The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade (78 page)

In the same year, a church council declared that the pope should be elected by a gathering of high-ranking bishops: the College of Cardinals. For the first time in decades, the papacy was freed from its dependency on the goodwill of the Holy Roman Emperor. Should young Henry IV ever rise to the ranks of emperorship, he would find the title stripped of its two most precious rights: the emperor’s sacred role as Defender of the Church, and his authority to name the successor to Peter’s power.

F
OR TWO CENTURIES
, the English had resisted Viking invasion. Now the Viking grip on the island had tightened; the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard had just been crowned king of England, while the defeated Anglo-Saxon king Ethelred the Unready cowered on the Isle of Wight and his wife and children took refuge in Normandy.

Five weeks after his coronation, Sweyn Forkbeard died suddenly at night, in his bed. The North Atlantic empire wavered a little on its foundations; the conquered land of Norway slipped from the grasp of the Danes and was reclaimed by a Norse nobleman, Olaf the Saint. But Sweyn’s heir, his son Canute the Great, claimed the crowns of Denmark and England.
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He soon discovered that the crown won by force could also be lost by force. Without the imposing figure of Sweyn at the head of the Danish forces, the people of London took courage. They sent a message to Ethelred, asking him to return and fight against the new foreign king. Ethelred agreed and arrived back on the shores of England, ships filled with Normans in tow. His son Edmund, child of his first marriage, led troops on the ground; together, the two men launched a pincer attack against the Danes.

Canute, who had been crowned in January, held out until Easter. Then, abruptly, he left England and headed for Denmark. The Danish chronicles are cagey about the reasons, but it seems likely that his brother, who had been serving as regent in Denmark while Canute was in London, was making a play for the Danish throne. England was a prize for the Danes, but it was newly conquered and insecure, and Canute first intended to secure his homeland. As a parting gesture, he cut the ears and noses off his English prisoners of war and dumped them on the shores right before he sailed away.
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The hostile gesture was clear: as far as Canute was concerned, the fight was not over. Ethelred claimed the crown again and brought his wife Emma and his two younger sons back from Normandy, but his triumph was temporary; Canute returned the following year with 160 ships and launched his attempt to reconquer England.

77.1: England and Scandinavia

Ethelred the Unready was still fighting off Danes when he died in April of 1016. His son Edmund was elected king by the witan, the gathering of the English nobility who still claimed the right to choose their king. England had been under a single monarch for less than a century, its aristocracy still remembered the days when their ancestors had been petty kings in their own right, and Ethelred’s rule had not been such a shattering success that his son could automatically claim the succession. But Edmund had outfought his father in the war against the Danes; he had earned the nickname “Ironside” “on account of his prodigious strength and his extraordinary resoluteness in war,” and he was duly crowned king and given the job of driving off Canute.
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In the next few months, the two armies fought at least seven major engagements. The slaughter on both sides was vicious and devastating. The land where they battled was laid waste, farmland trampled and nearby villages burned. In the seventh battle, at Ashingdon, the ranks of the witan itself were laid waste as the nobility of England fell—“all the chief men of the nation of the English race,” mourns the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. “On that field Canute destroyed a kingdom,” writes William of Malmesbury, in language that would be echoed by English chroniclers nine hundred years later, “there England’s glory fell, there the whole flower of our country withered.”
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Neither Edmund nor Canute was willing to stop the fight, but the remains of the witan insisted. It was time for a truce. In November 1016, less than a month after the Battle of Ashingdon, the two kings met, warily, on a small muddy island in the middle of the River Severn, each arriving on a small fishing boat that couldn’t carry an armed retinue. They agreed to divide the country: Canute would rule from Mercia to the north, and Edmund would keep London and remain king of the south. Edmund was also forced to disinherit his own sons (one a toddler, the other not much more than a newborn) and agree to make Canute his heir.
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A little more than a month after the treaty was signed, Edmund Ironside was dead. Henry of Huntingdon is the only chronicler to claim that he was murdered by order of Canute; the other records simply note that he died, leaving the whole country to the Danish king. Canute’s guilt remains uncertain, but the chronicles are unanimous concerning his next actions: he marched into London, claimed the crown, and then put to death the members of the witan who had been Edmund’s most trusted counselors.

He also ordered Edmund Ironside’s two young sons put on a ship and taken back to Scandinavia. This was to create deniability: “It would seem a great disgrace if they perished in England,” says John of Worcester, “…[so] he sent them to the king of Sweden to be killed.” The king of Sweden, who was Canute’s ally, met the ship but refused to comply when he found that he was expected to put two babies to death. Instead, he sent them as far away as he could arrange—to King Stephen of Hungary, with whom he had a passing acquaintance. The journey was too much for the younger baby, who died of illness and hunger; but the toddler survived and grew up under the care of a Hungarian foster-mother.
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Canute then sent for Emma of Normandy, Ethelred’s widow, and married her. He already had a long-term mistress (or common-law wife), a woman named Aelfgifu who had given him one son the year before and another the same year he married Emma. What Emma thought of this arrangement, we are not told; we do know that she sent her two sons, Alfred and Edward, back to Normandy to stay with their uncle. Undoubtedly she feared that they too would succumb to the mysterious illness that killed healthy sons of kings. Edward, the older, was ten years old; Alfred was still a baby.

Two years later Emma gave birth to a son, Canute’s third; he was named Harthacanute, after his father, and became heir to the crown of England.

