rthumberland, and Edric of
Mercia; reserving only to himself the administration of Wessex. But
seizing afterwards a favorable opportunity, he expelled Thurkill and
Yric from their governments, and banished them the kingdom; he put to
death many of the English nobility, on whose fidelity he could not rely,
and whom he hated on account of their disloyalty to their native prince.
And even the traitor Edric, having had the assurance to reproach him
with his services, was condemned to be executed, and his body to be
thrown into the Thames; a suitable reward for his multiplied acts of
perfidy and rebellion.

Canute also found himself obliged, in the beginning of his reign,
to load the people with heavy taxes, in order to reward his Danish
followers: he exacted from them at one time the sum of seventy-two
thousand pounds; besides eleven thousand pounds which he levied on
London alone. He was probably willing, from political motives, to mulct
severely that city, on account of the affection which it had borne to
Edmond, and the resistance which it had made to the Danish power in two
obstinate sieges.[*] But these rigors were imputed to necessity,
and Canute, like a wise prince, was determined that the English, now
deprived of all their dangerous leaders, should be reconciled to the
Danish yoke, by the justice and impartiality of his administration. He
sent back to Denmark as many of his followers as he could safely spare;
he restored the Saxon customs in a general assembly of the states; he
made no distinction between Danes and English in the distribution of
justice; and he took care, by a strict execution of law, to protect
the lives and properties of all his people. The Danes were gradually
incorporated with his new objects; and both were glad to obtain a little
respite from those multiplied calamities, from which the one, no less
than the other, had, in their fierce contest for power, experienced such
fatal consequences.

The removal of Edmond's children into so distant a country as Hungary,
was, next to their death, regarded by Canute as the greatest security to
his government: he had no further anxiety, except with regard to Alfred
and Edward, who were protected and supported by their uncle Richard,
duke of Normandy. Richard even fitted out a great armament, in order to
restore the English princes to the throne of their ancestors; and though
the navy was dispersed by a storm, Canute saw the danger to which he was
exposed,