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Edward the Confessor: life of the week
00:49:42
Tom Licence leads us through the legacy of the medieval monarch whose death led to England's Norman takeover – but whose life also left a significant mark on history
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- [00:01]
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
There.
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Tom Licence (Historian)
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
That is one perfect combination.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures.
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Narrator / Producer
From ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
To daring 20th century spies, Edward the.
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Narrator / Producer
Confessor, England's penultimate Anglo Saxon king, has long been remembered as a saintly, pious monarch, but some sources would have us believe he was also the weak ruler whose indecision paved the way for the Norman Conquest. Is that fair on Edward? And if not, how should we understand him? I spoke to historian Tom Licence to explore the life of this medieval monarch from his early years in exile and his ambitions for the crown to the subsequent political challenges he faced that ultimately shaped the fate of England.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Thank you so much for joining me to talk all things Edward the Confessor. Edward is famed for events surrounding his death in 1066, but we're going to be tracing his life story from the very beginning. So can you give us a top line 60 second introduction to Edward for those who might be familiar with the name but not actually know much about him?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Certainly well, he was the son of the English king, Aethelred, better known as Ethelred the Unready, and of the the Norman Emma, sister of the Duke of Normandy. So he's half English, half Norman, from an ancient line of English kings of Wessex, born about the year 1005, driven into exile in 1016, when the Danes come over and conquer England, spends a long time in Normandy, in exile at the court of the Dukes of Normandy, until 1041, when he comes back to England, reigns on the throne for 24 years, dies at the beginning of 1066, and the throne passes to Harold.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Perfect. Now, these are all key moments that we are going to be chatting about, but before we really delve into Edward's life, could you explain to us what was the situation in England in the beginning of the 11th century? What's the context we need?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Well, if you imagine Edward as a boy, he's growing up in an environment of constant warfare, constant raiding. We're getting these armies from Denmark. First of all, they're small armies, later, larger and larger armies. Even the King of the Danes is involved in invading England from all angles. So his parents are under constant pressure. He would have been moving around the country, there would have been soldiers in and out, the court, ships being prepared at harbour, news of battles, reports of people around him being killed in those battles. Some of the. The chief men of the realm are being killed. And when he's 11 or 12, as I said, he's driven into exile as a result of these Danish invasions. His father dies at that point, so he's on his own. He's. He's taken off to Normandy, probably not with his mother, we're not entirely sure in the first instance. So he's very much cut adrift. Loses both his parents, in effect, and is left to fend for himself in a strange land.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Does he have any other family that we should point to?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
There are some older half brothers, the sons of his father's previous wife, most of whom die actually before 10:16, before he goes into exile. So he's seen a number of his brothers die. He too has a full brother called Alfred, who's maybe seven or eight years younger than him, also the son of Emma of Normandy, so also half Norman. And Alfred goes into exile in Normandy with him, as does their sister, Godda, or God Yifu. She goes into exile as well. So there's a brother and a sister with him, but his parents are no longer in the picture, and when they go to Normandy, they go and stay with his uncle, Duke Richard of Normandy, who looks after them at the Norman court.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
So do we get a sense what life was like in exile for Edward and how that may have influenced him?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
That's a very interesting question. And we don't have many records, of course, but we can get a sense of what Duke Richard was like, his new guardian. And Duke Richard was very keen on building peace. He was a pious man, he gave lots of gifts to the Church, he formed peaceful connections with neighbouring principalities through marital alliances and he always supported the King of France. So Edward grows up under the influence of this figure who's very much a peace builder, a peace weaver, someone who's interested in religion. And also he gains some family members in the sense that Richard has his own sons who are Edward's cousins, of course, and Edward seems to become quite close to one of those who later becomes Duke Robert. And Certainly by the 1030s, Edward and Robert, who are similar ages, Robert's a bit older, but they're similar ages. They seem to be quite good friends.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
