they would value my friendship and their own well-being.”  He especially denounces unfair exactions:  “I have no need that money be heaped together for me by unjust demands.”  “I have sent this letter before me,” Cnut ends, “that all the people of my realm may rejoice in my well-doing; for as you yourselves know, never have I spared, nor will I spare, to spend myself and my toil in what is needful and good for my people.”

[Sidenote:  Cnut and Scotland]

Cnut’s greatest gift to his people was that of peace.  With him began the long internal tranquillity which was from this time to be the keynote of the national history.  Without, the Dane was no longer a terror; on the contrary it was English ships and English soldiers who now appeared in the North and followed Cnut in his campaigns against Wend or Norwegian.  Within, the exhaustion which follows a long anarchy gave fresh strength to the Crown, and Cnut’s own ruling temper was backed by the force of hus-carls at his disposal.  The four Earls of Northumberland, Mercia, Wessex, and East-Anglia, whom he set in the place of the older caldormen, knew themselves to be the creatures of his will; the ablest indeed of their number, Godwine, earl of Wessex, was the minister or close counsellor of the King.  The troubles along the Northern border were ended by a memorable act of policy.  From Eadgar’s day the Scots had pressed further and further across the Firth of Forth till a victory of their king Malcolm over Earl Eadwulf at Carham in 1018 made him master of Northern Northumbria.  In 1031 Cnut advanced to the North, but the quarrel ended in a formal cession of the district between the Forth and the Tweed, Lothian as it was called, to the Scot-king on his doing homage to Cnut.  The gain told at once on the character of the Northern kingdom.  The kings of the Scots had till now been rulers simply of Gaelic and Celtic peoples; but from the moment that Lothian with its English farmers and English seamen became a part of their dominions it became the most important part.  The kings fixed their seat at Edinburgh, and in the midst of an English population passed from Gaelic chieftains into the Saxon rulers of a mingled people.

[Sidenote:  Cnut’s Sons]

But the greatness of Cnut’s rule hung solely on the greatness of his temper, and the Danish power was shaken by his death in 1035.  The empire he had built up at once fell to pieces.  He had bequeathed both England and Denmark to his son Harthacnut; but the boy’s absence enabled his brother, Harald Harefoot, to acquire all England save Godwine’s earldom of Wessex, and in the end even Godwine was forced to submit to him.  Harald’s death in 1040 averted a conflict between the brothers, and placed Harthacnut quietly on the throne.  But the love which Cnut’s justice had won turned to hatred before the lawlessness of his successors.  The long peace sickened men of their bloodshed and violence.  “Never was a bloodier deed done