THE DANISH KINGS OF ENGLAND 1016-1042

Canute 1016-1035 (24 when crowned)

This Danish Viking was rapidly accepted by the native English population and England remained at peace and increased trade and prosperity during his 19years as ruler.

• Canute was King of three countries simultaneously. Denmark, Norway and England but he claimed England as his home
• He was considered a God by many English and he had to demonstrate he wasn’t by showing he couldn’t stop the tide rolling in
• He sent his Danish fleet and armies home but kept a 2000 strong bodyguard of able Danes never far away
• He reinforced the laws created by the English Saxon King Edgar
• He divided England into 4 Earldoms. Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria
• He travelled to Scotland and with a show of force compelled the Scottish King Malcolm to accept him as overlord
• He married twice and indeed had the two wives at the same time. Not unusual for Danes at the time. Elgiva from Northampton and Emma, the Norman Princess and widow of Ethelred the Unready. Via Elgiva he sired Sweyn who became King of Norway and Harold who became King Harold 1st of England. Via the princess Emma from Normandy he sired Harthacanute who also became a King of England.

Canute died on 12 Nov 1035 and his extensive empire was split between three of his sons, Sweyn received Norway, Hardicanute got Denmark and England south of the Thames. England north of the Thames went to Harold (Harefoot)

None of his sons were the man their father had been.

Harold 1st(Harefoot) 1035-1040 (19 when crowned) Son of Canute and Elgiva.

Harold was a spiteful man. He exiled his mother Emma to Normandy and when her sons and his half brothers Alfred and Edward returned to England he blinded Alfred by gouging out his eyes (so cruelly he almost immediately died) and Edward sensibly escaped back to Normandy.

(Blinding by the gouging out of eyes was a common treatment metered out to potential royal competitors at this time and was regularly practiced in Byzantium for hundreds of years)

Fortunately Harold died only 24 years of age and was succeeded by his half brother, the son of Emma, Hardicanute who already ruled England north of the Thames but from Denmark.

Hardicanute 1040-1042. (22 when crowned)

Hardicanute (means “Deadly Canute) was another vicious man. To ensure he would be ruler of all England (and Denmark) he landed in the north of England with a large army, murdered the Earl of Northumbria and burnt the town of Worcester to the ground. On arrival in the south he dug up the body of his brother and threw it into a bog.

Fortunately Hardicanute died of a fit after a reign of only 2 years.

SAXON line restored 1042

Edward the Confessor 1042-1066 (38 when crowned)

Son of Saxon King Ethelred the Unready and Princess Emma of Normandy. His mother Emma had sensibly kept well away from the Canute and sons by bringing him up in her country of birth Normandy. So in spite of being a Saxon King, he was by virtue of his 40 years or so in Normandy, essentially a Norman who spoke French better than English. Inevitably all his friends were Normans and he quickly populated the top jobs with his loyal Norman friends and almost certainly offered the English Crown to his friend and great nephew William Duke of Normandy who became William the Conqueror, King of England.

Edward was not a natural leader of men but preferred to live along side monks. The word Confessor implies that he was seen as more of a monk than a King. He left the running of the country to the powerful Godwin, the Anglo-Danish Earl of Wessex. Godwin had risen to power during the rule of Canute. Edward married Godwin’s daughter but having taken the monks vows of chastity had no children and indeed was said not to have consummated the marriage.

Edward is best remembered for two reasons.

1. He built both the Palace of Westminster which has grown into the present Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. He would have employed Norman stone masons for this task as they were the leading stone Church builders in Europe, indeed the only craftsmen who at that time could have built it. (Save for Byzantine architects)
2. He was sainted in recognition of the above and his piety.

Harold 2nd (Harold Godwinson) 1066 for 10 months

Harold son of Godwin, had no inherited claim to the English throne but as the Earl of Wessex after his father’s death in 1053, he became the effective ruler of England during the remaining years of the reign of Edward and was rapidly voted King by the Witan on Edwards death. Unfortunately Edward had almost certainly previously offered the English throne to his friend and great nephew William Duke of Normandy. Remember Edward spent the first 40 years of his life living in Normandy in the household of his Norman mother, the Princess Emma.

Further Harold had earlier been stupid enough to become shipwrecked on the Normandy coast and had been “entertained” in William’s castle where in front of half a dozen key witnesses had vowed on oath not to stand in the way of William’s passage to the English throne. (Well illustrated on the Bayeux Tapestry).

On hearing that Harold had taken the English throne for himself he sent his ambassadors to England to state his prior claim but they were rapidly sent back to Normandy. Not surprisingly William set to prepare an army to physically claim his “rightful” inheritance.

Harold’s father Earl Godwin had placed his numerous sons around England as regional earls so Harold could easily muscle up a powerful army for himself. Unfortunately he had previously fallen out with one of his brothers, Tostig the Earl of Northumbria, Northampton and Nottingham and Tostig, fuming, was living in Viking Denmark. Tostig like William wanted his inheritance which in Tostig’s case was Northumbria. While William was gathering his Norman army Tostig with the support of the King of Norway attacked the north of England. Harold marched north with two of his other brothers and eventually they defeated and killed Tostig and Harold Hardrada, King of Norway at Stamford Bridge in Northumberland.

Harold then received the news that William of Normandy had landed with an invading army at Pevensey Bay in Kent so Harold together with his loyal brothers Gyrth Earl of East Anglia and Leofwine Earl of Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire forced marched his tired army the 300 miles south to meet William at Hastings on the Sussex coast.

Not surprisingly William won, killing Harold, Gyrth and Loefwine in the process. The road was now clear for William, the Norman of Viking descent, to rule in place of Harold also of Viking descent.
The commencement of the Norman line

William 1st 1066-1087 called William the Conqueror.

