5 Pounds - Elizabeth II King Canute, Silver Proof

Cnut — the name rendered "Canute" here in its Victorianized spelling — ruled England, Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden simultaneously, making him one of the most powerful rulers medieval northern Europe produced. The coin commemorates a king whose administrative reforms of the English church and legal system were, by most scholarly accounts, more consequential than anything his Viking predecessors managed. The tidal legend attached to his name is almost certainly apocryphal, first appearing in writing a century after his death in 1035.