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HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
[1035 
my domain, I command you not to wet even the border 
of my robe.” Nearer and nearer came the waves, while 
around the king’s chair stood the courtiers, wondering 
what would happen, and fcaring lest their ruler should 
punish them for their flattery. At last a wave broke 
upon the sacred person of the king. Then he turned to 
his courtiers and said gently: “Do not forget that the 
power of kings is a small matter. He who is King of kings 
and Lord of lords, He is the One whom the earth and the 
sca and the heavens obey.” 
When Canute died in 1035, the people of England were 
aincerely sorry, especially as his sons, Harold and Hardi- 
canute, were not worthy of so good a father. They reigned, 
however, for a few years, first one son and then the other, 
but the English were. more and more displeased with 
their injustice and cruelty, and when they died, no one 
mourned. They were the last kings that ruled over both 
England and Denmark. 
21. The English kings restored.—The English now began 
to wish to have an Englishman again on the throne, and 
they chose Edward, the son of Ethelred the Unready. 
This Edward was a middle-aged man, and, since he had 
been brought up in France, where he had fled for refuge, 
it is probable that he could speak little English; but as 
he was a good man and a descendant of the royal line, the 
English invited him to be their king, and when he came to 
them, they gave him a hearty welcome. 
22. Government under the Saxons.—The England of this 
period was for the most part a land of small country vil- 
lages, the old “tuns” or townships, whose people lived by 
tilling the soil. Each man had his strip of the arable land 
while the pasture and waste land about the village was held 
in common. But the village was no longer the community 
of independent freemen deseribed by Tacitus. Now, the 
little wooden houses of the tillers of the soil, afterwards 
called “ villeins,” were grouped about the larger house of 
the chief man, later known as the lord of the manor. To 
him they owed certain services and from him they re- 
ceived' protection. These villages or manors were grouped