See next section, The Norman Kings of England.

Europe and the Middle East circa 1066.

France

France rose out of Gaul a county like England which was ruled by the Romans. After the Roman Empire in the west collapsed it was conquered by the Germanic tribe the Franks, hence France, and under the Frankish ruler Charlemagne they ruled most of continental Europe. In 843 Charlemagne’s three sons split their Europe into France, Germany and Italy but by 925 the French king was weak and not only did he cede Normandy to Rollo the Viking but the rest of France was also split into self ruling Dukedoms. The King of France only ruled the area round Paris, even now still called the Isle de France.

Germany

The Eastern part of Charlemagne’s empire which consisted of Germany and Italy was at this time also called the Holy Roman Empire and as such extended to include the whole of present day Germany and all of Italy north of Rome, plus the territories of Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia (Bohemia) and all of southern France east of the river Rhone then called Burgundy.

Italy

The small area around Rome was “ruled” by the Pope and called the Papal State but all of the remainder of southern Italy together with Sicily was ruled by Normans exactly as England was about to be.

Spain and Portugal

All of the southern half of Spain and Portugal was still ruled by Muslims who lived at peace with any resident Christians or Jews. This part of Spain was the most civilised in Western Europe. The north western quarter of both present day Spain and over the mountains into Portugal was the Kingdom of Leon-Castile. Aragon and Catalan were tiny Christian states just south of the Pyrenees.

Portugal became a separate territory around 868 and had a separate king by 1139

Byzantium

By 1066 the huge Church of St Sophia in Constantinople was 400 years old and was the theological centre of the Christian Church in constant argument with the Pope in Rome over trivial theological issues.

The Emperor ruled over the whole of Anatolia (Asia Minor or present day Turkey) and Greece but had lost Jerusalem and the Holy Land to the Islamic Arabs of the Fatimid Caliphate headquartered in Egypt. The remains of East Roman Empire was not strong enough by its self to contemplate a recovery of Jerusalem and indeed spent most of the time defending its boarders from attack by Swedish Vikings from the north and Islamic Arabs from the East now augmented and ruled by the superior fighting men from present day southern Russia the Seljuk Turks.

Baghdad in Mesopotamia present day Iraq.

Equal in size and importance to Constantinople, particularly as the cultural, economic and theological centre of the Islamic world had moved from Damascus to Baghdad around 750 AD and had flourished under a series of enlightened Caliphs. The academic leaders of the world in medicine and mathematics (algebra) were resident in Baghdad university. In 1066 Baghdad was ruled by a Turkish tribe the Seljuk who were the masters of horseback warfare and poised to take Jerusalem and then Anatolia.

This civilisation continued to flourish for another 200 years until overrun by Genghis Khan’s grandson on 10 February 1258 when all the books in the libraries were burnt or thrown in the Tigris and the majority of the inhabitants were murdered.

Russia

Vikings from Sweden were the first to rule the land between the Baltic and the Black Sea around 1000 AD and they made their headquarters in Kiev now in the Ukraine.

Religions

Christianity and Islam were the top religions and were avowed enemies with Palestine and particularly Jerusalem the main issue (as now). Neither religious group had the dominant position either militarily, economically or culturally. Both groups were weakened by theological splits, the Muslims between Shia and Sunni and the Christians between the Eastern Orthodox of Constantinople and Roman. Indeed Christians irrevocably split in 1054 which eliminated any possibility of a unified Christian approach to retrieving Jerusalem when the Crusades were called in 1095.

Jews had no territory of their own, were living happily in Muslim Territories but were hated by the majority of Christians. However Jews had to be tolerated in Christendom because the Pope had decreed that no Christian could run a bank (lend money) so the Jews had a monopoly and were resident in most European countries but not England until brought in from France by William the Conqueror.

Jews were also the language translators of the world very much used by the trading Arabs who always travelled with a Jewish translator.

Centres of commerce and population

The two largest cities in the area were Constantinople and Baghdad both had populations over 150,000. Constantinople was the political and theological capital of the Christian East Roman or Byzantium Empire and Baghdad the political and theological capital of the Islamic Arabs. Both made their money from trade particularly with silks and porcelain from China and spices from India and the Indonesian islands. Both towns were the only ones to have universities for the study of theology, public speaking, maths, science and philosophy.

The next largest towns were all in Arab hands, like Cordoba in Spain, Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, Antioch and Basra. All except Cordoba were trading ports. In England, France and the German tribal areas there was no town with a population as high as 10,000 people.

England

Silks, porcelains and spices from Constantinople were certainly available in England but only to the super rich. The average man and woman were subsistence farmers who owned their land and would try and keep warm inside woollen clothes and if they were lucky might have an animal skin fur coat and even boots made from leather from deer. The rich would have no shortage of leather products many of them imported. Almost all clothes and the majority of all the houses would be self made. (This is still the case in India and Pakistan today).

The basic difference between life in England and the rest of Western Europe compared with Constantinople and Baghdad at this time was the lack of an English middle class who would have gained their wealth from trade. In England the majority of people were always hungry and more often than not, cold and wet.

A King in England would be expected to have the following qualities;

• Military leader and strategist
• Swordsman
• Leader of men by physical strength and oratory
• Law giver
• Religious head
• Producer of sons
• Fiscal wiz kid
• Hobbies Hunting. (Deer and Wild Boar) Weapon bow and arrow
• Clothes Leather (sheep and Deer), wool sheep, silks imported from China via Muslim Arab traders from . Leather and fur also imported, seal, bear, reindeer and walrus
• He would marry for political expediency and have a mistress for love (not always)