"A pleasant music floats along the mere. From monks in Ely chanting service high, While as Canute the king is rowing by: 'My oarsmen,' quoth the mighty king, 'draw near, That we the sweet song of the monks may hear.'" And in a ballad upon Chelsea, a quarter of New York where the General Theological Seminary of the American church is situated, a poet of that communion has these verses: "When old Canute the Dane Was merry England's king, A thousand years agone, and more, As ancient rymours sing, His boat was rowing down the Ouse, At eve, one summer day, Where Ely's tall cathedral peered Above the glassy way. Anon, sweet music on his ear, Comes floating from the fane, And listening, as with all his soul Sat old Canute the Dane; And reverent did he doff his crown, To join the clerkly prayer, While swelled old lauds and litanies Upon the stilly air."[10] Ely minster was, however, not a cathedral in Canute's time; and it is a strange poetical licence that can describe an evening just before the Feast of the Purification as a "summer day." Perhaps the greatest distinction belonging to the monastery at this period was the honour of having educated King Edward the Confessor. He had been brought here in his infancy and offered by his parents on the altar; "and it was a constant tradition with the Monks that he used to take great delight in learning to sing Psalms and godly Hymns, among the children of his own age, in the Cloister, on which account he always retained a favourable regard to the place, after he became King."[11] In 1036, the year after Canute's death, Edward and his brother Alfred came over from Normandy to England, ostensibly to visit their mother, Queen Emma, who lived at Winchester, but really to ascertain the feeling of the nation with regard to the succession to the throne. Alfred fell into the hands of Earl Godwin, by whose orders he was deprived of his eyes and committed to the custody of the monks of Ely. He lived a very short time after this cruel treatment, and died and was buried at Ely.