King Knut could not, with his extensive possessions, devote much time to the government of Norway. He therefore had his son Sweyn proclaimed King of Norway in his stead. Sweyn's mother, who accompanied him to his new kingdom, was Aelgifa, the daughter of an ealdorman in Northampton. The Norsemen, however, called her Alfifa, and her son Sweyn Alfifasson. This was, accordingly, what the chiefs had gained by their rebellion--to be openly governed by the mistress of a foreign king and a boy who was and could be nothing but a tool in her hands. It was a humiliation which they could ill brook. If Alfifa had had the faintest comprehension of the people whom she undertook to govern, she might possibly for a time have maintained her son upon the throne; but when she proceeded to remodel the Norse legislation in the feudal spirit, she struck a blow at the very men who were the main-stay of her power. What the chiefs had desired was local independence--the right to manage their own affairs with as little interference as possible. They had hoped to obtain this liberty under a king who was too far away to trouble them. But now came Sweyn, and with him a number of Danes who became very important personages, and induced the king to modify the Norse laws so as to bring them more nearly into conformity with the laws of Denmark. It was then enacted that no one should have the right to leave the country without the king's permission, and that confiscation of property should be the punishment for transgression. Man-slaying was likewise to be punished by confiscation. So also an inheritance coming to an outlawed man should go into the king's treasury. Ships, fisheries, pasture-land, nay, even the peasant's hearthstones were taxed, and a system of extortion was instituted which was galling to the spirit of free men. Even the Christmas gifts which the peasants were to give the king, were fixed by law. The chief end of government seemed to be to transfer money from the people's pockets to those of the king. It was even asserted, though there was no law to that effect, that during Sweyn's reign the testimony of one Dane was sufficient to invalidate that of ten Norsemen. The central principle in this legislation was the feudal idea that all land belonged to the king, and that the possessors, as his tenants, had to pay for the usufruct. It was the same appropriation by the king of all allodial rights, which was encountered for the first time during the reign of Harold the Fairhaired. Alfifa, whom the people regarded as the author of the odious enactments, may have had her share in them; but far less than was popularly supposed. It was, no doubt, Knut who meant to crush the rebellious spirit of the Norse chiefs, by which he had himself profited, and Sweyn and Alfifa were merely his agents.