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1015. Canute returns from Denmark, and ravages the country from Sandwich to London.

1016. Ethelred II. dies in London, April: his eldest son, Edmund (II.) "Ironside” (named from his valour), succeeds. Edmund cedes the country north of the Thames to Canute, Nov.: Edmund Ironside murdered at Oxford, 30 Nov. Canute becomes sole king.

Canute was the second son of Sweyn, and was bequeathed his latest conquest, England, of which, on the murder of Edmund (II.) Ironside, he became sole monarch. By his 1st wife, Alfwen (or Elwyn) of Northampton, he had two sons, Harold I. (Harefoot) and Sweyn and by his 2nd wife, Emma of Normandy (the widowed queen of Ethelred II., the Unready), whom he married in 1018, he had a son on whom, by the marriage contract, the succession to the English crown was settled.

:

"Many deeds of barbaric severity and some of atrocious cruelty are recorded of him; but nearly all these were committed before the establishment of his power" (Creasy). "Canute's laws are absolutely equal. The country prospered. The feelings of the nation rallied towards a benefactor; and he who had sate like a nightmare on England's bosom, soon became venerated as a guardian angel. Confident in the people with whom he dealt honourably, their king might visit Denmark, might conquer Norway, might make a pilgrimage to Rome. . . . In his time not only did Dane and Saxon draw together, but Englishman and Norman held friendly intercourse. The purely Anglo-Saxon families, the special English feeling, had almost ceased" (Cobbe).

1017. Canute recognised as king of England. By his elder brother's death he becomes king of Denmark. 1018. The sons of Edmund (II.) Ironside-Edward (the Outlaw) and Edmund-sent to Sweden and thence to Hungary. Canute marries the queen-dowager, Emma of Normandy. From the frequent assassinations of the Danes, Canute

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ordains the law called Presentment of Englishrya fine to be inflicted on the hundred or township where a murder was committed, unless the murdered person was proved to be an " Englishman," ie., an Anglo-Saxon. 1019. Canute conquers Norway.

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1020. Canute is converted to Christianity he dismisses his Danish soldiers.

1022. Promotion of the Anglo-Saxon Godwin (afterwards earl of Kent): he marries Canute's niece, Gytha. Malcolm II. of Scotland and Duncan of Cumbria obliged to do homage. The King's Delf, a causeway connecting Peterborough and Ramsay, built.

1028. Canute conquers Sweden, and becomes one of the most powerful European sovereigns-king of England, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

1032. Canute goes on a pilgrimage to Rome.

1035. Canute dies at Shaftesbury, leaving Norway and Sweden to his eldest son, Sweyn, England to Harold (I.) Harefoot, and Denmark to Hardicanute.

HAROLD I., "HAREFOOT,"

A.D. 1035-17 MARCH 1040.

Harold "Harefoot" (from his fleetness of foot) was the 2nd son of Canute by his 1st wife, Alfwen. He was bequeathed the English crown by Canute, contrary to the treaty of the latter, with Richard II. duke of Normandy, on his marriage to the queen-dowager Emma.

"He died... little regretted or esteemed by his subjects" (Hume).

1035. Harold I. takes possession of the English throne: his half-brother Hardicanute arrives from Denmark. Edward (afterwards "the Confessor "), son of Ethelred II. and Emma, claims the crown with a force from Normandy he is repulsed. : Partition between Harold I. and Hardicanute agreed to, Hardicanute receiving the part of England south of the Thames.

1036. Harold I. is crowned at Oxford.

1038. Alfred, brother of Edward ("the Confessor"),

is

enticed from Normandy and murdered at Guildford by

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the vassals of earl Godwin. Queen Emma, his mother, flees to Flanders.

1039. [Murder of "the gracious Duncan," king of Scotland, by

Macbeth].

1040. Harold I. dies at Oxford, 17 March.

HARDICANUTE,

A.D. 1040-1042.

Son of Canute by his 2nd wife, the queen-dowager (of Ethelred II.) Emma of Normandy. He was bequeathed Denmark and also claimed England in virtue of his mother's marriage treaty : he had to accept a portion, south of the Thames, 1035, but he was approaching with a fleet to claim the whole when he received intelligence of the death of his half-brother, Harold I.

"Hardicanute, or Canute the Hardy, . is chiefly known by his bodily accomplishments" (Hume).

