Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/11

Canute 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 ( 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 (, 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 (, c. 16;, 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 ( i. 186; 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 ( 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 (, 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;, 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 (, Heimskringla, ii. c. 163). That he caused Ulf to be put to death there is no reason to