Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor or
Eadweard III (
c. 1004 â€" January 4,
1066) was the penultimate
Anglo-Saxon King of England and the last of the
House of Wessex, ruling from
1042 until his death.
1 His reign marked the continuing disintegration of royal power in England and the aggrandizement of the great territorial earls, and it foreshadowed the country's later connection with
Normandy, whose duke
William I was to supplant Edward's successors
Harold and
Edgar Ætheling as England's ruler.
Edward and his brother Alfred were taken to Normandy by their mother
Emma, sister of Normandy's duke
Richard II, to escape the
Danish invasion of England in
1013. In his quarter-century of Norman exile during his most formative years, while England formed part of a great Danish empire, Edward developed an intense personal piety; his familiarity with Normandy and its leaders was also to influence his later rule.
Returning to England with Alfred in an ill-advised abortive attempt (
1036) to displace their step-brother
Harold Harefoot from the throne, Edward escaped to Normandy after Alfred's capture and death. The Anglo-Saxon lay and ecclesiastical nobility invited him back to England in
1041; this time he became part of the household of his half-brother
Harthacanute (son of Emma and
Canute), and according to the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was sworn in as king alongside him. Following Harthacanute's death on
June 8,
1042, Edward ascended the throne. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle indicates the popularity he enjoyed at his accession â€" "before
Harthacanute was buried, all the people chose Edward as king in London". Edward was crowned at
the cathedral of Winchester, the royal seat of the
West Saxons on
April 3,
1043.
Edward's reign was marked by peace and prosperity, but effective rule in England required coming to terms with three powerful earls:
Godwin, Earl of Wessex, who was firmly in control of the
thegns of
Wessex, which had formerly been the heart of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy;
Leofric, Earl of Mercia, whose legitimacy was strengthened by his marriage to
Lady Godiva, and in the north,
Siward, Earl of Northumbria. Edward's sympathies for Norman favourites frustrated Saxon and Danish nobles alike, fuelling the growth of anti-Norman opinion led by
Godwin, who had become the king's father-in-law in
1045. The breaking point came over the appointment of an
archbishop of Canterbury: Edward rejected Godwin's man and appointed the bishop of London,
Robert of Jumièges, a trusted Norman.
Matters came to a head over a bloody riot at Dover between the townsfolk and Edward's kinsman
Eustace, count of Boulogne.
Godwin refused to punish them,
Leofric and
Siward backed the King, and
Godwin and his family were all exiled in September
1051.
Queen Edith was sent to a nunnery at
Wherwell. Earl Godwin returned with an armed following a year later, however, forcing the king to restore his title and send away his Norman advisors. Godwin died in
1053 and the Norman
Ralph the Timid received
Herefordshire, but his son Harold accumulated even greater territories for the Godwins, who held all the earldoms save
Mercia after
1057.
Harold led successful raiding parties into
Wales in 1063 and negotiated with his inherited rivals in Northumbria in
1065, and in January
1066, upon Edward's death, he was proclaimed king. The details of the succession have been widely debated: the Norman position was that
William had been designated the heir, and that Harold had been publicly sent to him as emissary from Edward, to apprise him of Edward's decision. Harold's party asserted that the old king had made a deathbed bestowal of the crown on Harold. However, Harold was approved by the
Witenagemot who, under
Anglo-Saxon law, held the ultimate authority to convey kingship.
Edward had married Godwin's daughter
Edith on
January 23,
1045. The monastic authors of the king's
hagiography, written about the time of his canonization, has represented the childless union as a
spiritual marriage, with Edward refusing to consummate it rather than break a vow of chastity. His nearest heir would have been his nephew
Edward the Exile, who was born in England, but spent most of his life in Hungary. He had returned from exile in 1056 and died not long after, in February the following year. So Edward made his great nephew
Edgar Atheling his heir. But Edgar had no secure following among the earls: the resultant succession crisis on Edward's death without a direct "throneworthy" heir â€" the "foreign" Edgar was a stripling of fourteen â€" opened the way for Harold's coronation and the invasions of two effective claimants to the throne, the unsuccessful invasion of
Harold Hardrada in the north and the successful one of William the Bastard.
