Eleanor Parker
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 contrast to his appearances in Scandinavian historiography, Cnut was widely remembered in English tradition as a wise, just, and pious king, his wisdom illustrated by medieval historians through a variety of short and colorful narratives, 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 explores 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 reassessment 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’s reign, describing how “the historian of Cnut, so ill-served by contemporary records, is more fortunate in those produced after his death.”2 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’s time as king, especially where they appear to have had access to earlier sources which no longer survive.3
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 biography 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 exclusion of other kinds of information. In discussing Cnut’s 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’ reading of Cnut, although it is, as he argues, a misconception.5 In particular, he advocates the use of Scandinavian sources – often previously dismissed as late and unreliable evidence – to modify and balance the impression of Cnut produced by the English texts.
Bolton’s arguments are especially significant in light of the current scholarly emphasis on developing a more nuanced, and less Anglocentric, understanding of the political and cultural situation in Cnut’s reign, one which gives greater consideration to the Scandinavian regions of the king’s 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’s reign,6 as well as the work of Elaine Treharne in analyzing the status and function of the English language at Cnut’s court.7 The Encomium Emmae Reginae, one of the earliest and most valuable narrative sources for Cnut’s reign, has also been the subject of important recent work in this regard: closer examination of Emma’s role in commissioning the text, the circumstances of its production, and the author’s 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’s death.8 Against this background, a more subtle understanding of the post-Conquest narrative sources has also become possible: these texts are increasingly understood not as straightforward evidence for Cnut’s activities as king, but as histories whose interpretations 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 attractively coherent narratives of Cnut and his reign.
Justice with a Pun
The story discussed in this chapter relates an incident early in Cnut’s reign, the killing of Eadric Streona – an event usually set in London in 1017, in the immediate 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 1015–1016, 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 – what Simon Keynes has called “an assortment of murders, base stratagems and acts of treachery” – variously including the slaughter on St. Brice’s Day in 1002, the murder of Sveinn Forkbeard’s 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 responsible 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 contemporary source sheds any light on its cause. After Edmund’s 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 Chronicle gives no details of Eadric’s death: the C, D, and E manuscripts of the Chronicle all have only a brief notice in 1017 that “on þisum geare wæs Eadric ealdorman ofslægen,” (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’s reign. All these events are listed before the arrangement of Cnut’s 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’s usual readiness to comment on Eadric’s behavior, there is also no judgment or speculation 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’s death and a very brief comment upon it: here the other deaths included in the earlier versions are not mentioned, but it is said that Eadric was killed “on Lundene swyðe rihlice” (in London, very justly), while the Latin text has only one extra word, “iustissime.”13
The comment on the justice of Eadric’s execution made in this post-Conquest version of the Chronicle, seems to have encouraged the development of a narrative which grew up during the eleventh century around Eadric’s 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 between 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’s 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 1040–1042, during the reign of Harthacnut and after Edward, Emma’s son by Æthelred, had returned to England from two decades of exile in Normandy to live at Harthacnut’s court. There seems to have been an uneasy truce between Edward, his mother, and his 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 English and Scandinavian traditions, and it does not seem to have had any direct influence on later medieval interpretations of Cnut’s 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’s death, which is at once a somewhat plausible anecdote, tied to the particular context of the early years of Cnut’s reign, and a neatly told story with a pithy moral lesson. It is intended to illustrate Cnut’s 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’s 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 pendentes 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, “Qui dominum,” inquit, “tuum decepisti fraude, mihine poteris fidelis esse? Rependam tibi condigna premia, sed ea ne deinceps tibi placeat fallatia.” Et Erico duce suo uocato, “Huic,” ait, “quod debemus persoluito, uidelicet, ne nos decipiat, occidito.” 