Anglo-Danish Empire - A Companion to the Reign of King Cnut the Great

["Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017\u20131019 179 Wulfstan as the author of the 1018 text, it is interesting to think of him being behind any coronation ordines of 1017. Whether he had adapted a text intended for Sveinn in 1014 we cannot know, but it would hardly be surprising if he had a role in Cnut\u2019s coronation.47 Kingston-upon-Thames does not seem to have been used as a coronation site after the coronation of King \u00c6thelred back in 979. The confusion generated by the Vita \u00c6dwardi Regis (Life of King Edward), which reports that Edward the Confessor was crowned in Canterbury, rather than in Winchester as stated in the Chronicle, suggests that traditions associated with coronation could be ma- nipulated if necessary.48 Presumably the circumstances of Cnut\u2019s ascent to power necessitated similar manipulation. If the coronation were, as seems likely, in London, this was a bold statement, for London was the place which had offered Cnut the greatest resistance of all. There is an instructive compari- son with the same use of Westminster, upstream from the City, by William the Conqueror when he had forced London into submission in 1066.49 With \u00c6thel- red\u2019s body at St. Paul\u2019s, Cnut\u2019s statement would have been all the bolder if his coronation were also the occasion of his marriage to \u00c6thelred\u2019s widow, Emma (also known as \u00c6lfgifu); this possibility is suggested by the circumstances of the so called \u201cthird recension\u201d of the English royal ordo.50 As might be expected, the Chronicle emphasizes legitimacy, and this suggests that continuity was important in its presentation of Cnut. The formula, noted 47 The circumstances of 1066, recorded in the \u201cfirst-draft\u201d history of the Carmen de Hastingae proelio (Song of the Battle of Hastings), give a sense of how compromise could be reached with two prelates in a London-based coronation. Although Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury is written out of the official history of post-1066 England, the Carmen, a pro-Norman view of events, notes the significance of his presence at Westminster at a ceremony involving the Archbishop of York; see Carmen de Hastingae proelio, ed. and trans. Barlow, 46\u201349. For the possible use of a previous ruler\u2019s ordo in a later ceremony (Harold\u2019s, in the coronation of Wil- liam), see Nelson, \u201cThe Rites of the Conqueror.\u201d 48 Vita \u00c6dwardi Regis, ed. Barlow, 14, has it at Canterbury; ASC (CDEF), s.a. 1043, at Win- chester. The consensus, however, on which see Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 61, is that Win- chester was the place of consecration. On Kingston-upon-Thames, see Keynes, \u201cBurial of \u00c6thelred the Unready,\u201d 142\u201343. Here I develop observations made in Lavelle, Cnut: North Sea King, 31\u201332. 49 See Bates, William the Conqueror, 247\u201356. 50 For \u00c6thelred\u2019s body and his links to London, see Keynes, \u201cBurial of \u00c6thelred the Un- ready.\u201d Stafford, in Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 174\u201378, addresses Emma\u2019s role in the \u201cThird Recension of the Second Ordo\u201d in Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS. 44. I gratefully acknowledge Liesbeth van Houts for discussion of this issue.","180 Ryan Lavelle above, which relates that Cnut succeeded to \u201call the kingdom of the English,\u201d is one common to records of the accession of Anglo-Saxon kings since the ninth cen- tury.51 Given that it took \u00c6thelred just over a year to be crowned king (following the murder of his half-brother Edward in 978),52 and given the likelihood of a delay between Sveinn\u2019s acclamation in late 1013 and the calling of the Witan in York in February 1014, it would seem appropriate to call the interval between the death of Edmund on November 30, 1016 and Cnut\u2019s coronation in 1017 a pause \u2013 not an interregnum.53 Some cross-Channel comparison is provided by Geoffrey Koziol\u2019s reading of late tenth-century Frankish charters. I wonder whether the first Cnut charters, from 1018 and 1019, survive (albeit sometimes just in the form of a grand title in a witness list) because they were the first charters declaring the legitimacy of a king who had recently been anointed, perhaps also because they were deter- mined by the composition, associated with peace-making, which is implicit in the agreement at Oxford in 1018 (for which see below).54 Putting to one side the implicit reference to an early Cnut charter at Winchester, which will be dis- cussed below, the survival of a Worcester lease of 1017 hints at the way in which land transactions took place independently of royal authority when that authority could not be present to establish itself in public performance.55 Policy Tensions Despite the upheavals and tensions evident in the immediate aftermath of 1016, there is no clear instance of governance-by-ravaging in Cnut\u2019s England. In con- trast to his son Harthacnut\u2019s reign over England (1040\u20131042), Cnut, in his, does 51 An important new thesis, currently being prepared for publication, on formulas such as fengon to rice for emphasizing legitimacy is in Konshuh, \u201cWarfare and Authority in the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle.\u201d 52 Although Dumville, in \u201cDeath of Edward the Martyr,\u201d offers an alternative chronology to the reading of 978 for the killing of Edward, the delay between the king\u2019s death and \u00c6thelred\u2019s consecration is still an integral part of the reading of the chronology. For the delay in early coronations, see Garnett, \u201cCoronation and Propaganda,\u201d 92\u201393. 53 On the speed of the coronation in 1066, see generally Garnett, \u201cCoronation and Propaganda.\u201d 54 Koziol, Politics of Memory and Identity. Charters from this period can be problematic texts insofar as they do not represent genuine charters, but their witness lists are useful. See S 951\u201356: http:\/\/www.esawyer.org.uk. 55 For discussion of the 1017 lease (S 1384), see Baxter, Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power, 25\u201331.","Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017\u20131019 181 not seem to have asserted a form of authority such as Timothy Reuter character- ized as \u201cstate-directed Bissonic violence,\u201d the imposition of power by brute force.56 Every king claiming control of some form of an English kingdom since 900, argu- ably right through to the twelfth century, faced some opposition within a decade of assuming the throne, and all responded with violence. Within living memory of Cnut\u2019s reign, Edgar the Peaceable had attacked the Isle of Thanet in 969, ten years after becoming king of England; according to Roger of Wendover, this was to avenge some harm committed there against merchants from York.57 Edgar\u2019s son \u00c6thelred, made king in 978, used violence to impose his rule on Rochester in 986.58 Back in the early tenth century, the actions of English kings were character- ized by violence and retribution against territory outside Wessex, even if the broader narrative might be interpreted as one of long-term strategic foresighted- ness.59 After Cnut, just about the only thing we see from his son Harthacnut, made king in 1040, is an attack on Worcestershire by his housecarls in 1041.60 Cnut bucks that trend, although there are ways of seeing exceptions to this reading. An easy way to explain Cnut\u2019s apparently non-violent record is that the violence to- wards potential opposition during his reign took place before he acceded to the throne as sole English ruler. The obvious issue here is the execution of English nobles in 1017, a dramatic event that was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle directly after the record of Cnut\u2019s division of the kingdom after acceding to the throne. The record of the exile of other figures suggests that Cnut was not free from potential opposition.61 How- ever, a charter of Cnut\u2019s reign from early 1019 (Figure 8.1) indicates that tensions did not have to manifest themselves in warfare or \u201cstate\u201d-directed violence for them to have meaning in a locality. Cnut gave a piece of land in Hampshire to a certain inhabitant of Winchester, \u201cadolescens animosus et instabilis\u201d (young, dar- ing, and inconstant), who had evidently persuaded Cnut that this estate was free for the king to donate. As the charter records, Cnut realized the apparent mistake and took the land back, granting it once more to New Minster.62 56 Reuter, \u201cDebate: \u2018Feudal Revolution,\u2019\u201d 191, discussing Campbell, \u201cWas it Infancy in England?\u201d 6. Thomas Bisson\u2019s reading of such violence is now best represented in Crisis of the Twelfth Century. 57 ASC (DEF), s.a. 969; Rogeri de Wendover chronica, ed. Coxe, I, 414\u201315 (s.a. 974), trans. EHD 1, 284. Roger\u2019s detail of the killing of York merchants provides an explanation for the ravaging, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle emphasizes royal agency. 58 ASC (CDE), s.a. 986. 59 I discuss this issue in my paper \u201cRepresenting Authority in an Early Medieval Chronicle.\u201d 60 ASC (CD), s.a. 1041, and John of Worcester\u2019s Chronicle, s.a. 1041. 61 ASC (CDE), s.a. 1017; (CDE), s.a. 1020. For Eadric Streona, see Parker in the following chap- ter, pp. 193\u2013209. 62 S 956, in Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 162\u201363; translated in EHD 1, 599\u2013601.","182 Ryan Lavelle Figure 8.1: Single sheet charter of Cnut granting an estate at Drayton (Hants) to New Minster, Winchester (S 956, dated Easter 1019). By permission of the Warden and Scholars of Winchester College. As Simon Keynes has observed, Cnut may have been following in the footsteps of \u00c6thelred, and perhaps also of Edgar, who had committed his errors while young and was making amends to an important ecclesiastical house.63 This may reveal something about Cnut\u2019s sense of kingship; meanwhile Sean Miller, in his commen- tary on the Drayton charter, notes that two other charters, both probably from early in Cnut\u2019s reign, refer to Cnut acting according to the wishes of \u00c6thelred.64 How- ever, we should note Barbara Yorke\u2019s observation of Cnut\u2019s relative parsimony 63 Keynes, Diplomas of King \u00c6thelred, 176\u201386, discusses \u00c6thelred\u2019s period of \u2018youthful indis- cretions\u2019, noting a comparison with the Drayton charter at 186, n. See also Ellis later in this volume, p. 378. 64 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 162 (S 949 (AD 1017\u00d71032) and S 960 (AD 1023)). Miller notes the similarity of the post-witness-list blessing in S 949, a charter granted to F\u00e9camp in Normandy, to that of S 956: S 949 is likely to be from early in the reign of Cnut rather than later, when relations with Normandy were strained; see Lavelle, Cnut: North Sea King, xx).","Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017\u20131019 183 towards New Minster.65 The Drayton charter shows that the \u201cadolescens\u201d was evi- dently still alive at the time of writing, had not been in exile, and was present in Winchester to contest the donation of the charter and the evident loss of his land. Cnut\u2019s words (or rather the words of the charter\u2019s draughtsman, who is influenced by the style of Wulfstan)66 have it that \u201cpenes prescriptum adolescentem litteras huic libertati contrarias. et calliditatis indagine adquisitas haberi comperimus\u201d (there are, in the possession of the aforementioned youth, letters contrary to this privilege, and acquired by fraudulent investigation). The implication is that such letters be ignored under pain of anathema, although there is no specific injunction to do so, such as we see in King Alfred\u2019s command, in the version of his will that survives, to destroy all earlier versions.67 There was certainly a dispute: a docu- ment from the abbot of New Minster recorded the lease, during the reign of \u00c6the- lred (978\u20131016), of a hide at nearby Barton Stacey to a certain Wulfm\u00e6r and his wife, with the expectation that it, along with \u201canother hide\u201d at Drayton, would re- vert after their lifetimes to the church. Perhaps the young man of the Drayton char- ter was related to Wulfm\u00e6r or his wife, or both, and had expected to receive the land at Drayton.68 If the earlier charter were used as evidence that both lands were to go to New Minster, the young man had a case. Only the Barton Stacey land had been explicitly leased, and Miller suggests there may have been another document which has not survived.69 The young man may have been right, too, to draw atten- tion to the king\u2019s right to grant him this land. The estate at Drayton bordered a royal estate which, according to Domesday Book, contributed to a render in kind known in Hampshire as the \u201cfirma unius diei\u201d (farm of one day).70 This estate, which lay at Barton Stacey (and was distinct from the New Minster\u2019s holding at Barton Stacey), was reorganised, presumably at some point in the eleventh cen- tury, in order to provide some economically viable render. In 1066 Barton Stacey was assessed for a \u201cdimidia\u201d (half) of one day\u2019s farm, suggesting that some loss of economic value had taken place at some point from the full day\u2019s farm. Land at Kings Worthy was noted as a \u201cbereuuice\u201d (\u201cberewick,\u201d meaning an outlier land- unit) to the Barton Stacey estate; the Kings Worthy land had itself probably 65 See Yorke later in this volume, pp. 222\u201327. 66 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 162. 67 S 1507 (AD 872\u00d7888). 68 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 157 (S 1420 (AD 995\u00d71005)). 69 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 158. 70 The bounds of the land are discussed in Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 163\u201364; Domesday Book: Hampshire, ed. Munby, fol.38c (entry 1:17). I discuss this system (known else- where as the firma unius noctis and its meaning for royal resources in my Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 13\u201347.","184 Ryan Lavelle Map 8.1: The estate at Drayton (Hants) granted to New Minster, Winchester, in 1019, with places named in the text. The boundaries of the Domesday hundreds and other eleventh- century vills are marked with regard to information in the Alecto Historical Editions Domesday Book maps. (The uncertainties of boundaries and the placement of vills have not been represented in this map, and this should only be taken as an approximate guide.)","Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017\u20131019 185 experienced its own loss of value, given that there were multiple claimants on the larger Worthy estate from which Kings Worthy was formed (see Map 8.1). Drayton may itself have had some importance as a piece of royal land. If the Wulfm\u00e6r of the earlier lease were a thegn who witnessed \u201cfairly low down the list of ministri between 986 and 1005,\u201d71 we might justifiably infer that he got the sort of long-service award due to royal thegns from a royal estate. Whether or not Drayton was the sort of bookland that King Alfred famously wrote of thegns de- serving, it was hardly unreasonable for a son to expect to receive it.72 It is perhaps revealing of this young man\u2019s expectation of receiving royal land that Drayton lies on the other side of the Barton Stacey estate from a neighboring royal estate, that of Hurstbourne. The blurred lines between what a king could and could not use as he saw fit are revealed by the fact that Hurst- bourne is said to have been amongst \u201cterras ad pertinentes filios\u201d (the lands belonging to the royal sons) which Edgar had granted to Abingdon Abbey, pre- sumably during a time of bolstering estates at the forefront of monastic reform in the 960s.73 Early in King \u00c6thelred\u2019s reign, the land had been brought back under royal control. Later (we cannot be sure when, but presumably in the last decade of the tenth or first few years of the eleventh century), \u00c6thelred, writing in a charter for Abingdon, had to make amends for the lands\u2019 reacquisition by providing some other lands to the abbey by way of compensation. If that is not enough evidence of blurred lines, there is Cnut\u2019s grant of land nearby, at what later became Abbots Worthy, apparently to Archbishop Lyfing in 1026.74 Evidently the Drayton dispute was far from having ended in Easter 1019, when the New Minster charter recording the transaction was drawn up. The charter pro- vides hints that Cnut\u2019s acquisition of power in Wessex had presumably involved negotiation, buying the favor of the local nobility, perhaps comparable with the position of Godwine, a man who rose to prominence as earl of Wessex under Cnut. Such men were characterized by Robin Fleming as \u201cEnglishmen short on family histories but long on personal loyalty.