But no such doubt applies to the household troops, or immediate body-guard of the king. These are commonly called Húscarlas, by the Anglosaxon writers, and continued to exist under that name after the Norman conquest. Lappenberg has very justly looked upon them as a kind of military gild, or association, of which the king was the master[289]. I doubt whether they were organized as a separate force before the time of Cnut; but it is certain that under that prince and his Danish successors they attained a definite and settled position. It is probable that this resulted from the circumstances under which he obtained the crown of England, and that the institution was not known to his Saxon predecessors: as an invader, not at all secure of his tenure, and surrounded by nobles whose previous conduct offered but slight guarantee of their fidelity, it became absolutely necessary to his safety to organize his own peculiar force in such a way as to secure the readiest service if occasion demanded it. This was the object of the Witherlags Ret, by which the privileges and duties of the Húscarlas were settled. Of this law Lappenberg observes:—“With greater probability may be reckoned among the earlier labours of Cnut, the composition of the Witherlags Ret, a court- or gild-law, framed for his standing army, as well as for the body-guards of his jarls. As the greater part of his army remained in England, the Witherlags Ret was there first established, and as the introduction of strict discipline among such a military community must precede all other ameliorations in the condition of the country, the mention of this law in its history ought not to be omitted[290]. The immediate military attendants of a conqueror always exercise vast influence, and these originally Danish soldiers (thingamenn, thingamanna lith, by the English called Húscarlas) have at a later period, both as bodyguards of the king and of the great vassals, acted no unimportant part in the country. They were armed with axes, halberds and swords inlaid with gold, and in purpose, descent and equipment corresponded to the Warangian guard (Wæringer), in which the throne of the Byzantine emperors found its best security. In Cnut’s time the number of these mercenaries was not very great,—being by some reckoned at three thousand, by others at six thousand[291]—but they were gathered under his banner from various nations, and consequently required the stricter discipline. Even a valiant Wendish prince, Gottschalk, the son of Udo, stayed long with Cnut in England, and gained the hand of a daughter of the royal house[292]. Cnut himself appears rather as a sort of grand-master of this military gild, than as its commander, and it is said that, having in his anger slain one of the brotherhood in England, he submitted himself to its judgment in their assembly (stefn) and paid a ninefold compensation[293]. The degrading epithet of ‘nithing’ applied to an expelled member of the gild, is an