This extremely important event links the centuries together, and determines the future fortunes of England. The kingly house, whose right and pre-eminence was connected with the earliest settlements, which had completed the union of the realm and delivered it from the worst distress, was at a moment of moral deterioration and disaster excluded by the spiritual and temporal chiefs, of Anglo-Saxon and Danish origin. They had first tried to limit it, to bind it by its own promise; when this led to nothing, they annihilated its right by a formal resolution of the realm, and procured peace by raising to the throne another sovereign who had no right by birth. Canute did not owe the crown to conquest, though his greater power contributed to the result, but to election, which now appeared as the superior right: hitherto the Witan had always exercised it within the limits of the royal family; this time they disregarded that family altogether. Canute decreed or allowed some bloody acts of violence, in order to strengthen the power that had fallen to his lot; but afterwards he administered it with a noble spirit answering to his position. He became the leading sovereign of the North: men reckoned five or six kingdoms as subject to him. England was the chief of them all, even for him; it was in possession of the culture and religion which he wished should prevail in the rest: the missionaries of the North went forth from Canterbury. England itself, however, gained a higher position in the world by its union with a power which ruled as far as Norway and North America, and carried on commerce with the East by the Baltic. In Gothland the great emporium of the West, Arabic as well as Anglo-Danish coins are found; the former were carried from the North as far as England. Canute favoured the Anglo-Saxon mode of life; he liked to be designated the 'successor of Edgar;' he confirmed his legislation; and it was his intention, at least, to rule according to the laws: as he even submitted himself to the military regulations of the Huskarls, so he commanded right and law to be administered in civil matters without respect to his own person. But a union of such different kingdoms could only be a transitory phenomenon. Canute himself thought of leaving England again independent under one of his sons. With this object he had married Ethelred's widow Emma. For, according to Anglo-Saxon ideas, the Queen was not merely the King's wife, but also sovereign of the land, in her own right. It was settled that the children of this marriage should succeed him in England. Probably Canute did not wish the inheritance of the crown in his house to depend merely on the goodwill of the Witan.