Who was King Cnut?

King of the spelling mistakes
He's one of the most famous of English kings although he wasn't English. For generations, schoolchildren were taught to spell his name only one way – the wrong way. And he's best known for sitting on his throne on the seashore and ordering the tide not to come in – although he never believed that the sea would obey him.

King Cnut (or Knut, but definitely not Canute, which was a later misspelling to make him sound more English) was probably the most powerful king ever to rule over Anglo-Saxon England. He was the son of the Viking king, Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, who conquered England in the reign of Ethelred the Unready but died almost immediately. So one of Cnut's first acts as king was to conquer the country again before taking complete control at the end of 1016.

By the end of his reign, he was not only king of England and Denmark; he also controlled Norway and parts of Sweden. He enjoyed overlordship in Scotland; he had married Emma, the widow of the former Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelred; and when the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad, was crowned in Rome in 1027, Cnut made the journey to stand at his side as an equal. According to Dr Ken Lawson, the Cnut scholar who appeared in Time Team's Nassington programme, he was, quite simply, 'one of the greatest European figures of his time'.

In like a lion, out like a lamb
Cnut's reign (1016-1035) has been described as 'much like the month of March: in like a lion and out like a lamb'. Certainly, by the time of his death in 1035, England had enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity in itself a major advance on the 30 years of war that had preceded it. He was still engaged in wars during this period, but none of them on English soil. The historian, F M Stenton, wrote of his reign: 'It was so successful that contemporaries found little to say about it.'

By the standards of his time, Cnut seems to have been a relatively peaceable and wise ruler. He was already a Christian (albeit one with many pagan habits) when he came to the throne and he left the English church to get on with things largely unmolested.

Banning berserking
He even banned the Viking pagan practice of 'berserking'. This involved berserkers (the word means 'bearskin' in Danish) dressing up in animal skins to fight, believing that they took on the characteristics of those animals and became invincible as they did so. The berserkers used to engage in regular duels with their enemies, or even just for the hell of it. Cnut made the practice illegal.

Turning the tide
The story of Cnut attempting to turn back the tide is one that is meant to demonstrate his piety, rather than the way it is often told as a vainglorious king being shown wanting in an overblown belief in his powers.

The earliest surviving version of the story, by Henry of Huntingdon in his Historia Anglorum (History of England), was not written down until the 1120s, so we can't be sure whether it ever really happened. But Ken Lawson believes it probably did 'as an act of planned piety'. Cnut, in effect, was saying to his nobles: 'Look, how insignificant my power is compared with that of God.'

And why did he want to appear pious? According to Ken Lawson, 'He was being pious because that's what English kings of the period were expected to be; and by being pious he could appear legitimate.'

Lady Godiva and 'Peeping Tom'
Another well-known tale from the reign of Cnut is that of Lady Godiva. The story goes that Godiva, the wife of Lord Leofric, one of Cnut's earls, rode naked through the streets of Coventry to protest against the taxes levied by her husband.

No one dared look at this remarkable sight, apart from a little boy named Tom. The original 'peeping Tom' was said to have been stricken blind as a consequence.

End of his reign
Cnut's reign came to an end on 12 November 1035 with his death at Shaftesbury. He was buried at Winchester. His chosen successor was Hardacnut, his son with Emma, but Hardacnut's half-brother, Harold Harefoot (so called because he was such a quick runner), usurped the throne while Hardacnut was fighting in Denmark. Harold died in 1040, before Hardacnut could return to England; and Hardacnut himself died two years later.

Before his death, Hardacnut nominated Edward (the 'Confessor') as his successor, returning the monarchy to the West Saxon line.

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