The triumph of the English upon this signal and decisive advantage, was at first attended with some insult and violence against the Danes, but the king, by the mildness of his character, soon reconciled the latter to his administration, and the distinction between the two nations gradually disappeared. The Danes were interspersed with the English in most of the provinces; they spoke nearly the same language; they differed little in their manners and laws; domestic dissensions in Denmark prevented, for some years, any powerful invasion from thence which might awaken past animosities; and as the Norman conquest, which ensued soon after, reduced both nations to equal subjection, there is no further mention in history of any difference between them. The joy, however, of their present deliverance made such impression on the minds of the English, that they instituted an annual festival for celebrating that great event; and it was observed in some counties, even to the time of Spelman.[*] [* Spelm. Glossary in verbo Hocday.] The popularity which Edward enjoyed on his accession was not destroyed by the first act of his administration, his resuming all the grants of his immediate predecessors; an attempt which is commonly attended with the most dangerous consequences. The poverty of the crown convinced the nation that this act of violence was become absolutely necessary; and as the loss fell chiefly on the Danes, who had obtained large grants from the late kings, their countrymen, on account of their services in subduing the kingdom, the English were rather pleased to see them reduced to their primitive poverty. The king’s severity also towards his mother, the queen dowager, though exposed to some more censure, met not with very, general disapprobation. He had hitherto lived on indifferent terms with that princess; he accused her of neglecting him and his brother during their adverse fortune;[**] he remarked that, as the superior qualities of Canute, and his better treatment of her, had made her entirely indifferent to the memory of Etheldred, she also gave the preference to her children of the second bed, and always regarded Hardicanute as her favorite. [** Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p.237] The same reasons had probably made her unpopular in England; and though her benefactions to the monks obtained her the favor of that order, the nation was not, in general, displeased to see her stripped by Edward of immense treasures which she had amassed. He confined her, during the remainder of her life, in a monastery at Winchester; but carried his rigor against her no farther. The stories of his accusing her of a participation in her son Alfred’s murder, and of a criminal correspondence with the bishop of Winchester, and also of her justifying herself by treading barefoot, without receiving any hurt, over nine burning ploughshares, were the inventions of the monkish historians, and were propagated and believed from the silly wonder of posterity.[*]