\u201d75 Presumably this is evidence that at the start of his reign, or perhaps during the period after or shortly before the death of 71 Charters of the New Minster, ed. Miller, 158. 72 Alfred\u2019s Version of St. Augustine\u2019s Soliloques, ed. Carnicelli, 48. For bookland rewards from royal estates, see Baxter and Blair, \u201cLand Tenure and Royal Patronage\u201d; Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 116\u201322. 73 S 937; for the charter\u2019s significance, see Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 1. 74 S 962; for this grant, see Lavelle, Royal Estates in Anglo-Saxon Wessex, 37. 75 Fleming, Kings and Lords in Conquest England, 48. Bolton, Cnut the Great, 91, notes the im- portance of English \u201ccollaborators\u201d to Cnut at this stage in his reign.","186 Ryan Lavelle \u00c6thelred, Cnut came to Winchester, or at least to a place close enough to the city for him to be subject to this kind of petitioning by figures who may have been in- fluential locally, but who were not so important that they dominated the wider po- litical landscape. Worth returning to here is the phrase \u201cadolescens animosus et instabilis\u201d (young, daring, and inconstant) which aptly echoes Cnut\u2019s own position at this time, even if he was striving not to live up to the last of these words.76 If the aforesaid young man had been useful to Cnut prior to 1019, the charter might indicate that he was no longer in favor; perhaps Cnut now sought the favor of the New Minster and was willing to sacrifice his wishes in order to gain this. The fact that the charter records an injunction against the possession by the young man of certain \u201clitteras\u201d (letters), said in the Drayton charter to be fraudulent, while tacitly acknowledging the continuing existence of this youth, suggests that a dispute was still in progress to which even the charter could not give full confi- dence of resolution. In terms of Cnut\u2019s early reign, it says something of the limits of Cnut\u2019s power, and of his need for negotiation, that he appears not to have had the full power to dispose of this young man in 1019, as he had of other awkward Englishmen in 1017. The Drayton charter is a small and local issue, however. Tensions could also heighten and be defused on a larger scale and Cnut\u2019s early reign sees a profligacy of peace-making. The agreement between Edmund and Cnut in the autumn of 1016 provides a clear example: the D manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to the \u201cnor\u00f0d\u00e6l\u201d (north part), of the kingdom being Cnut\u2019s in that agreement, a word echoed in the Chronicle\u2019s use of the verb \u201ctod\u00e6lde\u201d (di- vided) with regard to the division of the country in 1017.77 Oxford, a location which reflected the divisions of 1016 and 1017, saw the third of these agree- ments, resulting in a declaration of a legal code in 1018. Given that Cnut had mutilated hostages in 1014, presumably in recognition of the breaking of a peace agreement made between English nobles and his father, the declaration of a peace with Cnut had to be taken seriously.78 76 If S 956 can be related to the milieu of the narrative charters of \u00c6thelred\u2019s reign, there is something to be said for the possibility that, like the play on the name of the criminal \u00c6thel- sige related in S 886 (AD 995), there was a pun in the reference to the young man of S 956 being \u2018daring and inconstant\u2019. Given that daring was among the many attributes with which wolves were associated, and the tendency for the first element of a personal name to follow a patronym, was this young man a descendant of Wulfm\u00e6r? On the nature of the representation of wolf names, see Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages, 142\u201345. 77 ASC (C), ed. O\u2019Brien O\u2019Keeffe, 103 (s.a. 1017); (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1017); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1017); (D), trans. Swanton. 154 (s.a. 1017). On the division of the kingdom, see Reuter, \u201cMaking of England and Germany,\u201d 56. 78 Hicklin, \u201cRole of Hostages in the Danish Conquests.\u201d","Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017\u20131019 187 Paul Dalton has drawn attention to the making of peace at river and island sites, and of course the agreement at Olney in 1016 has particular importance in that respect.79 Oxford, however, means something more. As a place on the in- terstices between Mercian and West Saxon territory, on a river with islands and a long crossing across marshy ground which was not unlike the Ravning Enge bridge at Haraldr Bluetooth\u2019s complex at Jelling, home of Kn\u00fatr\u2019s Danish dy- nasty, Oxford could be read as a place of territorial liminality.80 The making of an agreement in Oxford in 1018 might be compared with another agreement there in 1035, which saw the nobility of Wessex and Mercia meeting in the wake of the death of Cnut.81 Clearly the inter-territoriality mattered. In St. Fri- deswide\u2019s church in Oxford, according to a charter of \u00c6thelred of 1004, a group of Danes had sheltered from a mob from the town and suburbs.82 The church was burnt down with the death of those inside, so presumably Oxford had a strong memory of this ethnic hostility. Oxford may therefore have been a sensi- ble location for a statement of reconciliation, particularly as this town had been a specific target of Sveinn\u2019s destructive campaign in the Thames Valley in 1013, when its people surrendered to him.83 There were further memories associated with the town. A tower in Oxford had seen the deaths of Sigeferth and Morcar, chief thegns of the \u201cSeofonbur- gum\u201d (\u201cSeven Boroughs,\u201d a chronicler\u2019s synonym for Danelaw territory), at the instigation of Eadric in 1015. This event seems to have impelled Cnut to come back to England, perhaps because the dead thegns were kin to \u00c6lfgifu of North- ampton. In the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury read the 1004 charter of \u00c6thelred as a record of the deaths of the followers of the thegns in 1015, confus- ing them with the Danes of the town who had been burnt at St. Frideswide\u2019s on St. Brice\u2019s Day (November 13) 1002.84 Only three years had passed between the death of Sigeferth and Morcar in 1015 and the Oxford agreement of 1018. If a tradition which explicitly confused the refuge and burning of 1002 with the 1015 events in the St. Frideswide\u2019s charter can be posited, this is most likely to have developed at a point closer to William of Malmesbury\u2019s own time than Cnut\u2019s 79 Dalton, \u201cSites and Occasions of Peacemaking.\u201d 80 For the topography of the crossing at Oxford, see Dodd, \u201cSynthesis and Discussion,\u201d 12\u201316. The Ravning Enge bridge is discussed in Pedersen, \u201cMonumental Expression and Fortification,\u201d 71\u201373. 81 ASC (E), s.a. 1035. 82 S 909 (AD 1004). 83 Blair, in Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, 167\u201368, links the massacre of 1002 with Sveinn\u2019s arrival in the town in ASC (CDE), s.a. 1013. On St. Clement\u2019s Church near the Cherwell as the lithsmen\u2019s garri- son chapel, see Barbara Crawford in this volume, p. 452. 84 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 310\u201311, esp. 310, n. 1 (identification of the charter).","188 Ryan Lavelle (assuming, that is, that a second church-burning did not take place in 1015).85 While the traditions of transference in the episode were an important element for identifying the traditions of what C. E. Wright famously noted was the oral \u201csaga literature\u201d of Anglo-Saxon England, there remains something to be said about the episode for Cnut\u2019s contemporaries. If his contemporaries were fully aware that Sigeferth and Morcar were not killed on St. Brice\u2019s Day 1002, we should be sensitive to the manner in which events could still become linked in popular memory, often quite quickly. Oxford had been a place where people identified as Danes were burnt in the recent past, and others who were identifi- ably linked to Cnut\u2019s family, who had been murdered by Eadric, who was him- self executed by the new king in 1017. Surely these links gave extra weight to the choice of Oxford as a place of reconciliation under Cnut. Conclusion: A Legitimate King Useful as it might be for Cnut to portray himself as a legitimate king of the West Saxon royal dynasty, the smoothness with which this happened should not fool us into believing that this was his only option. In the circumstances, such a por- trayal was a sensible option to take. A reshaping of Cnut\u2019s presentation of king- ship was necessary between 1014 and 1017, leading to a declaration of law in 1018. Cnut\u2019s claim to Denmark was realized in 1019 and not before, because his legitimacy as king of England remained a live issue. Despite his conquest of the English kingdom, the \u00e6thelings, young men with royal claims through kingly de- scent, were still at large, as noted by Simon Keynes, who cites the naming of Ed- ward, son of \u00c6thelred, as \u201cking of the English\u201d in a Ghent charter dated to 1016. Although this charter was most probably copied in the 1040s, Keynes calls it \u201cev- idence of a kind that . . . Edward had passed through Flanders shortly after his expulsion from England, in search of help at the shrine of saints.\u201d86 One English \u00e6theling was trouble; two were the makings of a dynasty, and Edward\u2019s brother Alfred was also at large. Cnut could not afford to ignore Edmund Ironside\u2019s sons, 85 Wright, in Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England, 179\u201382, treats this as an episode typ- ical of transference in oral literature. It is worth noting that there are thirteen manuscripts con- taining the charter (see the catalogue of manuscripts under S 909), so scribal interest in the episode may also have played a part in the transmission of the story. 86 Keynes, \u201c\u00c6thelings in Normandy,\u201d 177\u201381, esp. 181.","Chapter 8 Cnut, King of the English, 1017\u20131019 189 either. For all that the stories of these boys turned into legend, there is evidence that they presented a longer-term danger too.87 Looking beyond this chapter\u2019s narrow chronology by nearly a decade, we may see the context for a new dynamic in Cnut\u2019s reign in the actions of a new duke, Robert \u201cthe Magnificent\u201d: in power in Normandy from 1027, Robert was prepared to support his English cousins Edward and Alfred more actively after a period of relative calm across the Channel. Although trouble in Scandinavia required Cnut\u2019s attention for much of the second half of the 1020s, the potential relocation of Edmund Ironside\u2019s body to Winchester, from his south-western re- pose in or around 1032, shows a renewed attention to legitimacy at a time of potential pressure.88 Given the type of kingship that Cnut had chosen, English legitimacy mattered to him. It may be instructive to note that Cnut\u2019s early royal policy changed around the time when Emma gave him a son, Harthacnut Cnutsson, probably in ca. 1018.89 Before an \u00e6theling arrived who could be linked to the kinship of the West Saxon royal family through this anointed queen, Cnut could not afford to present himself as anything less than a legiti- mate English king. 87 For Edmund\u2019s sons, see Ronay, Lost King of England. 88 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cRoyal Burials in Winchester,\u201d 224\u201326. 89 According to Kiernan, in \u201cSquare Minuscule,\u201d 65\u201372, Harthacnut may have been the \u00e6the- ling named in the will of the noblewoman \u00c6thelgifu, S 1497 (normally dated 990\u00d71001). See also Bolton, \u201c\u00c6lfgifu of Northampton,\u201d who makes a case for the presence of \u00c6lfgifu and her children in eastern Denmark, a matter which would suggest that the need for a child with Emma was a specifically English one. See also Spejlborg later in this volume, pp. 341\u201342.","","Eleanor Parker Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d: Cnut\u2019s English Reputation and the Death of Eadric Streona From legitimacy to memory, after London Cnut did not look back. Two striking features characterize his reputation in medieval English historical writing: how overwhelmingly positive it is, and how memorably it is recorded. In notable con- trast to his appearances in Scandinavian historiography, Cnut was widely re- membered in English tradition as a wise, just, and pious king, his wisdom illustrated by medieval historians through a variety of short and colorful narra- tives, including, of course, the enduringly popular story of his supposed attempt to control the waves.1 This admiring view of Cnut is all the more surprising in light of the circumstances in which he came to the English throne, as a foreign conqueror taking power after years of violent conflict. The means by which Cnut came to be remembered so favorably deserve investigation, and this chapter ex- plores the question by considering one of the most oft-repeated stories attached to Cnut in post-Conquest sources: the killing of Eadric Streona on the orders of the king. The place of post-Conquest narrative sources of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries in the interpretation of Cnut and his reign has undergone some reas- sessment in recent years. The value of these sources, despite their late date, has long been recognised: in his 1993 study of Cnut, M. K. Lawson argued for their importance as a supplement to the more fragmentary contemporary evidence for Cnut\u2019s reign, describing how \u201cthe historian of Cnut, so ill-served by contempo- rary records, is more fortunate in those produced after his death.\u201d2 He goes on to demonstrate numerous ways in which the work of eleventh- and twelfth-century writers such as Goscelin, John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon can provide useful insights into various aspects of Cnut\u2019s time as king, especially where they appear to have had access to earlier sources which no longer survive.3 1 On Cnut\u2019s reputation in English and Scandinavian historiography, see the essays in Remem- bering Cnut the Great, ed. Goeres. 2 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 71. 3 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 71\u201380; see especially the chapter on Cnut\u2019s relations with the English church, 117\u201360. