King Cnut's Letter to the English People // Anglo-Saxon Primary Source (1019)
1 Video View·Feb 11, 2026
This is an extract from 'The Book of the Icelanders', written during the early Twelfth Century.
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King Canute greets in friendship his archbishops and his diocesan bishops and Earl Thorkell and all
his earls and all his people, whether men of a 1200 war guild or a 200, ecclesiastic and lay
in England. And I inform you that I will be a gracious lord and a faithful observer of God's
rights and just secular law. I have borne in mind the letters and messages which Archbishop
Liefing brought me from Rome from the Pope, that I should everywhere exalt God's praise
and suppress wrong and establish full security by that power which it has pleased God to give me.
Since I did not spare my money as long as hostility was threatening you,
I have now with God's help put an end to it with my money.
Then I was informed that greater danger was approaching us than we liked at all,
and then I went myself with the men who accompanied me to Denmark from where the
greatest injury had come to you. And with God's help, I have taken measures so that
never henceforth shall hostility reach you from there as long as you support me rightly and my
life lasts. Now I thank almighty God for his help and mercy that I have so settled the great dangers
which were approaching us that we need fear no danger to us from there, but we may reckon
on full help and deliverance if we need it. Now it is my will that we all thank almighty God
humbly for the mercy which he has shown for our help. Now I pray my archbishops and all my
diocesan bishops that they all may be zealous about God's dues, each in the district which is
entrusted to him, and also I charge all my elder men that they may help the bishops in furthering
God's rights and my royal dignity and the benefit of the people.
If anyone, ecclesiastic or layman, Dane or Englishman, is so presumptuous as to defy
God's law and my royal authority or the secular law, and he will not make amends and desist
according to the direction of my bishops, I then pray and also command Earl Thorkell,
if he can, to cause the evildoer to do right, and if he cannot, then it is my will that with
the power of us both he shall destroy him in the land or drive him out of the land,
whether he be of high or low rank, and also I charge all my reeves on pain of losing my friendship
and all that they possess and their own lives that everywhere they may attain my people justly
and give just judgments with the witness of the bishops and of the diocese and practice
such mercy therein as seems just to the bishop of the diocese and can be supported.
If anyone gives asylum to a thief or interferes on his behalf, he is to be liable to the same
penalty to me as the thief, unless he can clear himself of liability to me with the full process
of exculpation, and it is my will that all the nation, ecclesiastical and lay,
shall steadfastly observe Edgar's laws, which all men have chosen and sworn to at Oxford,
for all the bishops say that the breaking of oaths and pledge is to be very deeply atoned for with
God, and also they teach us further that we must with all our strength and all our might
earnestly seek love and honor the eternal merciful God and shun all evildoing, namely
the deeds of homicides and murderers and perjurers and wizards and sorceresses and adulterers and
incestuous deeds, and also we command in the name of God almighty and of all his saints that no
man is to be so presumptuous as to take to wife a woman consecrated to a life of chastity or a nun,
and if anyone has done so he is to be an outlaw before God and excommunicated from all Christendom
and to forfeit to the king all that he owns unless he desists quickly and atones very deeply to God,
and moreover we admonish that the Sunday festival is to be observed and honored
with all one's might from Sunday noon until dawn on Monday, and that no one is to be so
presumptuous as either to practice any trade or to attend any meeting on that holy day,
and all men poor and rich are to go to their church and make supplication for their sins
and to observe zealously every appointed fast and honor readily those saints whose feasts
the priests shall enjoin on us, so that altogether through the mercy of the eternal God
and the intersecession of his saints we can and may come to the bliss of the heavenly kingdom
and dwell with him who liveth and reigneth ever without end. Amen.