CANUTE, or Cnut (about 995-1035), was the son of Sweyn or Swend, king of Denmark and England. Though only nineteen years of age at his father’s death, he was elected by the Danish armament to the English throne (1014). But the English, only recently subdued by Sweyn, did not acquiesce in this disposal of the crown, recalled their old king Ethelred from Normandy, and obliged Canute to withdraw from the country. In the summer of 1015 Canute returned at the head of a vast Danish armament, and had compelled the submission of most of England when Ethelred died, and his son Edmund Ironside became the representative of the old English royal line. In the double election which ensued, Edmund was supported almost solely by London; the Witan of the rest of England decided upon Canute, who had proved himself too formidable a candidate to be set aside. Nevertheless, in five pitched battles fought during the year 1016, Canute found in Edmund more than an equal rival,— a rival, too, that grew more dangerous, as he was recognized to be the champion of the pure English nationality. At length, in the sixth battle, at Assandun in the same year, the English army, weakened and disconcerted by the desertion of Edric, the traitorous earl of Mercia, was completely overthrown. A division of the kingdom was arranged between the two competitors, but Edmund dying soon after, not without suspicion of treachery, even on Canute’s part, the latter became sole ruler of England....
His first care on attaining to undivided power was to remove all who might disturb its tranquillity. The sons of Edmund Ironside were sent out of the kingdom, and Edwy his brother was put to death; while Edric of Mercia soon met the fate he deserved, and many other leading men were banished or slain. The sternness of Canute’s early measures was, however, more the effect of policy than of a cruel disposition, for in a little time he showed himself a just and beneficent ruler. After exacting a dan egeld for the payment of his Danish host, he sent it home, with the exception of forty ships and of the household troops that attended on himself. Henceforward he put off the character of conqueror, and governed England like a native Englishman, enforcing the old English laws or enacting wise new ones, repressing disorder, and in every way attending to the interests of his subjects. He was careful of the interests of the church, though it had always been one of the great centres of resistance to Danish invasions, and was not afraid to raise Englishmen, such as Earl Godwin, to the highest posts in his government. A letter written to his English subjects from Rome, to which he had made a pilgrimage, is the best commentary on the motives which directed his reign; he is determined to make amends for the faults of his early years, to persevere in a just and pious government, to repress extortion, and in every way to promote the welfare of his subjects. The internal state of the kingdom was one of unprecedented peace and order, during which it recovered from the ravages and misgovernment of the generation preceding; and he left a happy memory of himself among the people. The well-known story of the rebuke he gave to his flattering courtiers, which rests on excellent authority, is a proof of this; and the well-known song be composed, when rowing near the monastery of Ely, is not only an example of his genial popular sympathies, but entitles him to a place among the creators of English poetry.
He was far more than king of England, however; he was the ruler of a vast northern empire, composed of five or six monarchies though the old historians differ in the enumeration of them. He succeeded to the usual overlordship over Wales and Scotland, asserting it in the latter case by force of arms. Shortly after his secure installation on the English throne, he superseded his brother Harold on that of Denmark; he repelled an attack of the Wends on his dominions there, and in those early times obtained a rectification of the Danish frontier from the emperor of Germany. Though at first unsuccessful in an invasion of Norway, be added that kingdom to his empire in 1028. He was now one of the most powerful and respected rulers of Christendom. He died at Shaftesbury in 1035, in the fortieth year of his age, and the twentieth of his reign. The best proof of his energy and ability is that the heterogeneous and geographically disconnected empire, which he governed so well, fell to pieces immediately after his death. (Freeman’s History of the Norman Conquest, vol. i.; Palgrave’s History of the Anglo-Saxons ; Green’s Short History of the English People.)
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