CHAP. IX. Ulf, who was bound to the throne by his marriage The Reign of with the king's sister Estrith,' was placed as governor Cnut. 1016. 1035. His government. over Cnut's hereditary kingdom, which henceforth saw itself ruled by orders from a king transformed from a Dane into an Englishman, and reigning at Winchester. With the early spring Cnut was back in England, and save for this and perhaps one other brief absence, the first eight years of his reign seem to have been spent in the settlement of English affairs. The pledge he gave at the outset of his reign that he would rule after Eadgar's law, that he would be true-in modern phrase-to the traditional constitution and usages of the realm, was religiously observed. The laws he enacted later followed those of his predecessors. The structure of government, the control of the Witan, the rule of ealdorman and bishop, the jurisdiction of shire-moot and hundredmoot and town-moot, remained unchanged. The royal progresses were diligently carried on, when the king, with his following of counsellors and scribes, administered justice and redressed wrong as Eadgar and Ælfred had done before him. The old organization of the country too was gradually restored, and the more galling marks of foreign rule done away. Englishmen were set over the great earldoms; and even the traditional connexions of the ruling houses were respected. The new earl of Mercia, Leofwine, had before been ealdorman of the Mercian district of 1 This cannot have been later than 1019, as the age of Swein Estrithson shows. Dahlmann, "Geschichte von Dannemark." (A. S. G.) CHAP. IX. Cnut. 1016 1035. the Hwiccas, and was succeeded in this post by his son Leofric; and when Eric the Norwegian was driven The Reign of into exile, Eadwulf, a brother of the murdered ealdorman Uhtred, was suffered to hold the hereditary possession of his house as Earl of Northumbria. Wessex remained for a time the special district of the king. But when, in 1020, possibly as a result of the addition of the Danish monarchy to his English realm, and the administrative difficulties which this brought about, Cnut formed it into an earldom, it was the English Godwine whom he chose for its ruler. From the outset of his reign the king had shown favour to Godwine, a thegn of West-Saxon blood, but whose parentage and rank are utterly unknown. The tradition of a humble origin, and his position at the court, show that Cnut was imitating Ethelred's policy in raising "new men" to high place in the royal councils. But whatever may have been his early rank, the ability Godwine showed both in the field and at the council board, his eloquence, his pleasant and ready temper, and his laborious industry, were soon rewarded with the hand of Gytha, the sister of jarl Ulf, who was himself wedded to the sister of Cnut. Such an alliance brought the new favourite near to the throne itself; but it was the prelude to yet greater honours. From 1020 he became the chief councillor of the king; he held an important office as governor of the realm in Cnut's absence during the wars in the north, and he probably possessed the earldom of Wessex with which we find him invested at Cnut's death. By that time, as his signatures show, he ranked first Godwine. CHAP. IX. among the English nobles, and before even the kins The Reign of men of the king, while his wealth was enormous and Cnut. 10161035. The ealdormen. his possessions extended over nearly every shire of southern and central England. The history of England in fact under its Danish conquerors was really a developement of those institutions, whether administrative, fiscal, or judicial, which had been growing into shape under its WestSaxon kings. The conquest brought no violent interruption to this developement-rather, by the social and political revolution it wrought, it enabled the conqueror to carry out the work of his predecessors more rapidly and completely than would have been possible without so great a shock. In the local organization of the realm the circumstances of Cnut's conquest left him no choice but to carry out in its entirety that change in the character of the great provincial governments which had been attempted by Ethelred in the case of Mercia. Ethelred's policy had implied the breaking down of the traditional West-Saxon system of the government of these dependencies by men of royal blood, and the appointment of ordinary delegates of the crown. Under Cnut this system was rapidly extended. The ealdormanries were changed into earldoms and the earls into pure nominees and dependents of the crown, a transformation which was marked by their summary displacement and replacement in their posts; and the policy of Ethelred, adopted first by his Danish successor, was finally made the basis of the system of the Norman Conqueror. The administrative system, too, had been taking new form under Ethelred, and the stormy character With CHAP. IX. Cnut. 10161035. System of administra tion. of his reign had shown the difficulties that attended The Reign of the change. In his youth indeed when little alteration seems to have been made, government was still in the hands of one of the great ealdormen, and even after the king had arrived at full power, Archbishop Sigeric seems to have retained something of the same position of standing councillor of the realm which Dunstan had identified with the office of the primate. But as years drew on the appearance of a new officer at court, the High Thegn, marked the beginning of an attempt on the part of the king to supersede the traditional and constitutional advisers by ministers of a more modern type chosen by and dependent on himself. Some such modification had become absolutely necessary under the conditions of the new English kingdom. the increasing demands for government and administration over so wide an area, and the growing complexity of England's foreign relations, the need of a continuous ministry in constant communication with the king made itself more and more felt, and unpopular as was the institution of the head thegn, it became of the first importance from the wide extent of the empire over which Cnut ruled, and the necessity of delegating his authority during any absence from his English dominions. The office indeed was not only continued by Cnut, but raised by him into a prominence it never afterwards lost. The transformation of the head thegn into a "Secundarius Regis" in the person of Godwine, marked a step towards the creation of the later Justiciary and of the ministerial CHAP. IX. system which lasted on to the close of the Angevin The Reign of reigns. Cnut. 1016 1035. With the creation, however, of such an officer the system of Dunstan came practically to an end. The The primate retained his position as councillor of chaplains. the realm in virtue of his representation of the king's liberties of the Church and of the people, but his power was that of a constitutional check, not of a minister of the crown; while the earls were only summoned to the three great Witenagemots to counsel on the affairs of the realm. The ordinary administration lay therefore wholly in the hands of the king and of his ministers. But for the carrying out of the details of government a staff of secretaries had now become necessary, and there are found from this time in the king's chaplains a group of men, some of whom were foreigners, like Duduc, who may have been chosen specially with a view to the transaction of foreign affairs, while others, like Stigand, were Englishmen; but all of whom were clearly picked men, and, as we see when they appear as bishops in later days, men of ability. The reward for their work was in most cases an episcopal see, and from now right up to the Reformation, service at the royal council-board became the ordinary road to a bishopric. It was to this fact that the English episcopate from this time owed its peculiarly political character and its close relations to the crown, and hence the institution of the "Royal Chapel" is one of the most important landmarks in our ecclesiastical history. But politically its effects were far greater. Administration, indeed, in any true sense was now |