There's a lot of turbulence, I think might be the right word to say going on in England at this time. Lots of different names, lots of different. We know Edward's going to become king, but pre Edward, who's in line?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Well, Aethelred, his father, rules from 978 to 1016. And while Aethelred is on the throne, Aethelred the unready, as I mentioned earlier, some of his older sons from his first marriage, he's seemingly lining them up to take over. So the key one to think about is Edmund, known as Edmund Ironside, the oldest son of Aethelred who survives now in 1016, when Edward's only 10 or 11, Edward Ethelred and Edmund Ironside, this is Edward's half brother, they're almost vying for the throne. Edmund is beginning to rebel against his father. So there's tension in the family. And Edmund Ironside goes into East Anglia, he gets himself a bride, he gathers a following and he's almost setting himself up as a separate king in conflict with Aethelred. And it's not entirely clear at this point whether Aethelred is still backing Edmund or maybe Aethelred's beginning to switch his support over to Edward, setting up Edward as a potential heir. At any rate, this is all short lived. Aethelred dies that year. In 1016, Edmund Ironside comes to the throne in his place, but only lasts for a matter of months. He's having to fight off the Danish king, King Cnut, and he eventually dies in November of that year, and Cnut takes over the realm. So Cnut is the king of Denmark. He now becomes king of Denmark and England, and he reigns from 1016 all the way through to 1035. But the most interesting thing he does straight away from Edward's perspective, is he marries Edward's widow, widowed mother Emma. She's lost Ethelred, her first husband, in 1016, doesn't seem to have liked him very much because he gets written out of the record completely and hops over and gets into bed with Cnut in 1017. So not only is Edward effectively abandoned by his mother and has lost both his parents, he sees his mother get into bed with and marry the very man who's driven him out of the country and taken his paternal throne.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Now, this is a very interesting development. Do we get a sense of what Edward's relationship was like with his mother, Mother Emma? I think sometimes it can come across seemingly quite dominant or domineering. Is that correct?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Well, it's a very political sort of relationship, and not a very close one at first. There are some signs that as a boy, Edward is traveling around with his mother because whenever she pops up in a charter, he pops up, too, as does Alfred. So it does seem that she's rearing him, or at least she's with him. I mean, sometimes mothers put their children at this date into the hands of foster carers, but she's with him. But later on, when he becomes King In 1042, one of the first things he does within a year is he punishes Emma and he takes away all her lands, all the treasure that she's got as well. And what the chronicles say, rather laconically, is that he punished her because he felt she hadn't done enough for him. Now, today, we might think of this in terms of parental neglect, or perhaps a mother not looking after her son as she should. And what Edward felt was that all through those years in exile, she hadn't done enough to support him, to promote his claim to the throne, to help him come back. In fact, she'd gone and had some other children with Cnut and her son with Cnut. He had become king in Edward's place. So you could just imagine how Edward would be feeling, how his mother had maybe betrayed him, you know, allowing her new son to replace him. Almost like a cuckoo in the nest.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Do we get a sense that Edward actually really wanted the throne? I mean, he comes back to England at some point. Could you explain what happens then?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Yeah, absolutely. I Mean, it used to be thought years ago that Edward was a sort of weak king. He wasn't ever very interested in becoming King of England and was invited over when all the other options were exhausted. In fact, a lot of research in recent years shows that he was doing everything he could in Normandy, certainly by the 1030s, to push his title. So we know that sometime between 1033 and 1035, he adopts the title King. Now, if you imagine it, he's over there at the Norman court, just across the Channel. Cnut is king in England and Edward is going around calling himself king. So he's directly challenging cnut. Not only that, he's putting around these stories. Now, there may not be any truth in them, but of course they're useful propaganda. One of the stories is that he was co crowned with Aethelred before Aethelred died, maybe about 10:15, Ethelred had him co crowned. So this idea that maybe he's already a king. Another story that's doing the rounds and it pops up in some Norman sources, is that all the nobles of the realm promised to Edward that when he grew up he would be king. This oath was sworn when Edward was still in Emma's womb, supposedly. So he's putting around these stories and he's also setting himself up as a sort of divine figure. There's a story going round that Edward has the power to heal people by touching them. And this shows that he's got the blood of kings running through his veins. So he's messaging left, right and center, putting out this propaganda that he's the rightful king. And we know in 1030, probably about 1034, initially with the help of his friend Duke Robert of Normandy, the son of Duke Richard, he mounts an invasion attempt. A fleet is got together. Edward as king, goes along with the Norman duke, and there's talk of taking England back from CNUT and putting Edward on the throne. Now, unfortunately, bad weather in the Channel, it seems, scotches this attempt to invade and the fleet gets blown off to Jersey for a while and ends up ravaging Brittany. But two years later, in 1036, by which time the young William is Duke of Normandy, Edward gets together another fleet, 40 ships, we're told of Norman soldiers along with Edward, turn up on the Hampshire coast somewhere near Southampton, and they fight a battle. And according to the Norman sources, which we've got no reason to doubt on this point, Edward wins the battle. But the help that he was expecting to arrive isn't there to support him. He's expecting some English troops to turn out on his side and actually he runs into opposition. So this invasion of attempt fails and he has to go back to Normandy. But that's two attempts Edward makes in the 1030s to reclaim his throne by violence, which are hushed up in the English sources. And one of the reasons they're hushed up is because the picture he later constructed of himself was of a peaceful ruler who didn't shed any blood, whose hands were clean, who wouldn't attack his own lands. But these accounts pop up in Norman sources, so that's how we know about them.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
