5 January


1066 On this day died Edward the Confessor, the only English king who ever became a saint. Kindly and pious, he spent hours each day in prayer and was reputed to have performed miracles of healing. With his prematurely white and flowing beard, he looked more like an ascetic prophet than a ruling monarch. He reigned for 24 years.


Edward was the son of King Ethelred II (the Unready), who died when Edward was only thirteen. By this time the Danes were ruling the country, and Edward was forced to flee to Normandy with his mother Emma. Emma, however, soon returned to England and married the Danish/English King, Canute, who was anxious to consolidate his hold on his English subjects. Two years later a son arrived, whom they christened Hardecanute.


In 1035 King Canute died, and his bastard son Harold claimed the English crown because Canute´s legitimate son, Edward´s halfbrother Hardecanute, was too busy running Denmark to move to England. Meanwhile Edward continued to live in exile in Normandy. But in 1040 Harold died and Hardecanute became English king. A year later he invited Edward to return to his native land as heir to the throne.


Edward was a weak and ineffectual king who permitted the powerful Godwine family virtually to rule in his name. He even married a Godwine daughter, but the marriage was never consummated and foundered after six years. In all his long life Edward never had a sexual relationship with a woman, but the theories explaining why are legion. Some believe that he was homosexual and others that he was impotent, while the more trusting give credence to the report that he had taken a holy vow of chastity. Unsurprisingly, he had no children.


Edward was 63 when he died, and his death let loose the rivalry between his Norman cousin William the Conqueror and his successor on the English throne, his brother-in-law Harold Godwine, who as Harold II became England´s last Anglo-Saxon king.


Edward left two enduring reminders of his reign. The first is the so-called St Edward´s sapphire, a rose-cut stone once in his coronet, now in the imperial state crown of England. The other is Westminster Abbey, which he founded.