122 A CITY OF MANY WATERS 



presented, showing the straits to which statecraft may be 

 reduced under feeble rulers. Good Bishop ^Ifeah, 

 scandalised by the nightly orgies of his liege lord, and 

 trembling for the disasters which such debauchery was 

 bringing on his country, used to steal out of the palace of 

 Wolvesey on winter nights, creep past the sentries, and, 

 plunging into the icy Itchen, stand up to his middle 

 singing penitential psalms till sunrise. 



It availed not. The kingdom passed to lords of a 

 sterner race, and Cnut, to whose name we were taught 

 in youth to give the Latinised form of Canute, ruled 

 the whole Danish dominions from the ancient Saxon 

 capital. It is said that he returned thither after the 

 famous wave-compelling experiment on the sea-shore, 

 and, vowing never again to wear an earthly crown, hung 

 it on the cross above the high altar in the cathedral, 

 where it remained till the great cross itself, a marvel of 

 silver work, disappeared in the convulsions of the Refor- 

 mation. Cnut was a good friend to Winchester, ' having 

 decorated,' says Roger of Wendover, 'the Old Minster 

 with such munificence that the minds of strangers were 

 confounded at the sight of the gold and silver and the 

 splendour of the jewels.' 



The coming of the Norman Conqueror found Win- 

 chester divided against itself, and the two minsters took 

 opposite sides, with very important results on their sub- 

 sequent fortunes. Queen Emma, having vindicated her 

 character against the charges of immorality in general 

 and complicity in the murder of her son Alfred in par- 

 ticular, by walking unscathed over nine red-hot plough- 

 shares laid in a row on the pavement of the cathedral, 

 died in 1052 in her own house at the top of the High 



