The man known to history as Edward the Confessor
was born between 1003 and 1005 at a town near Oxford called Islip. His father was King Aethelred II, also known
as Aethelred the Unready, who had acceded to the throne at just 12 years old in 978
after the murder of his half-brother King Edward, and his mother was Emma, a Norman
princess of Danish origin born sometime in the 980s, whose father was Richard I, Count
of Rouen. The reign of Aethelred the Unready, although
initially peaceful, witnessed an increase in viking raids that started from 991, when
the Norwegian marauder Olaf Tryggvason invaded England with an armada of 93 ships and killed
many of Aethelred’s noblemen at the Battle of Maldon. Following on from this disaster, and in the
wake of the deaths of many of his most trusted advisors in battle or elsewhere, Aethelred
began believing his reign was cursed, blaming it, among many similar misdeeds, on his mistreatment
of the abbey of Abbingdon during the early years of his administration, in which he had
sold the abbot’s post to the brother of one of his liegemen Ælfric of Hampshire,
one of the many men he blamed for leading him astray, and which motivated him to reform
his ways after 993 in a period of his reign marked by a renewed commitment to god and
the atonement of his past sins. In addition to following a new penitential
path, Aethelred further tried to diminish the Viking threat by strengthening his bonds
with the dukes of Normandy, marrying the Norman princess Emma in 1002, yet this was initially
less effective than he had hoped, as later that year he caught wind of a Danish conspiracy
to overthrow his realm, leading to his sanctioning of the infamous massacre of St Brice’s Day,
an attempted extermination of every single Dane in the realm which witnessed, atrocities
that his new half-Danish bride would have looked upon in horror and the consequences
of which, for the rest of his life, and the beginning phase of Edward’s existence, he
would have to deal with. Relations between Normandy and England at
this time were growing increasingly strained by the fact that Normandy was becoming a renowned
safe haven from which Viking pillagers were allowed to conduct their operations against
Britain. However, and thanks to the intervention of
the Pope, both kingdoms began to foster an alliance with each other from 990 and 991,
which was officially sealed later on in 1002 following the marriage of Emma to King Aethelred,
a union which has been viewed by many as the reason why their son Edward the Confessor,
who was of both Norman and Anglo-Saxon stock, and who had never fathered an heir, may have
later promised the English throne to William of Normandy, who was Emma’s great-nephew
and so a cousin to Edward, and who became William the Conqueror after his successful
annexation of England in 1066. Nevertheless, throughout his life, Edward
would have a complicated relationship with his mother, a queen so desperate to remain
at the center of the political scene that she was prepared to sacrifice anything if
it got her a better position, including Edward, who she abandoned in 1017 to marry the Danish
conqueror King Cnut, only resuming contact with him 20 years later when civil unrest
threatened to topple her. Edward had one brother, Alfred, who died in
1036 or 1037 without marrying, and whose murder would always be an uncomfortable point of
contention with the family of his future bride Edith, and one sister, Godgifu, who married
Drogo, Count of the Vexin, and then Eustace II Count of Boulogne after her first husband’s
death in 1035. In addition, Edward had one younger half-brother,
Harthacnut who was briefly the king of England, and one younger half-sister Gunnhild, who
was later Queen Kunigund of Germany, who were both the products of Emma’s betrothal with
Cnut, as well as six older half-brothers borne from Aethelred’s first marriage to the daughter
of the earl of Northumbria, Ælfgifu, namely Athelstan, Ecgberht, Eadred, Eadwig, Edgar,
and finally Edmund, the oldest, whose surviving son and grandson, Edward Ætheling and Edgar
Ætheling, both of pure Anglo-Saxon descent, were later welcomed into Edward’s household. Descriptions of Edward’s appearance and
personality only appear towards the end of his life when he was around 60 years old,
but even so he is still described as being a tall and imposing figure, with milky white
hair and beard, a broad and flushed face, long emaciated fingers that let light pass
through the gaps, eyes shining with humility, and a king who was gracious and friendly to
all those he met, famed for possessing a remarkable degree of self-restraint he maintained despite
the many losses and betrayals he suffered, and who was cheerful with a strong moral compass,
blessed with good judgement that improved with age, and who treated his petitioners,
rich or poor with equal respect and dignity, contrasted with a darker temperament that
occasionally flared up in sudden bursts of anger, but to all who knew him this quickly
subsided, for Edward much preferred being kind to being cruel. When he was not engrossed in the day-to-day
business of the realm, Edward, like many kings of his day, enjoyed the thrill of the hunt,
an activity which in the later years of his reign he seemed to prioritize by increasingly
offloading the responsibilities of maintaining law and order to his regional kinsmen in order
to find more time to pursue his favorite hobby, which even at aged 60 he was still practicing
and studying with the aid of the many illuminated books on falconry he is said to have also
possessed. Edward was also an avid collector of holy
relics, and although not a big reader, he was well respected throughout the realm as
being an enthusiastic patron of the arts, and according to one commentator: “his loving
generosity attracted to the realm men learned in many arts”, including many foreign monks,
whose discipline and devotion he is said to have admired. Although details about Edward’s early life
are hazy, some sources claim that as a young child he was taken by his parents to the monastery
of Ely and placed on the altar there, wrapped in a pall adorned with light green circles
in a gesture that illustrated their desire to put the young princeling on the path to
