Edward the Confessor was King of England from June 1042 to January 1066 - for just over 23 years - roughly from when he was in his late 30s/early 40s until his early 60s.

He’s considered the last King of England from the House of Wessex and he played a crucial role in setting the scene for the 1066 Norman Invasion of England just nine and a half months after he died.

After his passing
there would be a power struggle in which three men would contest the throne - Wessex Earl Harold Godwinson, the king of Norway Harald Hadrada and William of Normandy - with William emerging victorious.

Edward was born in around 1003 in Oxfordshire. He was the son of the then king of England, AEthelred - who ruled for almost 40 years between 978 - 1016.

Edward - an exile of around 25 years - was not in a strong position when he ascended to the throne and had to rely on powerful English noblemen to support his claim.

Chief among these was Godwin the Earl of Wessex who was to now play a signifiant role in shaping English history.

Not only would he supply the Queen - his daughter Edith, who Edward married - Godwin would also supply Edward’s successor, his son Harold Godwinson.

Even though King Edward would surely have resented Godwin - who after all just a few years before in 1036 had handed his brother Alfred over to King Harold - it appears that Edward had no choice but to seek out his support, go along with his advice and marry Godwin’s daughter.

The Godwin family also more or less controlled the whole of southern England, so if Edward wanted to stay king, it must have been necessary for him to keep them onside.

We don’t know if Edward was required to marry Edith in order to gain Godwin’s support, but it’s possible he eventually resented the match.

The marriage was childless - leaving Edward without an heir - and in around 1051 during a crisis between Edward and Godwin, Edward sent Edith to a nunnery and may have considered divorcing her.

Edward’s reputation was later cultivated as a pious, religious man, but in reality we don’t know how much truth there was in this.

We know he pursued an aggressive and ruthless policy against Scotland and Wales - sending his army to defeat the Scottish King Macbeth (later immortalised by William Shakespeare) and ordering the head of a Welsh prince to be delivered to him in revenge for a raid carried out on England.

Edward was in his 60s when he fell into a coma.

He died in January 1066

Harold Godwinson would claim that Edward had asked him if he would become his successor.

Of course, this was entirely disputed by William of Normandy who claimed the throne had been promised to him when he’d visited Edward in 1051 during Godwin’s exile.

This disputed succession would - by the end of the year - end with the Battle of Hastings, which we’ll cover in a subsequent video.

Not mentioned yet is Edgar AEthling who above all other contenders in 1066, could be said to have had the strongest claim to the English throne.

Edgar - an actual descendent of previous kings of England - was the king that never was.

A few videos back, you may recall that we covered the life of Edmund Ironside who was briefly King of England from April to November 1016, before he died and Canute took over.

Edmund’s children went into exile when Canute was crowned. One of his sons Edward the Exile had a son, Edgar AEthling, who was alive in 1066 when Edward the Confessor died.

As we’ll find out in a subsequent video, Edgar was actually elected the next King of England when Harold Godwinson was topled at the Battle of Hastings. Lacking an army though, he was never able to back up his claim.

Just under a century after his passing, in 1161, Edward was canonised as a saint by the pope and given the name Edward the Confessor supposedly to reflect the fact that he had led a saintly life.

Then again, it’s perhaps a coincidence that William the Conquerer and his descendants staked their legitimacy on Edward the Confessor’s own endorsement and that being endorsed by a a saint is certainly not going to do any harm to that claim.

Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey - which he himself had founded - where his remains lie to this day.
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