying away, and choosing Harold for king, drove Emma out of England. She went to Bruges, whither her son, Hartha-Cnut, came to her, and began to get ready a fleet to invade England and turn out his half-brother, when, before he could start, Harold died. Hartha-Cnut was sent for and chosen king at once. His rule was stern. He had his brother's body dug up and cast into a sewer, and brought Godwine to trial for Alfred's murder; but there were no witnesses, so the earl was allowed to clear himself by oath, and by Leofric's advice he brought back the king's favour by the gift of a splendid war-galley, with arms for eighty men aboard. Heavy taxes were raised to pay off the fleet that had come with the king, and they were sent home. Edward was called back from Normandy and kindly welcomed by his brother, and things were going on well, when Hartha-Cnut went to the wedding of one of his great officers at Lambeth, and as he stood up to pledge the married pair, suddenly fell to the ground in awful anguish. They that were next him picked him up, but he never spoke word more, and died there on the 8th of June 1042. Edward the CHAPTER VIII. The Great Earls. Edward and Harold. 1. Edward was chosen king, greatly by Godwine's help (ere Hartha-Cnut his brother was laid beside his father at Winchester), and hallowed in the old 1042-1066. English fashion on Easter Day 1042, the archbishop making him swear to take care of the Church, put down all unrighteousness, and keep the peace. He was a quiet, pious man, loving the Normans, with whom he had been brought up, and their polished clerkly ways, and listening too much perhaps to their advice. But England was now really ruled by the three great earls-Siward the Stout of Northumberland, the conqueror of Macbeth and dread of the Scots, a stern old warrior as Shakespere paints him, who refused to die in his bed like a cow when his last illness came upon him, but called for his mail-coat and helmet, and so, axe in hand, met death; Leofric of the Marchland, the peacemaker, wise in the things of God and the world also; and, greatest of all, Godwine of Wessex, the clever, persuasive statesman, whose sons Swegen and Harold had the earldoms of Hereford and East England, and whose daughter Eadgyth King Edward married. The king himself did little save in Church matters, which he and his Norman chaplains settled their own way, trying to bring in the French Church customs and greater strictness of life. England was now at rest and happy-in spite of a few bad seasons; some inroads of the Welsh and Northern wickings, quickly stopped; and the wickedness of Earl Swegen, who carried off the Abbess of Leominster, and killed his own cousin Biorn in cold blood, for which he was rightly outlawed-till 1050. "A The Norman favourites get Godwine outlawed, 1050 1052. 2. In that year Earl Eustace of Boulogne, the king's brother-in-law, came over sea, and having been with Edward for a while set out for home. few miles or more before they got to Dover he and all his men put on their mail-coats, and when they reached the town, tried to quarter themselves where they liked. One of them trying to get into a man's house against his will wounded him, and was slain by the householder. Then Eustace got on his horse, and his men on theirs, and rode up and killed the man on his own hearth. Then they rode down the town killing about twenty men, and the burghers killed nineteen of them and wounded many more. Eustace burst out with a few men, and went to the king and told him how he had fared, and the king was very angry and bade Godwine go and make war against Dover, for Eustace had told the king that the guilt was the burghers' not his, though it was not so." However, Godwine would not go, being loath to harm his own people, and fearing the king's anger he gathered a large army to overawe him. The king sent for Leofric and Siward, and it looked like the beginning of a civil war, when after several parleys and a delay which tired out Godwine's men, the great earl and all his family were banished and the queen sent to a nunnery. The Norman clerks, especially Robert the monk, whom the king made Archbishop of Canterbury in remembrance of his kindness to him when in exile, now advised the king to send for William, Duke of Normandy, his kinsman, and make him his heir; and he came with a great company of Frenchmen and paid Edward a visit. William, the fifth from Hrolf, first Earl of Rouen, left (by his father Robert's untimely death abroad on a pilgrimage in 1035) a child in the midst of enemies, had nevertheless by his wisdom and bravery overcome them all, and was now, though still a young man, the most powerful prince in France. His tall stately form, dark hair, stern look, and reserved manners formed a complete contrast with the blithe ways, mild D |