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9781501513336-010","192 Eleanor Parker This approach has often proved fruitful, but recent work on the period has adopted a more qualified attitude; as Timothy Bolton argues in his 2017 biogra- phy of Cnut, the wealth of information offered by these later English texts has perhaps led to their being over-valued by modern scholars.4 Bolton observes that historians have at times been inclined to place undue weight on the post- Conquest sources, uncritically adopting their interpretation of Cnut to the ex- clusion of other kinds of information. In discussing Cnut\u2019s interactions with the Church, for instance, post-Conquest English sources tend to present Cnut as a Viking barbarian who required English influence to convert him into a Christian king; Bolton shows how this view has colored many modern historians\u2019 reading of Cnut, although it is, as he argues, a misconception.5 In particular, he advo- cates the use of Scandinavian sources \u2013 often previously dismissed as late and unreliable evidence \u2013 to modify and balance the impression of Cnut produced by the English texts. Bolton\u2019s arguments are especially significant in light of the current schol- arly emphasis on developing a more nuanced, and less Anglocentric, under- standing of the political and cultural situation in Cnut\u2019s reign, one which gives greater consideration to the Scandinavian regions of the king\u2019s empire and to the shifting or overlapping identities of the king and his followers. Particularly influential here have been several productive studies of the role of skaldic verse and Scandinavian elite culture during Cnut\u2019s reign,6 as well as the work of Elaine Treharne in analyzing the status and function of the English language at Cnut\u2019s court.7 The Encomium Emmae Reginae, one of the earliest and most valu- able narrative sources for Cnut\u2019s reign, has also been the subject of important recent work in this regard: closer examination of Emma\u2019s role in commissioning the text, the circumstances of its production, and the author\u2019s approach to his material have highlighted the place of the Encomium as a key source for the multilingual culture and complex political dynamics of the Anglo-Danish court in the tense period which followed Cnut\u2019s death.8 Against this background, a more subtle understanding of the post-Conquest narrative sources has also be- come possible: these texts are increasingly understood not as straightforward evidence for Cnut\u2019s activities as king, but as histories whose interpretations 4 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 1\u201327; see also Bolton, Empire of Cnut. 5 Bolton, Cnut the Great, 2\u20135. On this theme see also Ellis, later in this volume, pp. 355\u201378. 6 Townend, \u201cContextualizing the Kn\u00fatsdr\u00e1pur\u201d; Frank, \u201cKing Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds\u201d; and Jesch, \u201cScandinavians and \u2018Cultural Paganism.\u2019\u201d. 7 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 9\u201347. 8 See most recently Butler, Language and Community in Early England, 86\u2013128, and Tyler, \u201cTalking about History,\u201d \u201cFictions of Family,\u201d and England in Europe.","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 193 and perspectives on Cnut are profoundly shaped by the contexts within which they were produced.9 If these texts, as Bolton argues, have seduced even the best of modern historians into accepting their interpretations as fact, it is worth paying more attention to how and why they manage to produce such attrac- tively coherent narratives of Cnut and his reign. Justice with a Pun The story discussed in this chapter relates an incident early in Cnut\u2019s reign, the killing of Eadric Streona \u2013 an event usually set in London in 1017, in the immedi- ate aftermath of the Danish conquest. Eadric, ealdorman of Mercia, had switched allegiance between the English and the Danish sides several times during the wars of 1015\u20131016, and is criticized in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for disloyalty to the English cause.10 He features prominently in later medieval narratives of this period, in time becoming an almost archetypal figure of treachery and deceit; in post-Conquest sources he is accused of an extensive list of further crimes \u2013 what Simon Keynes has called \u201can assortment of murders, base stratagems and acts of treachery\u201d \u2013 variously including the slaughter on St. Brice\u2019s Day in 1002, the murder of Sveinn Forkbeard\u2019s sister Gunnhild and her family, the Viking siege of Canterbury in 1011, the murder of Uhtred of Northumbria in 1016, and the loss of multiple battles to the Danes in the last months of the Danish conquest.11 Concerning the many crimes attributed to him by later medieval historians, perhaps the most common belief was that Eadric was directly or indirectly respon- sible for the sudden death of Edmund Ironside on November 30, 1016. Edmund died around six weeks after he and Cnut had reached an agreement dividing the kingdom between them; the circumstances of his death are unclear, and no con- temporary source sheds any light on its cause. After Edmund\u2019s death, Cnut was accepted as sole ruler of England, and the following year he made Eadric earl of Mercia, but had him executed at some point during 1017. The Anglo-Saxon Chroni- cle gives no details of Eadric\u2019s death: the C, D, and E manuscripts of the Chronicle all have only a brief notice in 1017 that \u201con \u00feisum geare w\u00e6s Eadric ealdorman ofsl\u00e6gen,\u201d (in this year Eadric the ealdorman was killed),12 the first in a list of prominent men disposed of, by death or banishment, in the first months of Cnut\u2019s 9 See, for instance, Hobson, \u201cNational-Ethnic Narratives in Representations of Cnut.\u201d 10 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 59\u201362 (s.a. 1015\u20131016); Keynes, \u201cCnut\u2019s Earls,\u201d 67. 11 Keynes, The Diplomas of King \u00c6thelred, 214. 12 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1017).","194 Eleanor Parker reign. All these events are listed before the arrangement of Cnut\u2019s marriage to Emma, which is noted as taking place before the beginning of August, but there is no other indication of the date or circumstances. Despite the Chronicle\u2019s usual readiness to comment on Eadric\u2019s behavior, there is also no judgment or specula- tion on the immediate reason for his execution. However, the bilingual F version of the Chronicle (British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A.VIII), written at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the first years of the twelfth century, adds both a location for Eadric\u2019s death and a very brief comment upon it: here the other deaths in- cluded in the earlier versions are not mentioned, but it is said that Eadric was killed \u201con Lundene swy\u00f0e rih<t>lice\u201d (in London, very justly), while the Latin text has only one extra word, \u201ciustissime.\u201d13 The comment on the justice of Eadric\u2019s execution made in this post-Conquest ver- sion of the Chronicle, seems to have encouraged the development of a narrative which grew up during the eleventh century around Eadric\u2019s death, telling how he was killed by Cnut or one of his men as just punishment for his disloyalty to Edmund. The details of the story vary between different texts, but here we will focus chiefly on one recurring aspect which appears in several versions of the episode: a dialogue be- tween Cnut and Eadric in which the crime is revealed, and the king, instead of being grateful for a murder which has made him sole ruler of England, unexpectedly orders that the perpetrator should be punished by death. Justice is delivered with a grim quip, and the drama of the scene hinges on some form of ambiguous statement by Cnut, which appears to promise reward for the murderer but in fact orders his death. The Exemplum of Eadric in the Encomium Emmae Reginae A version of this ambiguous dialogue already appears in the earliest iteration of the story, in the Encomium Emmae Reginae, written less than thirty years after the event is supposed to have taken place. The Encomium, commissioned after Cnut\u2019s death by his widow Emma, provides an account of the Danish conquest from a privileged and deeply partial perspective, shaped by the political context in which it was written: it was composed in 1040\u20131042, during the reign of Har- thacnut and after Edward, Emma\u2019s son by \u00c6thelred, had returned to England from two decades of exile in Normandy to live at Harthacnut\u2019s court. There seems to have been an uneasy truce between Edward, his mother, and his 13 ASC (F), ed. Baker, 110\u201311 (s.a. 1017).","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 195 younger half-brother, and the Encomium bears evidence of the difficulties of navigating this complex situation.14 In many ways, the Encomium stands apart from the mainstream of medieval historiography about Cnut, in both the En- glish and Scandinavian traditions, and it does not seem to have had any direct influence on later medieval interpretations of Cnut\u2019s reign. It does, however, feature the earliest appearance of some narratives about Cnut which were to recur in sources from the later eleventh century and afterwards.15 It was written at a moment when the events of the Danish conquest were still within living memory, but were already becoming the stuff of semi-historical legend. This is especially true of the episode of Eadric\u2019s death, which is at once a somewhat plausible anecdote, tied to the particular context of the early years of Cnut\u2019s reign, and a neatly told story with a pithy moral lesson. It is intended to illus- trate Cnut\u2019s wisdom and glorify the king, but in its emphasis on loyalty, divided rule, and the relationship between Cnut and Edmund, it is also transparently influenced by the circumstances in which the text was composed. The Encomiast introduces the story by explaining Cnut\u2019s attitude to those among the English army who had deceived Edmund: Erat autem adhuc primaeua aetate florens sed tamen indicibili prudentia pollens. Unde contigit, ut eos quos antea Aedmundo sine dolo fideliter militare audierat diligeret, et eos quos subdolos scierat atque tempore belli in utraque parte fraudulenta tergiuersatione pen- dentes odio haberet, adeo ut multos principum quadam die occidere pro huiusmodi dolo iuberet. Inter quos Edricus, qui a bello fugerat, cum praemia pro hoc ipso a rege postularet, ac si hoc pro eius uictoria fecisset, rex subtristis, \u201cQui dominum,\u201d inquit, \u201ctuum decepisti fraude, mihine poteris fidelis esse? Rependam tibi condigna premia, sed ea ne deinceps tibi placeat fallatia.\u201d Et Erico duce suo uocato, \u201cHuic,\u201d ait, \u201cquod debemus persoluito, uideli- cet, ne nos decipiat, occidito.\u201d Ille uero nil moratus bipennem extulit, eique ictu ualido caput amputauit, ut hoc exemplo discant milites regibus suis esse fideles, non infideles. [He was, however, as yet in the flower of youth, but was nevertheless master of indescrib- able wisdom. It was, accordingly, the case that he loved those whom he had heard to have fought previously for Eadmund faithfully without deceit, and that he so hated those whom he knew to have been deceitful, and to have hesitated between the two sides with fraudu- lent tergiversation, that on a certain day he ordered the execution of many chiefs for deceit of this kind. One of these was Eadric, who had fled from the war, and to whom, when he asked for a reward for this from the king, pretending to have done it to ensure his victory, the king said sadly, \u201cShall you, who have deceived your lord with guile, be capable of being true to me? I will return to you a worthy reward, but I will do so to the end that de- ception may not subsequently be your pleasure.\u201d And summoning Eir\u00edkr, his commander, 14 This is especially evident in the revised ending to the text, rewritten after Harthacnut\u2019s death; see Bolton, \u201cA Newly Emergent Mediaeval Manuscript.\u201d 15 For some examples see Parker, \u201cSo Very Memorable a Matter.\u201d","196 Eleanor Parker he said: \u201cPay this man what we owe him; that is to say, kill him, lest he play us false.\u201d He, indeed, raised his axe without delay, and cut off his head with a mighty blow, so that sol- diers may learn from this example to be faithful, not faithless, to their kings.]16 There are several points to note about the role of this episode \u2013 this \u201cexem- plum,\u201d as it is called here \u2013 within the Encomium\u2019s narrative of Cnut\u2019s con- quest. First, it serves a useful function in the text by standing in for everything that is omitted from the Encomium\u2019s highly selective narrative of the early years of Cnut\u2019s reign. In striking contrast to its detailed account of the conquest itself, the Encomium has very little to say about Cnut\u2019s earliest acts as king: there is no coronation scene, no mention of Cnut\u2019s first law codes or royal assemblies, nor even any reference to some significant incidents mentioned in the fairly sparse account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, such as the dedication of a church at the site of the Battle of Assandun in 1020 (a particularly surprising omission in light of the prominence the Encomium gives to that battle).17 Although it seems likely that Emma herself was directly involved in some of these events, none of them features in her Encomium. Apart from the account of Cnut and Emma\u2019s marriage \u2013 in which Cnut seeks through many kingdoms for a suitable bride before alighting on Emma \u2013 the earliest months and years of Cnut\u2019s reign are represented in the Encomium chiefly by this episode dealing with the pun- ishment of Eadric. As a result, it takes on particular significance, becoming em- blematic of the establishment of Cnut\u2019s power, his enacting of justice, and his respect for Edmund and desire to avenge the wrongs done to him. Those wrongs are carefully defined: in the Encomium, unlike later versions of the story, Eadric is punished for disloyalty to Edmund, but not for his murder. This is a significant difference, and it is related to the fact that the Encomium is at pains to point out that Edmund\u2019s sudden death was not the work of treachery: it was an act of God, since it was the divine will that the country divided between Cnut and Edmund should be united through the death of the English king: Uerumtamen Deus memor suae antiquae doctrinae, scilicet omne regnum in se ipsum diuisum diu permanere non posse, non longo post tempore Aedmundum eduxit e corpore Anglorum misertus imperii, ne forte si uterque superuiueret neuter regnaret secure, et regnum diatim adnihila[re]tur renouata contentione. Defunctus autem regius iuuenis regio tumulatur sepulchro, defletus diu multumque a patriensi populo; cui Deus omne gaudium tribuat in celesti solio. Cuius rei gratia eum Deus iusserit obire, mox deinde 16 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 30\u201333. 