A noble figure he was, that great and wise Canute, the friend of the
famous Godiva, and Leofric, Godiva's husband, and Siward Biorn, the
conqueror of Macbeth; trying to expiate by justice and mercy the dark
deeds of his bloodstained youth; trying (and not in vain) to blend the two
races over which he ruled; rebuilding the churches and monasteries which
his father had destroyed; bringing back in state to Canterbury the body of
Archbishop Elphege--not unjustly called by the Saxons martyr and
saint--whom Tall Thorkill's men had murdered with beef bones and
ox-skulls, because he would not give up to them the money destined for
God's poor; rebuking, as every child has heard, his housecarles' flattery
by setting his chair on the brink of the rising tide; and then laying his
golden crown, in token of humility, on the high altar of Winchester, never
to wear it more. In Winchester lie his bones unto this day, or what of
them the civil wars have left: and by him lie the bones of his son
Hardicanute, in whom, as in his half-brother Harold Harefoot before him,
the Danish power fell to swift decay, by insolence and drink and civil
war; and with the Danish power England fell to pieces likewise.

Canute had divided England into four great earldoms, each ruled, under
him, by a jarl, or earl--a Danish, not a Saxon title.

At his death in 1036, the earldoms of Northumbria and East Anglia--the
more strictly Danish parts--were held by a true Danish hero, Siward Biorn,
alias _Digre_ "the Stout", conqueror of Macbeth, and son of the Fairy
Bear; proving his descent, men said, by his pointed and hairy ears.

Mercia, the great central plateau of England, was held by Earl Leofric,
husband of the famous Lady Godiva.

Wessex, which Canute had at first kept in his own hands, had passed into