being a monk, and that until 1014, Edward, alongside his brother Alfred, was mentored
by Bishop Ælfhun of London. Although it is hard to know if this particular
detail about his early upbringing is true or false, what is sure is that during Edward’s
childhood, as the newest addition to the Anglo-Saxon ruling house, he would experience, either
with his own eyes or from second-hand accounts, the destabilizing effects of the vicious Viking
campaign to destroy England, led principally by the enigmatic Danish lord Swein Forkbeard. When Edward was born, the Kingdom of England
was being consistently harried by Scandinavian warlords, a desperate situation that was compounded
by a great famine in 1005 so terrible, according to Archbishop Wulfstan of York, “that no
one ever remembered one so grim before”, viewed as a disaster of such apocalyptic scale
that many in the Church attributed it to the final reckoning of God, and the materialization
of the prophecy that, 1000 years after the death of Jesus, Satan would break free of
his bondage to wreak havoc upon the land, an opinion also shared by the pious Aethelred,
who in a bout of violent religious extremism removed three of his lords from their offices
in 1006, gouging out the eyes of Wulfheah and Ufegeat and confiscating the territories
of another leading thegn called Wulfgeat. As Edward turned into a toddler, England was
ravaged by a series of devastating Viking sorties in 1006 and 1007 which saw them pillage
and loot every shire in Wessex, a wave of terror that only ended after Aethelred gave
the aggressors an enormous tribute, buying him time to build up a sizable navy in 1008
to defend against future incursions and which by 1009, assembled at Sandwich, was the largest
English naval force ever recorded. This period of uneasiness and anxiety was
punctured by further personal tragedy for Aethelred, who lost two of his sons from his
previous marriage to Ælfgifu, Ecgberht in 1006, and the youngest of Edward’s half-brothers
Edgar, in 1008, a tale of woe that continued into August 1009, when a Viking force led
by the Danish Jarl Thorkell comprising of Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians tore through
Canterbury, east Kent, Berkshire, and up the coasts of Sussex and Hampshire. In 1010, with England being further pummeled
by Viking assaults, this time targeting East Anglia, Aethelred despairingly turned to God
once more by organizing a barrage of spiritual countermeasures, including changing the images
on his coins to the Lamb of God, ordering that on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday
before the feast of St Michael that all his subjects should fast on bread and water in
order to combat the devil, and insisting that every religious institution in the land should
sing a hymn called ‘Against the heathen’ every day, in a flurry of desperate appeals
that may have been some of Edward’s first memories. Yet Aethelred’s pleas to the divine remained
unanswered, as the following year in 1011 the Danish menace Thorkell, on behalf of the
Danish king Swein Forkbeard, returned to wage an offensive that ripped through the shires
of the south, the east, and the Midlands, followed by the premature death of yet another
of Edward’s half-brothers, Eadred in 1012 and also the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury
Ælfheah, butchered in a drunken rage by Thorkell’s soldiers after he refused to be ransomed. This year also marked the introduction of
the ‘heregeld’, an exploitative tax that effectively made England a vassal state of
the Danes, for now Aethelred was forced to pay a yearly tribute to upkeep the armies
of the Danes, who in return offered their protection. Although the heregeld marked the ultimate
capitulation of the English to the Viking scourge, it gave Aethelred and his royal court
some much needed breathing space, and Edward, a child of around 9 years old at this time,
would have felt a sudden uprush in optimism as Aethelred and his 3 remaining older half-brothers,
Athelstan, Edmund, and Eadwig, plotted their next move. However, in July 1013, all hopes of extinguishing
the Danish presence once and for all crumbled after an enormous Danish invasion fleet, arriving
at Sandwich, proved so formidable that all of Aethelred’s allies quickly surrendered,
and although London remained the only borough to put up any sort of resistance, this quickly
disintegrated after Aethelred and the rest of the royal family, completely outmaneuvered,
fled the country to seek asylum in Normandy with Duke Richard II, Emma’s brother. Edward, accompanied by his mother Emma, and
his sister Godgifu, and his brother Alfred, were hurriedly flung into a boat to cross
the English Channel, while their father met with them in Normandy after wintering with
his fleet off the coast of the Isle of Wight, and it is thought that Athelstan, Edmund,
and Eadwig, who all had a claim to the English throne, escaped elsewhere to avoid sharing
an uncomfortable period of exile with their younger half-siblings and now rivals, Edward
and Alfred. Edward’s first stint away from his motherland,
however, was short-lived, and in 1014 he returned to England with several envoys as part of
a diplomatic mission to reestablish his father’s position after the abrupt death of Swein Forkbeard
in February led to a number of competing claims, including from Cnut, Forkbeard’s son. Moreover, in a further twist of fate, another
of Edward’s half-brothers, Athelstan, had died in 1014, meaning that Edward’s claim
to the throne was suddenly strengthened, and with Duke Richard of Normandy seeing an opportunity
to install one of his nephews on the English throne, it seems that Aethelred, who was at
the mercy of the Normans, started to consider his younger son as heir instead of Edmund,
Edward’s oldest half-brother. Nevertheless, In the ensuing negotiations,
Aethelred was reinstated as king, and looking to exact revenge for the 1013 invasion, he
ordered an army to attack Cnut at his base at Lindsey in an offensive so brutal that
contemporary chroniclers reported that: “all the inhabitants that could be got at were
raided and burned and killed”, suggesting that women and children were also victims
of Aethelred’s avenging fury, which also extended to many of the thegns who had deserted