This seems to really contradict that really traditional view of him as this weak willed, unworldly, overly pious, too pious a man. Now, this is making a statement. How did these invasions go down in England on the other side of the Channel?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
We don't really know because the sources are silent about them. But when Edward comes over a third time with another band of Normans in 1041, England capitulates. And the chief men around Hartha Cnut, who's king at that time, Cnut's son, they say, well, look, we can't let this keep on happening. Why don't we invite Edward on board and get him involved in the government he can cope rule with Hartha Knut and then everyone will be happy. So it's almost as though the pressure works and certainly it's advertising to all the nobles in England, look, I'm here, I want to be your king. I'm of the rightful bloodline. Maybe I could be a better king than half a Knut, who by this point has become really unpopular because he's taxing everyone, which is the one thing kings can always do to make themselves unpopular. So in 1041, the nobles look at Edward, particularly Godwin, the Earl of Wessex, and they think maybe bringing him on board is a good idea. And so he's almost forced upon Harthacnut's regime. And then, very conveniently, within a year, Harthacnutt dies and Edward becomes king.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
And by the time that he became king, this claim, was it more widely accepted?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Yeah, well, the key claim is that he's of the royal blood of the ancient House of Wessex. So that's enough of the claim in itself. He's a much more established figure and claimant than the Danes, who are interlopers in England. I don't know so much about whether these oaths are believed or not, but there's enough there for Edward to be the strongest candidate in 1042.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
So when and where was he crowned? Is that correct to talk about it like that in the 11th century?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Oh, yes. Coronation was a ritual which made a man with the title of king into an actual sacral monarch. Touched by God. An anointing, if you like. He was crowned at Winchester, but he delayed his coronation until Easter 1043, the best part of a year after Harthaconate died and Edward took over. And the most likely reason that he delayed it and chose Easter Day is that he wanted to signify the resurrection of his dynasty. The old dynasty had come back to life. Edward had come back from exile. Exile was seen as a kind of death. He'd risen from the dead, if you like. There was very deliberate symbolism there. And what we see all through Edward's reign is the careful use of symbolism and the staging and theatrical management of how he comes across.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
He seems to have a very strong PR team around him. Did he have many supporters?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Oh, absolutely. There were plenty of the old nobility who were only too glad to have him back. Godwin, the Earl of Wessex, got on board very soon. Soon. As did the other earls, as did the archbishops, it seems. And his wife Edith, whom he marries in 1045. We later find that she's almost the person who's orchestrating his theatricality. She embroiders his garments. She commissions goldsmiths to make all the jewels that he wears. And she ensures that when he walks on stage in front of the public, for example, in the balcony at Winchester Cathedral, he looks like a saint, like some patriarch from the Old Testament, like someone almost divine. A true king, if you like.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Do we know much about the personal nature of their relationship between Edith and Edward?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
We catch glimpses of it here and there. So on the bow tapestry, the last scene we have of Edward's life, Edith is there cradling his feet. Now, this is an intimate thing, of course, you know, a sign of love and lifelong affection. And we catch glimpses of that too, throughout Edward's biography. She looks up to him like a father figure. In fact, she. She refers to him as her father. She wants to sit at his feet, we're told, almost like he's a father. And he says, no, come up and sit beside me. But the other interesting detail we learn is that he always includes her in his councils. He takes her advice on matters to do with politics and religion and anything else. And when he loses power in 1066 to Harold, Edith gets shut out. Her voice isn't counted anymore. And she laments this, and we read. She's heartbroken that she has no power to influence the course of events. So Edward includes her and he involves. And all of this despite the fact that in 1051 he briefly imprisons her in a nunnery. So she obviously forgave him for that, but she commissions this biography of him, which itself is a work of love. And there's no sharper contrast than that between how she regards Edward and how she worships his memory and how Edward's mother, Emma, regarded Ethelred, because Emma commissions this work to celebrate King Canute and completely has Ethelred written out of the picture. So Edward and Edith's relationship, I think, is a loving one, but Emma and Ethelred's relationship is, I think, perhaps a deeply problematic one.
