Edward,
the eldest son of Ethelred the Unready,
king of England, was born in Islip in Oxfordshire in about 1003.
Edward's mother, Emma of Normandy, was
the daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandy.
After the death of Ethelred the Unready
in 1016, the throne of England passed to Canute
the Great. The new king married Emma of
Normandy and the couple had a son, Hardicanute.
Edward spent the first part of his life in Normandy.
He held deep religious convictions and became known as Edward the
Confessor. When Hardicanute became
king of England in 1040, he recalled his half-brother to the English
court.
In 1042, Hardicanute died of convulsions
at a drinking party. Edward now became king and one of his first
acts was to deprive
his mother, Emma
of Normandy,
of all her estates. Anglo-Saxon chroniclers claimed that Edward
had done this because he felt he had been neglected by his mother
as a child.
For
the first years of his reign English political life was dominated
by Godwin
of
Wessex, Leofric
of
Mercia and Siward
of
Northumbria. Godwin became the most important of these when Edward
married his daughter Edith
in 1045. Godwin hoped that his daughter would have a son but Edward
had taken a vow of celibacy and it soon became clear that the couple
would not produce an heir to the throne.
In 1051 a group of Normans became
involved in a brawl at Dover and several men were killed. The king
ordered Godwin, as earl of Wessex, to
punish the people of Dover for this attack on his Norman friends.
Godwin refused and instead raised an army against the king. The
earls of Mercia and Northumbria remained loyal to Edward and to
avoid a civil war, Godwin and his family agreed to go into exile.
Over the next year Edward the Confessor
increased the number of Norman advisers
in England. This upset the Anglo-Saxons and when Godwin and a large
army commandeered by his sons, Harold
and Tostig, landed in the south of England
in 1052, Edward was unable to raise significant forces to stop the
invasion.
Godwin now forced Edward to send his Norman
advisers home. Godwin was also given
back his family estates and was now the most powerful man in England.
When Godwin died the following year, his place as the leading Anglo-Saxon
in England was taken by his son Harold of
Wessex .
Edward the Confessor and Edith did not have any children. William
of Normandy claimed that at a meeting in 1051 Edward had promised
him that he would become his heir. Edward's legitimate heir was
his grandson, Edgar
Atheling.
However, on Edward's deathbed in 1066, it is claimed that he nominated
Harold of Wessex, as the successor to
the throne.