17 See Parker, Dragon Lords, 37\u201340. The translation of St. \u00c6lfheah from London to Canterbury in June 1023 is also a striking omission, since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Emma and Harthacnut were both present at the conveyance of the saint\u2019s body from Rochester to Canter- bury: ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 64 (s.a. 1023).","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 197 patuit, quia uniuersa regio ilico Cnutonem sibi regem elegit, et cui anti omni conamine restitit, tunc sponte sua se illi et omnia sua subdidit. [God, who remembered His own ancient teaching, according to which a kingdom divided against itself cannot long stand, soon afterwards, pitying the realm of the English, took away Edmund from the body, lest it should chance that if both survived neither should rule securely, and that the kingdom should be continually wasted by renewed conflict. The dead prince, however, was buried in a royal tomb, and was wept long and sorely by the native people; to him may God grant every joy in the heavenly kingdom. Soon thereaf- ter it became evident to what end God commanded that he should die, for the entire coun- try then chose Kn\u00fatr as its king, and voluntarily submitted itself and all that was in it to the man whom previously it had resisted with every effort.]18 The Encomiast seems determined to downplay the advantages of Edmund\u2019s death for Cnut, and to stress that if the timing of Edmund\u2019s death was convenient, it was because of divine intervention, not the act of a traitor. Cnut is presented as Ed- mund\u2019s avenger and cannot be accused of any complicity in his death. The negative light in which the division of the kingdom is presented here is typical of the Encomium\u2019s treatment of the idea of shared rule between kings (the text also claims the division was originally Eadric\u2019s proposal, as if further to blacken the suggestion),19 and it echoes the earlier presentation of a discus- sion between Cnut and his brother Harald about dividing Denmark between them in 1014\u20131015.20 In both cases the Encomium devotes considerable space to the negotiation of shared rule between two kings, and concludes that it is unde- sirable and untenable on anything more than a temporary basis. This must have been of pointed relevance at the time of the text\u2019s composition, after Ed- ward\u2019s return to his half-brother\u2019s court. Within this context, the Encomium\u2019s story of Cnut\u2019s punishment of Eadric appears to serve a double purpose: it may have been intended to mollify Edward and his supporters by demonstrating Cnut\u2019s respect for Edmund, while also providing an implicit warning against any expectation of shared rule over England. The other important difference between this earliest version of the story and the later accounts is the role attributed to the Norwegian earl Eir\u00edkr H\u00e1ko- narson, who is characterized elsewhere in the Encomium as one of Cnut\u2019s most trusted and worthy supporters.21 At the time the Encomium was written, Eir\u00edkr had probably been dead for nearly twenty years,22 so these flattering references 18 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 30\u201331. 19 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 28\u201329. 20 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 16\u201319. 21 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 23. 22 Keynes, \u201cCnut\u2019s Earls,\u201d 57\u201358.","198 Eleanor Parker to him suggest that the Encomiast\u2019s source was someone at the Anglo-Danish court who remembered the key players of 1016\u20131017. This is an instance where the Encomiast seems to be particularly well-informed about the events of the Danish conquest, and his narrative is firmly rooted in the political dynamics of the first years of Cnut\u2019s reign. Eir\u00edkr\u2019s role, however, also serves to emphasize the moral lesson of the story: this episode is, as the Encomiast points out, an exemplum about loyalty \u2013 told so \u201cthat soldiers may learn to be faithful, not faithless, to their kings\u201d \u2013 and it sets up a direct contrast between the treacher- ous Eadric and the loyal Eir\u00edkr. In this section of the text Eir\u00edkr, credited with staunch loyalty, stands in contrast not only to Eadric but also to the more com- plex figure of Thorkell the Tall, about whose allegiance to Cnut the Encomiast makes various contradictory assertions.23 The contrast established between Eadric and Eir\u00edkr is particularly interesting in light of the fact that much recent work on the Encomium has demonstrated how closely attuned the text is to the politics of the Anglo-Danish court, a multi- lingual environment where two coexisting vernacular languages played crucial roles in negotiations of power and identity and in royal self-presentation.24 The Encomium\u2019s story here turns precisely on a matter of linguistic misinterpretation and reinterpretation. As the Encomiast presents it, Cnut speaks in a way which is deliberately ambiguous, exploiting the double meaning of his own words even as he punishes Eadric for deceit. Eadric has come to the king attempting to deceive him, but finds himself deceived. He has misread Cnut by misinterpreting Cnut\u2019s wishes \u2013 thinking he will be pleased by disloyalty to Edmund \u2013 and now Cnut deliberately allows him to misinterpret his words, \u201cI will give you a worthy re- ward.\u201d By contrast, Eir\u00edkr apparently correctly understands Cnut\u2019s ambiguous command to \u201cpay this man what we owe him,\u201d and becomes the instrument of the king\u2019s justice, immediately executing his orders without hesitation or doubt. The Encomiast offers an explicit gloss on the instruction \u2013 \u201cthat is to say, kill him\u201d \u2013 but it does not seem that Eir\u00edkr needs a translation of his king\u2019s words. The contrast between the disloyal English earl and the loyal Norwegian one is thus underlined by their ability or failure to interpret the king\u2019s speech. Al- though the Encomium does not draw attention to the fact, this story dramatizes an interaction which \u2013 if this incident had really taken place \u2013 would conceiv- ably have been bilingual; we might picture Cnut switching from English to Dan- ish as he turns from Eadric to Eir\u00edkr. At other moments in the text the Encomium is alert to linguistic difference, at least in place-names and personal names: the 23 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 10\u201311, 15\u201317. 24 See especially Tyler, \u201cTalking about History\u201d and \u201cFictions of Family.\u201d","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 199 author interprets and translates the meaning of the English place-names Sheppey and Assandun,25 as well as explaining that the name Harthacnut, \u201csi ethimologia Theutonice perquiratur\u201d (if the etymology of this is investigated in Germanic), re- veals the character of the king, since \u201cHarde\u201d means \u201c\u2018uelox\u2019 uel \u2018fortis\u2019\u201d (\u201cswift\u201d or \u201cstrong\u201d).26 There is no such comment here, but the story nonetheless seems to exemplify the kind of linguistic negotiation Elaine Treharne has identified in her examination of the texts produced in Old English and Old Norse at Cnut\u2019s court. She discusses the complex relationship between language and identity in a situa- tion where distinct (but perhaps overlapping) textual and linguistic communities of Norse speakers and English speakers coexisted, with the king himself as the shared focus.27 In his public pronouncements, Treharne argues, Cnut presents himself as belonging to both communities, speaking to each in their own language and identifying himself with both; she describes, for instance, how Cnut\u2019s letter of 1027 \u201cmagnificently manifests the inherent contradictions of the king himself\u201d and \u201cevinces a discursive ambivalence that reflects its owner\u2019s voice . . . simulta- neously genuine conversion narrative and Germanic boast.\u201d28 She finds in these texts a kind of deliberate multivalence in Cnut\u2019s presentation of himself as king, especially through his use of language. He was a figure who could be simulta- neously read in different ways by his different audiences \u2013 an ambiguity which the Encomium\u2019s story of Eadric and Eir\u00edkr makes very literal indeed. The Wolf Tamed: Cnut and Bury St. Edmunds Tradition When we turn to the versions of the story from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, none of which is directly dependent on the Encomium, the feature of the ambiguous dialogue does not immediately reappear. Jay Paul Gates has recently discussed the use of this episode by the Worcester histori- ans, arguing that the presentation of Eadric in these texts reflects contemporary anxieties about a predatory aristocracy expropriating church lands, projected 25 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 24. 26 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 34\u201335; for discussion, see Appendix V. The encomiast also inter- prets the name Athala as \u201cnobilissima\u201d (Encomium, ed. Campbell, 46). 27 Treharne, Living Through Conquest; on multilingualism at Cnut\u2019s court, see also Townend, \u201cCnut\u2019s Poets.\u201d 28 Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 37.","200 Eleanor Parker back from the Anglo-Norman present onto the Anglo-Saxon past.29 In Hemming of Worcester\u2019s version of the story, dating from around 1096, Eadric is killed not for any act of disloyalty but for his oppressive treatment of monasteries and rapa- cious acquisition of Worcester\u2019s lands; it is here that Eadric\u2019s byname \u201cstreona,\u201d (the \u201cacquisitor,\u201d) is first recorded.30 John of Worcester goes further and accuses Eadric of treachery to both \u00c6thelred and Edmund, but neither source says he was responsible for Edmund\u2019s death. For John of Worcester, Cnut\u2019s decision to kill Ea- dric is thus a pragmatic choice rather than a judicial one: he fears that Eadric, who has betrayed Edmund, will not be loyal to him, so he has Eadric killed in the royal palace in London at Christmas 1017 and his body thrown over the city wall.31 There is no particular interest here in exploring Cnut\u2019s behavior or motives; this is a polit- ical murder, and if it is just retribution for Eadric\u2019s long history of oppressions, that kind of justice is not consciously a motive on Cnut\u2019s part. The first post-Conquest source to say that that Edmund was murdered, and to take an interest in Cnut\u2019s response to the killer, is a text written at Bury St. Edmunds around 1100. This is a revised version of Herman\u2019s slightly earlier Miracles of St. Edmund, an anonymous rewriting which has been attributed by its most recent editor to Goscelin.32 The revised Miracles elaborates on the ear- lier version\u2019s reference to Edmund Ironside\u2019s death with a story about Cnut\u2019s reaction:33 Cunque sancionis huius utrinque decreta inuiolabiliter tenerentur, uix euoluto unius anni circulo, a quodam magnatium suorum Eadmundus dolo peremitur. Quod cum scele- ris auctor regi Cnuto nuntiare studuisset, eia inquiens, surge perambula regionem secu- rus, non enim ulterius tuum diminuet Eadmundus imperium, iturus ad ecclesiam cuius deuotus et frequentissimus cultor erat, assistentibus sibi ait, Si mihi fidem debetis, cauete ne uiuum hunc reuertens inueniam. Nimio siquidem dolore saucius fuerat, audita uiri nece iniusta, in hoc nimirum illo famoso rege Dauid haut inferior, qui proditores Isboset filii Saul aduersarii sui morte multari iussit. 29 Gates, \u201cThe \u2018Worcester\u2019 Historians and Eadric Streona\u2019s Execution,\u201d 165\u201380, and \u201cImagin- ing Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,\u201d 125\u201345. 30 Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 280\u201381. 31 Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 504\u20135. 32 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, cxiv\u2013cxxvii. 33 In the unique manuscript of the fullest surviving version of Herman\u2019s text (British Library, Cotton MS. Tiberius B.II), the section where Herman presumably noted Edmund\u2019s death has been erased, and a later hand of the early thirteenth century has inserted the detail that he was killed by Eadric\u2019s treachery. The addition also gives the date and place of Edmund\u2019s death, but does not mention Cnut\u2019s punishment of Eadric: see Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Li- cence and trans. Lockyer, 26\u201329.","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 201 [After both parties had resolutely stuck to the treaty for almost a year, one of Edmund\u2019s magnates treacherously killed him. When the perpetrator of this crime hurried to announce it to King Cnut, saying, \u201cQuick! Go, and tour the country in safety, for no more shall Ed- mund diminish your power,\u201d Cnut, who was heading to church, being a devout and assidu- ous worshipper, said to his companions: \u201cIf you are loyal to me, see that I do not return and find this man alive.\u201d For he was sorely grieved to hear of the other man\u2019s unjust mur- der, and his reaction lived up to the precedent of the famous king David, who sentenced the men who betrayed and killed Ishbosheth, son of his enemy Saul, to death.]34 This writer does not name Eadric, and the feature of the ambiguous dialogue does not appear here; Cnut\u2019s command to punish the murderer could not be more explicit. However, there are some parallels with the Encomium\u2019s framing of the story in the contrast between the murderer who betrays Edmund and Cnut\u2019s command to his followers that they should punish him \u201cif you are loyal to me,\u201d reminiscent of the Encomium\u2019s interpretation of the incident as a lesson to retainers to be faithful, not faithless, to their king. Cnut\u2019s order provides a clear and definitive statement of what such loyalty to the king should mean. What is particularly interesting about this version of the story is its place within a longer narrative of Cnut\u2019s reign which attempts to show how he became a just and pious king. The episode is in keeping with this text\u2019s presentation of Cnut as a devout Christian ruler, \u201ctam pius, tam benignus, tam religionis amator\u201d (con- scientious, liberal, and devoted to religion), but also with its implication that there was something surprising, even unnatural, in his becoming so.35 In post-Conquest tradition at Bury St. Edmunds, Cnut was commemorated as a generous patron and refounder of the abbey,36 and there is evidence to suggest that Cnut did indeed take a particular interest in patronizing the cult of St. Edmund, apparently even linking it to his own conquest: he supported the building of a new church there, which was consecrated on the anniversary of the Battle of Assandun.37 Post-Conquest texts from the abbey make much of the link to this royal patron, and attempt to explain it and underline its significance by drawing a sharp con- trast between Cnut and his father, Sveinn. In the two versions of the Miracles of St. Edmund, Sveinn appears as an arrogant, hostile pagan, imposing unreasonable de- mands on the abbey as well as violently attacking the region. It is suggested that there was a particular enmity between Sveinn and St. Edmund, and Herman is the first author to tell the story of how the spirit of St. Edmund appeared to Sveinn and 34 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188\u201389. 35 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188\u201389. 36 Foot, \u201cThe Abbey\u2019s Armoury of Charters,\u201d 42\u201346, and Gransden, Legends, Tradition and History in Medieval England, 89\u201393. 37 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 142\u201343, and Marafioti, The King\u2019s Body, 206\u201312.","202 Eleanor Parker suddenly struck him dead. The expanded version of the Miracles adds some color- ful details to this narrative, including a speech in which Edmund offers Sveinn a spear instead of the tribute demanded.38 This story was to be a highly influential one, shaping the view of Sveinn taken by John of Worcester and other twelfth- century historians;39 it helped to establish the idea that Cnut\u2019s behavior as a Chris- tian king was best understood as a contrast to the paganism of his father \u2013 as a reaction to, or even an atonement for, ancestral sins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a point on which the post-Conquest narrative sources differ considerably from those more closely associated with Cnut\u2019s court: the Encomium presents Sveinn as a wise and much-loved king who, on his deathbed and in his last words to his son, \u201cexhorted him much concerning the government of the kingdom and the zealous practice of Christianity, and, thanks be to God, committed the royal sceptre to him, the most worthy of men\u201d (Cui dum multa de regni gubernaculo multaque hortare- tur de Christianitatis studio, Deo gratias illi uirorum dignissimo sceptrum commisit regale.)40 Similarly, the king\u2019s skalds, as Roberta Frank puts it, never \u201chesitate to observe that Cnut was his father\u2019s son.