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Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Now, of course, we know going forwards, that at the end of Edward's life there's going to be a bit of a succession crisis, to put it lightly. Do we know why they didn't have children?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
We don't know why they were unable to produce biological heirs, but there is a sense that Edward always has somebody lined up for the throne. So for a long time, it seems, for the first 10 years, Edward in Edith are trying to produce a child and can't. And then when that becomes obvious and they both have to accept that, they send for the next in line in the bloodline, who is Edward the Exile? Now, there are lots of Edwards here, so let's call them Edward the Confessor and Edward the Exile. Edward the Confessor sends for Edward the Exile, who is the son of Edmund Ironside, his half brother, who died back in 1016. So that makes Edward the Exile, Edward's nephew. He'd gone off to Hungary and he probably didn't speak much English, but in 1057, he comes back to England and Edward is lining him up for the throne. Unfortunately, he dies straight away, but he has a son called Edgar and Edward adopts Edgar as his son. So obviously we think in terms of bloodline, but there are other ways you can form families then as now, and adoption is also a means by which rulers provide for their succession. Plenty of Roman emperors done this, of course. So Edward and Edith have an adopted son being set up, but for some reason they can't have a biological one.
- [19:02]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
We'll come on to talk a bit more about the line of succession in a little while, but before, while we're talking, you know, with all the Edwards that we have, Edward the Confessor, what exactly did Edward confess?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
It's a very good question. It's probably one of the things people are going to want to know about him, given that he has this epithet, and most of our Anglo Saxon kings, of course, do have an epithet of some sort. Ethelred the Unready, Edward the Confessor. The thing about these epithets is that they're usually created much later, and they're to do with the posthumous reputation of that figure. There's a Danish source which suggests that in his lifetime, Edward was called Edward the Good. Confessor is a category of saint. So in the Catholic Church there are martyrs, those who give their lives for the faith, virgins, those who keep themselves pure from sexual intercourse, and confessors, those who confess or demonstrate their virtue, if you like, by their actions. And at Westminster, the monks where Edward founded this abbey began to regard him as a saint and began to write up his life as though he had performed miracles. And so he came to be identified as a saint and given this category confessor, because he was neither a martyr nor a virgin. So it's simply the type of saint he was later regarded as.
- [20:16]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Good context for how things are going to pan out.
- [20:22]
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- [21:50]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
We've spoken about the fact that Edward might not be the ineffective Meek man that he's been portrayed as. Can we get a sense of him as a person, as an individual?
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Tom Licence (Historian)
What sort of man was Edward? Probably a man more like Richard of Normandy than Aethelred. So his father had been quite a troubled, almost paranoid man who liked to purge his court of dubious nobles and pick fights with people. I think Edward is very much a peacekeeper. He's committed to peace. Some of the trauma that he suffered in his childhood has perhaps taken away any desire he has to punish people or be cruel. He's seen enough of that. He wants to form connections, he wants to get along with people. And while he does find it necessary to punish people from time to time, he usually offers them a chance to come back. There's none of the purges that you get in Ethelred's reign or Knut's reign, where nobles get executed. Not with Edward. He might banish them, but usually he leaves a door open. And for that reason, and because he listens to people's advice, things hold together pretty peaceably through most of his reign. He's also a pious man. He endows particularly Benedictine monks. It's an old fashioned form of piety, not like some of the new religious orders that are coming in. I'm thinking particularly about the canons who are more active in the world. He likes the monks, he likes the contemplative side of things. The odd hermit perhaps thrown into the mix. But he's also a proper red blooded monarch. He likes to go hunting too, and he's still hunting at 60 out in the forests, catching deer and wild boar and whatever. So he's an active man and we do often see him out with the fleet, commanding the fleet or out on campaign. There are hints of this here and there, that he's very active. One author also says that he has a quick intelligence. It seems like he's quite a thinking man and able think on his feet and he can be cunning and wily where he needs to be as well. One of the people writing an epitaph for neighbourhood says that everyone loved him, but they also feared him. These are the two qualities that the King at this time would want. So a man of many parts and I think well suited to be a ruler.
- [23:52]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Well then, what challenges did he face in his rulership?