77.2: The Earldoms of England

England remained under Canute’s rule for the next two decades. The demoralized witan resisted him no longer, and Canute put most of the administration of his new kingdom into the hands of his own trusted men. He divided England into four earldoms, known as Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, and he appointed Danish earls to rule over three of the realms: Thorkell the Tall over East Anglia, Siward over Northumbria, Leofric over Mercia. With some hesitation, he awarded Wessex to an Anglo-Saxon: Godwin, a native of Sussex who had supported Canute in his battle for the English throne. Godwin was outnumbered by Danes, but he was canny. He courted and married Canute’s sister, not long afterwards, linking himself by blood to the foreign king.

In 1028, Canute forced Olaf the Saint of Norway to abdicate and crowned himself “King of Norway” as well. Now he held his father’s old empire in reality: England, Denmark, and Norway.
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His ambitions were not yet satisfied, though. In 1031, he invaded Scotland and fought against Malcolm II, high king of the Scots, until the Scottish armies agreed to a truce.
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As high king, Malcolm II was first among equals. When he decided to surrender, he did not do so alone. “Malcolm, the king of Scots, submitted to Canute,” the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
records, “and two other kings, Maelbeth and Iehmarc.” Not just the high king, but the other kings of Scotland were recognizing Canute’s authority.
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By the time Canute died in 1035, the Danish grip on England seemed almost unbreakable. The most that the witan could now hope for was the ascension of Emma’s son Harthacanute to the throne; he was half-Danish and half-Norman, but at least he had some vague connection with the English royal line of the past.

Even this hope, however, was soon dashed. Harthacanute, barely twenty, had been dispatched to Denmark, where he was supposed to be watching over the double realm of Norway and Denmark for his father. But as soon as Canute died, the illegitimate son of the deposed Olaf the Saint mounted an armed challenge for the throne. His name was Magnus the Good, and he had the support of much of Norway. Harthacanute, trapped by this Scandinavian war, was unable to return to England.

Instead, the Danish army in England, along with the earls of the four territories, made Canute’s oldest son, the fully Danish Harold Harefoot, “regent” in England. Ostensibly this was for Harthacanute’s benefit, but in reality it was a play for the throne, and the witan disapproved: “Earl Godwin and all of the foremost men in Wessex opposed it,” the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
tells us.
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Into this tiny gap of opportunity, Ethelred’s two younger sons attempted to step. Backed by a small group of unhappy Anglo-Saxons, reinforced by a small force of Norman soldiers, Edward and his younger brother Alfred Atheling tried to return to their homeland. The effort was cut short by the treachery of Godwin. After opposing Harold Harefoot’s regency, Godwin—who was more interested in power than anything else—had backtracked and embarked on the project of making himself Harold’s closest friend. He sent word to Edward and Alfred that he was behind their return, all the time reporting to Harold about the whereabouts of the regent’s younger half-brothers. When Edward and Alfred landed, their party was ambushed. Edward escaped, but most of his supporters were captured: “Some of them were sold for money, some cruelly destroyed,” the
Chronicle
says, “some of them were fettered, some of them were blinded, some maimed, some scalped.” Alfred, taken prisoner, was hauled in chains towards the abbey of Ely. On the way, he was blinded so ineptly that his brain was pierced. He died in agony, aged twenty-four.
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Edward returned to Normandy, nursing a hatred for Godwin and a boiling rage at Harold Harefoot. His mother Emma fled from her stepson and his cruelty as well—but she had no wish to return to Normandy. Emma was now fifty years old. She had been queen of England twice and given birth to three sons and two daughters; she had been forced to send her first family away and had lost a son. She wanted peace and security, and Normandy was in chaos. Her brother Richard the Good, twenty years her senior, had died in 1027; his two sons had followed each other in rapid success, both dying young, and by 1035 the bastard William, son of her younger nephew, had been acclaimed as duke. He was only eight, and the duchy was torn between the ambitions of powerful Norman nobles who wanted to control him. The
Encomium Emmae Reginae
, written in Emma’s praise, tells us that she found refuge and quiet in Western Francia; the Frankish nobleman Baldwin of Flanders “received her well there, and maintained her as long as she had need.”
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Meanwhile, Harold Harefoot celebrated by abandoning the title of regent and having himself crowned as king of England: “Harold was everywhere chosen as king,” the
Chronicle
says, “and Harthacanute forsaken because he was too long in Denmark.”
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All was not going Harold’s way, though. For one thing, Scotland was slipping from his control. The submission of Malcolm seems to have been less than unanimous among the lesser kings of Scotland. He had died in 1034 and had been succeeded as high king of Scotland by his young son Duncan. With the old honored king out of the way, one of the subject rulers rebelled.

The rebel was Mac Bethad mac Findlaich, king of the small northern kingdom called Moray. English chroniclers rendered his name, simply, as Macbeth.
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Five hundred years later, Shakespeare would make Macbeth infamous as a traitorous host who killed his king in his sleep, but the historical revolt was a perfectly routine declaration of independence, the rejection of a high king whose clan had been willing to bow to a foreign invader. Mac Bethad was a powerful man in his own right; the twelfth-century Irish poem
The Prophecy of Berchan
calls him “the red king who is generous,” and adds that Duncan was a weak and ineffective ruler with nothing but his bloodline to recommend him.
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