\u201d41 It seems, however, that post-Conquest writers at Bury St. Edmunds per- ceived a disparity between the behavior of Sveinn and his son, their devout pa- tron, and saw it as something which had to be explained. Both versions of the Miracles set Cnut\u2019s behavior in the context of his father\u2019s wickedness, empha- sizing the surprising and unnatural quality of Cnut\u2019s success as king. \u201cMirantur homines quod de amara immo toxicata radice tam mellifluum germen pullulare potuerit, sed nature legibus libera conditoris nature potestas non angustatur. Iustum siquidem est, ut creatoris arbitrio creatura famuletur,\u201d Goscelin com- ments; \u201cMen were amazed that a shoot so sweet could sprout from a root that bitter, even poisonous, but the unlimited power of nature\u2019s Creator is not bound by nature\u2019s laws.\u201d42 Herman makes the same point by twice using the image of the wolf: he says that Cnut did not imitate his father\u2019s wickedness, thus proving the truth of a proverb, \u201cnequaquam lupum sicut putatur tam mag- num fore\u201d (The wolf is not nearly so big as he is made out to be),43 and he also includes a short verse: 38 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 152\u201355. 39 Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 476\u201377. 40 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 14\u201315. See Sawyer, \u201cSwein Forkbeard and the Historians,\u201d 26\u201340. 41 Frank, \u201cKing Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,\u201d 112. 42 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188\u201389. 43 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 40\u201341.","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 203 Que Saulum mutauit in Paulum in eodem lupum magnum, nunc habet ferum hominem in Christianissimum regem. [He who changed the great wolf Saul into Paul has now made a wild man into a most Christian king.]44 The image of a wolf acting against its nature is one found prominently in the hagi- ography of St. Edmund, in the form of the wolf who famously guarded the head of the saint. With this language Herman absorbs Cnut into the central imagery of Ed- mund\u2019s cult, as the wild barbarian king, like the wolf, is converted to the venera- tion of St. Edmund. This follows on from these texts\u2019 representation of the Danes as arrogant and hostile by nature, a point illustrated not only by Sveinn but also by two further stories of proud Danes punished by the intervention of St. Edmund.45 Such a view of the Danes is perhaps unsurprising within the hagiography of a saint killed by a Viking army, but it provides an important context for these texts\u2019 view of Cnut as patron and as king. By nature, they suggest, Cnut might have been expected to be like his father, and so it is almost a miracle that he is not \u2013 a mani- festation of the power of God and St. Edmund. The story of Cnut\u2019s punishment of Edmund Ironside\u2019s killer, then, serves as a turning point within the narrative, marking the difference between Cnut and the text\u2019s other Danish characters. Cnut\u2019s words come as a surprise to the reader, as they do to the murderer, and they set the scene for a new kind of interaction between the Danish king and the abbey. The Twelfth Century and Beyond It is perhaps this element of surprise, as much as the justice of Eadric\u2019s punish- ment, that made the story of his death so popular. It is particularly demonstrated in versions which contain the ambiguous dialogue, in which the king\u2019s words be- come the focus as they reveal an unexpected meaning. The kind of dialogue found in the Encomium does not appear again until Henry of Huntingdon\u2019s Historia An- glorum, and though there does not seem to be a direct connection between Henry\u2019s version and that in the Encomium, there are other parallels between the two ac- counts: as Gates notes, Henry\u2019s Historia is also the first source after the Encomium 44 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 42. 45 Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, xxxvii\u2013xxxviii (Licence\u2019s comments on the characterization of Danes in the Miracles), 36\u201337, 56\u201359.","204 Eleanor Parker to say that Eadric was beheaded, making his death a formal execution rather than the political murder described by the Worcester historians.46 This suggests that Henry may have been following a different tradition which was closer to that re- corded in the Encomium, though Henry\u2019s account also differs from the Encomium in several key respects. There is no role here for Eir\u00edkr, and there is no room for doubt that Eadric was responsible for Edmund\u2019s death (although in this case it is his son who carries out the murder). Eadric goes to Cnut and tells him what has happened, and they have a brief dialogue: Edricus igitur ad regem Cnut ueniens, salutauit eum dicens, \u201cAue, solus rex.\u201d Cui cum rem gestam denudasset, respondit rex, \u201cEgo te ob tanti obsequii meritum, cunctis Anglo- rum proceribus reddam celsiorem.\u201d Iussit ergo eum excapitari, et caput in stipite super celsiorem Lundonie turrim figi. [Then Eadric came to King Cnut and saluted him, saying, \u201cHail, sole king!\u201d When he dis- closed what had happened, the king answered, \u201cAs a reward for your great service, I shall make you higher than all the English nobles.\u201d Then he ordered him to be beheaded, and his head to be fixed on a stake on London\u2019s highest tower.]47 This recalls the Encomium\u2019s play on the ambiguity of Eadric\u2019s anticipated re- ward, but takes it one step further in having Cnut explicitly promise to make him \u201chigher\u201d (celsior), exploiting the double meaning of being physically and socially \u201chigh.\u201d Henry makes particularly effective use of stories which involve this kind of direct speech, and they cluster in the section of Book 6 dealing with the early eleventh century.48 This narrative about Cnut is one of two such epi- sodes, placed at the beginning and end of his reign; the second is the famous story of his demonstration that he could not control the waves, and the two sto- ries act as introduction and conclusion to a reign Henry presents as one of un- paralleled success and royal splendor. From the twelfth century onwards, many elaborations begin to appear as to the manner of Edmund\u2019s death and the punishment of his murderer.49 William of Malmesbury tells how Eadric was \u201ciussu regis arte qua multos frequenter cir- cumuenerat ipse quoque conuentus\u201d (by the king\u2019s command entrapped in his turn by the same trick that he had frequently used in the past to entrap many others.)50 Gaimar describes a complicated machine supposedly used to kill 46 Gates, \u201cImagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,\u201d 137\u201338. 47 Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 360\u201363. 48 For other examples, see Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, cv\u2013cvi. 49 See Wright, Cultivation of Saga, 205\u201312. 50 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 320\u201321; see Gates, \u201cImagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,\u201d 127\u201334.","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 205 Edmund, and has Cnut himself behead the traitor with an axe and throw the body in the Thames.51 Neither of these versions contains an ambiguous dia- logue, although in each case Cnut has a speech explaining that he is punishing Eadric for treason. The dialogue does, however, appear in a number of twelfth- and thirteenth- century texts, in Anglo-Norman and Middle English as well as in Latin, and it seems to have had popular appeal. In Walter Map\u2019s account, the murderer and his motive are both very different: the murderer is not Eadric, but a servant who is angry because Edmund has refused him some property. Nevertheless, the am- biguous dialogue remains, with Cnut asking \u201cQuis michi tam amicus extitit, ut faciam eum precelsum pre consortibus suis?\u201d (Who has been so much my friend, that I may set him on high above all his fellows?) The murderer proudly con- fesses, and \u201crex eum sublime<m> rapi fecit, et in altissima quercu suspendi\u201d (the king had him caught up on high and hanged on the tallest oak.)52 In the thir- teenth-century version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, which largely follows Gaimar\u2019s telling of the story, an ambiguous dialogue, not found in Gaimar, adds the wordplay on \u201creward\u201d (guerdoun) found in the Encomium and in Henry of Huntingdon.53 In English texts, the wordplay instead tends to focus on the broad range of meaning covered by Middle English \u201cheigh,\u201d incorporating both \u201clofty, elevated\u201d and \u201cexalted, powerful.\u201d In Robert of Gloucester\u2019s version of the story, for instance, Cnut\u2019s wordplay is taken to virtuosic extremes: it is extended to in- clude the promise that the villain will not only get his proper \u201cmede\u201d and be made a \u201chey mon,\u201d but will also be given \u201cauauncement\u201d and will never again need to care for food or clothing. All these promises are fulfilled when he is exe- cuted and his head is displayed high on the Tower of London.54 Despite the multiplicity of versions of the story of Edmund\u2019s death, Cnut is never presented as the guilty party; he is seen as Edmund\u2019s avenger and the execu- tor of justice. This is a remarkable contrast to the view of the incident found in Old Norse historiographical tradition, where a number of sources share the idea that Eadric was responsible for Edmund\u2019s death, but say, as no English source does, that the murder was performed on Cnut\u2019s orders. In Kn\u00fdtlinga saga, for instance, it is said that Eadric took money from Cnut in exchange for killing Edmund.55 Kn\u00fdt- linga saga was written in Iceland in the second half of the thirteenth century, and 51 Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Short, 238\u201345 (lines 4399\u2013484). 52 De Nugis Curialium, ed. James, rev. Brooke and Mynors, 430\u201333. 53 Prose Brut Chronicle, ed. and trans. Marvin, 216\u201319. 54 Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. Wright, I, 462\u201365. 55 Danakonunga s\u00f6gur, ed. Bjarni Gu\u00f0nason, 119\u201320 (Kn\u00fdtlinga saga, chap. 16); see also \u00d3l\u00e1fs saga helga, by Snorri Sturluson, in Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni A\u00f0albjarnarson, 33 (chap. 26).","206 Eleanor Parker may have drawn on a now-lost Kn\u00fats saga; it is possible that the detail of Eadric\u2019s bribe derives from this source, or it may have been the author\u2019s own inference.56 The idea that Cnut was involved in Edmund\u2019s death might have seemed a natural conclusion to draw from the timing of events, and it is in accord with how Norse writers tend to view Cnut, as a canny political operator given to unscrupulous means of achieving his aims. The divergence between the two traditions highlights how surprisingly con- sistent the post-Conquest English sources are in their positive or at least neutral view of Cnut\u2019s role, however much the other details of the story vary. Even within narratives more critical of Cnut, this act is interpreted favorably. For the author of the South English Legendary version of the life of Edward the Confes- sor, avenging Edmund Ironside\u2019s death was the only good thing Cnut ever did: & \u00feei he were lu\u00feerman an gode dede he dude do For me ne mai neuer traitors do to moche wo.57 [And though he was a wicked man, he did perform one good deed; for one can never cause traitors too much suffering.] The widespread popularity of this episode means that it played an important role in the construction of the largely positive reputation Cnut achieved in post- Conquest sources. The story is usually presented as an example of his swift and decisive justice, establishing a link between the new king and his heroic prede- cessor, Edmund Ironside. Conclusion: Reading Cnut What, then, was the appeal of this popular story, and what did it contribute to later interpretations of Cnut? The grim humor of the king\u2019s pun must have at- tracted such widespread repetition because it seemed so neatly to underline the justice of Eadric\u2019s punishment and its aptness for his supposed crime: in a su- preme example of poetic justice, the deceiver is deceived. But it presents Cnut in a particular way, too: he appears not only as an executor of justice, but as a quick-thinking, adaptive, linguistically creative king. He is a man who can think, act, and change rapidly, and whose decisions are hard to predict.58 56 For discussion see Danakonunga s\u00f6gur, ed. Bjarni Gu\u00f0nason, ciii. 57 Verse Life of Edward the Confessor, ed. Moore, lxiv\u2013lxv (comment) and 6 (lines 181\u201382). 58 See also Goeres and North earlier in this volume, pp. 12\u201317.","Chapter 9 \u201cIn London, Very Justly\u201d 207 In linking Cnut with interpretative ambiguity, the story may reflect some of the difficulty later historians faced as they attempted to make sense of Cnut at this moment of transition, at the point when he changes from Viking invader to Christian king of England. Cnut is not an easy king to read. Medieval historians, like modern scholars, seem to have puzzled over the question of how to connect the different aspects of his identity; they must have wondered how to explain the process by which this young Viking, after the years of Anglo-Danish warfare so plentifully recorded in their sources, swiftly established himself as a king ac- ceptable to the English. A story which hinges on the difficulty of reading Cnut, then, serves a useful function in dramatizing that transition, rather than attempt- ing to explain it directly. In a narrative like Henry of Huntingdon\u2019s, the Eadric episode functions in a similar way to the conversion stories other twelfth-century historians associate with Cnut, in which some startling event reforms the king from his previous pagan barbarity into a pious Christian monarch; William of Malmesbury\u2019s story of how Cnut was miraculously punished for his insolence to St. Edith (Eadgyth) of Wilton is probably the most famous example of this type.59 In Henry\u2019s Historia Anglorum, Cnut is apparently not in need of moral reform, but the story of Eadric\u2019s death, set at a crucial moment very early in Cnut\u2019s reign, similarly bridges the narrative gap between the years of conflict between the En- glish and the Danes before Cnut\u2019s accession and the new state of affairs during his reign. It provides a turning point in the interpretation of Cnut, one which pivots precisely on the ambiguity to which Eadric falls victim. Until this moment Eadric, like any reader of the Historia Anglorum\u2019s account of Cnut\u2019s violent conquest, might justifiably interpret Cnut as a tyrant king who would rejoice in his rival\u2019s murder. His unexpected reaction, revealed within the space of one multivalent sen- tence, marks the beginning of a new phase, as Cnut makes the transition from Vi- king raider to Christian ruler, providing a new framework within which to read the subsequent story of Cnut\u2019s successful reign. 59 Gesta Pontificum, ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, I, 298\u2013301; for discussion see Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 39\u201341, and Parker, \u201cPilgrim and Patron.