Canute (DNB00)

Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09 Canute

CANUTE or CNUT (994?-1035), called the Great, and by Scandinavian writers the Mighty and the Old, king of the English, Danes, and Norwegians, was the younger son of Sweyn, king of Denmark, by Sigrid, widow of Eric the Victorious, king of Sweden (Adam Brem. ii. 37). In his charters his name is written Cnut, and sometimes Knuð, in Norsk it is Cnútr, and in Latin correctly Cnuto. The name is one peculiar to the Danish royal family. The form Canutus is a corruption; it is, however, as old as the canonisation of the later king of that name by Paschal II about 1100 (Ælnoth, Vita S. Kanuti, ap. Langebek, Scrip. Rer. Dan. iii. 340, 382 ; Freeman, Norman Conquest, i. 442). While, then, Canute is certainly an incorrect form, it has obtained such sanction as wide and long use can give. Sweyn had apostatised, but some time after the birth of Cnut he again became a christian, and was rebaptised. As a boy, then, Cnut must have bee a pagan, but he seems to have received baptism before 1013, and possibly before 1000, the date of the battle of Swold, won by Sweyn, as it seems, after his conversion, and by his allies, the Swedes. At his baptism Cnut received the name of Lambert (comp. Chron. Erici, Langebek, i. 158; Adam Brem. ii. 87, 38, 49, and Schol. 38). He is said to have urged his father to invade England in 1013 (Enc. Emmæ, i. 3); he sailed with him, and must therefore have landed at Sandwich, and thence gone round to Gainsborough, where Sweyn received the submission of Earl Uhtred of Northumbria, and of all the Danish part of the kingdom. Crossing Watling Street into the purely English districts, the host advanced to London, ravaging all the country. Being repulsed from London, the Danes marched westwards, and all Wessex submitted to Sweyn, who was now acknowledged as ‘full king’ (A.-S. Chron. 1013). London gave hostages to him, and Æthelred fled to Normandy. Thus Cnut's conquest only completed and confirmed the work of his father (Norman Conquest, i. 399). According to one writer, Sweyn, believing his end to be near, talked much with his son concerning the art of government and the christian religion (Enc. Emmæ. i. 6). His death, however, was unexpected, and the gifts Cnut afterwards made to the monastery of Bury seem to show that he shared the general belief that it was due to the vengeance of St. Eadmund. Sweyn died on the road from Gainsborough to Bury on 3 Feb. 1014. His son Harold succeeded him in Denmark, and the Danish fleet chose Cnut to be king of England. The ‘witan,’ however, sent after Æthelred, and declared every Danish king an outlaw. Æthelred returned to England during Lent. Meanwhile Cnut remained at Gainsborough until Easter (17 April), evidently gathering together as large a force as he could, in order to crush the newly awakened energy of the English. Following his father's example, he now made an agreement with the people of Lindesey that they should supply him with horses, an indispensable step towards inland conquest, and then join his army in ravaging the country. Before he could set out Æthelred marched into Lindesey at the head of a great host, and forced Cnut and his Danes to flee. They sailed to Sandwich, and there Cnut cut off the hands, ears, and noses of the hostages his father had taken, and put them ashore. He then returned to Denmark.

Meanwhile the Norwegians shook off the Danish yoke. Olaf Haroldsson (the saint), a Norwegian sea-king, had carried Æthelred from Normandy to England in his ships. Foreseeing that the English war would call for all Cnut's strength, and knowing that the bravest Danes were with him, and among them Eric, the earl of Norway, he landed in that country, and by the spring of 1015 obtained the crown (Corpus Poeticum Boreale. 116, 127, 153). According to a strange story, Cnut, on landing in Denmark, asked his brother Harold to divide his kingdom with him. Harold refused, and Cnut let the matter drop for the time (Enc, Emmæ, ii. 2). In another account the Danes are said to have deposed Harold on account of his slothful and unwarlike character, and to have chosen his brother king in his stead, but, subsequently becoming impatient at Cnut's long absence, to have again chosen Harold, who reigned until his death (Chron, Erici, Lang. i. 168). It seems probable that Cnut, on his return at the head of a powerful fleet devoted to his service, became at least virtual sovereign of the country; that some time later (during Cnut's second absence in England, 1015-19) Harold regained the authority he had lost while his abler brother was in the country, and that Harold died before Cnut returned to Denmark from his second visit to England.

