s children (for historians
vary in this particular); and that evidence, supported by the great
power of Canute, determined the states immediately to put the Danish
monarch in possession of the government. Canute, jealous of the two
princes, but sensible that he should render himself extremely odious
if he ordered them to be despatched in England, sent them abroad to
his ally, the King of Sweden, whom he desired, as soon as they arrived
at his court, to free him by their death from all farther anxiety.
The Swedish monarch was too generous to comply with the request, but
being afraid of drawing on himself a quarrel with Canute, by
protecting the young princes, he sent them to Solomon, King of
Hungary, to be educated in his court. The elder, Edwin, was
afterwards married to the sister of the King of Hungary, but the
English prince dying without issue, Solomon gave his sister-in-law,
Agatha, daughter of the Emperor Henry II., in marriage to Edward, the
younger brother; and she bore him Edgar Atheling, Margaret, afterwards
queen of Scotland, and Christiana, who retired into a convent.

Canute, though he had reached the great point of his ambition, in
obtaining possession of the English crown, was obliged at first to
make great sacrifices to it; and to gratify the chief of the nobility,
by bestowing on them the most extensive governments and jurisdictions.
He created Thurkill Earl or Duke of East Anglia, (for these titles
were then nearly of the same import,) Yric of Northumberland, and
Edric of Mercia, reserving only to himself the administration of
Wessex. But seizing afterwards a favourable 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 cit