[9] Northman's last non-chronicle appearance is a subscription to a lease given by Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, to his brother Ælfwig.
John of Worcester related that:In July Cnut married Ælfgifu, that is Emma, Æthelred's widow, and at Christmas, when he was at London, ordered the treacherous Ealdorman Eadric (ducem Edricum) to be killed in the palace because he feared that some day he would be entrapped by Eadric's treachery, just as Eadric's former lords Æthelred and Edmund, that is Ironside, were frequently deceived, and he ordered his body to be thrown over the city wall, and left unburied.
The king made Leofric ealdorman (ducem) in place of his brother Northman, and afterwards held him in great affection.
[12] The account in the surviving versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (in recensions C, D, E) is shorter, and does not give Northman the title of dux:In this year [1017] King Cnut succeeded to all the kingdom of England and divided it into four, Wessex for himself, East Anglia for Thorkel, Mercia for Eadric, and Northumbria for Eric.
It described him as a "powerful man" (potens homo), and that all Northman's lands were afterwards given to Ealdorman Leofric, his brother.
[14] The Chronicle of Crowland Abbey, the reliability of which is doubted by some historians, says that Northman was a retainer of Eadric Streona, ealdorman in much of Mercia.