Canute began to reign in the year of our Lord 1017, and reigned twenty years. Though he obtained the sovereignty unjustly, yet he conducted himself with great affability and firmness. At his entrance on the government, dividing the kingdom into four parts, himself took the West Saxons, Edric the Mercians, Thurkill the East Angles, and Eric the Northumbrians. His first care was to punish the murderers of Edmund, who had, under expectation of great recompence, acknowledged the whole circumstances: he concealed them for a time, and then brought them forward in a large assembly of the people, where they confessed the mode of their attack upon him, and were immediately ordered to execution. The same year, Edric, whom words are wanting to stigmatize as he deserved, being, by the king’s command, entrapped in the same snare which he had so frequently laid for others, breathed out his abominable spirit to hell. For a quarrel arising, while they were angrily discoursing, Edric, relying on the credit of his services, and amicably, as it were, reproaching the king, said, “I first deserted Edmund for your sake, and afterwards even despatched him in consequence of my engagements to you.” At this expression the countenance of Canute changed with indignation, and he instantly pronounced this sentence: “Thou shalt die,” said he, “and justly; since thou art guilty of treason both to God and me, by having killed thy own sovereign, and my sworn brother; thy blood be upon thy head, because thy mouth hath spoken against thee, and thou hast lifted thy hand against the Lord’s anointed:” and immediately, that no tumult might be excited, the traitor was strangled in the chamber where they sat, and thrown out of the window into the river Thames: thus meeting the just reward of his perfidy. In process of time, as opportunities occurred, Thurkill and Eric were driven out of the kingdom, and sought their native land. The first, who had been the instigator of the murder of St. Elphege, was killed by the chiefs the moment he touched the Danish shore.[226] When all England, by these means, became subject to Canute alone, he began to conciliate the Angles with unceasing diligence; allowing them equal rights with the Danes, in their assemblies, councils, and armies: on which account, as I have before observed, he sent for the wife of the late king out of Normandy, that, while they were paying obedience to their accustomed sovereign, they should the less repine at the dominion of the Danes. Another design he had in view by this, was, to acquire favour with Richard; who would think little of his nephews, so long as he supposed he might have others by Canute. He repaired, throughout England, the monasteries, which had been partly injured, and partly destroyed by the military incursions of himself, or of his father; he built churches in all the places where he had fought, and more particularly at Assingdon, and appointed ministers