Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor was the last king of the old English line, reigned for twenty-four years without an heir, built Westminster Abbey, and died in the first week of 1066 leaving a throne that three men claimed, which is the reason there was a Norman Conquest. He was born about 1003, the son of Aethelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, and when Sweyn Forkbeard took England in 1013 he was sent to his mother's family in Normandy, where he spent twenty-five years as a landless exile while Cnut and Cnut's sons ruled his country and his mother married the conqueror. His half-brother Harthacnut recalled him in 1041 and died the next year, and Edward was chosen king in 1042 because there was no one else. He came with Norman friends and Norman habits and found the kingdom in the hands of Earl Godwin of Wessex, whose daughter Edith he married in 1045 and by whom he had no children; the later story that the marriage was unconsummated by his vow of chastity is what made him a saint. He tried to break Godwin in 1051, exiled the family and, it seems, promised the succession to his cousin William of Normandy, who visited that year. Godwin came back in force in 1052 and Edward gave way. After that the Godwinsons governed and the king built. The abbey at Westminster, the first great Romanesque church in England, was consecrated on 28 December 1065 while he lay dying, and he was buried in it on 6 January 1066, the day Harold Godwinson was crowned, having, according to Harold, named him on his deathbed. William said Edward had promised him; Harald Hardrada of Norway had a claim from a treaty of Harthacnut's. All three met that autumn. Edward was canonised in 1161, and Henry III rebuilt the abbey around his shrine, where English kings have been crowned since and where he still lies.
- Lived: 1003 CE – 1066 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: king, monarch