him including Morcar and Sigefyrth, who were lured to their deaths at a council in Oxford
in 1015. With Aethelred viciously reasserting his dominance
and having strongly hinted that he would pass the throne to Edward, his oldest son Edmund
sought to stake his own claim in the power struggle, rebelling against his father by
riding to Malmesbury, where he freed the widow of the murdered Sigefyrth and married her
to win the support of a large section of the English baronage, some of whom opposed Aethelred’s
return, but by September 1015 Aethelred was gravely ill, and the restoration of his power
was looking more and more unlikely as he gradually succumbed to sickness. With Edward a boy of 11 years old and hardly
able to mount a challenge of his own, he instead stayed by Aethelred’s side until his death
on the 23rd of April 1016, and Edmund was left as the only serious contender to Cnut,
whose military prowess would prove much greater in the conflict ahead. Several months after Aethelred’s passing,
and after a series of indecisive skirmishes, Cnut struck a mortal blow to Edmund’s cause
at the Battle of Assandun on the 18th of October, slaughtering most of Edmund’s generals in
an orgy of death that according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle took the lives of all of “the
chief men in the English race”, including the irrepressible Ælfric of Hampshire, a
man who had served the Anglo-Saxon monarchy for over 3 decades. Cnut’s triumph would be topped by the sudden
death and possible murder of Edmund on the 30th of November 1016, and as Cnut victoriously
crowned himself King of England in 1017, Edward, having received his baptism by fire, scampered
back to Normandy to avoid being executed to begin an extended period of exile. He would not however, be joined by his mother
Emma, a woman who relished the trappings of power, and who saw in the accession of the
new Danish monarch a chance for her to reclaim her position at the English court. In July 1017, and to the resentment of Edward,
Emma returned to England to marry King Cnut, who divorced Ælfgifu of Northampton, with
whom he fathered children including Harold Harefoot, in order to enter a matrimony with
an ex-Queen of England that would legitimize his authority, and which produced a further
two of Edward’s half-siblings, Harthacnut, his half-brother, and Gunnhild, his half-sister. As Emma became the new Queen of Denmark, Edward,
probably feeling neglected and forgotten, forged a new life for himself on the Continent,
and although opinion at the Normandy court was divided over his presence, Edward was
dutifully protected by them throughout his time there, and with the Danes consolidating
their new English holdings, Edward all but disappeared from the political scene for 20
years. It was not until 1035 that he became relevant
once again after the death of King Cnut on the 12th of November led to the full-scale
disintegration of his power in England, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and the rise in popularity
of Emma’s stepson, Harold Harefoot, as a rival successor to Harthacnut. With Harthacnut away in Scandinavia battling
for supremacy against Magnus of Norway, Emma was unable to defend his position against
the advances of Harold Harefoot and his sponsors, who started a violent campaign of usurpation,
leaving Emma with no choice but to call upon her ancestral home in Normandy and her sons
Edward and Alfred, to help her crush the rebellion. Despite having been ignored by their mother
for an incredibly long time, Aethelred’s sons answered her call, and in 1036 they crossed
the English channel, with Edward going on to sail up the Solent River to reunite with
his mother at Winchester, where he defeated enemy forces at a battle near Southampton,
yet Alfred would not be so triumphant, being captured at Guilford by Earl Godwin of Wessex
and conveyed to the custody of Harold Harefoot, who blinded him so horrifically that he soon
died of his injuries. Despite Edward’s victory, he was eventually
forced to sail back to Normandy after being ejected by Harefoot, who in 1038 further bolstered
his power by banishing Emma, who went to Bruges to wait for Harthacnut and his army to return
from Norway and to take back England. When Harthacnut arrived in Flanders, he had
a mere 10 ships full of warriors at his disposal, but after increasing his flotilla to 60 ships
he was met by the fortunate news that Harold Harefoot had unexpectedly died on the 17th
of March 1040, allowing Harthacnut to return to England unopposed where he was crowned
king, and where Edward, in recognition of his loyalty, was seemingly made joint ruler,
but on the 8th of June 1042, after a short and childless reign Harthacnut died, and despite
rival claims from Harthacnut’s cousin, Swein Estrithson, and interest from Magnus of Norway,
it was Edward who was crowned king at Winchester on the 3rd of April 1043 by the archbishops
of York and Canterbury at the age of 38, an accession that was greatly facilitated by
the support of Godwin of Wessex, an accomplice in the gory murder of Edward’s brother,
Alfred, a slight that Edward would never forget. With a desire to have a church of his own,
one of Edward’s first acts as king was to order the reconstruction of St Peter’s Abbey
at Westminster, a building project that would be perhaps the one constant throughout a reign
that was often as turbulent as it was peaceful, and the place in which he would eventually
be laid to rest. Aside from this, Edward’s earliest and most
important political task was to win allies, for although England was now ruled by an English
monarch who could trace his lineage all the way back to the first Anglo-Saxon king of
Wessex, Cerdic, the brief possession of England by the Danes had left behind a strong Scandinavian
aristocracy that were still highly influential and represented most powerfully by Godwin
of Wessex and Siward of Northumbria, who had both risen to prominence under Cnut, the man
also responsible for the appointments of most of the major figures of the English Church
at the time. Despite this, Edward was evidently more than
happy to have the support of these lords, which was illustrated most saliently on the
