first things that he did was to send to Normandy for the
widowed Lady Emma, though she was many years older than he was. She
came over; she married the new king; and was again Lady of the
English. She bore Cnut two children, Harthacnut and Gunhild. Her three
children by Ethelred were left in Normandy. She seems not to have
cared at all for them or for the memory of Ethelred; her whole love
passed to her new husband and her new children. Thus it came about
that the children of Ethelred were brought up in Normandy, and had the
feelings of Normans rather than Englishmen, a thing which again
greatly helped the Norman Conquest."

Cnut's first acts of government in England were a series of murders;
but he afterwards became a wise and temperate king. He even identified
himself with the patriotism which had withstood the stranger. He
joined heartily in the festivities of Christmastide, and atoned for
his father's ravages by costly gifts to the religious houses. And his
love for monks broke out in the song which he composed as he listened
to their chant at Ely: "Merrily sang the monks in Ely when Cnut King
rowed by" across the vast fen-waters that surrounded their Abbey.
"Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we these monks sing."[13]

"'All hail!' the monks at Christmas sang;
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all the year."[14]

It is said that Cnut, who is also called Canute, "marked one of his
royal Christmases by a piece of sudden retributive justice: bored
beyond all endurance by the Saxon Edric's iteration of the traitorous
services he had rendered him, the King exclaimed to Edric, Earl of
Northumberland: 'Then let him receive his deserts, that he may not
betray us as he betrayed Ethelred and Edmund!' upon which the ready
Norwegian disposed of all fear on that score by cutting down the
boaster with his axe, and throwing his body into the Thames."[15]

In the year 1035, King Cnut died at Shaftesbury, and was buried in
Winchester Cathedral. His sons, Harold and Harthacnut, did not possess
the capacity for good government, otherwise the reign of the Danes
might have continued. As it was, their reigns, though short, were
troublesome. Harold died at Oxford in 1040, and was buried at
Westminster (being the first king who was buried there); Harthacnut
died at Lambeth at a wedding-feast in 1042, and was buried beside his
father in Winchester Cathedral. And thus ended the reigns of the
Danish kings