Knute takes the whole kingdom and divides it into four
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Ingram/Giles translation) records under 1017 that King Knute took to the whole government of England and divided it into four parts: Wessex for himself, East-Anglia for Thurkyll, Mercia for Edric and Northumbria for Eric.
What this does and does not establish
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a monastic chronicle, used here through a 19th-century English translation (this e-text gives J. Ingram's translation, with excerpts of J. A. Giles's translation collated in by its preparer; the Old English was not checked); this records what this translation of the Chronicle says, not independent confirmation. A passage from J. A. Giles's translation, collated into this e-text in double parentheses under the same year, says only that Canute was chosen king.
- Quoted from a published English translation, not from the original-language text.
- Region
- Europe
- Theme
- Politics and institutions
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- A.D. 1017.
- How we use it
- Placed in the year under which the Chronicle enters it. For events near the turn of the year this may differ from the modern calendar year, and some annals in the Chronicle are known to be dislocated.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
The year is the heading under which this translation of the Chronicle enters the passage; the Chronicle's own year-beginning (Christmas, Annunciation or September, varying by manuscript) is not converted.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (English translation by J. Ingram, with J. A. Giles)
Anonymous Anglo-Saxon chroniclers; translated by James Ingram (1823) and J. A. Giles (1847)
Published English translation, as quoted
This year King Knute took to the whole government of
England, and divided it into four parts: Wessex for himself,
East-Anglia for Thurkyll, Mercia for Edric, Northumbria for Eric.Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Source: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, tr. J. Ingram and J. A. Giles, Project Gutenberg eBook #657. Wording is a 19th-century translation; the Chronicle's year headings follow its own reckoning.
Exact source version
29fd0af2fcddbade6ab661734fa77c2d8fdd938b0ff3a639bdfc2c757cceb134Checks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-04. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
This is a corrected version of this record. During research, before this release, an earlier version was withdrawn after independent review and replaced by this one.
Revision s1p_1017_asc_1_r2
Exact revision fingerprint
c6ff7168f79eba44a789ba7f6856b66a6de2238fa0938a22504daae56492ecc6