Edmund, defeated, but not discouraged, retreated to the Severn, where he recruited his forces.  Canute followed at his heels.  And now the two armies were drawn up which were to decide the fate of England, when it was proposed to determine the war by a single combat between the two kings.  Neither was unwilling; the Isle of Alney in the Severn was chosen for the lists.  Edmund had the advantage by the greatness of his strength, Canute by his address; for when Edmund had so far prevailed as to disarm him, he proposed a parley, in which he persuaded Edmund to a peace, and to a division of the kingdom.  Their armies accepted the agreement, and both kings departed in a seeming friendship.  But Edmund died soon after, with a probable suspicion of being murdered by the instruments of his associate in the empire.

[Sidenote:  The Danish race.

Canute.]

[Sidenote:  Harold I., A.D. 1035.]

[Sidenote:  Hardicanute, A.D. 1035]

[Sidenote:  The Saxon line restored.]

Canute, on this event, assembled the states of the kingdom, by whom he was acknowledged King of all England.  He was a prince truly great; for, having acquired the kingdom by his valor, he maintained and improved it by his justice and clemency.  Choosing rather to rule by the inclination of his subjects than the right of conquest, he dismissed his Danish army, and committed his safety to the laws.  He reestablished the order and tranquillity which so long a series of bloody wars had banished.  He revived the ancient statutes of the Saxon princes, and governed through his whole reign with such steadiness and moderation that the English were much happier under this foreign prince than they had been under their natural kings.  Canute, though the beginning of his life was stained with those marks of violence and injustice which attend conquest, was remarkable in his latter end for his piety.  According to the mode of that time, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, with a view to expiate the crimes which paved his way to the throne; but he made a good use of this peregrination, and returned full of the observations he had made in the country through which he passed, which he turned to the benefit of his extensive dominions.  They comprehended England, Denmark, Norway, and many of the countries which lie upon the Baltic.  Those he left, established in peace and security, to his children.  The fate of his Northern possessions is not of this place.  England fell to his son Harold, though not without much competition in favor of the sons of Edmund Ironside, while some contended for the right of the sons of Ethelred, Alfred and Edward.  Harold inherited none of the virtues of Canute; he banished his mother Emma, murdered his half-brother Alfred, and died without issue after a short reign, full of violence, weakness, and cruelty.  His brother Hardicanute, who succeeded him, resembled him in his character; he committed new cruelties and injustices in revenging those which his brother had committed, and he died after a yet shorter reign.  The Danish power, established with so much blood, expired of itself; and Edward, the only surviving son of Ethelred, then an exile in Normandy, was called to the throne by the unanimous voice of the kingdom.