16th of November 1043 when he rode with them from Gloucester to Winchester to punish the
woman who had deserted him as a child, Emma, who was disinherited of her estates and whose
henchmen, such as Stigand, who she had made Bishop of East Anglia, were removed from their
offices, although Edward’s retributive feelings did not last for too long, for she was shortly
welcomed back into the royal fold. Entrenching his rule, Edward lavished gifts
and honors on the aristocracy, saving the most important for Earl Godwin, who Edward
made his son-in-law after marrying his daughter Edith on the 23rd of January 1045, a women
who was renowned for her beauty just as much as her intelligence and virtue, for Edith
purportedly spoke many languages, read widely and was a practitioner of many arts at the
same time as being a devoted Christian of the highest morals. To Edith’s biographer, she was “not so
much a spouse but a good mother”, who as well as being an astute and trustworthy advisor
to Edward, worked diligently to fashion his royal image from the first moment, helping
him to exhibit the splendor befitting of a king by outfitting him with the finest clothes
emblazoned with gold and silver jewels, equipping him with a walking stick made out of gold
and the most precious gems as well as a saddle for his horse embellished with beautifully
carved birds and creatures, and furnishing his throne room with exquisite Spanish carpets. At least in the early stages of their marriage,
the couple seemed very happy together, a fact illustrated by their joint visit to Abingdon
Abbey when Edith spotted a group of children having lunch at an unusually early hour, and
in an effort to provide them with a better quality meal, for she was shocked that tonly
had bread to eat, Edith asked her husband if he could make a donation, to which he laughed
and asked that he would do so if someone could provide him with some property he could gather
the funds from. Edith replied, saying that she had recently
been gifted a village, and that if Edward were to allow it she would more than happily
give it away, to which the king heartily agreed, remarking how it was a great idea. In fact, many commentators noted how despite
their troubles the couple remained extremely close, and according to one they were like
“one person dwelling in double form”, another states that Edith was “divinely
joined to the king’s side”, and finally that for Edith “no page of any book could
please her more than one which tells of Edward’s qualities”. On the other hand, there were some who disliked
the new Queen, accusing her of stealing holy relics for her collection and even ordering
assassinations that benefited her family, who had all been elevated to the highest offices
of the realm thanks to her husband, including her eldest brother, Swein, who was inserted
as Earl of the West Midlands in 1043, her other brother Harold, who was given control
over much of Middlesex, Essex, East Anglia, and Cambridge, her Danish cousin Beorn Estrithson,
who was installed as the regional authority in the lands between Swein and Harold in 1045,
and various other members of her clan who exercised control of all the kingdoms south
of the River Humber apart from Mercia, which was ruled by Leofric, one of the last remaining
nobles installed by Aethelred, Northampton, which was administered by Siward of Northumbria,
and Hereford which was overseen by Ralph of Mantes, the son of Edward’s sister Godgifu,
the last 3 of which constituted the majority of Edward’s personal power base, greatly
weaker than that of the Godwins. In addition, the Norman presence in the kingdom
was practically wiped out by the rise of the Godwins, marked only by the modest holdings
of the two Breton lords Ralph the Staller and Robert fitz Wimarc, as well as Edith’s
personal maid, Matilda, yet although Edward’s private entourage remained extremely modest
in comparison to his wife, he still held a strong sway with the Church, his God-given
authority there acting as a much needed counterbalance and empowering him to make his own decisions
without too much Godwin influence, such as in 1051 when he rejected the ascension of
Æthelric, one of Godwin’s men, to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Furthermore, and in another indication of
his influence over the Church, Edward was able to appoint many of his own royal clerks,
such as his German ally Robert of Jumièges who oversaw the Holy See of London in 1044
and Canterbury in 1051, to the most important posts on offer instead of Church candidates,
further illustrated by the fact that between 1051 and 1057 there were only 4 monks ordained
as bishops. Despite Edward’s preference for his own
men, he still enjoyed widespread popularity among the Church, who were always suspicious
of the pagan heritage of the Scandinavian faction, whose influence they much preferred
to offset with Edward’s appointments, even if it cost them a little independence. As well as the Church, Edward also largely
dictated his administration’s attitude towards security and foreign relations, his experience
as an exiled prince visiting many European courts during his 20 year stint away from
England no doubt coming in particularly handy, as demonstrated by the impressive list of
sovereigns who congratulated him on his accession to the throne, including his brother-in-law
German emperor Heinrich III who was married to Edward’s sister Godgifu, Henri I of France,
who was named as “a close kinsman”, and an unnamed king of the Danes who was probably
Swein Estrithson, who at the time was petitioning for Edward’s support to help him ward off
the advances of Magnus of Norway. Magnus had designs on the English throne and
was viewed as such a danger that Edward prepared his ships to defend against a possible invasion
by the Scandinavians throughout 1044 and 1045, a threat that only subsided with Magnus’
death on the 25th of October 1047 to the relief of Swein Estrithson as well as Edward, both
of whose kingdoms were saved from a Viking assault because of this remarkable stroke
of good fortune, with Magnus being himself replaced by Harold Hardrada. Perhaps traumatized by his experience in 1013
when he was forced to flee his homeland, Edward had no love of viking warlords like Magnus,
