The Swedish monarch was too
generous to comply with the request; but being afraid of drawing on
himself a quarrel with Canute, by protecting the young princes, he
sent them to Solomon, king of Hungary, to be educated in his court.
The elder, Edwin, was afterwards married to the sister of the king of
Hungary; but the English prince dying without issue, Solomon gave his
sister-in-law, Agatha, daughter of the emperor Henry the Second,
in marriage to Edward, the younger brother; and she bore him Edgar,
Atheling, Margaret, afterwards queen of Scotland, and Christina, who
retired into a convent.
Canute, though he had reached the great point of his ambition in
obtaining possession of the English crown, was obliged at first to make
great sacrifices to it; and to gratify the chief of the nobility, by
bestowing on them the most extensive governments and jurisdictions. He
created Thurkill earl or duke of East Anglia, (for these titles were
then nearly of the same import,) Yric of Northumberland, and Edric of
Mercia; reserving only to himself the administration of Wessex. But
seizing afterwards a favorable opportunity, he expelled Thurkill and
Yric from their governments, and banished them the kingdom; he put to
death many of the English nobility, on whose fidelity he could not rely,
and whom he hated on account of their disloyalty to their native prince.
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