Under Canute’s immediate successor, Harald Harefoot, as well as under Hardicanute, the power and grandeur of the Danish chieftains continued steadily to increase. Many besides those just mentioned are spoken of in letters of Hardicanute’s reign; and above all the celebrated Danish jarl Siward, surnamed Digre, who in the year 1040 became jarl in Northumberland. We also meet with the jarl Thuri; the thanes Urki, Atsere (Adzer), and Thurgils; the knight Ækig (Aage); and, in the chronicles, Styr and Thrand. Lastly, Osgod Clapa, and Toui Pruda are mentioned in the history of Hardicanute, but on a mournful occasion. It was at the marriage festival which Osgod Clapa made for his daughter and Toui Pruda, that Hardicanute had a stroke of apoplexy, from which he never recovered. Some, therefore, are of opinion that the marriage did not take place at Lambeth (see p. 20,) but at Clapham (Clapa-ham, or Clapa’s home), in Surrey, to the south of Kennington, which now forms part of London. As long as their supremacy lasted, the Danes must naturally have behaved as conquerors in the land which they had subdued. Their innate love of splendour and profusion found ample nourishment, whilst at the same time their pride was flattered, by the subjugation of the Anglo-Saxons. The old English chroniclers complain bitterly of the severe humiliations which the natives were compelled to endure. If, for instance, Anglo-Saxons met a Dane upon a bridge, they were obliged to stand still, and make low bows; nay, even if they were on horseback, they must dismount, and wait till the Dane had passed. At the same time the Anglo-Saxon nobility gradually lost the many fiefs and lucrative posts of honour which had formerly been in their possession, but which were now transferred to their powerful conquerors. But what really injured the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy more than anything else, was the wise and conciliatory policy of Canute the Great, which, by extinguishing the hatred between the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, amalgamated the aristocracy of the two nations to such a degree that the Anglo-Saxon nobility at length existed only in name, having become by imperceptible degrees more than half Danish. A contrary method of proceeding, a violent and sanguinary oppression of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, would, perhaps, in some respects, have been more serviceable to them, as it would have inflamed their hatred, and provoked them to a desperate resistance; and would thus have incited them to keep themselves free from the intrusion of all foreign admixture.