Though one must remember that Canute [or Cnut] was in fact demonstrating to his flattering courtiers, by making them all get their feet wet, that his powers were not, as they had obsequiously assured him, infinite, but that a king had no more power over the physical world than anyone else and so couldn't hold back the tide. Seems unfair on poor old Canute that he should be remembered as a personification of overweening pride, when the reality was the exact opposite. My late wife Valerie put it rather well IMO, in a novel of hers, Culture Shock (Duckworth 1988): "History has given Canute the wrong footnote".

~M~