Having thus lost England, Cnut is said to have prepared himself for its reconquest by two successful campaigns against the Slavs dwelling on the south coast of the Baltic in Sclavia and Sembia. The two brothers are also represented as acting together. They went to Poland and brought back with them their mother, who was the daughter of Mieceslas, the last duke, and on their return they received the body of their father Sweyn, which was sent over from England by an English lady, and buried it with great pomp at Roskild (Enc. Emmæ, ii. 3).

Cnut eagerly set himself to raise a sufficient force for a fresh invasion of England, and with the help of his half-brother, Olaf of Sweden, he equipped a splendid fleet (Adam Brem. ii. 50). A promise from Earl Thurkill that he would join him with his ships, whether delivered in person or not, decided the date of his departure. He sailed from Denmark in 1016, perhaps accompanied by his brother Harold and by the earl (Thietmar, vii. 28), though Harold's presence may at least be doubted (Enc. Emmæ, ii. 4); while the statement that Thurkill went with the fleet depends on his identity with a Thurgut spoken of by Thietmar. Cnut landed at Sandwich. Thence he sailed round the coast to the mouth of the Frome, and harried Dorset (the sack of the monastery of Cerne is specially recorded, Mon. ii. 626) and Wiltshire and Somerset. He met with no opposition, Æthelred lay sick at Corsham, and the ætheling Eadmund and Earl Eadric were at enmity with each other. Eadric joined Cnut, bringing forty ships with him, and by Christmas Wessex submitted to the Danish king and supplied him with horses. Early in 1016 Cnut crossed the Thames at Cricklade and ravaged Warwickshire; thence he passed over to Bedfordshire, and then led his host by Stamford and Nottingham to York (A.-S. Chron.l016; Othere, Corp, Poet Bor. ii. 176). There Uhtred and all Northumbria submitted to him. Nevertheless he treacherously allowed Uhtred to be slain by his private enemies, and gave his earldom to Eric, who had married his sister Estrith (Simeon, ap. Twysden, col. 81). At York he stayed some time to gather his forces, Æthelred was now dead, and on hearing of his death Cnut appears to have sailed to Southampton, and to have held a meeting of the witan there, at which he was chosen king, and the great men present at it renounced the sons of Æthelred, and swore to obey him (Flor. Wig. i. 173; Norman Conquest, i. 418). The silence of the chronicles, however, throws some doubt on this story. Meanwhile the Londoners made Æthelred's son, Eadmund, king in his stead. On 7 May Cnut laid siege to London. The invading fleet is said to have consisted of 340 ships, each containing eighty men ({{sc|Thietmar), and as the river was defended by London Bridge, Cnut made a canal along the south side of it, and so drew his ships to the west of the bridge (A.-S. Chron.; {{sc|Florence, i. 173; Lithsmen's Song, Corp. Poet. Bor. ii. 108). Eadmund left the city to gather a force in Wessex, and it was perhaps now that Emma, Æthelred's widow, in order to give her stepson time to come to the relief of the city, entered into negotiations with Cnut, and that he was thus for the first time brought into communication with her (Thietmar). Cnut was forced to march westwards with part of his army to meet Eadmund, and after two engagements the Danes broke up the siege; it was again formed and again broken up, and Cnut, foiled in his attempt to take London, seems to have made the Medway the headquarters of his fleet, and to have thence sent out expeditions to plunder. A vigorous attack was made on his army in Kent by the English under Eadmund, who drove him and his men into Sheppey with great loss. The total failure of his expedition now seemed certain, but the English king was hindered from following up his success, and the Danes were thus enabled to leave their place of refuge., The struggle, the details of which must be reserved for the life of Eadmund, ended in the battle of Assandun, a spot which may be identified by the hill of Ashington in Essex. There Cnut met an army gathered from every part of England. After a stubborn battle lasting throughout the day. and even by moonlight, the English gave way; the retreat soon became a rout, and 'all the flower of the English race was there destroyed (A.-S. Chron.)

