The Battle of Hastings (3 page)

England may have been wealthy in comparison to some states, but to Englishmen at the time life did not seem rosy. Taxes had to be imposed: the heregeld or army tax, later known as danegeld, first appearing in 1012. Money was levied both to support armed forces and to pay off the enemy. The heavy taxation which the tributes necessitated was resented, and royal reeves pressed demands which made them unpopular. Wulfstan said of them that ‘more have been robbers than righteous men’.
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Property might be seized without apparent just reason. One Englishman wrote ‘the Lord multiplies children, but early sickness takes them away’; and another spoke of the various ways in which death might strike: wolves, hunger, war, accident, hanging, and brawling. There was a desperate desire for more order. The general feeling of malaise in England, of ineffective defence, is reflected in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
.
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In the eleventh century the English lacked that unity of purpose which had supported Alfred the Great and others in earlier crises. There were two significant factors. One was the attitude of the descendants of Scandinavian settlers in eastern England, who inevitably tended to feel sympathetic towards new Scandinavian leaders who appeared on the scene.

Such latent hostility to the Wessex kings was worsened by Aethelred’s inconsistent conduct. One moment he was paying tribute to raiders, the next he was killing Danes settled in England. In 1002 occurred the famous slaughter of St Brice’s Day, when the king ordered ‘to be slain all the Danish men who were in England’. This is no doubt an exaggeration, and perhaps he had some cause for action; possibly only recently arrived Danes were the victims, and it was said that he had heard of a plot against himself and his counsellors.
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But his action did not remove the Danish settlements, and it did not help to remove the ethnic division within the kingdom.

The second factor was the lack of cohesion among the English magnates. The eleventh century is dotted with tales of treachery and rebellion, of disputes between magnates and between magnates and the king. The English monarchy was in many ways an impressive development, but it had failed to ensure a submissive nobility. Under Aethelred one has, for example, the treachery of Eadric Streona in Mercia, described as ‘a man of low birth whose tongue had won for him riches and rank, ready of wit, smooth of speech, surpassing all men of that time both in malice and treachery, and in arrogance and cruelty’; and more succinctly as ‘perfidious ealdorman’.
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There was also the treachery of the ealdorman of Hampshire in 992, whose son was blinded by Aethelred in the following year, and the treachery of Wulfnoth of Sussex, who joined the Viking invaders in 1009. Thorkell the Tall was a double traitor, deserting Cnut for Aethelred, and then in 1015 going back to Cnut. It is true that some of the criticism of treachery comes from hostile partisan sources, and probably such men had a greater degree of accepted independence than we sometimes realise and did not see themselves as acting badly, only as making new alliances and agreements. Even so, such fickle loyalty undermined the stability of government.

One way Aethelred did attempt to solve his problems, which had enormous consequences, was to seek alliance with his neighbours across the Channel. In 991 he concluded a treaty with Richard I (942–96), duke of Normandy, and in 1002 he married as his second wife Emma, Richard I’s daughter, who was also the sister of his successor Richard II (996–1026). (His first marriage was to Aelfgifu of Northumbria.) The details of this policy we shall pursue further in the following chapter. Aethelred’s efforts were always inadequate, and the most useful thing his Norman alliance brought was a place of refuge as his fortunes plummeted. In 1013 he sent his wife Emma back to her homeland along with their two sons, Edward (the Confessor) and Alfred, and he himself followed shortly.

Sweyn Forkbeard was able to take London and claim the kingdom in 1013. In this year ‘all the nation regarded him as full king’.
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But his triumph was soon followed by his death, in February 1014. He planned for his son Harold to take over the Danish throne, and for Cnut to have England. Cnut’s success did not seem certain, and he was forced to return to Denmark. This brief respite encouraged some of the English magnates to ask Aethelred to return, which he did. They were not overly enthusiastic, inviting him back only ‘if he would govern them more justly than he did before’.
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Aethelred seems by this time to have been a spent force, a tired man. No doubt he thought he could leave things to his progeny: he had some thirteen children from his two marriages. He allowed power to pass to his son by his first marriage, Edmund Ironside.

This position also was not long to endure. In 1015 Cnut was ready to return to England and seek the throne, with support from Thorkell the Tall and Eadric Streona. Edmund Ironside had to abandon London, though he won a victory at Brentford. He was forced to move his base to the north, where he made alliance with Uhtred, earl of Northumbria. Northern support for southern kings was never very reliable throughout the eleventh century; indeed Northumbria could hardly be regarded as under southern rule, while what we would call Yorkshire and Northumberland were not united.
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Cnut pursued his rival and attacked York. Uhtred was persuaded to submit to the Dane, which gave Cnut the upper hand, but did Uhtred little good for the severe Scandinavian had him killed. Cnut appointed his own man, Eric, who had served Sweyn Forkbeard, to be the new earl.

In April 1016 Aethelred died. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
summed up with some accuracy: ‘he had held his kingdom with great toil and difficulties as long as his life lasted’, but his death made little change to the situation, possibly if anything strengthening the hand of his more energetic son Edmund.
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The latter still had friends in the old base of the Wessex kings and in the south. He was accepted as king in both London and Wessex. A bruising and decisive battle was then fought between the rivals at Assandun (possibly Ashingdon in Essex), when Eadric again deserted the English. Both sides suffered heavy losses, but Cnut emerged as the victor.

It is clear that at this point Cnut had doubts about his ability to remove Edmund. He agreed a treaty whereby Edmund would keep Wessex, though Mercia and London would be his. But this settlement too was short-lived in the political maelstrom of the eleventh century, for Edmund died suddenly in November 1016. His sons for safety were sent abroad, to Sweden, later ending up in Hungary. His son Edmund died there, but Edward the Exile stayed at the Hungarian court and married a noblewoman called Agatha, the niece of the German Emperor, Henry II. We shall hear of him again in due course.

