Cnut

Cnut was but twenty years old when, accepted by the East Anglians and West Saxons as their king, he became ruler of both English and Danes. He was already king of the Norwegians, and a little later was chosen by the Danes of Denmark as their king. Thus England, during Cnut's reign, was in a sense but a part of a great northern empire; an empire, however, not firmly united even under Cnut, but composed of three peoples representing different degrees of civilization, and widely separated from each other by intervening waters. Although Cnut had shown the fierceness and cruelty of a viking in the earlier years of warfare, he exhibited a high order of statesmanship when he came to reign. He loved the English as his own people and favored the church, sometimes too ostentatiously. He became a true English king, carrying out the policy of his great predecessors of the house of Alfred, increasing the strength of the kingdom, and furthering the peace and prosperity of his people.

Northern Europe at the time of Cnut

The Great Earldoms

One of his earliest acts was to divide England into four provinces, or earldoms, each of which he placed eventually under a man whom he could trust.' The earldoms, which corresponded very closely to the older ealdormanries, conformed to the four great tribal divisions into which England had always been separated, even under the West Saxon kings. Two, East Anglia and Northumbria, were in the east and north; and two, Mercia and Wessex, were in the centre and south. The Northumbrians, East Anglians, Mercians, and West Saxons may be called the four races of the English nation. Of the West Saxons Cnut himself took the earldom, though he afterward gave it to Godwine, an Englishman, who had helped him in his wars. The earldom of the East Anglians he gave at first to Thurkill, a Dane ; that of Mercia was eventually given to Leofric, an Englishman, the husband of Lady Godiva; and that of Northumbria eventually to Siward of the old Anglo-Danish house. Cnut kept the control of these earldoms in his own hands, as had Eadgar that of the ealdormanries; and as long as he lived no earl was sufficiently strong to usurp royal power or to seize the kingship. All that was to take place after Cnut's death.

Cnut's Government and Law

In his government of the kingdom Cnut sought to blot out all traces of the earlier wars and to unite English and Danes as one people under a peaceful and prosperous rule. To this end he sent his entire Danish army back to Denmark in 1018, and refrained from alienating his English subjects by introducing Danish law and Danish officials into the kingdom. He gathered English and Danes together at Oxford in 1018, where all chose Eadgar's law and swore to observe it; and at a council held at Winchester, sometime between 1027 and 1034, he issued, with the advice of his witan, the most important code of law that had thus far appeared. It was English law, written in Anglo-Saxon, the law Of Alfred, thelstan, and Eadgar, enlarged and improved.

This law Cnut bade men obey, and obedience brought peace and concord to England. He did what Eadgar had done for the local courts, requiring men to go first to the hundredmot for justice, and in order to hasten decisions in cases carried from the hundredmots to the shiremots, he allowed the latter to meet more frequently. Like his predecessors, he discouraged appeals to the king. He protected the weak by commanding every one to swear to keep the peace, and endeavored to enforce the law of Alfred and thelstan that every one should have a surety responsible for his appearance at court. He forbade extortions and injustice, admonished his people to observe Sunday, to avoid murder and perjury, and to obey the commands of the church. All these orders he vigorously enforced.