and as king sought to disempower them domestically by banishing Cnut’s niece, Gunnhild, and
her family in 1044, and prominent Danish landholder Osgod Clapa in 1046, while in 1048 he successfully
fended off a Viking armada of 25 ships led by the pirates Lothen and Yrling, who sailed
from Flanders to ravage the south-eastern ports of Sandwich and Thanet. In fact, much of Edward’s early foreign
policy centered around containing Flanders and its ruler Count Baldwin V, whose territories
were a safe haven for the bands of roving pirates that consistently harried English
shores, and who was prevented from causing more harm to England by a network of continental
alliances Edward maintained with his brother-in-law Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, and Walter
III, Count of the Vexin. Count Baldwin also damaged Edward’s relationship
with King Henri I of France, who although on good terms with the English sovereign,
was also Baldwin’s brother-in-law and also the protector of the duke of Normandy, William,
a man who intimately knew Edward from his time in exile and whose family, after Queen
Emma was stripped of her possessions, maintained increasingly frosty relations with their previous
charge thereafter. Edward’s friendship with Henri I would take
another blow in 1049, when working in conjunction with King Swein of Denmark, he sent a flotilla
of ships to help the German emperor Heinrich to quell the Lotharingian rebellion which
Count Baldwin entered in 1047, an intervention that would have displeased Henri, who would
go on to show his disapproval in 1051 by marrying one of Count Baldwin’s daughters. Responding to Edward’s aid of the German
emperor, Count Baldwin sent a raiding party comprising of 29 vessels headed by the exiled
Danish lord Osgod Clapa to devastate parts of Essex, a situation made even more complicated
by the fact that his sally was followed up by another one led by Swein, Earl Godwin’s
oldest son, who had taken shelter in Flanders after abducting the abbess of Leominster in
1047 and murdering his own cousin, Earl Beorn, before being welcomed with open arms by Count
Baldwin. The chaos of the mid to late 1040s came to
an end by 1050, a relatively calmer year in which Edward decommissioned 9 of the 14 ships
he had hired from abroad to defend his realm from a possible invasion, extending the contracts
of the remaining forces by just one year, at the same time that he pardoned Swein at
the instigation of his wife. Basking in a temporary period of calm Edward,
who for whatever reason never fathered any heirs, was finally able to think about his
legacy, and in 1051 Normans sources, written after the Norman conquest of England in 1066,
assert that Robert of Jumièges was sent to the court of William of Normandy, Edward’s
formative home, to discuss the issue of succession, and that it was here that Edward first promised
William the English throne, a claim, whether fact, historical fiction, or a mixture of
both, for the Norman chroniclers cannot be entirely trusted, that the Duke would use
as justification for his later actions. Nevertheless, as Edward mulled over who would
follow him, he was feeling increasingly resentful of the Godwin’s grip on power, and from
1051 the realm was plunged into crisis as Edward sought to reassert his authority over
his wife’s family. It began in the spring of 1051 when Edward
appointed his German favorite Robert of Jumièges as the Archbishop of Canterbury, who immediately
accused Earl Godwin of illegally possessing several Church estates, a tension that came
to a head in September 1051, when Godwin refused Edward’s order to discipline the burgesses
of Wessex, after several citizens were blamed for starting a confrontation with the men
of Eustace of Boulogne, Edward’s brother-in-law, who was visiting the English king on family
business. Edward was so incensed that Godwin had disobeyed
his command that, with the encouragement of Eustace and the archbishop, he convened a
council at Gloucester on the 7th of September attended by his army and the forces of Earl
Siward of Northumbria, Leofric of Mercia, and Earl Ralph Mantes of Hereford, while the
Godwin’s called an assembly of their own vassals at Beverstone, just south of Gloucester,
in which they immediately demanded that Eustace and Ralph Mantes lay down their arms, while
Robert of Jumièges added more fuel to the fire by leveling an accusation that Godwin
was planning to murder Edward, just as he had done to his brother Alfred during Harold
Harefoot’s failed coup. Although each side seemed ready for battle,
neither wanted to start a civil war, and as Edward refused to back down Godwin’s position
steadily fractured to the point where, with the support of the aristocracy, he was charged
with treason and, alongside his oldest son Swein was forced to hand over one of his sons
as a hostage to Edward. As both armies made their way to London, and
it was announced that Swein was now to be treated as a fugitive, Godwin’s forces disintegrated
by the time he reached his manor in Southwark, and his hope evaporated after he received
a message from the king through Stigand, Bishop of Winchester, which stated that justice would
only be served when Godwin could return to him his deceased brother Alfred. Earl Godwin took the hint, and alongside his
sons Gytha, Swein, and Tostig fled into the welcoming arms of Count Baldwin in Flanders,
while his other sons Harold and Leofwine made haste to Bristol and boarded a ship to Ireland,
as the men of house Godwin were denounced as traitors and enemies of the realm by Edward
who, unsure of his wife’s loyalties, imprisoned Edith in a nunnery. With Archbishop Robert of Jumièges recommending
that Edward should divorce his wife, the Godwins’ sizable estates were redistributed among Edward’s
supporters, including Earl Ralph of Mantes and another called Oda, who were ordered to
assume command of a fleet of ships docked at Sandwich, while Edward’s coastal squadrons
were put on high alert as he waited for the Godwins to unleash vengeance. Edward’s scions in Somerset proved their
loyalty, and alertness, when they repelled an attempt by Godwin’s sons Harold and Leofwine,
en-route to their father who was waiting for them in the English Channel, to restock their