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 indescribable 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 fraudulent 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, “Shall 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 deception may not subsequently be your pleasure.” And summoning Eiríkr, his commander, he said: “Pay this man what we owe him; that is to say, kill him, lest he play us false.” He, indeed, raised his axe without delay, and cut off his head with a mighty blow, so that soldiers 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 – this “exemplum,” as it is called here – within the Encomium’s narrative of Cnut’s conquest. First, it serves a useful function in the text by standing in for everything that is omitted from the Encomium’s highly selective narrative of the early years of Cnut’s reign. In striking contrast to its detailed account of the conquest itself, the Encomium has very little to say about Cnut’s earliest acts as king: there is no coronation scene, no mention of Cnut’s 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’s marriage – in which Cnut seeks through many kingdoms for a suitable bride before alighting on Emma – the earliest months and years of Cnut’s reign are represented in the Encomium chiefly by this episode dealing with the punishment of Eadric. As a result, it takes on particular significance, becoming emblematic of the establishment of Cnut’s 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’s 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 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 thereafter it became evident to what end God commanded that he should die, for the entire country then chose Knútr 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’s death for Cnut, and to stress that if the timing of Edmund’s death was convenient, it was because of divine intervention, not the act of a traitor. Cnut is presented as Edmund’s 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’s treatment of the idea of shared rule between kings (the text also claims the division was originally Eadric’s proposal, as if further to blacken the suggestion),19 and it echoes the earlier presentation of a discussion between Cnut and his brother Harald about dividing Denmark between them in 1014–1015.20 In both cases the Encomium devotes considerable space to the negotiation of shared rule between two kings, and concludes that it is undesirable and untenable on anything more than a temporary basis. This must have been of pointed relevance at the time of the text’s composition, after Edward’s return to his half-brother’s court. Within this context, the Encomium’s story of Cnut’s punishment of Eadric appears to serve a double purpose: it may have been intended to mollify Edward and his supporters by demonstrating Cnut’s 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 Eiríkr Hákonarson, who is characterized elsewhere in the Encomium as one of Cnut’s most trusted and worthy supporters.21 At the time the Encomium was written, Eiríkr had probably been dead for nearly twenty years,22 so these flattering references to him suggest that the Encomiast’s source was someone at the Anglo-Danish court who remembered the key players of 1016–1017. 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’s reign. Eiríkr’s role, however, also serves to emphasize the moral lesson of the story: this episode is, as the Encomiast points out, an exemplum about loyalty – told so “that soldiers may learn to be faithful, not faithless, to their kings” – and it sets up a direct contrast between the treacherous Eadric and the loyal Eiríkr. In this section of the text Eiríkr, credited with staunch loyalty, stands in contrast not only to Eadric but also to the more complex figure of Thorkell the Tall, about whose allegiance to Cnut the Encomiast makes various contradictory assertions.23
The contrast established between Eadric and Eiríkr 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 multilingual environment where two coexisting vernacular languages played crucial roles in negotiations of power and identity and in royal self-presentation.24 The Encomium’s 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’s wishes – thinking he will be pleased by disloyalty to Edmund – and now Cnut deliberately allows him to misinterpret his words, “I will give you a worthy reward.” By contrast, Eiríkr apparently correctly understands Cnut’s ambiguous command to “pay this man what we owe him,” and becomes the instrument of the king’s justice, immediately executing his orders without hesitation or doubt. The Encomiast offers an explicit gloss on the instruction – “that is to say, kill him” – but it does not seem that Eiríkr needs a translation of his king’s 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’s speech. Although the Encomium does not draw attention to the fact, this story dramatizes an interaction which – if this incident had really taken place – would conceivably have been bilingual; we might picture Cnut switching from English to Danish as he turns from Eadric to Eiríkr. At other moments in the text the Encomium is alert to linguistic difference, at least in place-names and personal names: the author interprets and translates the meaning of the English place-names Sheppey and Assandun,25 as well as explaining that the name Harthacnut, “si ethimologia Theutonice perquiratur” (if the etymology of this is investigated in Germanic), reveals the character of the king, since “Harde” means “‘uelox’ uel ‘fortis’” (“swift” or “strong”).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’s court. She discusses the complex relationship between language and identity in a situation 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’s letter of 1027 “magnificently manifests the inherent contradictions of the king himself” and “evinces a discursive ambivalence that reflects its owner’s voice … simultaneously genuine conversion narrative and Germanic boast.”28 She finds in these texts a kind of deliberate multivalence in Cnut’s presentation of himself as king, especially through his use of language. He was a figure who could be simultaneously read in different ways by his different audiences – an ambiguity which the Encomium’s story of Eadric and Eiríkr 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 historians, arguing that the presentation of Eadric in these texts reflects contemporary anxieties about a predatory aristocracy expropriating church lands, projected back from the Anglo-Norman present onto the Anglo-Saxon past.29 In Hemming of Worcester’s 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 rapacious acquisition of Worcester’s lands; it is here that Eadric’s byname “streona,” (the “acquisitor,”) is first recorded.30 John of Worcester goes further and accuses Eadric of treachery to both Æthelred and Edmund, but neither source says he was responsible for Edmund’s death. For John of Worcester, Cnut’s decision to kill Eadric 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’s behavior or motives; this is a political murder, and if it is just retribution for Eadric’s long history of oppressions, that kind of justice is not consciously a motive on Cnut’s part.