1040. Hardicanute (Hartha-Cnut), king of Denmark, arrives with a fleet in the Thames immediately after his brother's death, and is crowned. The Danegelt reimposed to support the Danish navy: riots in the country: Worcester given up to be plundered and burnt from the resistance of the inhabitants to the tax. 1041. Edward ("the Confessor "), the king's half-brother, arrives in England: the murderers of his brother Alfred fined. 1042. Hardicanute dies at a carousal at Lambeth,-England and Denmark finally separated.*

Edward was 3rd son of Ethelred II., the Unready, and his

*For influence of the Danes on the Anglo-Saxon population, see above, p. 14.

queen, Emma of Normandy. The eldest son, Edmund (II.) Ironside, had left two sons, Edmund and Edward ("the Outlaw"), of whom the latter was, at the death of Hardicanute, living in Hungary. His distance from the kingdom proved a sufficient reason to the Witan-gemote to pass him over, and, by the influence of earl Godwin (whose vassals had murdered Alfred, the second son of Ethelred II.), Edward was elected. He married Edgitha, "the rose sprung of thorns," Godwin's daughter (by Canute's niece, Gytha), 1043, but, for some reason, in 1051, he sent her to a convent: he had no issue.

"He cared as little for the pride and pleasures of royalty as he was unfitted for its toils. . . . So mild and humble was he that no affront, no injury, could disturb his calm and placid mind" (Palgrave). "Foreign education, together with his naturally weak and superstitious disposition, made him resemble a Norman monk rather than an English king" (Creasy).

His saintliness subsequently procured him canonisation, and from the monks the title of "The Confessor."

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1042. EDWARD (THE CONFESSOR) elected by the Witan-gemote, to the exclusion of Edward ("the Outlaw"). 1043. Edward marries Edgitha, the daughter of Godwin earl of Kent.

1044. Edward deprives his mother of all her possessions and imprisons her for life in a convent. Most public offices are conferred on Normans.

1051. Riot of the followers of Eustace, count of Boulogne, at Dover: Godwin earl of Kent and his son Harold (II.) head a rebellion to expel the Norman parasites. "The chronicles witness to the strong English feeling against the Normans at this time" (Cobbe). "The court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles was long afterwards to the court of Charles II." (Macaulay).

Godwin and his family have to flee the country. Queen Edgitha is sent to a convent. William duke of Normandy visits England: is said to have been promised the succession to the crown by Edward. 1052. Godwin and his son Harold (II.) return each with a fleet, and are restored to their honours: the Normans are banished the kingdom by the Witan-gemote. Danegelt abolished.

1053. Earl Godwin dies at the king's banquet, April: his second

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son, Harold (II.), the eldest (Sweyn) having died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, succeeds to the earldom

of Kent.

1054. SIWARD earl of Northumberland invades Scotland to restore Malcolm III. (son of "the gracious Duncan"): the usurper, Macbeth, is defeated and slain at Dunsinane. 1057. Edward ("the Outlaw ") is recalled from Hungary as the heir to the throne: he arrives with his son, Edgar Atheling, and two daughters: he dies.

1065. Harold (II.) in Normandy is said to have sworn to support William, Duke of Normandy, in the succession. Insurrection in Northumbria against Harold's brother, Tostig, who had succeeded (1064) to the earldom on the death of Siward: Harold (II.), "the Vice-king," reduces the Northumbrians, and procures the earldom for Morcar, son of Leofric, late earl of Mercia: Tostig flees to Flanders. St. Peter's church (the Abbey), Westminster, rebuilt by Edward the Confessor.

1066. Edward the Confessor (at. 64) dies, 5 Jan.

In this reign Danegelt was abolished, 1052 (revived in 1069): and the first "Great Seal" was used. The Laws of Ina and Alfred were embodied in a code.

"From the era of Edward II.'s accession [Edward the Martyr, 975] the provincial governors began to overpower the royal authority, as they had done upon the Continent. England under this prince was not far removed from the condition of France under Charles the Bald. In the time of Edward the Confessor the whole kingdom seems to have been divided among five earls, three of whom were Godwin and his sons Harold and Tostig," and the other two Siward of Northumbria and Leofric of Mercia (Hallam). "Faction was contending against faction; and, like the Britons of the old time, every bystander must have seen that the realm was at the mercy of any invader" (Palgrave). "The probability is that the Saxon system of polity, if left to itself, would have fallen into utter confusion; out of which would have arisen, first, an aristocratic hierarchy, like that, which arose in France; next, an absolute monarchy; and, finally, a series of anarchical revolutions, such as we now behold around, but not among us" (Creasy).

HAROLD II.,

6 JAN. 13 Oct., 1066.

Harold, the "Vice-king," and brother-in-law of Edward the Confessor, was earl of Kent, and second but eldest surviving son of the late earl Godwin. He had no hereditary claim to the