Determined, then, to extend his personal rule over the whole country, he began by causing Edric, Lord of Mercia, to be put to death. Edric was a man of evil life, and both Danes and English were glad to be rid of him. According to one account, he had brought, about the death of the brave Edmund Ironside, Ethelred’s son, who had all this time been the great antagonist of Canute, and who had engaged him in a series of battles after the death of Sweyn, and in the end divided the kingdom with him. It seems not impossible that Canute himself had connived at the murder of Edmund, for Edric was then Canute’s friend; however this may have been, it now served Canute’s purpose to accuse Edric of compassing Edmund’s death and to punish him for it. Next, Eirik was driven out of England at the end of the winter, and Canute added Northumbria to his own dominions.[38] There now only remained Thorkill the Tall to dispose of, who had long reigned over the East Angles, and had proved himself a great warrior. On the first opportunity Canute outlawed him and drove him out of the land; but no better fortune awaited him in Denmark. Fearing that so mighty a warrior, in order to revenge himself on King Canute, would excite rebellions and war in their country, some of the Danish chiefs met Thorkill at the shore and put him to death before he could step on land (1021).[39] Thus Canute became sole King of England and Denmark. His next step was to banish Ethelred’s son Edwy out of England, and to marry his step-mother, Ethelred’s widow, who, strange as it may appear to us, consented to wed with the enemy of her husband and family. The marriage was a politic one for Canute, for it brought to his allegiance many of the English who had hitherto looked upon him as a foreign conqueror and foe; and when in course of time Emma bore him a son and daughter they began to look upon the son as the rightful heir to the English crown. His father named him Hardacanute. Canute had also a son by a former wife, whose name was Harald, who immediately succeeded his father.