The first post-Conquest source to say that that Edmund was murdered, and to take an interest in Cnut’s response to the killer, is a text written at Bury St. Edmunds around 1100. This is a revised version of Herman’s 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 earlier version’s reference to Edmund Ironside’s death with a story about Cnut’s reaction:33
Cunque sancionis huius utrinque decreta inuiolabiliter tenerentur, uix euoluto unius anni circulo, a quodam magnatium suorum Eadmundus dolo peremitur. Quod cum sceleris auctor regi Cnuto nuntiare studuisset, eia inquiens, surge perambula regionem securus, 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.
[After both parties had resolutely stuck to the treaty for almost a year, one of Edmund’s magnates treacherously killed him. When the perpetrator of this crime hurried to announce it to King Cnut, saying, “Quick! Go, and tour the country in safety, for no more shall Edmund diminish your power,” Cnut, who was heading to church, being a devout and assiduous worshipper, said to his companions: “If you are loyal to me, see that I do not return and find this man alive.” For he was sorely grieved to hear of the other man’s unjust murder, 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’s command to punish the murderer could not be more explicit. However, there are some parallels with the Encomium’s framing of the story in the contrast between the murderer who betrays Edmund and Cnut’s command to his followers that they should punish him “if you are loyal to me,” reminiscent of the Encomium’s interpretation of the incident as a lesson to retainers to be faithful, not faithless, to their king. Cnut’s 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’s reign which attempts to show how he became a just and pious king. The episode is in keeping with this text’s presentation of Cnut as a devout Christian ruler, “tam pius, tam benignus, tam religionis amator” (conscientious, 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 contrast 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 demands 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 suddenly struck him dead. The expanded version of the Miracles adds some colorful 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’s behavior as a Christian king was best understood as a contrast to the paganism of his father – 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’s court: the Encomium presents Sveinn as a wise and much-loved king who, on his deathbed and in his last words to his son, “exhorted 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” (Cui dum multa de regni gubernaculo multaque hortaretur de Christianitatis studio, Deo gratias illi uirorum dignissimo sceptrum commisit regale.)40 Similarly, the king’s skalds, as Roberta Frank puts it, never “hesitate to observe that Cnut was his father’s son.”41
It seems, however, that post-Conquest writers at Bury St. Edmunds perceived a disparity between the behavior of Sveinn and his son, their devout patron, and saw it as something which had to be explained. Both versions of the Miracles set Cnut’s behavior in the context of his father’s wickedness, emphasizing the surprising and unnatural quality of Cnut’s success as king. “Mirantur 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,” Goscelin comments; “Men were amazed that a shoot so sweet could sprout from a root that bitter, even poisonous, but the unlimited power of nature’s Creator is not bound by nature’s laws.”42 Herman makes the same point by twice using the image of the wolf: he says that Cnut did not imitate his father’s wickedness, thus proving the truth of a proverb, “nequaquam lupum sicut putatur tam magnum fore” (The wolf is not nearly so big as he is made out to be),43 and he also includes a short verse:
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 hagiography 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 Edmund’s cult, as the wild barbarian king, like the wolf, is converted to the veneration of St. Edmund. This follows on from these texts’ 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’ 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 – a manifestation of the power of God and St. Edmund. The story of Cnut’s punishment of Edmund Ironside’s killer, then, serves as a turning point within the narrative, marking the difference between Cnut and the text’s other Danish characters. Cnut’s 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’s punishment, that made the story of his death so popular. It is particularly demonstrated in versions which contain the ambiguous dialogue, in which the king’s words become the focus as they reveal an unexpected meaning. The kind of dialogue found in the Encomium does not appear again until Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, and though there does not seem to be a direct connection between Henry’s version and that in the Encomium, there are other parallels between the two accounts: as Gates notes, Henry’s Historia is also the first source after the Encomium 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 recorded in the Encomium, though Henry’s account also differs from the Encomium in several key respects. There is no role here for Eiríkr, and there is no room for doubt that Eadric was responsible for Edmund’s 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, “Aue, solus rex.” Cui cum rem gestam denudasset, respondit rex, “Ego te ob tanti obsequii meritum, cunctis Anglorum proceribus reddam celsiorem.” Iussit ergo eum excapitari, et caput in stipite super celsiorem Lundonie turrim figi.
