Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 2.djvu/28

 20 CHRONICLE OF THE SAGA VII. Ch APT Eli XXIV. The mur- der of Edmund. The earl would not sleep upon the message of the king, but sailed immediately out of the country, leaving behind his son Earl Hakon to take care of Norway ; and, as he was but seventeen years of age, Einar Tambarskelver was to be at his hand to rule the country for him. Eric met King Canute in England, and was with him when he took the castle of London. Earl Eric had a battle also to the westward of the castle of London, and killed Ulf kel Snelling. So says Thord Kolbeinsson : — et West of London town we passed, And our ocean-steeds made fast, And a bloody fight begin, England's lands to lose or win. Blue sword and shining spear Laid Ulfkel's dead corpse there. Our Thingmen hear the war-shower sounding Of grey arrows from their shields rebounding." Earl Eric was a winter in England, and had many battles there. The following autumn he intended to make a pilgrimage to Rome, but he died in England of a bloody flux.* King Canute came to England the summer that King Ethelred died, and had many battles with Ethelred's sons, in which the victory was sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. Then King Canute took Queen Emma in marriage ; and their children were Harald, Hardacanute, and Gunhild. King Canute then made an agreement with King Saxon Chronicle, in 1016, at the feast of Saint Andrew. Canute mar- ried Emma, the widow of Ethelred, in 1017. The murder of Edmund by Henry Strion is not mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle; but in a manuscript in the Cotton Library, quoted by Turner, it is said, " Nocte siquidem sequentis diei festivitatis Sancti Andrea? Lundoniae perimitur insidiis Edrici Strioni." This manuscript is stated to be wrjtten within fifty years of the event. It gives a strong corroboration of the accu- racy, as to events, of the saga accounts. Edmund was not the son of Emma, but of a former marriage of King Ethelred. Emma was mar- ried in 1002 to Ethelred.
 * King Ethelred died 1014; Edmund Ironside, according to the