Cnut follow the English King into Gloucestershire. Great as his victory was, he knew that Eadmund might once more gather strength, and he therefore consented to make peace with him. The two kings met on the isle of Olney in the Severn, near Deerhurst. Henry of Huntingdon's story of a combat between them, and that told by William of Malmesbury of a challenge sent by Eadmund and refused by Cnut, may both be set aside as mythical. At Olney the land was divided. CbhI took the northern part; Wessex remained to Eadmond (ib.) This seems all that can be said with absolute certainty about the agreement. By supplying a defective passage in Florence from Roger of Wendover, it appears that Eadmund's share also included East Anglia and Essex with London, and that he kept the crown of the kingdom, Cnut being an under-king (Flor. Wig i. 178; Rog. Wend. i. 459). On the other hand, Henrv of Huntingdon (756), though he is probably wrong, assigns London and the headdhip of the kingdom to Cnut. The Londoners 'bought peace' of the Danes, and the fleet took up winter quarters there (A.-S. Chron.; Lithsmen's Song, Corp. Pott. Bor. ii 108), Eadmund was slain 30 Nov. There is no trustworthy evidence that Cnut had any hand in this opportune event. No English writer accuses him of it, and the story in the 'Knytlinga Saga' that he employed Eadric to slay him is unworthy of belief. Saxo (193) speaks of the belief that he was put to death by Cnut's order, without accepting the story. Henry of Huntingdon gives a detailed account of the murder of the king by Earl Eadric: he there makes Eadric boast of his deed to Cnut, who thereupon has him slain, even as David did by him who declared that he had put Saul to death. There seems no reason for doubting that the king met a violent death; that he was slain by Eadric is certainly probable, and while there is nothing to prove that Cnut instigated the murder, it was done in his interest by men who believed that they had good cause to expect that he would reward them for it. On the death of Eadmund, Cnut immediately called the witan to London, and, when the assembly had met, bade those who were present at the conference at Olney declare what had been settled there about the succession. They answered that Eadmund had assigned no part of his kingdom to his brothers, but Florence (i. 179) says that their testimony was false. Onut was then formally chosen king, and he received the oaths of the witan; and when perhaps a fuller assembly had been gathered, his kingship was generally acknowledged. The great men and the people swore to obey him, and he made oath to them in return (ib. 180).

Cnut was about twenty-two when he ascended the throne in the first days of 1017. In spite of the formal election end oaths which accompanied his accession, he had really won the kingdom by the sword, and in order to render his position secure be indulged his naturally stern and revengeful temper by putting several of the most powerful Englishmen to death. Among these were Eadric, by whose treasons against his natural lord he had often profited, and Æthelweard, the son of Æthelmær, the patron of Ælfric the Grammarian [q. v.] An ætheling named Eadwig was banished and afterwards slain by his orders, and with him, too, was banished another Eadwig, called the 'ceorls' king.' It is generally asserted on the authority of Florence of Worcester that the sons of Eadmund were sent to Olaf of Sweden that he might slay them, but that they were saved from death and sent into Hungary. There is, however, good reason for believing that for 'ad regem Suuavorum' should be read 'ad regem Sclavorum,' that Cnut sent the children to his brother-in-law Bolealas, and that Miecealas, his nephew, sent them safely to Russia (Steenstrup, Normannerne, iii. 305). The two sons of Æthelred were with their mother at the court of Richard, duke of the Normans, who might have been disposed to take up his sister's cause, (Cnut, however, avoided this danger by his marriage with her.) Emma, or, as the English called her, Ælfgifu, whom Æthelred married 'before August' in 1002, must have been about ten years older than her new husband. Nevertheless, the marriage need not have been one of mere policy, for she was remarkably beautiful. Cnut was already the lover of another Ælfgifu, sometime, it is said, the mistress of Olaf of Norway [see Ælfgifu of Northampton]. By her he had two sons, Harold and Sweyn. Emma, therefore, before she accepted his offer, stipulated that, should she bear the king a son, no other woman's son should succeed to the kingdom, and to this Cnut agreed {Enc. Emmæ, ii., 16).