9 ships at Porlock, and thanks to Edward’s royal armada, he was able to repulse Godwin’s
first attempt to retake his English possessions in June, harassing his ships up the coast
until they were forced to retreat back to Flanders. In August however, the Godwins were a lot
more successful, with the Irish and Flanders arms of their naval forces successfully linking
up at Portland Bill in Dorset before moving east, where they managed to enlist many men
for their cause at North Foreland and then the Thames Estuary at the same time that Edward
established his headquarters in London, where his land army, commanded by five of his earls,
and his navy, consisting of fifty ships, were organized by mid-August. When Godwin reached London on the 14th of
September, he established a camp on the south bank of the River Thames to the terror of
many of Edward’s allies, including the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert of Jumièges, who realizing
that Godwin was prepared to risk everything and engage in battle, deserted the royal forces
and fled for their lives, while some, such as Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumbria,
stayed where they were but refused to help Edward, who was absolutely infuriated but,
now realizing he was powerless, agreed to meet earl Godwin at a council outside of London
on the 15th of September 1052. It was here that Godwin proclaimed he was
innocent of all the crimes leveled against him, forcing Edward to clear the Earl’s
name and to reinstate Edith back to the royal court, while all those who deserted the King’s
side were denounced as criminals. Although Edward had been thoroughly beaten,
he managed to recover his position fairly quickly due to the convenient deaths of many
of the Godwin entourage, such as Swein, his fiery brother-in-law, who died on the 6th
of March 1052 in Constantinople while returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and Earl
Godwin himself on the 15th of April 1053, who was replaced as Earl of Wessex by his
son Harold. Despite the death of their patriarch, the
Godwins, thanks to the behind the scenes influence of Queen Edith, continued to dominate the
positions of the realm, with Edith’s younger brother Tostig inserted as the Earl of Northumbria
after the death of Siward in 1055, disturbing the pre-existing power balance of Edward’s
regional lords to such a degree that the son of Leofric of Mercia, Ælfgar, who had been
made Lord of East Anglia, was temporarily banished and part of his duchy given to Godwin’s
other son, Gyrth, after his attempts to claim Northumbria. Although Ælfgar was eventually entrusted
with the earldom of Mercia after Leofric’s death in 1057, Gyrth was given the entirety
of East Anglia at his expense, and similarly when Ralph of Mantes died the same year Edward
decreed that Harold was to be the earl of Hereford, while at the same time another of
Edith’s brothers, Leofwine, was delegated a swathe of south-eastern territories, a raft
of appointments that meant the Godwin family now controlled most of England apart from
Mercia, but far from being unhappy about the new status quo, Edward seemed to support it,
for it guaranteed the stability of the realm. In fact, it worked so well that after 1052
he retired from active military service, entrusting the security of the kingdom to his lieutenants
and preferring to direct affairs from the sidelines while he enjoyed more leisurely
pursuits such as hunting, as was the case in 1054 when he ordered Siward of Northumbria
to mount an attack on Scotland, resulting in the defeat of King Macbeth at a battle
in Perthshire and the installation of Duncan’s son Malcolm Canmore as monarch, who would
go on to kill Macbeth in 1057 and pay homage to Edward at Gloucester in 1059. Edward similarly dealt with his difficult
Welsh subjects in the same way, in 1053 ordering the assassination of the Prince of South Wales
Rhys ap Rhydderch after his border infringements into Hereford, resulting in the Welsh warlord’s
severed head being delivered to Edward’s court, and in 1055, after the rise of the
prince of North Wales Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and his seizure of territories rightfully
belonging to the English Crown, Edward would select Harold to redress the situation, instructing
him to invade northern Wales in 1062, leading to the near capture of the Welsh rebel at
Rhuddlan. Gruffudd having escaped his grasp, Edward
was next compelled to call upon his other brother-in-law Tostig to mount another raid
of northern Wales while Harold took command of a fleet of ships that set off from Bristol,
a joint maneuver that resulted in the submission of the majority of the Welsh noble houses
and the murder of Gruffudd by his own soldiers on the 5th of August 1063, confirmed by the
delivery of his head to Harold who dutifully sent it to Edward who, most likely sitting
comfortably at one of his palaces ordered the brothers to impose vassalage on the fractured
Welsh, an impressive achievement that highlighted the effectiveness of Edward’s system of
subservient lords doing his bidding, a modus operandi that contributed to the harmony and
stability his kingdom enjoyed from 1052 until 1065. On the other hand, in 1065, towards the end
of Edward’s life, the system of governance he had carefully crafted, in which he trusted
his earls to carry out his will, broke down with the collapse of the relationship between
Harold and his brother Tostig, the earl of Northumbria, a man whose brutal rule of the
Northern shires led to a widespread revolt against him that year in October perpetrated
by Eadwine and Morcar of Mercia, the sons of Ælfgar of Mercia, Leoferic’s successor
who had died in 1062, and whose offspring demanded that Morcar be installed as Earl
of Northumbria instead of Tostig. When Edward demanded that Harold help out
his embattled brother he refused in much the same way as his father, Earl Godwin had done
in 1051, and alongside many of the other nobles of the land who also disobeyed the king’s
command, allowed Morcar to seize control of Northumbria and to oust the unpopular Tostig
to the fury of King Edward, whose authority had been undermined yet again. With Harold having the upper-hand and the
sympathies of the aristocracy, King Edward was later forced to authorize the exile to