[Then Eadric came to King Cnut and saluted him, saying, “Hail, sole king!” When he disclosed what had happened, the king answered, “As a reward for your great service, I shall make you higher than all the English nobles.” Then he ordered him to be beheaded, and his head to be fixed on a stake on London’s highest tower.]47
This recalls the Encomium’s play on the ambiguity of Eadric’s anticipated reward, but takes it one step further in having Cnut explicitly promise to make him “higher” (celsior), exploiting the double meaning of being physically and socially “high.” 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 episodes, 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 stories act as introduction and conclusion to a reign Henry presents as one of unparalleled success and royal splendor.
From the twelfth century onwards, many elaborations begin to appear as to the manner of Edmund’s death and the punishment of his murderer.49 William of Malmesbury tells how Eadric was “iussu regis arte qua multos frequenter circumuenerat ipse quoque conuentus” (by the king’s 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 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 dialogue, 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’s 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 ambiguous dialogue remains, with Cnut asking “Quis michi tam amicus extitit, ut faciam eum precelsum pre consortibus suis?” (Who has been so much my friend, that I may set him on high above all his fellows?) The murderer proudly confesses, and “rex eum sublime rapi fecit, et in altissima quercu suspendi” (the king had him caught up on high and hanged on the tallest oak.)52 In the thirteenth-century version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, which largely follows Gaimar’s telling of the story, an ambiguous dialogue, not found in Gaimar, adds the wordplay on “reward” (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 “heigh,” incorporating both “lofty, elevated” and “exalted, powerful.” In Robert of Gloucester’s version of the story, for instance, Cnut’s wordplay is taken to virtuosic extremes: it is extended to include the promise that the villain will not only get his proper “mede” and be made a “hey mon,” but will also be given “auauncement” and will never again need to care for food or clothing. All these promises are fulfilled when he is executed and his head is displayed high on the Tower of London.54
Despite the multiplicity of versions of the story of Edmund’s death, Cnut is never presented as the guilty party; he is seen as Edmund’s avenger and the executor 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’s death, but say, as no English source does, that the murder was performed on Cnut’s orders. In Knýtlinga saga, for instance, it is said that Eadric took money from Cnut in exchange for killing Edmund.55 Knýtlinga saga was written in Iceland in the second half of the thirteenth century, and may have drawn on a now-lost Knúts saga; it is possible that the detail of Eadric’s bribe derives from this source, or it may have been the author’s own inference.56 The idea that Cnut was involved in Edmund’s 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 consistent the post-Conquest English sources are in their positive or at least neutral view of Cnut’s 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 Confessor, avenging Edmund Ironside’s death was the only good thing Cnut ever did:
& þei he were luþerman 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 predecessor, 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’s pun must have attracted such widespread repetition because it seemed so neatly to underline the justice of Eadric’s punishment and its aptness for his supposed crime: in a supreme 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
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 acceptable to the English. A story which hinges on the difficulty of reading Cnut, then, serves a useful function in dramatizing that transition, rather than attempting to explain it directly. In a narrative like Henry of Huntingdon’s, 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’s 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’s Historia Anglorum, Cnut is apparently not in need of moral reform, but the story of Eadric’s death, set at a crucial moment very early in Cnut’s reign, similarly bridges the narrative gap between the years of conflict between the English and the Danes before Cnut’s 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’s account of Cnut’s violent conquest, might justifiably interpret Cnut as a tyrant king who would rejoice in his rival’s murder. His unexpected reaction, revealed within the space of one multivalent sentence, marks the beginning of a new phase, as Cnut makes the transition from Viking raider to Christian ruler, providing a new framework within which to read the subsequent story of Cnut’s successful reign.
Notes
1
On Cnut’s reputation in English and Scandinavian historiography, see the essays in Remembering Cnut the Great, ed. Goeres.
2
Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 71.
3
Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 71–80; see especially the chapter on Cnut’s relations with the English church, 117–60.