Cnut’s family

Edmund Ironside’s death allowed Cnut (1016–35) to become the sole ruler of England. His father had claimed to be king, but the events of the previous few years show that the claim had never been truly substantiated. Now Cnut became in fact as well as in name the Scandinavian ruler of the English kingdom. An early act to cement his position was the surprising move to marry Aethelred’s Norman widow, Emma. This was a wise act, since it gave him an additional claim to the throne, hopes of alliance with Normandy, and it undermined thoughts in Normandy of giving aid to Aethelred and Emma’s sons (Edward (the Confessor) and Alfred). These two were brought up at the Norman court, but Duke Richard II seemed content to accept Cnut as king of England. Later Cnut’s sister, Estrith, married Robert I, duke of Normandy, which for a time at least nullified the position of the exiled sons of Aethelred; though Robert was to repudiate her before his expedition to the Holy Land.

The initiative for the marriage to Cnut may have come from Emma who, at every turn of fortune, made efforts to keep herself at the centre of power. She had favoured her stepson Edmund Ironside but with his death transferred her ambitions to a match with the conqueror Cnut, whom she married in 1017. There seems to have been a tacit agreement that Cnut’s existing wife, Aelfgifu, should not be thrown out, but that children by Emma should have preference as heirs. Although her sons by Aethelred were safely in Normandy, and in the long run her alliance with Cnut helped to bring one of them to the English throne, at the time it appears that Emma did not give priority to their hopes, and indeed rather abandoned them for the sake of retaining some personal status in England.

Cnut is justly known as Cnut the Great. His greatness lies perhaps less in his rule of England than in his European importance, controlling much of Scandinavia as well as England. He gained Norway by 1028, and also held parts of Sweden. In Britain he became ruler of the Isle of Man, and was recognised as lord of the Scottish king and of the Scottish islands, as well as of Scandinavian Ireland.

Cnut was a tough, even ruthless king in England. On occasion he had hostages mutilated: hands, ears and noses cut off. His recognition of Christianity may have been from genuine belief, but his actions and attitudes were aimed at political benefit. He did though make a journey to Rome in 1027 for the coronation of the German Emperor Conrad II, which seems to have taken the form of a pilgrimage. His political executions do not speak of a merciful or likeable man. But his laws support a wish to be a just king, and his success brought a stability which England had lacked since the death of Edgar. This had its benefits in the development of the Church and in economic growth.

Cnut used the English system of ealdormen over provinces, though with him we begin to call them jarls or earls. An initial act was to appoint earls over the main regions. He was aided by the death in 1016 of Ulfketel of East Anglia, and soon cleared the decks of magnates he distrusted, including, as we have seen, Uhtred of Northumbria and, late in the following year, Eadric Streona (the Acquisitor) of Mercia.
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Cnut’s new earls included the two men who had most aided him in gaining the kingdom: Eric who became earl of Northumbria, and Thorkell who was given East Anglia. England was in effect divided into four regions by 1017: Wessex, which the king kept directly under himself; Northumbria for Eric; Mercia for the soon to be disposed of Eadric; and East Anglia for Thorkell.
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Throughout the reign further reorganisation was made, and some of Cnut’s earls held sway over smaller districts. Later, an earl, Godwin, was also appointed over Wessex, a choice of great significance for the future. Godwin was probably of English descent, thought to be the son of the Sussex noble Wulfnoth Cild the thegn. Little is known about the family’s history in this period, but they had presumably been helpful to Cnut during the period of conquest. Cnut trusted other English nobles, and Mercia in time went to Leofric, probably the son of one of Aethelred’s ealdormen. Northumbria passed to Siward, who married the former Earl Uhtred’s granddaughter.

Cnut was a harsher and tougher ruler than Aethelred, but he also had problems with his earls, which suggests that they continued to have more power and independence than was good for the kingdom as a whole. When Cnut returned to Denmark in 1019, Thorkell acted for him in England. But when Cnut returned in 1020, he quarrelled with the great earl, and Thorkell went into exile for three years having been outlawed in 1021. Later they were reconciled. Under Cnut at least, the great earls were kept in their place.

The return to some stability under Cnut benefited England’s economy. The towns in the south grew, coinage was reformed. We hear of some industrial development, for example in salt, lead and tin. Cnut was often in London, which was increasingly looking like a capital. The period of Scandinavian rule, with the inevitable turn towards the north and east for trade and communications, showed the value of London’s position.

Cnut died at Shaftesbury in 1035, and was buried in his acquired English kingdom, at Winchester. It is not certain that had he lived his empire would have survived. It was already breaking up. His Scandinavian lands were reduced, and even Denmark was proving difficult to retain. Cnut’s death, and his marital arrangements – seemingly married twice at the same time – left an uncertain succession and a period of renewed trouble in England.

Cnut’s first wife, Aelfgifu of Northampton, was to some extent sidelined when he married again, but she was still treated as a wife. She was mother to Sweyn and Harold Harefoot, and assisted in the government of Norway. The failure of the family in Norway gave an increased interest in the English succession. Emma, mother to Edward and Alfred by Aethelred, also gave Cnut a son in Harthacnut. Cnut seemed to have ensured that there would be no problem over having sufficient heirs for his various lands, yet within seven years all his sons were dead.

Cnut’s intention was that his son by Emma, Harthacnut, should be his chief heir, and succeed him in both Denmark and England. Harthacnut had already been recognised as king in England during his father’s lifetime. This recognition, together with Edmund Ironside’s position before his father’s death, seems to be following a continental practice in succession which is not normally found in England, but may cast an interesting light on some post-Conquest situations.