In 1018 Cnut levied a heavv danegeld of 72,000 pounds, besides 15,000 which he took from London alone. With this money he paid off his Danish forces and sent them away, keeping only forty ships with their crews, who formed the nucleus of his body of 'hus-carls.' And in the same year he held a gamot at Oxford, where Danes and English joined together in the observance of 'Eadgar's law.' The phrase denotes a renewal of the good government under which men had lived in the reign of Eadgar, when both races dwelt together on terms of perfect equality, each being judged by its own law, though indeed the difference between the systems was scarcely more than one of name. From this time Cnut appears in England as a wise and just ruler. He reigned as a native king, and though he was lord of vast dominions he ever treated England as the chief of all. He constantly visited his other kingdoms, but he made his home here, and while he ruled elsewhere by viceroys he made this country the seat of his government, so that in his reign England was, as it were the head of a northern empire (Adam Brem. ii. 63). Yet even here he adopted something of an imperial system of government; for, following out the policy already pursued by Eadgar, he divided the kingdom into four earldoms, and entrusted the administration of each part to a single earl, Just as each of the four divisions of the German land and race was under its own duke (Stubbs, Const Hist. i. 202, where the feudal tendency of this arrangement is marked). The highest offices in church and state were open to Englishmen. Æthelnoth was archbishop of Canterbury, Godwine earl of Wessex. During his later years, indeed, when he saw fit to banish certain Danish earls from England, he filled their places with Englishmen, and so 'Danish names gradually' disappear from the charters and are succeeded by English names' (Norman Conquest, i. 476).

Having set in order his new kingdom, Cnut visited Denmark in 1019, using for his voyage the forty ships he had retained. He took with him Englishmen as well as Danes, and Godwine is said to have gained his favour by doing him good service in a war he made during this visit against the Wends (Hen. Hunt. 757). On his return to England in 1020 he was present at the consecration of the church at Assandun that he and Earl Thurkill had built to commemorate the victory over Eadmund. The chronicler notes that the building was 'of stone and lime,' for in that well-wooded district timber would have been the natural and less costly material to use. Wulfstan, archbishop of York (the see of Canterbury was vacant), and many bishops were there, and the ceremony was one of national importance. The foundation must have been small, for the church was served bu a single secular priest. Cnut was a liberal ecclesiastical benefactor, generally favouring the monks rather than the secular clergy. He rebuilt the church of St. Eadmund at Bury, evidently as an atonement for the wrong his father had done the saint, turned out the secular clerks, and filled their places with a colony of monks brought from the monastery of Hulm in Norfolk (Will. Malm. Gesta Reg. ii. 181, Gesta Pontiff. 161; Monasticon, iii. 135, 137). The solemn translation of the body of Archbishop Ælfheah from St. Paul's to the metropolitan church in 1023 doubtless had a political as well as a religious significance. The English saw that the days of plunder by the heathen-men were over for ever, and that the Danish king delighted to honour the martyr whose death made him a national hero. Another of his acts of devotion has been held to cast a suspicion upon him, for in 1032 he visited Glastonbury, and after praying before the tomb of his rival Eadmund offered on it a pall worked with the various hues of the peacock. He also gave a charter to the monastery (Will. Malm. ii. 184, 185). He appears as a benefactor at Canterbury, Winchester, Ely, Ramsey, and elsewhere. He held English churchmen in high esteem. He admitted Lyfing, abbot of Tavistock, and afterwards (1027) bishop of Crediton, to intimate friendship, and took him with him on his journeys to Denmark and Rome (Will. Malm. Gesta Pontiff. 200). Archbishop Æthclnoth evidently had considerable influence over him. He took many clergy from England to Denmark, and appointed some of them to bishoprics there. One or more of these bishops were consecrated by the English metropolitan. This brought the king into communication with Unwan, archbishop of Hamburg. Unwan seized Gerbrand, who had been consecrated to the see of Roskild by Æthelnoth in 1022, and made him profess obedience to him, and wrote to Cnut to complain of this infringement of the rights of his see. Cnut was glad to oblige the powerful metropolitan of the north, and took care that all such matters should be arranged as he wished for the future. Whatever headship England had among the dominions of the Danish king, it was not to give the church of Canterbury metropolitan rights over them (Adam Brem. ii. 53). Cnut's munificence extended to foreign churches, and by the advice of Æthelnoth he greatly helped the building of the cathedral of Chartres. His devout liberality took men by surprise. Both he and his father Sweyn seem to have been looked on as heathens by Christendom at large until Cnut exhibited himself as the most zealous of christian kings. The affairs of the north were little known, and Cnut, in spite of his baptism, gave men little cause to deem him a christian until after his accession. A contemporary writer, Ademar of Chabannes, states that he was converted when he came to the throne (Recueil, x. 156), and Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, writing in 1020 or 1021 to thank him for the gifts he had made to his church, implies that up to that time he had believed that he was a pagan (ib. 466). In a legend of St. Eadgyth, told by William of Malmesbury, Cnut is represented as led by his heathen prejudices to despise the English saints. He especially mocked at the sanctity of Eadgyth as the daughter of Eadgar, whom he pronounced a lustful tyrant. Æthelnoth rebuked him, and the saint herself rose up to convince him of his sin (Will. Malm. Gesta Pontiff. 190). The story is foolish enough, but taken in connection with the assertions that Cnut acted by the advice of Æthelnoth in sending gifts to Chartres, and that the archbishop accompanied him on his visit to Glastonbury, it perhaps suggest that Æthelnoth was the means of turning the king from a mere nominal christianity, such as he professed when he mutilated the hostages in 1013, to a zeal for the faith and a life not wholly unworthy of it. The belief of Fulbert and Ademar as to the king's heathenism was of course connected with the fact that 'pagani' was the recognised description of the Danes.