- [23:56]
Tom Licence (Historian)
He faced challenges pulling together what is now Britain. Challenges from the Scots, challenges from the Welsh. Now, depending on which side we see it from, of course, the Welsh and the Scots might say, well, they face challenges from an expanding England, but there's a lot of Warfare on the borders at different times. There are also attacks from pirates of one sort or another, some of them coming out of Ireland, which has a large Scandinavian population at this date, some of them coming out of Denmark and Norway. And he also faces challenges in keeping a balance between the different nobles and factions at his court, because there's a lot of squabbling among the chief men, all of whom desire to have dominance over his councils, particularly between a Norman faction at court, some of the Norman favourites he's brought over from Normandy, and Harold's family under Earl Godwin at that point. So balancing the competing ambitions of the nobles, Scotland and Wales, making sure the coasts are guarded and making sure he's always got enough money to fund all these things, because it all costs a lot of money, plus, of course, finding an heir to continue his line, these are some of the major challenges he faces, not to mention that great rebellion that happens in 1065 from the north.
- [25:07]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
How would you describe the political relationship between Edward and Earl Godwin and his family?
- [25:14]
Tom Licence (Historian)
Well, often the two are constructed as separate camps. It's traditionally been the case that you've got Edward on the one hand and the Godwins sort of house Godwin on the other. And the line I take very much in biobiography is this isn't the case at all. They're all working together. You can't separate them. If there's a political unit called the Godwins, then Edward is the head of that unit. It and for most of the reign, Edward and Godwin, Edith Godwin's daughter, who of course, Edward marries in 1045. Godwin's sons, Harold Sweyn, Tosti and the others, they all work very well to keep things ticking over. There are two points where that relationship breaks down. 1051-1052, where the family are briefly driven into exile. I mean, Godwin and Co and 1065 as well, where there's some suggestion that Harold might not be doing what Edward wants in the case of the northern rebellion, but for the rest of the reign, they get on very well. Now, it's been suggested in the past that Godwin has Edward in his pocket, that Edward has to ally with Godwin and that Godwin's pulling the strings behind the scenes, that Edward's a kind of puppet ruler. But actually it's a bit more complex than that. What we find by the 1050s is that there are two major factions at Edward's court trying to pull the strings, and they both accuse the other of being the more powerful, which Suggests to me that Edward's got the balance just about right. Also, when Goblin dies, Edward takes a lot of his lands back, so Harold inherits a much smaller earldom. So this idea that Godwyn and Harold are sort of puppet masters controlling Edwin, that too is a product of Victorian thinking and needs to go in the bin.
- [26:47]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Great argument for it, then. Now, who is the other camp that's potentially pulling against the Godwyns? Just so we've got that clarity.
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Tom Licence (Historian)
Yeah, absolutely. So there are one or two people Edward befriends in Normandy who come over with him. One of the key figures is Robert of Jumiege, a monk of the monastery of Jumiege. First of all, Edward makes him Bishop of London, which is a really important role, as you might imagine, because that's where all the court activity happens. And there are signs that Robert is a sort of confidant, very, very close to the King. And then the crunch comes in 1050 when the archbishop of Canterbury dies and Godwin, on the one hand, wants his relative to be the archbishop and Edward wants his man Robert to be the archbishop. And, of course, the King prevails and Robert becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. So at that point we have Robert of Jumiege heading a Norman faction at court. There are one or two other Norman bishops too, such as Ulf of Dorchester, and one or two Norman secular lords also in the mix. And this faction, according to the accounts we have from Harold's family, Godwin's family is doing everything it can to slander Godwin and to undermine his position at court, just to make sure that they can dominate the king. Obviously, they would have told a very different story, but it's quite clear that you've got a Norman faction and what we might describe as Edward's in laws, on the other hand, vying for control.
- [28:07]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Now, you also mentioned that if we put it from Edward's perspective, he's dealing with trouble in Wales and Scotland. As you said, Scots and Welsh might see this very differently. How did he address these? I put it in inverted commas, Troubles.
