Many a man has been improved by adversity, many spoiled by great success. But, as Dr. Hodgkin points out,[51] two great characters in history, Cæsar Augustus and Knut the Rich, vastly improved their behaviour after realising their very highest flights of ambition. Each was in a sense the founder of an empire, one of them the mightiest and in influence the most enduring dominion that the earth has ever known, the other was of the flimsiest and most ephemeral. Indeed it began to crumble before the founder died. English communications were in those early centuries mainly with the Scandinavian lands, by whose people many parts of the British Isles had been settled, and that Knut's dream of a great northern empire was never realised we have some cause for regret. Far more promising schemes, however, would have been destroyed by the two savages by whom he was succeeded. By Northmen speaking French, under the great William, descendant of Rolf Wend-afoot, whom no horse could bear, English foreign relations were suddenly changed in 1066. Hitherto it had seemed likely England might form the focus of a great dominion of the North, henceforth she was closely bound to the central lands of Europe. Had the empire of Knut the Rich been maintained its capital would probably have been Roskilde from the convenience of its position, or if the wealth and importance of England had made it desirable that the chief city should be there, it would most likely have been drawn to some place much nearer to Denmark than Winchester. Knut's own associations with Roskilde were by no means uniformly happy. Indeed it was there that he was guilty of one of the worst acts in his career. In 1017 "King Knut rode up to Roiswell the day before Michaelmas with a great following. Earl Wolf, his brother-in-law, had arrayed a banquet for him. The earl gave him entertainment full noble, but the king was unjoyous and scowling. The earl wrought many ways to make him gleesome, but the king was short and few-spoken. The earl bade him play at the chess, and that he yeasaid, so they got them a chessboard and played. Earl Wolf was a man quick of word and unyielding in all things; he was the mightiest man in Denmark next after King Knut.... Now when they had been playing a while at the chess Earl Wolf checked the king's knight. The king put his move back and bade him play another. The earl got angry, cast down the table and went away. The king said: 'Runnest thou away now, Wolf the Craven?' The earl turned back in the door and said: 'Further would'st thou have run in the Holy River if thou mightest have brought it about; nor didst thou call me Wolf the Craven when I thrust in to the helping of thee when the Swedes were beating you like hounds.' "Therewith the earl went out and went to sleep, and a little afterwards the king himself went to sleep.