But Sweyn, as I have related, on his restoration to the sovereignty of the Danes, being impatient of quiet, sent his son Canute twice into England; first with three hundred, and then with two hundred, ships. His associate in the former expedition was Osbern, the brother of Sweyn; in the latter, Hacco: but, being each of them bribed, they frustrated the young man’s designs, and returned home without effecting their purpose. In consequence, becoming highly disgraced by king Sweyn for bartering their fidelity for money, they were driven into banishment. Sweyn, when near his end, bound all the inhabitants by oath, that, as he had fourteen sons, they should confer the kingdom on each of them in succession, as long as his issue remained. On his decease, his son Harold succeeded for three years: to him Canute, whom his father had formerly sent into England. Remembering his original failure, he prepared, as we have heard, more than a thousand vessels against England: his father-in-law, Robert Friso, the possessor of six hundred more, supporting him. But being detained, for almost two years, by the adverseness of the wind, he changed his design, affirming, that it must be by the determination of God, that he could not put to sea: but afterwards, misled by the suggestions of some persons, who attributed the failure of their passage to the conjurations of certain old women, he sentenced the chiefs, whose wives were accused of this transgression, to an intolerable fine; cast his brother, Olave, the principal of the suspected faction into chains, and sent him into exile to his father-in-law. The barbarians, in consequence, resenting this attack upon their liberty, killed him while in church, clinging to the altar, and promising reparation. They say that many miracles were shown from heaven at that place; because he was a man strictly observant of fasting and almsgiving, and pursued the transgressors of the divine laws more rigorously than those who offended against himself; from which circumstance, he was consecrated a martyr by the pope of Rome. After him, the murderers, that they might atone for their crime by some degree of good, redeemed Olave from captivity, for ten thousand marks. After ignobly reigning during eight years, he left the government to his brother Henry: who living virtuously for twenty-nine years, went to Jerusalem, and breathed his last at sea. Nicholas, the fifth in the sovereignty, still survives.[321] [Sidenote: [A.D. 1085.] ROBERT GUISCARD.]