- [28:24]
Tom Licence (Historian)
It's complex because in Wales, when he comes to the throne, there are two rulers, one in the south, one in the north of Wales, both called Griffith. I mean, just to make things easier. And at first, Edward seems to form alliances with them. They're probably among the rulers who bring him gifts and form treaties with him. And for the first several years, the Griffith. In the north, relations are peaceful, Griffith. In the south, things are a bit more problematic. The Scottish ruler Macbeth, obviously, we know him from Shakespeare he too seems to be on peaceable terms with Edward for at least the first 10 years. There's no sign of friction. So I think at first, Edward is doing what Duke Richard in Normandy did. He tries to build peaceful alliances with his neighbours. He might be paying them pensions, they might be returning tribute of some sort. There are probably agreements in place that they should come and fight for him if he needs them. But something begins to break down around about the mid-1050s, and I don't know if it's because Edward is maybe imposing more tribute on them, or the terms have changed or some treaty has expired, or perhaps the northern Griffith and Macbeth, they develop their own ambitions and begin to push at their borders, which is certainly what the English accounts say. Of course, it's the fault of the Welsh and the Scotland. But something begins to break down in the mid-1050s, and at that point, Edward turns a more martial face towards his opponents, as they now are.
- [29:39]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
What extent did he go to?
- [29:41]
Tom Licence (Historian)
Well, in response, we know, to Welsh raids from the northern Griffith and possibly similar things in the Scottish border. Edward puts together large armies under earls. He doesn't seem to lead them himself, and he sends those earls in to crush his enemies in Scotland and Wales. And In Wales, in 1055, that results in a treaty. So there's another treaty with the northern Griffith, but in Scotland, Earl Seward, the Earl of Northumbria and a great army. Again, all of this is in Macbeth. That's slightly sort of modified in Shakespeare's play, but Earl Seward goes north and he fights a massive battle with Macbeth and a lot of people are killed, including Seward's son and a couple of the Normans who'd fled into Scotland to fight for Macbeth. Macbeth lingers a few more years in history, not in Shakespeare's play, but in history he lasts a bit longer. But this desire to dominate and crush his opponents is beginning to manifest in the 1050s. And by the time of Edward's death. Death, the rulers then in Wales and Scotland are now his clients. So he's totally dominated the whole island. They are paying tribute to him. They've come to his court to swear submission to him. And the person who wrote his obituary that appears in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles says that Edward is remarkable for the fact that the whole of the island of Britain, Scots and Welsh and everybody else, regards him as its ruler. He's like an emperor of Britain. That situation seems to have fallen apart under Harold, so it's a real achievement. By the time of Edward's death, he's able to exercise such control and effectively conquer Wales and Scotland.
- [31:08]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
We've pointed to a couple of sources as we've been chatting. So just there, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. How exactly do we know about Edward's life?
- [31:18]
Tom Licence (Historian)
So there are three kinds of contemporary sources that give us information about Edward. The first, charters, which are documents issued by the king, granting lands to religious houses or individuals. They often have lists of names of people who witness them when the document is given, and dates. So we know what Edward's doing, when and who's with him. So that can fill in some of the details that we don't have from written accounts. The second set of sources are what we call the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, which is actually a number of different chronicles, all brought together under that title, written at different places and they overlap and they share material. Some are the same, some are slightly different, but between them they furnish quite a detailed account, particularly of the years from the 1040s through to the 1080s. So covering Edward's reign, they get quite detailed and we get a lot of detail from them. We can also compare them. So one chronicle coming from one angle might have a slightly different take to one chronicle, come from a different angle, so we can see where the gaps are and read between the lines and also work out who's lying or work out who's covering things up. And then the other main source we have is a source which has been called the Life of Edward the Confessor, but is actually more a collective biography of Edward and his family, because it talks a lot about Edith and also about Harold and Tosti are the two older brothers who are still alive when it's begun. And that's a very interesting source because it combines poetic passages, which are almost dreamlike, with narrative of historical details, painting Edward almost like a saint. And this biography was commissioned by Edith and it was begun before Edward's death. So it's a contemporary account written by someone at court. So three very useful kinds of source. We have shedding light on Edward apart from archaeology and art and other things like the Bay of Tapestry, which give us other glimpses.
- [33:01]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Thank you. Very important. We cover with Scotland and Wales under Edward's banner. Now there is a rebellion in 1065. How did he deal with this?
