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THE ENGLISH TAXED.

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and of his selling Church preferments for money. We have seen that the worst part of the guilt of Alfred's cruel death probably rests upon his shoulders.

Hardicanute was chosen king by an assembly which met shortly after Harold's death. At midsummer he came over to England, landing at Sandwich, and shortly afterwards was crowned at Canterbury. He began his reign by a disgraceful act of vengeance. The body of Harold was taken out of its tomb at Westminster, beheaded, and thrown into the Thames. It was recovered from the river by a fisherman, delivered by him to the Danish colony in London, and buried again in their cemetery outside the walls.1 This must have been an unpopular act, for Harold had been the choice of nearly the whole English people, and probably had not reigned long enough to excite any great discontent. Still more hateful to the people must have been the imposition of a heavy tax for the payment of the fleet which Hardicanute had brought with him. A sum of £22,000 was levied in one year, and another of £11,000 in the next. is interesting to be told that each rower received eight marks, and each steersman twelve.2 The city of Worcester refused, we are told, to make this payment, and an expedition led by Leofric of Mercia, Siward

It

1 The reader must conceive of London as not reaching further westward at this time than the western end of Fleet Street, the spot so long marked by Temple Bar. Outside lay the open space which is now called the Strand, or river bank; and here, in the place where the Church of St. Clement Danes still preserves a memory of the fact, was the burial place of the colony.

2

Eight marks

=

£5 6s. 8d. (about $27). The Chronicler says that

there were sixty-two ships. This, after deducting £496 for the steers

men, would allow rather more than sixty rowers for each ship.

of Northumbria, and other nobles, were made to reduce the city to submission. For four days the country was ravaged, and on the fifth the city itself was burnt. The inhabitants, however, are said to have escaped, some by flight, others by defending themselves on an island of the Severn. The army which Leofric and his companions led against Worcester was largely composed of the House Carles, and we hear many stories of the rapacity and violence of this force. Besides their military duties, they seem to have been employed as collectors of the Danegelt. Tax-gatherers are never welcome visitors, and it may easily be believed that soldiers employed in this capacity may have made themselves specially odious.

The only other memorable act of Hardicanute is his effort to destroy his powerful subject, Earl Godwin. The earl was accused, as has been said, of having brought about the death of the Atheling Alfred. He was tried by the nobles and Churchmen of England. Depositions of his accusers were taken, and he affirmed his innocence upon oath, and his judges also took their oaths that they believed his affirmation. The favour of the King himself, who indeed owed him much, he seems to have regained by a handsome present. This was a splendid ship, which is thus described by Florence of Worcester. It had a gilded beak, and was equipped in a most perfect manner. Eighty warriors manned it, and every one of them bore a golden bracelet on each arm of sixteen ounces weight, was armed with a strongly woven habergeon, and a helmet partly gilt. Each also was girded with a gilded sword; from his left shoulder

END OF CANUTE'S DYNASTY.

319

hung a Danish axe, bound with gold and silver; in his left hand was a shield, the boss and the nails of which were gilded, and in his right a lance, the English name of which was "aetgar."

Hardicanute appears not to have been married. At least we hear nothing of wife or child. It was probably with the thought of providing for the succession that he invited the Atheling Edward to come over from Normandy. Not long after his reign came to a sudden end. "This year died Hardicanute," we read in one of the Chronicles, "as he stood at his drink." He had honoured with his presence the marriage of his standard-bearer, a great Danish noble, Tofig, surnamed the Proud. The wedding feast was held at Lambeth, where Clapa, the father of the bride, had his house. "As the king stood in good health and joyous, drinking with the aforesaid bride and certain men," he fell down in a fit. As he is described as having struggled fearfully, the fit was probably epileptic. Whatever was its nature, it was fatal in the course of a day or two With Hardicanute the shortlived dynasty of Canute came to an end. He was probably in his twenty-third or twentyfourth year.

XXIX.

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.

AFTER what we have heard of the doings of Canute's sons, it is not surprising to be told by the Chronicler that "all the people chose Edward king in London." They were wearied of Danes; they would have an English ruler. But unfortunately-if indeed it turned out to be unfortunate-the man whom they chose was not an Englishman except in name. That his mother was Norman might not have mattered much, for on the father's side he came of the stock of Alfred; and Englishmen know by experience how thoroughly English kings who are even on both sides of foreign descent can become. But all his life had been spent in Normandy; all his tastes had been formed there ; he had no thought but to make England as like the home of his youth as he could. His coming, therefore, was the peaceful beginning of the Conquest which was to be completed, or, it would be better, perhaps, to say decided, four and twenty years afterwards, on the bloody field of Senlac. It was a strange ordering of fate that made this island three times the spoil of three successive swarms of invaders belonging substantially to the same race. Both Saxons and Danes

EDWARD CROWNED KING.

321

were rovers of the sea who issued from the harbours of Eastern Europe, and the Normans were Norwegians who had been settled for some generations in a province which they had won from France.1

Edward was in Normandy when the crown thus came to him. He was not altogether willing to accept it; but Earl Godwin persuaded him to yield, and he came over to England. There was still a Danish party in England, and there were some who advocated the claims of Sweyn, the cousin of Hardicanute; but the influence, the eloquence, and, it was said, the bribes, of Godwin prevailed, and on Easter Day (April 3rd), 1043, Edward was "hallowed king" at Winchester. Ambassadors from France, from Germany, and from Norway, were present, bringing gifts from their sovereigns; gifts too were offered by the great English nobles, Godwin presenting him, as he had presented his predecessor, with a splendidly adorned ship.

The new king was in the prime of his manhood,2 "a man," as his biographer describes him, "of very comely person; his stature moderate; his hair and

1 During the ninth century, and in the early years of the tenth, pirates from Norway had sailed up the Seine and formed settlements at the mouth and along the shores of that river. In 912 Rolf the Norseman made a treaty with Charles the Simple, by which a region which, to speak generally, was the Normandy of later times, was handed over to him and his followers. The Northmen then became a settled people, far superior in civilization to their kinsmen, whether in Scandinavia or in England. This superiority they owed in part to the readiness with which they adopted the ways of the Latinized people among whom they had found a home. Their romantic adventures, which took them as far afield as Constantinople, form the subject of one of the volumes in the "Story of the Nations."

2 He was probably born in 1004.

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