4
Bolton, Cnut the Great, 1–27; see also Bolton, Empire of Cnut.
5
Bolton, Cnut the Great, 2–5. On this theme see also Ellis, later in this volume, pp. 355–78.
6
Townend, “Contextualizing the Knútsdrápur”; Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds”; and Jesch, “Scandinavians and ‘Cultural Paganism.’”.
7
Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 9–47.
8
See most recently Butler, Language and Community in Early England, 86–128, and Tyler, “Talking about History,” “Fictions of Family,” and England in Europe.
9
See, for instance, Hobson, “National-Ethnic Narratives in Representations of Cnut.”
10
ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 59–62 (s.a. 1015–1016); Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 67.
11
Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred, 214.
12
ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1017).
13
ASC (F), ed. Baker, 110–11 (s.a. 1017).
14
This is especially evident in the revised ending to the text, rewritten after Harthacnut’s death; see Bolton, “A Newly Emergent Mediaeval Manuscript.”
15
For some examples see Parker, “So Very Memorable a Matter.”
16
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 30–33.
17
See Parker, Dragon Lords, 37–40. The translation of St. Ælfheah 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’s body from Rochester to Canterbury: ASC (D), ed. Cubbin, 64 (s.a. 1023).
18
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 30–31.
19
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 28–29.
20
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 16–19.
21
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 23.
22
Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 57–58.
23
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 10–11, 15–17.
24
See especially Tyler, “Talking about History” and “Fictions of Family.”
25
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 24.
26
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 34–35; for discussion, see Appendix V. The encomiast also interprets the name Athala as “nobilissima” (Encomium, ed. Campbell, 46).
27
Treharne, Living Through Conquest; on multilingualism at Cnut’s court, see also Townend, “Cnut’s Poets.”
28
Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 37.
29
Gates, “The ‘Worcester’ Historians and Eadric Streona’s Execution,” 165–80, and “Imagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 125–45.
30
Hemingi Chartularium, ed. Hearne, I, 280–81.
31
Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 504–5.
32
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, cxiv–cxxvii.
33
In the unique manuscript of the fullest surviving version of Herman’s text (British Library, Cotton MS. Tiberius B.II), the section where Herman presumably noted Edmund’s death has been erased, and a later hand of the early thirteenth century has inserted the detail that he was killed by Eadric’s treachery. The addition also gives the date and place of Edmund’s death, but does not mention Cnut’s punishment of Eadric: see Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 26–29.
34
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188–89.
35
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188–89.
36
Foot, “The Abbey’s Armoury of Charters,” 42–46, and Gransden, Legends, Tradition and History in Medieval England, 89–93.
37
Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 142–43, and Marafioti, The King’s Body, 206–12.
38
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 152–55.
39
Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 476–77.
40
Encomium, ed. Campbell, 14–15. See Sawyer, “Swein Forkbeard and the Historians,” 26–40.
41
Frank, “King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds,” 112.
42
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 188–89.
43
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 40–41.
44
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, 42.
45
Miracles of St. Edmund, ed. Licence and trans. Lockyer, xxxvii–xxxviii (Licence’s comments on the characterization of Danes in the Miracles), 36–37, 56–59.
46
Gates, “Imagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 137–38.
47
Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 360–63.
48
For other examples, see Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, cv–cvi.
49
See Wright, Cultivation of Saga, 205–12.
50
Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, I, 320–21; see Gates, “Imagining Justice in the Anglo-Saxon Past,” 127–34.
51
Estoire des Engleis, ed. and trans. Short, 238–45 (lines 4399–484).
52
De Nugis Curialium, ed. James, rev. Brooke and Mynors, 430–33.
53
Prose Brut Chronicle, ed. and trans. Marvin, 216–19.
54
Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. Wright, I, 462–65.
55
Danakonunga sögur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, 119–20 (Knýtlinga saga, chap. 16); see also Óláfs saga helga, by Snorri Sturluson, in Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 33 (chap. 26).
56
For discussion see Danakonunga sögur, ed. Bjarni Guðnason, ciii.
57
Verse Life of Edward the Confessor, ed. Moore, lxiv–lxv (comment) and 6 (lines 181–82).
58
See also Goeres and North earlier in this volume, pp. 12–17.
59
Gesta Pontificum, ed. Winterbottom and Thomson, I, 298–301; for discussion see Treharne, Living Through Conquest, 39–41, and Parker, “Pilgrim and Patron.”