Viking London by Thomas Williams

Author:Thomas Williams [Thomas Williams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

IV

Lundúnaborg

Cnut’s war with Edmund Ironside rumbled on throughout 1016, a bitter conflict that pitted English lords against each other and tore the young English realm open along some of its most recently knitted ethnic and regional scars. When, finally, the exhausted factions came to an accommodation at Olney in Gloucestershire, it was agreed that Edmund would continue to rule as king south of the Thames, and that Cnut would hold Mercia and the north. The fate of East Anglia was left unclear, but its ealdorman – the mighty Ulfcetel, the giant of fortress-London – had been slain in the recent fighting. The Danish army turned back to London and a separate peace was brokered with the city. Cnut’s fleet reappeared on the Thames, and his army prepared to settle down for the winter. Fate, however, intervened. On 30 November 1016, Edmund, who was apparently resident within the city, suddenly died. A later tradition – almost certainly untrue – maintained that he was shot up the arse with a crossbow whilst sat on the privy (an undignified end and, one imagines, an unpleasant modus operandi for the assassin).

Thus Cnut found that he was able to complete his conquest without further bloodshed, mere weeks after having been fought to an unsatisfactory impasse. He was proclaimed king of England, in London, in the dying days of 1016 in the presence of the English clergy and aristocracy. He had summoned the witanegemot, a national assembly of bigwigs, evidently seeking the legitimacy that only this theatre of universal affirmation could provide. His concern with the security of his rule was carried through into his first acts as king, extracting agreement from the English nobles that the late King Edmund had expected no familial succession and that he, Cnut, should be recognized as guardian of Edmund’s children. Early in the following year he gave thought to the wider government of England: Thorkell was made earl of East Anglia, replacing the deceased Ulfcetel; Eadric Streona was formally recognized as earl of Mercia. Eadric did not have very long to enjoy the fruits of his perfidy. Cnut summoned him back to London in December 1017, and ‘because he feared that someday he would be ensnared by Eadric’s treachery’1 had the earl killed on Christmas Day at the royal palace (in palatio). His body was thrown over the wall to lie unburied, food for carrion beasts.

Despite Cnut’s close association with London in the early years of his reign – the royal hall he evidently maintained, the yuletide courts he held there – the new king was no friend to the city. In the aftermath of victory Cnut had levied the astonishing tax of £72,000 on England, extorted from his new subjects to pay his armies and reward his supporters. But London was singled out for special treatment, hit with a demand for a further £10,500. It was recognition, perhaps, of the city’s economic power: it continued to be England’s most prolific mint, with seventy-nine moneyers working in London and Southwark at the peak of production in the early part of Cnut’s reign.

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