William of Normandy, who had visited England during Godwin's exile, claimed that the childless Edward had promised him the succession to the throne, and his
successful bid for the English crown put an end to Harold's nine-month kingship following a 7000-strong Norman invasion.
Edgar Ætheling was elected king by the
Witan after Harold's death but was brushed aside by William. Edward, or more especially the mediæval cult which would later grow up around him under the later Plantagenet kings, had a lasting impact on English history.
Westminster Abbey was founded by Edward between
1045 and
1050 on land upstream from the City of London, and was consecrated on
December 28,
1065. Centuries later,
Westminster was deemed symbolic enough to become the permanent seat of English government under
Henry III. The Abbey contains a shrine to Edward which was the centrepiece to the Abbey's redesign during the mid-thirteenth century. In 2005, Edward's remains were found beneath the pavement in front of the high altar. His remains had been moved twice in the 12
th and 13
th centuries, and the original tomb has since been found on the central axis of the Abbey in front of the original high altar.
Historically, Edward's reign marked a transition between the
10th century West Saxon kingship of England and the Norman monarchy which followed Harold's death. Edward's allegiances were split between England and his mother's Norman ties. The great earldoms established under
Canute grew in power, while Norman influence became a powerful factor in government and in the leadership of the
Church.
It was during the reign of Edward that some features of the English monarchy familiar today were introduced. Edward is regarded as responsible for introducing the royal seal and coronation regalia. Also under Edward, a marked change occurred in Anglo-Saxon art, with continental influences becoming more prominent (including the "Winchester Style" which had become known in the 10th century but prominent in the 11th), supplanting celtic influences prominent in preceding painting, sculpture, calligraphy and jewellery (see
Benedictional of St. Æthelwold for an example of the Winchester Style). His crown is believed to have survived until the
English Civil War when
Oliver Cromwell allegedly ordered it to be destroyed. Gold from it is understood to have been integrated into the
St Edward's Crown, which has been used in coronations since
Charles II of England in
1661.
When
Henry II came to the throne in
1154, he united in his person at last the Saxon and Norman royal lines. To reinforce this new warrant of authenticity, the cult of King Edward the Confessor was promoted.
Osbert de Clare was a monk of
Westminster, elected Prior in
1136, and remembered for his lives of saints
Edmund,
Ethelbert,
Edburga in addition to one of Edward, in which the king was represented as a holy man, reported to have performed several miracles, and touching people to heal them. Osbert was an active ecclesiastical politician as his surviving letters demonstrate, who was twice banished from the monastery and who went to
Rome as an advocate for the canonisation of Edward culminating successfully in his canonisation by
Pope Alexander III in
1161. In
1163, the newly sainted king's remains were enshrined in
Westminster Abbey with solemnities presided over by
Thomas Becket,
Archbishop of Canterbury. On this occasion the honour of preparing a sermon was given to
Aelred, the revered Abbot of
Rievaulx, to whom is generally attributed the
vita in Latin, a
hagiography partly based on materials in an earlier
vita by Osbert de Clare and which in its turn provided the material for a rhymed version in octasyllabic
Anglo-Norman, possibly written by the chronicler
Matthew Paris.
When Edward was sanctified, there were two types of saints:
martyrs and
confessors. Martyrs were people who died in the service of the Lord, and confessors were people who died natural deaths. Since Edward died a natural death, he was styled Edward the Confessor.
The
Roman Catholic Church regards Edward the Confessor as the
patron saint of kings, difficult marriages, and separated spouses. After the reign of Henry II Edward was considered the patron saint of England until
1348 when he was replaced in this role by
St. George. He remained the patron saint of the Royal Family.
# The numbering of English monarchs starts from scratch after the Norman conquest, which explains why the
regnal numbers assigned to English kings named Edward begin with the later
Edward I (ruled 1272–1307) and do not include Edward the Confessor (who was the third King Edward).
*
Steven Muhlberger's 'Edward the Confessor and his earls'*
Illustrated biography of Edward the Confessor*
Early British Kingdoms: Edward the Confessor*
BBC History: Edward the Confessor*
The Rise of Godwine, Earl of Wessex*
Edward the Confessor At Find A Grave*
Aelred of Rievaulx,
Life of St. Edward the Confessor, translated Fr. Jerome Bertram (first English translation) St. Austin Press ISBN 190115775X