\u201d","","Barbara Yorke Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment This chapter will examine the surviving references to Cnut and his involvement with Winchester, finding that it was a rather less significant place for him than has often been suggested \u2013 until the very end of his reign, when it was chosen as his burial place. The development of a family mausoleum for Cnut in Old Minster, Winchester, helped convey the message that his family were the legiti- mate successors of West Saxon kings who were also buried there. But who car- ried such ideas forward? The desire of modern commentators to connect Cnut with Winchester may have led to a downplaying of the role of his queen, Emma, whose links with the city, and alliances with certain bishops of Win- chester, were more deeply rooted and longer-lasting. Introduction That Winchester was an important royal and ecclesiastical center by the time Cnut became king of England is already well established in the secondary liter- ature. In histories of Winchester, Cnut takes his place within a succession of royal patrons of the city and its major ecclesiastical foundations.1 In studies of Cnut\u2019s reign, his relationship with Winchester has been used to illustrate how the king negotiated his relations with the Anglo-Saxon establishment, and how he situated himself as a Christian ruler in the West Saxon tradition through gifts to major churches.2 Three factors, in particular, have made Cnut\u2019s relation- ship with Winchester seem especially significant. First, there is his burial in the Anglo-Saxon cathedral known as the Old Minster (see Figure 10.1), together with members of his family, which revived a tradition of royal burial in Win- chester that may stretch back to the seventh century. Second, there is the undoubted fact that Winchester has produced a greater concentration of Scandinavian sculpture and artefacts dating to the first half of 1 Turner, Winchester, 11\u201319; Beaumont James, Winchester, 62\u201364; Ottaway, Winchester, 205\u201310. 2 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 82\u201391, 133\u201360; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 45\u201352, 94\u2013106. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9781501513336-011","210 Barbara Yorke Figure 10.1: The Winchester Cathedral mortuary chest bearing the names of King Cnut and Queen Emma. Photograph \u00a9 John Crook. the eleventh century than anywhere else in southern England, with the possible exception of London (see Figures 10.3 and 10.5). Extrapolating from these finds and the long history of Winchester as a city with royal connections, Matthew Townend suggested that Winchester was the main center of court culture dur- ing the reign of Cnut, the place, in other words, where the skaldic poems com- posed during the 1020s in praise of Cnut should be contextualised.3 Finally, the one manuscript portrait of Cnut that has survived is to be found in a Winchester manuscript. This is the famous illustration that appears as the frontispiece to the Liber Vitae of New Minster, in Winchester, of Cnut and his wife Emma (whom the English called \u00c6lfgifu) presenting a golden cross to this monastery (Figure 10.2).4 The frequent reproduction of this illustration in books and articles relating to Cnut, together with that of the mortuary chest bearing his name from Winchester cathedral (Figure 10.1), has served to reinforce an impression of the centrality of Winchester to his reign. Is there anything that a chapter on Cnut and Winchester can add to this well-established story? Although certain \u201cfacts,\u201d such as his burial in the city and the presence there of Scandinavian sculpture, are unassailable, there are other \u201cfacts\u201d which have perhaps been too readily assumed rather than demon- strated. How often can Cnut be shown to have been in Winchester? Were there periods of his reign in which Winchester was more significant to him than in others? How did his patronage of Winchester\u2019s religious houses compare with 3 Townend, \u201cContextualising the Kn\u00fatsdr\u00e1pur.\u201d 4 British Library, London, Stowe 944; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes.","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 211 Figure 10.2: Cnut the Great and Queen Emma present a cross to the New Minster, Winchester. Vitae of the New Minster 1031, prefatory image, BL Stowe 944, fol 6r. Photograph: British Library.","212 Barbara Yorke that of other major ecclesiastical communities? Can we distinguish Cnut\u2019s role in Winchester from what the bishops and abbots of Winchester wished it to be, either during his reign or retrospectively? Do we need to distinguish Cnut\u2019s role in Winchester from those of others associated with him, such as Queen Emma, their son Harthacnut, and Earl Godwine of Wessex? These are some of the is- sues that will be explored below, issues that must be considered before we can judge as fully as is possible the relationship between Cnut and Winchester. Winchester before Cnut Before going further into this analysis, it is necessary to review something of Winchester\u2019s history prior to Cnut\u2019s succession and to consider how the city would have appeared to him. Fortunately, it is not necessary to discuss the ear- lier Anglo-Saxon evidence in detail because we have the excellent overviews of Martin Biddle, whose major research excavations in the city between 1961 and 1971 provide the foundation for much of what can be said about its early his- tory.5 Equally important are surviving documents produced by Winchester\u2019s two major male religious houses, the Old and New Minsters, though one also has to recognize that these houses were not above adjusting aspects of their history to reflect changing circumstances, or ideals, rather than reality.6 We can note the importance of Winchester in the Roman past as Venta Belgarum, and how its Roman origins are likely to have been a major reason for the choice of Winchester as the new center of the West Saxon see ca. 660, when its loca- tion at Dorchester-on-Thames was no longer tenable.7 Although the Roman street system was lost during the major retraction of settlement in the fifth and sixth centuries, its walls were a more enduring legacy and a major reason for Winchester becoming a major defensive site (\u201cburh\u201d) during the period of Viking attacks in the ninth century. Winchester is one of the largest burhs listed in the Burghal Hidage,8 and Martin Biddle\u2019s excavations, combined with contemporary charter evidence, have suggested that a grid of streets was laid out at the same 5 In addition to the annual interim reports published in The Antiquaries Journal (1964\u20131975), see in particular Biddle, \u201cWinchester: Development of an Early Capital\u201d and \u201cStudy of Win- chester,\u201d and Biddle and Keene, Winchester Town Atlas; see also Ottaway, Winchester. 6 Miller, Charters of New Minster; Rumble, Property and Piety; the charters of Old Minster have not yet been published in their entirety, but have been studied in detail in Rumble, Codex Wintoniensis. 7 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cVenta to Wintancaestir\u201d; Ottaway, Winchester, 75\u2013204. 8 Defence of Wessex, ed. Hill and Rumble.","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 213 time as the refurbishment of defenses (Map 10.1).9 King Alfred (871\u2013899) was the obvious choice to be credited as the progenitor of the scheme, but more recent ex- cavations at Staple Gardens in the north-west of the walled city, and in particular a series of radio-carbon dates from the site, have suggested that the refurbishment of Winchester began earlier: around the middle of the ninth century, that is, prob- ably during the reigns of Alfred\u2019s father, \u00c6thelwulf (839\u2013858), and his elder broth- ers \u00c6thelbald (855\u2013860) and \u00c6thelbert (860\u2013865).10 Some of the work is likely to have been carried out during the time when Swithun was bishop of Winchester (852\u2013862). An eleventh-century Latin poem credits Swithun with the rebuilding of the town\u2019s east gate.11 King Alfred undoubtedly deserves credit for establishing an integrated system of burhs garrisoned from the surrounding countryside for which Winchester may have provided a blueprint.12 The family of Alfred also founded major new religious houses in the city; here the main initiator was Alfred\u2019s son, King Edward the Elder (899\u2013924). Ed- ward\u2019s mother, Ealhswith, following her husband\u2019s death, began the founda- tion of a nunnery on an estate she possessed in the city. However, as Ealhswith herself died in 901, much of the work on the Nunnaminster is likely to have been carried forward by her son Edward.13 Edward was the active founder of New Minster immediately to the north of the cathedral site of Old Minster (see Map 10.1), though the new religious community may have been developed from a more modest foundation created by Alfred for his Frankish adviser Grim- bald.14 New Minster seems to have been intended from the first to be the burial church of Edward and his family, and the body of Alfred was moved there from Old Minster, which had previously been used intermittently for royal burials.15 New Minster seems to have been a major basilican church of Carolingian type, while Old Minster beside it was a smaller, cruciform church built at the time of its foundation in the seventh century (although it seems to have been given a more impressive western fa\u00e7ade soon after the foundation of New 9 Biddle, \u201cStudy of Winchester,\u201d 119\u201326; Ottaway, Winchester, 205\u201319. 10 Ford and Teague, Winchester, A City in the Making, esp. 187\u2013211. 11 Cult of St. Swithun, ed. Lapidge, 781\u201382. 12 Brooks, \u201cCrucible of Defeat.\u201d 13 Scobie and Qualmann, Nunnaminster; Foot, Veiled Women II, 243\u201352; Rumble, Property and Piety, 45\u201349; Ottaway, Winchester, 226\u201327. 14 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 1\u20137; Rumble, Property and Piety, 50\u201364; Miller, Charters of New Minster, xxv\u2013xxviii, 12\u201345 (nos. 2\u20137). 15 The burial of \u00c6thelwulf is uniquely described in the Annals of St. Neots as having been in Steyning in Sussex, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 855 records his burial place as Win- chester. The implication can perhaps be drawn that \u00c6thelwulf\u2019s body had been transferred from Steyning to Winchester by the time the Chronicle annals had been compiled in early 890s.","214 Barbara Yorke Map 10.1: Plan of Late Saxon Winchester (north at the top). \u00a9 Martin Biddle.","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 215 Minster).16 The major rebuilding of Old Minster occurred during the episcopate of the formidable Bishop \u00c6thelwold (963\u2013984), who reformed all three major reli- gious communities in Winchester as monastic foundations and spearheaded major ecclesiastical reforms in the country as a whole.17 Kings were patrons of \u00c6thelwold, but he was undoubtedly the main architect of the transformation of the religious quarter of Winchester. One may note here that although both kings and bishops were major patrons in Winchester, relations between them were not always harmonious. A significant factor in Edward\u2019s foundation of New Minster may have been the poor relations of both his father and himself with Bishop De- newulf of Winchester (878\u00d7879\u2013908).18 The support of Denewulf\u2019s successor Fri- thestan (909\u2013932\u00d7933) for the sons from King Edward\u2019s second marriage may have been a significant reason why two sons from Edward\u2019s first and third mar- riages were buried outside Winchester, at Malmesbury in Wiltshire and Glaston- bury in Somerset respectively.19 One could go on, if space permitted, but it is perhaps sufficient to say that there were turbulent politics during the tenth cen- tury in which the bishops of Winchester were often closely involved, as were leading families among the nobility, for some of whom Winchester was also a major religious and political centre. Whether Cnut was aware of such undercurrents we do not know, but he could readily have been informed of them by his Anglo-Saxon advisers, not to mention his wife, Emma, who had been married previously to King \u00c6thelred II (978\u20131016) and had received from him an estate in the center of Winchester in 1012.20 In appearance, Winchester would have conformed to many of Cnut\u2019s expectations of a royal centre, having many of the main features of the royal residence of Jelling in Denmark: de- fenses, monumental religious structures, royal burials, service industries.21 As he traveled further within Europe, Cnut would have appreciated the architectural simi- larities of Winchester with other leading centres of Roman origin. He would even rec- ognize among the dedications of Winchester\u2019s churches some, such as St. Lawrence, St. George, St. Pantaleon, and St. Maurice and his Companions, that were also fa- vored in Ottonian centres, which may have been a sign of the West Saxon dynasty\u2019s 16 Ottaway, Winchester, 222\u201325. 17 Biddle, \u201cFelix Urbs Winthonia\u201d; Bishop \u00c6thelwold, ed. Yorke. 18 Yorke, \u201cBishops of Winchester, Kings of Wessex.\u201d 19 Yorke, \u201c\u00c6thelwold and Politics,\u201d 70\u201374; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 8\u201314; Marafioti, The King\u2019s Body, 56\u201380. 20 Goodman, Goodbegot; Rumble, Property and Piety, 215\u201319; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, esp. 220\u201324. 21 K\u00e4hler Holst, Dengs\u00f8 Jessen, Wulf Andersen, and Pedersen, \u201cLate Viking Royal Constructions.\u201d","216 Barbara Yorke wider family connections.22 Winchester would have been the largest town that Cnut encountered in southern England, apart from London, and the latter may not have possessed such impressive ecclesiastical architecture. Specialist craftsmen, mer- chants, pilgrims, and people from the linked country estates would have been part of its admixture of inhabitants, together with clerics, nuns, and those associated with the administration of the shire.23 Winchester had a number of potential uses or significances for the new Anglo-Danish regime, but how did Cnut make use of it? Cnut in Winchester There almost certainly was a royal residence in Winchester before the time of Cnut, but its existence may only be inferred rather than demonstrated from the surviving written and archaeological evidence.24 Direct references to a royal residence come from the reigns of Edward the Confessor (1042\u20131066) and William I (1066\u20131087); re- cords of the latter\u2019s extensions to the Anglo-Saxon royal palace imply that it lay im- mediately to the west of the Old and New Minsters (see Map 10.1). The public land, for which Edward the Elder needed the permission of the witan before it could be used for the building of New Minster, may have been part of the royal palace site, and the siting of New Minster so close to Old Minster may have been due to the presence of the palace site immediately to the west.25 As Martin Biddle has argued, it is plausible that Winchester possessed a royal residence from the seventh century, when Old Minster was founded, but there has not been the opportunity to examine the putative site archaeologically; as it now lies within the cathedral cemetery, and probably partly under the war memorial, excavation seems a remote possibility. One can point to various occasions of royal assembly prior to the reign of Cnut when use of a royal residence in Winchester would have been appropriate, but one should also note the presence of royal vills within a few miles of the city, for in- stance, at Kings Worthy and King\u2019s Somborne.26 22 Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, I, 106\u201328; Dome \u2013 Gr\u00e4ber \u2013 Grabungen, ed. Freund and K\u00f6ster. 23 Ottaway, Winchester, 209\u201364. 24 Biddle and Keene, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, 289\u201391. See Lapidge, ed., Cult of St. Swithun, 296, n. 194, for an explanation that what was held to be a reference to a palatium in Winchester in Lantfred\u2019s Translatio et Miracula s. Swithuni (chap. 10) might actually refer to a residence not in Winchester. Kolz, in \u201cKingship and Palaces,\u201d 323, suggests that palatium in that context meant \u201c\u2018the court\u2019 as a collection of people, and not the palace as a building.\u201d 25 Rumble, Property and Piety, 50\u201356. 