- [33:12]
Tom Licence (Historian)
Yeah, it's very nasty what happens in 1065. It's very bloody and ugly. There's a party in the north, particularly the Old House of Bamber, who feel that they should exercise more influence there than they do. Edward has sent his brother in law, Tosti, up to be Earl of Northumbria, who's been ruling Northumbria for 10 years. Tosti is probably Edward's favourite brother too, by this point, but Tosti's very harsh, he's very strict and legalistic. Anyone he doesn't like, he has them imprisoned or murdered. And some of these Northumbrian nobles, they've been kicking up a stink about this. And what usually happens when they do this by the end of Edward's reign is they just get murdered, either by Tosti or. Or in one case, on Edith's orders. One comes all the way down to Edward's Christmas court, probably in 1064, and Edith has him killed. So the regime isn't handling things very well at all. And it's almost as though Edward is turning a blind eye to this because it's Tosti and Edith who are doing this. But it's a very strong message that's going up there to the north. You can't trust this regime. This regime is not having any of it and it's going to kill you. And then what happens, of course, is that we have this massive rebellion when Edward and Tosti are down south hunting, and the northerners, men of York and Northumbria, they break into York, they kill all of Tosti's huskar. Anyone associated with Tosti gets their throats cut, sort of murder and bloodshed on the roads and on the waterways. And at first, Edward doesn't quite know how to handle it, possibly because when it begins, Harold's still abroad. We know certainly that Harold is back by mid October. And one of the first things that Edward does is he sends Harold up there as a negotiator, because Harold has a really good track record at negotiation. But there's a question mark as to whether Harold is really on Edward's side or whether he's siding with the rebels to undermine Tosti. Because by this point, certainly Harold and Tosti have a lot of friction between them that's been building up over many years, a sort of sibling rivalry. And the biography, the biography of Edward the Confessor or his family, tells us that when Edward got ready to march against the nobles and he was going to lead the army himself, he was going to raise an army from the whole of England and lead it himself, which he's 60 years old at this point, his commanders, the biographer says, didn't so much as sort of disobey him, but wrongfully deserted him. Now, the biographer doesn't tell us who these commanders are, but Harold is almost certainly going to be one of Them and probably some of those other brothers too, the younger brothers, Gurth and Laufwin, who are also earls. And so Edward finds himself in this position where he wants to go and fight these rebels and crush the rebellion. But the men who are going to lead his armies, they're not going to turn out for him and they give him all sorts of excuses. Winter's setting in. It's really expensive to raise this sort of army, but they don't want to fight the northern rebels and it's probably because Harold's got a nice deal stitched up with those rebels already.
- [35:55]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
So this is obviously coming to the end of Edward's life. What's the fallout of this rebellion?
- [36:01]
Tom Licence (Historian)
From Edward's perspective, it feels like his power has collapsed. People have stopped obeying him. This is what happened to Harthacon in 1041, the Chronicle tells us. They stopped obeying him. His commanders have stopped obeying him, so he can do nothing at all. Worse than that, his chief commander, Harold, is now in alliance with the leaders of the rebellion, who are the two northern earls, Edwin and Morcar. So there's a faction there who are sorting out things in the north entirely separate to what Edward wants, and they want Edward's favorite, Tosti, banished from the realm. So not only has Edward lost control over his commanders, his right hand man has to go because there's no other way Edward's going to hang on to power. The rebels have marched all the way down to Oxford. This is the point at which they're encroaching on the heartland of Wessex where Edward holds sway. So he's forced to banish his favourite Tosti. Harold is pretty much now running things with the two northern earls, having formed this new alliance with the rebels, and Edward is left to rant in his gilded chamber. I mean, the account we have of him is that he's pacing up and down, calling down vengeance from God on those who've betrayed him, cursing the world, cursing the ungrateful supporters who've let him down. And it's all too much for him. He has a stroke or something, he falls terribly ill and we're told that from this point onwards he is a king in decline. His health deteriorates rapidly from the point when Tosti goes into exile, maybe shortly before Christmas. Up until his death on the night of the 5th, the 6th of January, Edward is on a downward spiral.
- [37:35]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
It's a sad end to what's obviously been quite bit a, even if popular perception doesn't say so, quite a successful reign. With his death Obviously, there is this huge succession crisis. We need to ask the question, who did he actually promise the throne to and when and why? How credible are the Godwinson and Norman claims?