Flanders of his friend Tostig, a man who Edward thought of as a brother, and whose bond was
described by one chronicler as ‘amor’, the strongest term of affection that could
be used, in a banishment that would have likely torn Edward apart, and was perhaps partly
responsible for the decline of his health that was about to follow. With Edward’s trusted generals breaking
the peace, the question of succession came to the fore again, for Edward and Edith were
childless, something Edward was keenly aware of in 1054 when he sent Bishop Ealdred of
Worcester on a mission to the German court of Heinrich III to establish contact with
the son of his long dead older half-brother, Edmund, who had fathered a son called Edward
Ætheling, also known as Edward the Exile. Growing up in the relative safety of the German
empire, Edward Ætheling had married a princess of German-Hungarian stock, Agatha, and produced
3 children, Margaret, Christina, and a boy they named Edgar Ætheling, they enjoyed an
influential position at the Magyar court, but when Edward Ætheling visited King Edward
in 1057 with his family he died suddenly, leaving the question of succession more open
than ever, especially since Edgar Ætheling, the grandson of Edmund and a possible contender
for the throne, was raised in the English royal house after the death of his father,
whose passing paved the way for William of Normandy to stake his claim even further. In 1065 the succession dispute intensified
after Harold crossed the channel to meet William of Normandy, an event that has been interpreted
by scholars writing after William’s invasion of England in 1066 as confirmation of Edward’s
1051 promise to bequeath the kingdom to the Norman duke. In several highly politicized pro-Norman accounts,
including the famous Bayeaux Tapestry, produced to justify the Conqueror’s seizure of England,
Norman scholars generally report that Harold crossed the Channel to Ponthieu where he was
received by Guy of Amiens, who then handed him over to William. Harold supposedly accompanied the Duke on
a military campaign around Brittany, afterwards swearing an oath of loyalty that recognized
William’s claim to the English throne, an agreement that was confirmed by an exchange
of hostages. On the other hand, those looking to balance
out the Norman accounts, and who believe no such oath was sworn, have suggested that instead
of promising the English Crown as the Norman chroniclers assert, that it could have been
something much more trivial, such as a declaration to marry into the Norman house, that William
was able to subsequently hijack for his own narrative. Whatever the case, soon after Harold’s journey
to Normandy, Edward’s health started to deteriorate on Christmas Eve 1065, and although
the king made an effort to appear cheerful at the dining table the next day, behind the
smiles he was suffering intensely as Edith attended to his every need in private, and
as Edward plunged deeper into the bowels of sickness, he summoned Stigand and his other
bishops to inform them that the consecration ceremony at Westminster, Edward’s most famous
building project, on the 28th of December should go ahead without him, By new year 1066
the old king, so ill that he could not leave his bed, reminisced about the bygone days
of his youth and ominously told of a dream he had where the trunk of a green tree representing
destiny was splitting apart, a harbinger of what was to befall his homeland, and in the
few times he was lucid the king reportedly denounced evildoers and agents of Satan, issued
his final writs and grants with the help of his royal steward, the bishop Stigand, his
loyal kinsmen Harold and Robert fitz Wimarc, and his devoted wife Edith, who sat on the
floor and warmed his feet to comfort his passing, and as funeral arrangements began to be prepared,
all who were by the king’s side witnessed Edward making a last minute decision that
would change the course of history, as the dying king named Harold as his successor. On the 5th of January 1066, Edward died, and
the dead king, with a circlet on his head and an amulet of the Cross hung around his
neck, was wrapped up in a shroud of Byzantine silk and conveyed to his funeral the next
morning, a solemn affair in which he was transported from the palace to Westminster Abbey to the
dirges, chants, and ringing bells of clerics, accompanying the crowd of esteemed nobles
who witnessed the king’s body being lowered into his tomb at the high altar, before they
rushed off to watch Harold crown himself king immediately afterwards. A few years after Edward’s passing, many
people reported that they had been miraculously cured of their ills and ailments after spending
time by the tomb of the deceased king, claims that kickstarted the cult of St Edward which
led to his eventual canonization by the Church. As the years passed and the reign of Edward
became distant history, new accounts of his supposed ability to perform miracles started
to emerge, such as the tale of a young woman who by the king’s hand was cured of scrofulous
glands on the neck, stories which led to a renewed interest in Edward in 1102 when Gilbert
Crispin, the abbot of Westminster, exhumed the old king’s grave and alongside Gundulf,
the bishop of Rochester, searched for evidence of his saintliness, but it was only after
the release of Edward’s biography by Westminster monk Osbert de Clare, some time before 1138,
that the notion that Edward deserved sainthood garnered mainstream appeal from the English
church and the royalty. The first attempt to canonize Edward in the
late 11th century was unsuccessful after Pope Innocent II denied the claim, but hopes were
revived in 1160 after Edward’s case was put forward again by another Abbot of Westminster,
Laurence, who with the backing of King Henry II was able to provide Pope Alexander III
with the necessary evidence, including the account of Osbert de Clare and several eyewitness
reports, that attested to Edward’s divine healing abilities, of which the Pope was sufficiently
convinced to confirm his sainthood in a papal bull published on the 7th of February 1161. Edward was acknowledged by the Church as a
holy confessor, which is a saint who was not martyred, and from then on was given the epithet
