The English administration of Canute must be sought in the histories of that kingdom. In Denmark he endeavoured to give to Christianity a predominancy which it had not yet attained. On his accession, full half of the Danes were pagans. To reclaim them, churches were built, and Anglo-Saxon missionaries appointed. This latter measure was hateful to them; and it was not agreeable to his Christian subjects, who wished the dignities of the church for themselves. Both were dissatisfied with his almost continued absence in England. Availing himself of this universal feeling, Ulfo the jarl, as we have before related[132], placed Harda-Canute, an infant son of the king, on the Danish throne. We have related, too, the issue of this rash step—the resignation of the boy, and the murder of Ulfo by the royal order. From this time there was continued tranquillity in both Denmark and England. Canute, indeed, was too powerful and too vindictive to be resisted with impunity. The acquisition of a third kingdom, which he conquered in 1028[133], surrounded his throne with a splendour that no Saxon or Danish prince had before possessed.
That Canute was sullied by many crimes is evident, even, from his most partial historians. He put to death many, without the forms of law, either because he would punish their past, or avert their future, hostility. After his accession to the English throne he acted with great cruelty to many Anglo-Saxon nobles, and with perfidy to more. Yet he had great qualities. He must have been a good ruler, or he would not have dismissed his Danish followers, with the exception of about 3000. That he placed Danes and English on a footing of equality; that he administered justice with strict impartiality; that he improved the laws no less than the administration; that his yoke was felt to be tolerable by the English and the Norwegians, no less than by his hereditary subjects, are historical truths. “In fact, he was one of the best princes that ever swayed the English sceptre. If in his earlier days he was ferocious, after his establishment on the English throne he was humanised by Christianity. Of his zeal for religion, no less than for the temporal welfare of his people, we have evidence enough in his acts. There was an air of barbaric grandeur about the monarch, not to be found in any other sovereign of the times.”[134] Lord of three great kingdoms as he was, we must look for his true elevation to his own mind; and (a rare phenomenon) his moral qualities improved as he advanced in years. Few are the instances, whether in history or in common life, of men so completely reclaimed from evil to good. Much of this reformation has been ascribed by Roman catholic historians to his pilgrimage to Rome. They would be more logical if they called this pilgrimage the effect of the reformation. The state of his mind, his motives, his principles, are well described in the remarkable letter which he wrote from the eternal city, and which exhibits his character in a truer light than the comments of any historian.[135]