Under the year 1022 it is said in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that Cnut 'went out with his ships to Wiht,' and the next year he is described as returning to England. These entries have been satisfactorily explained as referring to an expedition to Wihtland in Esthonia (Steenstrup, Normannerne, iii. 323). Earl Thurkill was outlawed from England in 1021. Nevertheless, before Cnut left Denmark to return thither after his expedition, he appointed the earl ruler of Denmark on behalf of one of his sons. This son was probably Sweyn, the son of Ælfgifu of Northampton. The king brought Thurkill's son back with him as a hostage for his father's good behaviour. About this time he banished Earl Eric from England, and a few years later his own nephew Hakon, giving their English earldoms to Englishmen.

Cnut's pilgrimage to Rome, assigned in the Chronicle to 1031, took place in 1026–7, for he assisted at the coronation of the emperor Contad on 26 March 1027 (Wipo, c. 16; Sighvat, Corp. Poet. Bor. ii. 136). On his way he gave rich gifts to the various monasteries to which he came. At St. Omer the writer of the 'Encomium Emmæ' saw him and marvelled at his devotion and munificence. He sent to England an account of his visit to Rome in a letter addressed to the archbishops, bishops and all the English gentle and simple. He tells his people how his pilgrimage, vowed some time before, had been put off by press of businss, and how glad he was that he had at last seen all of the holy places of Rome; he describes how honourably he had been received by the pope and the emperor, and says that he had obtained promises from the emperor and from Rudolf of Burgundy that merchants and pilgrims of England and Denmark should not be oppressed on their way to Rome, and from the pope that some abatement should be made in the large sums demanded from his archbishops in return for the pall, and that he had made a vow to reign well and amend whatever he had done amiss as a ruler (Flor. Wig. i. 186; Will. Malm. ii 183). The whole letters show his warm-heartedness and his confidence in the sympathy of his people. While, however, there is much that is noble in it, there is something also of the simplicity of the backward civilisation of Scandinavia. By a treat arranged by Archbishop Unwan, Cnut's daughter Gunhild was betrothed to the emperor's son Henry, and Conrad gave the Danish king the march of Sleswic and accepted the Eider as the boundary between Denmark and Germany (Adam Brem. ii. 54).

When Cnut was firmly established on the English throne, he sent messages to Olaf Haroldsson, demanding that he should hold Norway as his earl and pay him tribute. On Olaf's refusal he set about creating a party for himself in Norway, and spent money freely in bribing the Norwegians to be faithless to their king ({[sc|Sighvat}}, 4). Olaf sought to strengthen himself by forming an alliance with the king of Sweden. About 1026 it seems that another danger also was threatening Cnut in the north, for Ulf, the husband of his sister Estrith, is said to have tried to make one of his sons king of Denmark in his place. Besides the discontent that Cnut's absence from his paternal kingdom would naturally occasion, it is probable that that his active christianity was unacceptable to some part of his Danish subjects (Ann. Hildesheim. 1035). He went over to Denmark probably in 1026, and Ulf is said to have submitted to him. He then sailed to meet the allied fleets of Norway and Sweden, which were revaging Scania. After a fierce engagement in the Helga river the Danes were worsted (A.-S. Chron. 1025; Saxo, 195; Ann. Isl. an. 1027; according to Othere's song they stopped the foray, Corp. Poet. Bor. ii. 156). After the battle, in which many Englishmen are said to have fallen, Cnut, as the story goes, picked a quarrel with Ulf and had him assassinated in St. Lucius Church at Roskild (Laing, Heimskringla, ii. c. 163). That he caused Ulf to be put to death there is no reason to