In the long struggles between Roman and Briton, Briton and Saxon, Saxon and Dane, many were the warriors who perished in its waters. One State secret it held and revealed.
Harold Harefoot, the son of Canute, had been buried at Westminster, but his half-brother, Hardicanute, had caused the corpse to be exhumed, and the head severed from the body and cast with it into the river. The body was drawn up in the net of some Danish fishermen, and secretly buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes.