Category: Storyline

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In the early 11th century, the English were crushed by the Scots in the Battle of Carham. We are told that King Malcolm of Scotland, supported by King Owain of Strathclyde, brought their combined armies to bear against the forces of Ealdorman Uhtred of Bernicia in 1018… and there, they slaughtered the English.

But there’s a problem with that story.

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In the year of 1021, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle tells us two things.

A Bishop died.

And Thorkell the Tall was expelled from the country. And that’s all it tells us.

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If you have heard of King Cnut, what you probably heard was the story of Cnut and the Tides. The most common version of it goes like this.

“Canute, the greatest and most powerful monarch of his time, sovereign of Denmark and Norway, as well as of England, could not fail of meeting with adulation from his courtiers; a tribute which is literally paid even to the meanest and weakest princes. Some of his flatterers breaking out, one day, in admiration of his grandeur, exclaimed that every thing was possible for him: Upon which the monarch, it is said, ordered his chair to be set on the sea-shore, while the tide was rising, and as the waters approached, he commanded them to retire, and to obey the voice who was lord of the ocean. He feigned to sit some time in expectation of their submission; but when the sea still advanced towards him, and began to wash him with its billows, he turned to his courtiers, and remarked to them, that every creature in the universe was feeble and impotent, and that power resided with one Being alone, in whose hands were all the elements of nature; who could say to ocean, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther’; and who could level with his nod the most towering piles of human pride and ambition.”

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When we left off, Cnut had managed to get Eadric to go on the record calling for the execution of the English claimants to the throne… and then Cnut rejected the suggestion, and instead outlawed Eadwig, and exiled the sons of Edmund to Sweden.

What the public likely didn’t know was the fact that Cnut had quietly hired an assassin to finish the job with Eadwig, and he had given orders to King Olaf of Sweden to execute Edmund’s sons, once they reached his shores.

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It’s been a strange few years.

The fall of the House of Wessex and the rise of Cnut looks like a simple story of conquest. After all, it’s right there in the title. Virtually every book on this era has a chapter called “The Conquest of England.” And for good reason… Cnut /was/ a conqueror. And conquest, at least in the popular imagination, is a simple story of military domination. Of soldiers and sieges, where the biggest army and the best tactics win the day.

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Morcar and Sigeferth were under a lot of stress.

These two noble brothers from the North had only just managed to join the Wulf dynasty through Sigeferht’s marriage to Ealdgyth, the niece of the powerful Ealdorman AElfhelm of York and Wulfric Spot. And that really should have been a smart move, given how powerful that family was.

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There are worse things than spending a holiday in Normandy.

And one of those things is spending a holiday in Normandy because you just lost your entire Kingdom to the Danes.

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England in 1013 was a Kingdom begging to be conquered. Decades of bad decisions have eroded its foundations and now it sat as a mere shadow of its former glory. It had none of the military prowess established by King AEthelstan. None of the political stability enjoyed under King Edgar. And none of the smart planning created by King Alfred.

Rather than being a focal point of European politics and a well governed island fortress this new England was decadent, weak, and dangerously vulnerable.