the kingdom by the murder of thy brother, whom thy mother shamefully slew, the sword shall not leave thy house till the crown has passed to one of another race and language." And these solemn words were wonderfully fulfilled, as we shall read presently.

9. Archbishop Dunstan lived to be sixty-three, which was a great age in those days, and he had been the servant of seven kings, one after another. One day, after he had preached in the cathedral and blessed all the people there, he told them that he was about to die, and he spoke a few words of farewell to them. Then he chose the spot where he would be buried, and three days after he died.

8. KING CANUTE (R. 1016-1042).

1. When Dunstan died, King Ethelred was only nineteen, and the foolish young man chose bad counsellors, who flattered him, and thought only of their own quarrels and their own interests, and did not care for the good of the kingdom. He was a very undecided man, and so the English called him the "Unready." The terrible Danes quickly found out that England had no longer a king strong enough to defend the land, so they began to torment the English people worse than ever. They came across the sea and forced their ships up the rivers, burned villages, and stole cattle, and slaughtered people or else carried them off to sell as slaves.

2. At last King Ethelred fled away to Normandy,

and Sweyn, the Dane, forced the English to obey him. His son Canute succeeded him, and became a very great prince, ruling not only over England, but over Denmark and Norway besides. But Canute had to fight hard against the English before they would obey him; for Ethelred had a brave son, called Edmund Ironside, whom the English loved and wanted for their king, and he came back from Normandy, and fought for them against Canute. But Edmund died, and then the English fought no more, and obeyed Canute. Canute was terrible in battle, but he gave good laws to the country, and dealt justice evenly to Englishmen and Danes, and compelled them to live peaceably together.

3. He married Queen Emma, the widow of Ethelred the Unready, and this pleased the English. But Canute could not trust himself among the people as the English kings had done. He gathered about him an army of hired soldiers, who were always ready to fight against rebels, or any who should invade the land.

4. Canute was so great a king that his courtiers began to think that he was as great as a god, and could do whatever he pleased. But Canute was too wise to believe them; so one day, when the courtiers had been wearying him with foolish flatteries, he commanded them to carry his throne down to the sea-coast, and set it close to the edge of the waves, and he sat down in his state chair by the sea-shore, with his crown on his head and his sceptre in his hand.

5. The tide was coming in, and the waves were already close to the king's feet, and in a very few

minutes they must come up over him if he did not move back. And Canute stretched out his sceptre over the waves and commanded them to come no farther. But the waves rose higher and higher, and soon the feet of the king and the courtiers were in the water. Then at last Canute got up, and, turning away from his flattering courtiers, he said, "See what a slight thing is the power of a king." And he bade them keep their praises for Him whom alone the winds and waves obey.

6. When he died, Canute divided his kingdoms between his sons, and these were violent men; so war and disorder broke out again in England.

9. EARL GODWIN (B. 990; D. 1053).

1. When Emma, the wife of King Ethelred, fled to Normandy, to escape from the Danes, she took her two little boys, the youngest sons of Ethelred, with her. Normandy was a country in the north of France which had been conquered by Northmen like the Danes many years before; but by this time these Normans, as they were called, had become like Frenchmen in speech and manners. The two sons of Ethelred were called Alfred and Edward; and afterwards, when King Ethelred was dead and Emma came back to England in her widow's dress and married King Canute, she left the little princes behind her, and they were taught and trained like little Norman

boys. They learnt to speak the Norman language, which was more like French than English; and they dressed in the Norman fashion, and made friends among the Norman barons. They wore short capes that came only down to their elbows, and the English lords wore long cloaks. They cut their hair short, and Englishmen in those days wore long curls. And, above all, they talked Norman-French instead of English; so that though they were of the royal house of England, they were like Normans, and not like Englishmen in their ways. The only thing about

them that was like Englishmen was their fair hair and skin. When King Canute was dead and his sons were ruling in England, Queen Emma invited Alfred and Edward to come and see her.

2. There lived at that time an Englishman named Godwin, whom Canute had promoted to great power and honour. He was Earl of all Wessex. He had enormous wealth, and was able to raise an army or a fleet stronger than the king's army or the king's fleet.

3. Earl Godwin knew that, for all their French ways, Alfred and Edward were the real English princes. He feared that some day the English might choose one of them for their king, instead of the Danish sons of Canute, and that then, perhaps, his power would be taken from him. And he thought that Normans would come over to help in the government, and that all kinds of French customs, which he hated, would be introduced. A letter was written to Prince Alfred, who was the elder of the two, full of kind words of greeting, beg

C

ging him to come up to London and visit the court. So Prince Alfred set out for London. But a band of armed men were sent to waylay him upon the road; and when the prince came by they fell upon him, and murdered many of his attendants. The prince himself was treated very cruelly, and at last his eyes were put out, and soon after he died.

4. The Lady Emma and her son Edward both fled beyond the sea. Prince Edward went back to Normandy, where his cousin William was now duke.

5. Before long the English people were tired of being ruled by the violent sons of Canute. They saw that Prince Edward was very good and pious, and he had courteous manners. Then, too, they remembered that he was an Englishman by birth, and that he came of the royal family of Edgar and Alfred and Athelstan; and they wished to have him for their king.

6. They wished it so strongly that even the powerful Earl Godwin dared not oppose them, though he greatly feared that Edward, on becoming king, would not only take away his power, but perhaps punish him for the wicked murder of his brother Alfred. So he made Edward promise to marry his own daughter before he allowed him to be crowned; for he said to himself, "He will not like to punish the father of his wife." And so Edward married Earl Godwin's daughter, and the crafty earl kept all the wealth and the power that he had held under the Danes; and though many Norman friends of Edward did come to England, Godwin was still the most powerful man in the kingdom.