proceeded to realize his dream of a great Scandinavian empire, which
should include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and England. He was one of
those monumental men who mark the periods in the pages of History, and
yet child enough to command the tides to cease, and when disobeyed, was
so humiliated he never again placed a crown upon his head,
acknowledging the presence of a King greater than himself.

Conqueror though he was, the Dane was not exactly a foreigner in
England. The languages of the two nations were almost the same, and a
race affinity took away much of the bitterness of the subjugation,
while Canute ruled more as a wise native King than as a Conqueror.

But the span of life, even of a founder of Empire, is short. Canute's
sons were degenerate, cruel, and in forty years after the Conquest had
so exasperated the Anglo-Saxons that enough of the primitive spirit
returned, to throw off the foreign yoke, and the old Saxon line was
restored in Edward, known as "the Confessor."

[Sidenote: Edward the Confessor, 1042 to 1066]

Edward had qualities more fitted to adorn the cloister than the throne.
He was more of a Saint than King, and was glad to leave the affairs of
his realm in the hands of Earl Godwin. This man was the first great
English statesman who had been neither Priest nor King. Astute,
powerful, dexterous, he was virtual ruler of the Kingdom until King
Edward's death in 1066, when, in the absence of an heir, Godwin's son
Harold was called to the empty throne.

Foreign royal alliances have caused no end of trouble in the life of
Kingdoms. A marriage between a Saxon King and a Norman Princess, in