26 Roach, Kingship and Consent.","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 217 One apparently promising reference to Cnut using Winchester as a royal resi- dence should probably be discarded. This is the reference in the late-twelfth-century Winchester Annals of Richard of Devizes, a monk of Winchester cathedral, to Cnut choosing Winchester as his main residence (\u201cregni sui solium habuit in Wintonia\u201d).27 Some of the historical entries in the Winchester Annals were taken from known sour- ces such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, while others (such as the Winchester resi- dence reference) appear plausible, but John Gillingham has demonstrated that it would be unwise to treat the unique material in the Annals as reliable.28 He has shown that Richard was heavily influenced by the pseudo-historical work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose approach he sought to blend with Winchester traditions. Al- though in modern times the historical sections of the Winchester Annals have been printed separately from the seemingly more fantastical earlier sections (that included, for instance, Cerdic\u2019s rededication of a Roman temple in his \u201ccapital of Winchester\u201d to Woden), Gillingham shows how similar preoccupations unite all parts of the work. These include locating within Winchester notable events, such as the recognition of Egbert\u2019s bretwalda-ship in 825, that are not claimed for other places. Richard\u2019s claim that Winchester was Cnut\u2019s seat has verbal echoes of a comparable claim in the Enco- mium Emmae Reginae that refers to London.29 Putting the Winchester Annals to one side, we are left with a meager haul of references to Cnut\u2019s presence in Winchester, although the number is greater than for some earlier kings, especially when it is borne in mind that Cnut spent a con- siderable part of his reign abroad and that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entries for his reign are brief. When it is noted that we possess only one direct reference to King Alfred having been in the city, it can be appreciated that the references we do possess for Cnut may well stand for more numerous unrecorded visits. Never- theless, as they stand, they suggest that Cnut was most engaged with Winchester at the beginning and towards the end of his reign. The most significant reference to Cnut\u2019s presence in Winchester occurs in the preface to his law code I\u2013II Cnut, which indicates that it was issued at a council held at Christmas in Winchester.30 Patrick Wormald estimated that the year must 27 Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, ed. Luard, 15. 28 Gillingham, \u201cRichard of Devizes.\u201d 29 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 22\u201325; in addition, there are verbal echoes of the coronation ordo in which the king was installed in hoc regni solio; see further Marafioti, The King\u2019s Body, 95. 30 Whitelock, \u201cLaws of Wulfstan,\u201d 444\u201352; Wormald, Making of English Law, 345\u201366; Law- son, Cnut: Danes in England, 61\u201363. See also Stafford, \u201cLaws of Cnut,\u201d 179, for a reading that would argue for a preceding meeting of the witan in Winchester, where Cnut might have pro- mulgated part of II Cnut as a condition for his acceptance as king of England.","218 Barbara Yorke have been either 1020 or 1021.31 The law code was in effect a codification and guarantee of existing Anglo-Saxon law, brought together by Archbishop Wulf- stan of York, who had played such a major role in producing the legislation of Cnut\u2019s Anglo-Saxon predecessor \u00c6thelred II. The Winchester assembly may be viewed as the successor to the assembly at Oxford in 1018, at which the Danes and the English reached agreement and Cnut agreed to honor the laws of \u00c6the- lred\u2019s father, King Edgar (957\u2013975). Cnut\u2019s \u201cLetter to the English\u201d of 1020 also promised to uphold established Anglo-Saxon law and traditions.32 The Winches- ter assembly of 1020 or 1021 can therefore be seen as a final stage in the normali- zation of Cnut\u2019s rule in England. The timing of the assembly at a major Christian festival underscored the binding nature of the agreement between Cnut and his English subjects. It was highly appropriate that it should have been held in the premier see of the West Saxons, where both Edgar and \u00c6thelred II as kings of the English had presided over major assemblies.33 The two other potential references to Cnut being in Winchester are of less moment and less certainty, and relate to his patronage of the Winchester min- sters; this will be discussed more fully in the next section. Goscelin\u2019s late- eleventh-century account of the translation and miracles of St. Mildrith (also known as Mildreth, or Mildred) records, as an example of Cnut\u2019s piety, that on one occasion when celebrating Easter in Old Minster, Winchester, Cnut refused to wear his crown and placed it on a crucifix, on Christ\u2019s head, instead.34 Gosce- lin appears to date the event to 1035,35 but Richard Sharpe has argued that Go- scelin\u2019s rather confused chronology would better fit the date 1030.36 Goscelin follows Cnut\u2019s crowning of the crucifix with an account of a visit by him to Rome during which Mildrith saved Cnut from drowning.37 Cnut is known to have visited Rome in 1027, so if Goscelin\u2019s account is to be trusted, the king must have made a second visit to Rome in 1030 or 1035 that is not otherwise recorded.38 There are records of visits by Cnut to Saint-Omer and Cologne that cannot be easily fitted with the 1027 visit to Rome, and so could support the idea of a second visit there, while the D version of the Chronicle for 1031, al- though it has been suggested that its record is for 1027 misplaced, records a 31 Wormald, Making of English Law, 345. 32 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 56\u201364, 82\u201389. 33 Roach, Kingship and Consent, 22\u201323. 34 Rollason, \u201cGoscelin\u2019s Account of St. Mildrith,\u201d 162\u201365 (chap. 6). 35 Barlow, \u201cTwo Notes: Cnut\u2019s Second Pilgrimage.\u201d 36 Sharpe, \u201cDate of St. Mildreth\u2019s Translation.\u201d 37 Rollason, \u201cGoscelin\u2019s Account of St. Mildrith,\u201d 167\u201368 (chap. 10). 38 Barlow, \u201cTwo Notes: Cnut\u2019s Second Pilgrimage.\u201d","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 219 visit to Rome.39 One can see that Goscelin\u2019s account is somewhat problematic, and it is not clear what his source of information was. It may have been one of the oral traditions surrounding Cnut as a pious Christian king that were picked up, and developed further, by Anglo-Norman historians such as Henry of Hun- tingdon, who is otherwise the main source of the story in which Cnut fails to turn the tide.40 Although it is plausible that Cnut celebrated Easter in Old Min- ster towards the end of his reign, the Translatio of St. Mildrith can hardly be seen as cast-iron evidence for his presence in the city. A final possible record of a visit by Cnut to Winchester is also problematic. The frontispiece of the Liber Vitae of New Minster, believed to have been pro- duced in 1031, shows Cnut and Emma presenting a large gold cross to the ad- miring New Minster community with the support and approval of God, his angels, the Virgin Mary, and St. Peter (Figure 10.2). But does the illustration re- cord an actual ceremony at which Cnut and Emma made the gift? The Liber Vitae itself provides no help with the interpretation of the image, and it can only be an inference that, as the gift of the cross is recorded in the frontispiece, it was linked directly with the production of the Liber Vitae.41 A lavish cere- mony of presentation could be seen as part of a narrative of ostentatious piety that has been identified as a feature of Cnut\u2019s kingship.42 The frontispiece presents Cnut and Emma modeled on Ottonian donor portraits, and the act of cross-giving, like the alleged crowning of the crucifix, could be seen as fitting with influences on Cnut\u2019s performance of kingship from Ottonian imperial piety in the latter part of his reign, after his journey to Rome in 1027 and attendance at the coronation of Conrad II.43 However, both the possible performances of ostentatious piety by Cnut on visits to Winchester are plausible but not proven. 39 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 65 (s.a. 1031); Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 102\u20134; Hare, \u201cCnut and Lotharingia,\u201d 269\u201377. 40 Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, VI, 17, 368\u201369; Bolton, Cnut the Great, Appendix 1, 214\u201316. See below for Cnut\u2019s exceptionally good relations with Canterbury, which might help explain the positive cultivation of his memory there. 41 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 39\u201347, for a full discussion of the possibilities. 42 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 117\u201360; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 77\u2013106; Treharne, \u201cPer- formance of Piety.\u201d 43 Gerchow, \u201cPrayers for Cnut,\u201d 222\u201334, Treharne, \u201cPerformance of Piety.\u201d See further discus- sion of the depiction below.","220 Barbara Yorke Cnut\u2019s Patronage of the Winchester Minsters Charters provide a means of assessing how Cnut\u2019s patronage of the Winchester minsters can be compared with his support for other major ecclesiastical communi- ties in England, although Cnut was not especially generous in his land grants to English churches. The Winchester religious houses may have been included in the submission to Cnut at Southampton immediately after the death of King \u00c6thelred: this submission is recorded by John of Worcester.44 Subsequently, \u201cWessex\u201d sub- mitted to Edmund Ironside, but John of Worcester believed that the men of Hamp- shire and Wiltshire fought on the Danish side at the battle of Assandun in 1016, in which their ealdorman \u00c6lfric was killed.45 The Winchester religious communities do not seem to have been among those which Cnut considered had opposed him;46 no reparations are recorded, but he does not seem to have conspicuously rewarded them either. New Minster did succeed in 1019 in securing the restoration of an estate at Drayton, Hampshire, which Cnut had given to a lay claimant, proba- bly a kinsman of the original donors, soon after he had come to power.47 Abbot Byrtm\u00e6r of New Minster is attested as first or second of the listed abbots in charters of Cnut (until his death in 1030), a ranking that implies that he had a significant role in the witan,48 but New Minster received no further gifts of land. Old Minster\u2019s only recorded gift of land from Cnut was a modest estate of three hides at Bishop\u2019s Hull in Somerset granted in 1033.49 A renewal of Old Minster\u2019s privileges is dated to 1035, but seemingly contained no new grants of land.50 The renewal may well have a genuine basis, but like a number of such Old Minster records of grants of privileges it seems to show signs of later improvement. Winchester seems to have fared better from gifts of treasure. The gift of the gold cross to New Minster has already been mentioned. Although the cross is shown as a plain gold object (Figure 10.2), it is usually assumed to be identical to the great jeweled cross of gold and silver that was destroyed in the siege of 44 Chronicle, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 484\u201385. 45 Chronicle, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 486\u201387; see also ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 61 (s.a. 1016). 46 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 86\u201393. 47 Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, 159\u201364 (no. 33). This transaction is considered in greater detail in the chapter by Ryan Lavelle in this volume, pp. 169\u201389. 48 Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, xxxiii. It may not be coincidence that the monasteries of New Minster and Glastonbury, whose abbots consistently head the lists attesting abbots, contained the greatest concentrations of recent royal burials. For the significance attached to royal burials in this period, see Marafioti, The King\u2019s Body. 49 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 972. 50 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, S 976.","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 221 Winchester in 1141.51 William of Malmesbury recorded that, after it was dam- aged in the siege, its remains yielded five hundred marks of silver and thirty of gold.52 Relic donations made by Cnut and Emma are also recorded in the New Minster Liber Vitae.53 A sixteenth-century manuscript records that Cnut also gave \u201cduas imagines magnas auro argentoque bene ornatus\u201d (two large statues beautifully decorated in gold and silver) and four fine vestments.54 It has also been suggested that the splendidly decorated Grimbald Gospels, which were certainly in the possession of New Minster in the eleventh century, were a gift from Cnut.55 They are among the de luxe manuscripts produced by Eadui Basan at Canterbury, which Sandy Heslop has suggested were commissioned by Cnut and Emma.56 Not surprisingly, Cnut and Emma were among the patrons to be remembered in the prayers of the New Minster community, as was also Cnut\u2019s sister Santslave (\u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa).57 Old Minster is also said to have received generous gifts from Cnut. The Win- chester Annals record the gift of a richly decorated shrine for the relics of St. Birinus, the founder of the West Saxon see at Dorchester-on-Thames, whose relics had been moved to Winchester by the early eighth century, as well as a large effigy and silver candelabrum.58 Admittedly, the Winchester Annals have already been referred to as a potentially unreliable source of information, but their claim here is commensurate with the type of gifts recorded for New Min- ster. William of Malmesbury commented that Cnut \u201cWintoniae maxime munifi- centiae suae magnificentiam ostendit, ubi tanta intulit ut moles metallorum terreat aduenarum animos, splendor gemmarum reuerberet intuentium oculos\u201d (exhibited especially at Winchester the munificence of his generosity, where his offerings were such that strangers were alarmed by the masses of precious metal and their eyes dazzled as they look at the flashing gems.)59 However, 51 Historia Novella, ed. King, 102\u20135; Chronicle, III, ed. McGurk, 302\u20133. 52 Historia Novella, ed. King, 102\u20135 (chap. 55); Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 41, citing BL Cotton MS. Vespasian D.IX, fol. 33v. 53 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 105\u20136; some of the relics may have been embedded in the cross. 54 BL Cotton MS. Vespasian D.IX, fol. 32rv; Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 41, n. 179. 55 Pratt, \u201cKings and Books,\u201d 366\u201371. 56 Heslop, \u201cDeluxe Manuscripts,\u201d but see also Gameson, \u201cEarliest English Royal Books,\u201d 20, for reservations about seeing Cnut as a commissioner of books. 57 Liber Vitae, ed., Keynes, 94\u201395; Keynes, \u201cCnut\u2019s Earls,\u201d 64\u201365; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 215\u201316, for the identity of Cnut\u2019s sister, on whom see also Morawiec, pp. 419\u201329, and Gazzoli, pp. 399\u2013417, later in this volume. 58 Annales Monasterii, ed. Luard, 16. 