Much of his reign was peaceful and prosperous. Skirmishes with the Scots and Welsh were only occasional and internal administration was maintained. The financial and judicial systems were efficient and trade was good. However, Edward's introduction to court of some Norman friends prompted resentment, particularly in the houses of Mercia and Wessex, which both held considerable power.
Edward married Godwine's daughter Edith in , but this could not prevent a breach between the two men in Two years later, with the support of Leofric of Mercia, Edward outlawed Godwine and his family. However, Edward's continued favouritism caused problems with his nobles and in Godwine and his sons returned.
Attracted to religion and to Norman culture, he was not a vigorous leader. He gained a reputation, not fully deserved, for sanctity and was eventually canonized. The youngest son of Ethelred the Unready and his Norman wife, Emma, Edward was born sometime after When Ethelred's authority crumbled in the face of Danish invasions and dissensions among the English nobility, Emma and her children took refuge in at the court of Richard II, Duke of Normandy.
Ethelred died in , and Edward's eldest brother, Edmund Ironsides, succeeded him but died later the same year. Cnut of Denmark was in possession of England, and Edward and his remaining brother Alfred were in exile in Normandy. As he grew up, Edward became thoroughly imbued with Norman manners.
After Cnut's death in , England experienced several years of factional strife, during which Edward's brother Alfred returned to England and was murdered by a powerful earl, Godwin of Wessex. In Cnut's last surviving son designated Edward his successor, and the following year Edward, with widespread popular support, became king of England.
This inevitably led to conflict and chaos when Edward died on 4th January The issue of succession was a major contributing factor to the Norman conquest of England. Edward the Confessor, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings, has been historically preserved and depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. His legacy as a leader was mixed, damaged by infighting and attempts by others to seize power. Nevertheless, he brought with him a strongly religious influence, Norman-style administration and reigned for a long twenty four year period.
Jessica Brain is a freelance writer specialising in history. Based in Kent and a lover of all things historical. Queen consort to two kings of England, mother of two kings and stepmother to another, why is Emma of Normandy not better known in English history? Related articles. Emma of Normandy. The Norman Conquest. The Battle of Hastings. Next article. He was renowned also as a godly man.
Godwine was a real power broker. Edith, his daughter, was probably in her teens or at most in her early 20s when Edward married her. They would have been something of a father-daughter relationship, at least to onlookers. After that, there was a fairly harmonious relationship between them, that they got on very well and put their differences behind them. Edward built a new family for himself, something he continued to have to do through his life.
He lost his first family, so he built a new family first in Normandy with his cousins and then later on with the Godwines. Edward and the Godwines were pretty much of one mind in most of the action they took, not necessarily at the very end of the reign which has coloured perception to some extent, nor in — but through those 15 years in between, they got on pretty well. He had had a son, also confusingly called Edward, who had gone into exile in Hungary.
And Edward the Exile, in terms of bloodline succession, was the equivalent to the next one in line for the throne if King Edward had no children.
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