1017. Cnut consolidates his position (A wedding and four funerals)
July, 1017. Cnut marries Emma, Æthelred's widow
December 25 (?), 1017. Cnut orders four executions
The Chronicle records that after Cnut succeeded to all England he divided it into four, keeping Wessex (the traditional royal power base) for himself, giving East Anglia to Thorkell (who had come as a viking raider in 1009 and sworn allegiance to Æthelred in 1012), Mercia to Eadric (effectively reinstating him as ealdorman of Mercia), and Northumbria to Erik (confirming his appointment of 1016). It adds that several people were killed in that year, including Eadric, Northman the son of Ealdorman Leofwine, Æthelweard the son of Ealdorman Æthelmær the Stout, and Brihtric the son of Ælfheah of Devonshire. John of Worcester, writing in the 12th century, dates these four executions to Christmas. The Chronicle also notes that Cnut had the ætheling Eadwig (son of Æthelred) exiled and later killed, and that before 1 August he ordered the widow of King Æthelred, Richard's daughter, to be fetched as his wife.
Eadric's execution, after his multiple betrayals in 1015-6, would doubtless have been widely applauded by Danes and English alike; one manuscript of the Chronicle notes that he was killed "very rightly", and John of Worcester reports the killing of the "perfidious ealdorman" in London and adds that Cnut ordered the body be thrown over the city wall and left unburied. We know less about the other three executed nobles. Cnut may have feared that they would betray him if an English prince appeared and tried to win back the kingdom. Cnut then did his best to ensure that there would be no such English pretenders, exiling and killing Eadwig, who seems to have been the only surviving son of Æthelred's first marriage to Ælfgifu, and also exiling Edmund Ironside's two young sons (see the note on Edward the Exile's return in 1057). This left Æthelred's sons by his second marriage to Emma, in exile in Normandy and out of Cnut's reach, and it was probably partly to neutralize them that Cnut married Emma in turn. The Encomium Emmae Reginae, written at Emma's behest in 1041/2, records that Emma refused to marry Cnut unless he agreed that he would never set up the son of any other wife to rule after him, if they had a son (II.16); presumably it was also part of the deal that Emma renounced the claim of her sons by her earlier marriage.
S. Keynes, "Introduction to the 1998 Reprint" of Alistair Campbell (ed.), Encomium Emmae Reginae (Cambridge: 1998)