<h2>CHAPTER V—ENGLAND UNDER CANUTE THE DANE</h2>
<p>Canute reigned eighteen years. He was a merciless King
at first. After he had clasped the hands of the Saxon
chiefs, in token of the sincerity with which he swore to be just
and good to them in return for their acknowledging him, he
denounced and slew many of them, as well as many relations of the
late King. ‘He who brings me the head of one of my
enemies,’ he used to say, ‘shall be dearer to me than
a brother.’ And he was so severe in hunting down his
enemies, that he must have got together a pretty large family of
these dear brothers. He was strongly inclined to kill <span class="smcap">Edmund</span> and <span class="smcap">Edward</span>, two children, sons of poor Ironside;
but, being afraid to do so in England, he sent them over to the
King of Sweden, with a request that the King would be so good as
‘dispose of them.’ If the King of Sweden had
been like many, many other men of that day, he would have had
their innocent throats cut; but he was a kind man, and brought
them up tenderly.</p>
<p>Normandy ran much in Canute’s mind. In Normandy
were the two children of the late king—<span class="smcap">Edward</span> and <span class="smcap">Alfred</span>
by name; and their uncle the Duke might one day claim the crown
for them. But the Duke showed so little inclination to do
so now, that he proposed to Canute to marry his sister, the widow
of The Unready; who, being but a showy flower, and caring for
nothing so much as becoming a queen again, left her children and
was wedded to him.</p>
<p>Successful and triumphant, assisted by the valour of the
English in his foreign wars, and with little strife to trouble
him at home, Canute had a prosperous reign, and made many
improvements. He was a poet and a musician. He grew
sorry, as he grew older, for the blood he had shed at first; and
went to Rome in a Pilgrim’s dress, by way of washing it
out. He gave a great deal of money to foreigners on his
journey; but he took it from the English before he started.
On the whole, however, he certainly became a far better man when
he had no opposition to contend with, and was as great a King as
England had known for some time.</p>
<p>The old writers of history relate how that Canute was one day
disgusted with his courtiers for their flattery, and how he
caused his chair to be set on the sea-shore, and feigned to
command the tide as it came up not to wet the edge of his robe,
for the land was his; how the tide came up, of course, without
regarding him; and how he then turned to his flatterers, and
rebuked them, saying, what was the might of any earthly king, to
the might of the Creator, who could say unto the sea, ‘Thus
far shalt thou go, and no farther!’ We may learn from
this, I think, that a little sense will go a long way in a king;
and that courtiers are not easily cured of flattery, nor kings of
a liking for it. If the courtiers of Canute had not known,
long before, that the King was fond of flattery, they would have
known better than to offer it in such large doses. And if
they had not known that he was vain of this speech (anything but
a wonderful speech it seems to me, if a good child had made it),
they would not have been at such great pains to repeat it.
I fancy I see them all on the sea-shore together; the
King’s chair sinking in the sand; the King in a mighty good
humour with his own wisdom; and the courtiers pretending to be
quite stunned by it!</p>
<p>It is not the sea alone that is bidden to go ‘thus far,
and no farther.’ The great command goes forth to all
the kings upon the earth, and went to Canute in the year one
thousand and thirty-five, and stretched him dead upon his
bed. Beside it, stood his Norman wife. Perhaps, as
the King looked his last upon her, he, who had so often thought
distrustfully of Normandy, long ago, thought once more of the two
exiled Princes in their uncle’s court, and of the little
favour they could feel for either Danes or Saxons, and of a
rising cloud in Normandy that slowly moved towards England.</p>
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