59 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 322\u201323.","222 Barbara Yorke William goes on to say that such gifts were actually organized by Queen Emma from the treasure that was at her disposal. The Winchester minsters may have received some dazzling treasures (per- haps especially because of Emma\u2019s links with Winchester, which are consid- ered more fully below), but the grants of land that would have come directly from Cnut, approved by the witan, are decidedly meager. Other communities were more favored, especially those with saints in whom Cnut seems to have been particularly interested, such as St. Cuthbert at Durham and St. Edmund at Bury.60 The recipient of Cnut\u2019s greatest ecclesiastical patronage was undoubt- edly Canterbury, to which the relics of Archbishop \u00c6lfheah, slain by the Danish army in London in 1012, were translated with much pomp and ceremony by Cnut, Emma, and their son Harthacnut in 1023.61 A major factor in Cnut\u2019s favor- itism towards Canterbury must have been his good working relationship with both Archbishop Lyfing (1013\u20131020) and his successor \u00c6thelnoth (1020\u20131038), for all the likelihood that the latter was the brother of Ealdorman \u00c6thelweard of western Wessex, who had been outlawed by Cnut in 1020.62 Both Lyfing and \u00c6thelnoth were the recipients of far more generous grants of land than had been made to Winchester.63 Cnut is said to have made a visit to Christ Church sometime between 1017 and 1020, during which he laid a charter guaranteeing the archbishop\u2019s freedoms on the altar of Christ Church.64 \u00c6thelnoth was the recipient of even more generous gifts: five separate estates and, it would ap- pear, substantial rights in the port of Sandwich and a royal crown.65 It would also appear that \u00c6thelnoth acted as de facto earl in Kent.66 St. Augustine\u2019s, Canterbury, received a coveted gift of the former royal nunnery site at Minster-in-Thanet including the relics of its premier saint Mildrith.67 Without the existing ties to the Wessex heart- land of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, it must have seemed appropriate to Cnut to focus his patronage on the leader of the English church. Canterbury was undoubtedly the preeminent focus of his involvement with the Church in southern England. 60 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 121\u201322, 142\u201343. 61 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 64 (s.a. 1023); (D), trans. Swanton, 156; \u201cTranslatio Sancti \u00c6legi,\u201d ed. Rumble and trans. Morris. On the initial daring of this translation, see also Goeres and North in this volume, pp. 12\u201317. 62 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 129\u201330, 147\u201350; Brooks, Church of Canterbury, 287\u201396; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 78\u201383. 63 Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury II, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1052\u2013133. 64 Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury II, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1058\u201362 (no. 145). 65 Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury II, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1079\u201398 (no. 151). 66 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 79\u201382. 67 Rollason, \u201cGoscelin\u2019s Account of St. Mildrith.\u201d","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 223 Winchester as Burial Place of Cnut and his Family There was one aspect of Winchester that does seem to have been of personal sig- nificance to Cnut, and that was its history as a place of royal burial. Winchester had been used intermittently for royal burial probably since the seventh century and certainly from the eighth, but its use had never been exclusive and a range of other religious foundations in Wessex had also been used. There was a significant concentration of royal burials at New Minster, which seems to have been founded by King Edward the Elder (899\u2013924) to serve as a place of burial for himself, his father King Alfred (871\u2013899), and his mother Ealhswith, plus other members of his immediate family.68 The burials appear to have been grouped in or around a tomb-structure (\u201csacellum\u201d) that contained the body of Alfred.69 However, with the exception of the burial of King Eadwig (955\u2013957), no other rulers from the dy- nasty had been buried at New Minster. Use of Old Minster for royal burial had been more intermittent, and the most recent king to be interred there was Eadred (946\u2013955).70 Among Cnut\u2019s more immediate predecessors, King Edgar (957\u2013975) had been buried at Glastonbury, which already housed the body of his father, King Edmund I (939\u2013946).71 In 1016 they were joined by the body of Edgar\u2019s grand- son, King Edmund II Ironside, who had ruled for a few months in that year.72 Ed- mund\u2019s father, and the first husband of Emma, King \u00c6thelred II (978\u20131016), had been buried in St. Paul\u2019s, London,73 probably not from any particular connection with the foundation, but rather because he had died in London while Cnut and Edmund Ironside were disputing the throne. It was the first burial of a king of the West Saxon dynasty outside the Wessex heartlands. It seems likely that the concentration of burials of members of Cnut\u2019s family in Old Minster was intended to emulate that of Edward the Elder\u2019s family in New Min- ster. Edward may have been making a political statement through his choice of burials in New Minster, founded at a time when his cousin \u00c6thelwold was still at large and disputing his claim to the throne.74 The new family mausoleum at New Minster can be seen as a claim that from then on, only descendants of King Alfred had the right to rule the enlarged kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons that had come 68 Liber Vitae, ed. Keynes, 2\u20135; Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, xxv\u2013xxxi. 69 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cDanish Royal Burials,\u201d 213. 70 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 45 (s.a. 955). 71 Marafioti, The King\u2019s Body, 65\u201384. 72 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 62 (s.a. 1016); (D), trans. Swanton, 113 (s.a. 1016); Marafioti, The King\u2019s Body, 84\u201398. 73 Keynes, \u201cBurial of King \u00c6thelred at St. Paul\u2019s.\u201d 74 Yorke, \u201cBishops of Winchester\u201d; Lavelle, \u201cPolitics of Rebellion.\u201d","224 Barbara Yorke together during his reign. The body of King Alfred was moved from the Old Min- ster, where it had been placed after his death in 899, to New Minster at (it would seem from a charter reference75) at the earliest opportunity. Left behind at Old Min- ster was King \u00c6thelwulf (839\u2013858), the father of Alfred and grandfather of both Edward and \u00c6thelwold, together with some earlier representatives of the West Saxon royal house.76 The burials of the family of Cnut at Old Minster could simi- larly have been read as marking the start of a new dynasty, but one that was con- nected to earlier rulers and in lawful succession to them. Cnut was buried in Old Minster in 1035 and was subsequently joined by his son Harthacnut (d. 1042), his wife Emma (d. 1052), and nephew Beorn (d. 1049) (see Table 10.1).77 Cnut\u2019s family burial place, like that of Edward the Elder, may also have been inaugurated by the transfer of a significant royal figure, that of the king with whom he had ruled briefly, Edmund Ironside. Burial alongside Edmund\u2019s body would have provided a tangible demonstration that members of the Anglo-Danish dynasty were legitimate successors of the West Saxon royal house. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Edmund was buried at Glastonbury in 1016, but there was a strong medieval tradi- tion in Winchester that Edmund was buried in the cathedral; a Purbeck marble slab within the presbytery, probably of later twelfth-century date, records that \u201cHic iacet Edmundus rex E\u00feeldredi regis filius\u201d (Here lies King Edmund son of King \u00c6thelred) (see Figure 10.3).78 There are similar inscriptions recording the burials of Earl Beorn (nephew of Cnut) and Duke Richard (son of William I).79 The case for the genuineness of the tradition of Edmund\u2019s burial, or rather re- burial, in Winchester has been made by Martin Biddle and Birthe Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle and need not be rehearsed in detail here. William of Malmesbury records that in 1032 Cnut visited the grave of Edmund Ironside on November 30, the anniversary of Edmund\u2019s death, and laid a pallium decorated with peacocks on his tomb.80 This would have been a likely occasion for the remains of Edmund, or some of them, to have been transferred to Winchester. The inclusion of Edmund in Cnut\u2019s family group recalls the claim in the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that in their meeting at Alney in 1016 Cnut and Edmund \u201cwurdon feolagan \u204a wedbro\u00f0ra\u201d 75 Charters of New Minster, ed. Miller, 26\u201330 (no. 4). 76 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker (s.a. 855); Yorke, \u201cBurial of Kings.\u201d 77 Crook, \u201c\u2018A Worthy Antiquity\u2019\u201d; Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cDanish Royal Burials.\u201d 78 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cDanish Royal Burials,\u201d 224\u201327. 79 All manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that record the murder of Earl Beorn in 1049 also record that his body was disinterred and taken to Old Minster for burial \u201cwith Cnut his uncle.\u201d See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 113\u201314 (s.a. 1049). 80 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 330\u201331 (chap. 184).","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 225 Figure 10.3: The second half of the inscriptions of the later-twelfth-century Purbeck marble tomb-slabs for (upper) Earl Beorn and Richard, son of William I, and (lower). Edmund Ironside, son of \u00c6thelred II. Photograph \u00a9 John Crook. (became partners and sworn brothers).81 In a charter of privileges for Glastonbury Cnut is said to have made the grant \u201cindulgentiam criminum meorum et relaxa- tionem peccaminum fratris mei regis Eadmundi\u201d (for the indulgence of my trans- gressions and the forgiveness of the sins of my brother King Edmund).82 The charter is undoubtedly spurious, but may have a genuine basis. The claim that Cnut regarded Edmund as a brother is also made by William of Malmesbury.83 It seems likely that the burials of the family of Cnut were made originally in the eastern arm of the Old Minster. It was near there that the famous panel from a frieze was excavated. It has been interpreted by the Biddles as a scene from the legend of Sigmundr, which is elsewhere known from the V\u01eblsunga Saga, and as one likely to have been linked with the family\u2019s place of burial (see Figure 10.4).84 The connections of that legend with characters in the extended West Saxon royal genealogy (and allusions to it in the poem Beowulf) would have been an- other means of linking the Danish and West Saxon dynasties. The burials of the family of Cnut may then have been transferred intact from the Old Minster to the cathedral in 1093.85 The body of Richard, the second son of William I who 81 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 62 (s.a. 1016); (D), trans. Swanton, 152 (s.a. 1016: \u201cbecame partners and pledged-brothers\u201d). 82 Charters of Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Kelly, 528\u201332 (no. 61). 83 Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 330\u201331 (chap. 184); possibly William was drawing on the charter evidence. 84 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cExcavated Sculpture from Winchester,\u201d 314\u201322 (no. 88). On this see also Simon Thomson in this volume, pp. 235\u201353. 85 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cDanish Royal Burials,\u201d 219\u201328.","226 Barbara Yorke Figure 10.4: Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture from Old Minster, Winchester, showing what may be the episode of Sigmund and the wolf known from V\u01eblsunga saga. Photograph \u00a9 John Crook. was killed in an accident in the New Forest in ca. 1070, had probably been added to the group (see Table 10.1), and transferred with them.86 Subsequently associated with them was the body of Richard\u2019s brother, Wil- liam II Rufus (1087\u20131100), who was killed in the New Forest.87 In this way, the Normans in turn stressed their legitimate rights to the English throne through burial associations with their Anglo-Danish connections. The plans for a special burial place for Cnut in Old Minster would have been aided by the appointment in 1032 of \u00c6lfwine, a former royal priest, as bishop of Winchester.88 Indeed, one might ask at this point whose idea the fam- ily burial place in Old Minster was. Was \u00c6lfwine appointed to Winchester to carry the plan through, or was it an idea that emerged after his appointment, 86 Biddle and Kj\u00f8lbye-Biddle, \u201cDanish Royal Burials,\u201d 224. 87 Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History V, ed. Chibnall, 282\u201383 (X.xiv); Barlow, William Rufus, 419. 88 Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 149; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 101\u20132. In \u201cGoscelin\u2019s Ac- count of St. Mildrith,\u201d ed. Rollason, 166, \u00c6lfwine is descibed as the amicus of King Cnut.","Chapter 10 Cnut\u2019s Interaction with Winchester: A Reassessment 227 Table 10.1: Genealogy showing the relationships of Edmund Ironside, the family of Cnut and the early Norman kings (with those buried in Old Minster, Winchester underlined). Richard II Emma = (1) \u00c6thelred = (2) Cnut \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0r = \u00dalfr d. 1026 d. 1052 Unr\u00e6d d. 1016 d. 1035 (by his first wife) Edmund Ironside d. 1016 Richard III Robert Beorn d. 1049 d. 1027 d. 1035 William Edward Harthacnut d. 1087 d. 1066 d. 1047 Richard William II d. ca.1070 d. 1100 perhaps at his own suggestion? Was his appointment the trigger for its inaugu- ration through the transfer of the remains of Edmund Ironside to Winchester, or did Cnut or those around him, such as Queen Emma, already have reasons to be concerned about his health by 1032, prompting their thoughts to turn to making provision for a suitable burial place and ensuring the succession? Cnut\u2019s Inner Circle and Winchester As we have seen, it is not possible to demonstrate conclusively that Cnut was in Winchester between the major assembly there in 1020 or 1021 and the taking of his body there for burial in 1035, from the location of his death, Shaftesbury Abbey. However, some of Cnut\u2019s close associates had much deeper connections with Winchester that stretched beyond his reign. His wife Emma had had links with the city since 1012, when she was given a substantial holding in the center","228 Barbara Yorke of Winchester by her husband, \u00c6thelred II; this was subsequently known as the \u201cmanor of Goodbegot\u201d (Figure 10.5).89 Figure 10.5: The site of Queen Emma\u2019s manor of Goodbegot in High Street, Winchester today. Photograph \u00a9 Barbara Yorke. The gift was made in 1012 at the height of the Scandinavian attacks and so may have been intended to provide the queen with a safe haven in the walled city. Situated in the High Street, it could also have made a lucrative contribution to her revenue. It is not clear whether Emma lived on this site during all her visits to Winchester, or whether we should envisage her dwelling in the elusive royal palace. After Cnut died, Emma took to Winchester not only his body, but also his treasury, as well as the housecarls who supported the succession of their son Harthacnut.90 We can be certain of the presence of a body of housecarls within Winchester at this time, and any monuments that might be associated with them from Winchester, such as the fragment of a runic inscription from a gravestone 89 Goodman, Manor of Goodbegot; Rumble, Property and Piety, 215\u201319. The part of the \u201chaga\u201d (tenement) that Emma (as Queen \u00c6lfgifu) bequeathed to Old Minster, Winchester, is referred to in a writ of Edward the Confessor, confirming the gift as \u00c6lfrices gode begeaton, probably meaning something like \u201c\u00c6lfric\u2019s good yield\u201d: Biddle and Keene, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, 158\u201359; Rumble, Property and Piety, 220\u201322 (no. 29; see also no. 96). Harmer renders this name \u201c\u00c6lfric Goodsgetter\u2019s,\u201d in Anglo-Saxon Writs, 383\u201385, 399 (no. 111), but the word be-g\u0113ate (wk. m.) is no nomen agentis; it is glossed \u201cacquired property\u201d in DOE (no. 269, 2): https:\/\/tapor.library.utor onto.ca\/doe\/; here it would have to be in the accusative plural. 90 ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 65 (s.a. 1035); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker, 102\u20133 (s.a. 1035)."]