‘the Confessor’, but although at the time there was much interest surrounding him, his
popularity slowly waned as the years passed, and was only briefly revived by his most famous
devotee King Henry III, who as well as naming his son after the Confessor also had Edward’s
tomb restored on the 13th of October 1269 during his reconstruction of Westminster Abbey. Afterwards, a modest cult of Saint Edward
survived quietly for centuries more before it was abruptly terminated with the accession
of the Hanoverian monarch George I in 1714. Although Edward the Confessor was the last
monarch of the Anglo-Saxon bloodline and the house of Cerdic, which could be traced back
to the early 6th century, to govern England, and though the first few years of his reign
were fairly chaotic as he worked tirelessly to stamp his authority domestically as well
as internationally, his reign after 1052 was for the most part very successful, a rare
period of peace that served as an oasis of calm, a contrast to the mayhem so often associated
with the medieval era, yet it could equally be said that Edward was extremely lucky in
that the unexpected deaths of others often served him very well. As a young prince born into the brutal pandemonium
of medieval Europe, Edward’s first glimpse of life was death, his agent of fortune, as
the famine of 1005, so devastating that contemporaries were convinced they were experiencing the
final judgement of Christ, spread pestilence and starvation to all. Edward, being the oldest child of his father’s
second marriage to Emma, and having 7 older half-brothers ahead of him in the line of
succession, was never meant to be king, yet by the time he was 11 years old the savage
and unrelenting medieval world had taken away the lives of every single one of his male-half
siblings, and Edward was unexpectedly heralded as the rightful Anglo-Saxon heir, as the triumph
of the Danish King Cnut against Edmund in the civil war of 1014 to 1016 forced him to
flee into exile. Having escaped with his life and been abandoned
by his mother Emma who chose to start a new life as Cnut’s queen, Edward led by all
accounts a comfortable life as a noble refugee at the Norman court, a 20 year period that
served as a stark contrast to the bedlam that had enveloped his early years, and a time
in which the future king would have developed the judgement, skills and appropriate conduct
that would forge him into a sophisticated medieval statesman, qualities that would serve
him well in the coming storm that ensued after the death of King Cnut and the break out of
a civil war between Harold Harefoot and his half-brother Harthacnut. After a brief campaign fighting against Harold
Harefoot in 1036 which witnessed the horrific blinding and murder of his brother Alfred
after he was seized by Edward’s future father-in-law Earl Godwin of Wessex and handed over to the
enemy, Edward was aided by death yet again after Harthacnut, emerging victorious in the
struggle, passed away after barely 3 months on the throne, and as joint king Edward was
chosen in his stead, with the support of Earl Godwin who had changed allegiances, to govern
the kingdom of England. Edward’s first few years in office were
marked by a campaign to win over the Danish remnants that still occupied an influential
place in society, significantly facilitated by his marriage to Edith as recognition of
Earl Godwin’s essential role in making him king, and despite Godwin’s kinsmen dominating
many of the most important postings in the realm, Edward was able to operate fairly independently
and was still able to have the final say in most matters. On the other hand, Edward’s reliance on
the Godwin clan would have destabilizing consequences after Earl Godwin, believing he was above
the law and the word of the king, disobeyed Edward’s command to punish his Wessex subjects
after their disrespectful treatment of Count Eustace II of Boulogne, the husband of his
sister Godgifu, and his men, during a visit to Edward’s court in 1051. Showing his true colors and the lust of a
man sick with power, Edward was forced to face-off against Earl Godwin and his sons,
whose combined strength forced Edward to concede and to forgive his benefactor without a clash
of arms, yet Edward would strike lucky yet again, and his position would be somewhat
restored after the deaths of the unruly Swein and Earl Godwin shortly after the showdown. From here, Edward was able to mend his relationship
with the surviving Godwins, most notably Harold and Tostig, who became like brothers to him
and to whom he subsequently entrusted the security of the kingdom against the incursions
of the Welsh and the Scots, ushering in a period of peace and stability lasting well
over a decade, and that abruptly ended when he was again betrayed by a close confidant,
this time Harold, who refused, alongside many of Edward’s noblemen, to help the unpopular
Tostig recover his position as the earl of Northumbria after an uprising against him
by Eadwine and Morcar of Mercia. With the heartbroken Edward left with no choice
but to exile one of his closest friends, the king’s health soon took a turn for the worse,
and by December 1065, after missing the consecration ceremony of his church in Westminster he lay
on his deathbed, where the question of succession came sharply into focus. It was an honor which, according to Norman
sources he had promised to William of Normandy in 1051 and 1065, and which, according to
other accounts, he had reneged upon, giving it instead to Harold as he lay on his deathbed
at Gloucester in early 1066, yet Edward’s true intentions were lost to history after
the triumph of the Norman conquest in 1066 and the slaying of Harold, who declared himself
king on the same day as Edward’s funeral, and whose defeat at the hands of William of
Normandy at the Battle of Hastings inspired a raft of pro-Norman accounts confidently
claiming that William, instead of Harold, had always been Edward’s true heir. What do you think of Edward the Confessor? Do you think he was a man whose success and
rise to power can be attributed more to the convenient deaths of his rivals than his own
political prowess? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime thank you very much for watching.