- [38:02]
Tom Licence (Historian)
Right, so, as you know, that's a very big question. Lots of stuff's been said about it in the past. Here's the license line which I stick to. Edward had always wanted an heir of the blood and the heir he'd lined up was his great nephew, his adopted son, Edgar Etheling. The biographer actually gives us all the details we need to know. The Latin hasn't been properly read in the past. The translation has been quite misleading. What Edward sets up in 1065, what he's got in mind is a Regency arrangement with the Queen in charge and with Harold and Tosti as protectors of the realm, and with Edgar Etheling, who's still a boy at that point, becoming king upon his death. So until Edgar reaches his majority at the age of 15, we don't know exactly when he is born, but he's not far off. 15 in 1065. Until he reaches his majority, Edith is to run things and Harold and Tosti are to protect the realm. Now, this is exactly the same setup you've got in France, where the King is a boy and where the Queen, his mother, I should say the Dowager Queen, she's running the King's council along with the Count of Flanders, who's, like the protector of France. It's a very similar arrangement to the one you've got in Germany, to where, again, you've got a royal mother looking after a child king. So that's what Edward envisages. Everything that comes out of William's camp is made up in 1066. And afterwards, Harold's camp are a bit cautious about what they actually claim. If you read the sources carefully, none of them says that Edward makes Harold king or chooses him king. It just says that he appointed him to look after things. And they say this in various ways. But the story that emerges from Harold's camp is that, well, on his deathbed, obviously, Edward says, well, actually, Harold, you know, you're the man for the job. But that's not certainly what Edward had intended up until that point. And if Edward did change his mind at the last minute, he did so under pressure. But it's not what the international community were expecting. You know, for the last seven, eight years, Edward had been parading Edgar around as his heir. They'd gone along to Winchester and signed up in the Winchester Book of Life, had a big ceremony. Everyone would have known that Edward was lining up Edgar. And so when Harold suddenly became king, it was like, well, you know, it's a free for all. Who else fancies diving in and having a go at the throne?
- [40:15]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
We know that Harold and Edward had a relationship. Do we know about the relationship between Edward and William?
- [40:23]
Tom Licence (Historian)
We know something of it. We catch glimpses of it here and there. So Edward was very close to William's father, as I mentioned, Duke Robert, who died in 1035. And then for the next six years or so, Edward is hanging around at William's court. He sometimes witnesses charters among the group of influential people who are looking after the young William. So Edward and William seem to have a close relationship. You've got to remember, though, that William at this point is still a boy. He's born in 1028, so he's going to be at most 13 when Edward goes over to England. Then, very interestingly, in 1051, when the Norman faction briefly prevails and Godwin's family are exiled for a year, we find this record in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle that William comes over and visits Edward. Now, in hindsight, it's very easy to think that this is something to do with the throne and promises of the throne and all this sort of stuff that William's camp later claims, but actually, it's a lot more to do with the politics of the time. It's about securing alliances. And William isn't the only foreign visitor who comes over to see Edward in 1051. A few months earlier, Count Eustace of Bologne had been over, so it's not perhaps as significant as we might think in hindsight. And then the other thing that happens is that William ends up with these two hostages, the hostages being Harold's youngest brother, Wulfnoth, and his nephew Haakon. These hostages are conveyed over to William's keeping in Normandy and he hangs onto them all the way through until 1065, when he releases one of them, and then he keeps the other one right through until the 1080s. And these hostages seem to be security on Edward's part, just to make sure that the goblins don't do anything nasty to him when they manage to make a comeback from exile. But it's possible that they were simply kidnapped by the Norman faction when the normans fled in 1052 and conveyed to William as pawns to help them make a comeback. So we don't really know why these hostages are there, but they seem to have this sort of key role in making sure that everything goes well, in.
- [42:16]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
English politics, overall, in your opinion, how much responsibility do you think we can lay at the feet of Edward for the succession crises that follow his reign?
- [42:26]
Tom Licence (Historian)
Edward did everything he could to make it clear to everybody who was next in line for the throne. Edgar Etheling, he's the only Etheling, he's the only one who's got that title, meaning throne worthy. So Edward did everything he could. He's not to blame then for creating any sort of confusion. I don't believe for one moment that he made a promise to William. I don't think he gave the throne to Harold. I think these are stories that are made up. You know, when brutal men want to invade countries, they make up stories justifying it at the time. Afterwards, Edward didn't create any confusion, didn't make any promises. Everything was crystal clear. So I don't think he's to blame at all. What he was potentially to blame for was allowing this culture at court that perhaps precipitated the rebellion, allowing a situation where Northumbrian nobles who were coming to him to appeal were getting murdered by people who were very, very close to him. This was enough to bring on a rebellion. And of course, of course, if you rule in that way, trouble's going to come down the road. And trouble coming down the road can create all sorts of problems you hadn't envisaged. So it was as a result of that rebellion that Harold then saw an opportunity to make this new alliance with these northern earls that the whole face of politics shifted the key people around Edward were no longer dependable and the whole situation became volatile. Anything could happen and a powerful man like Harold was able to take the throne, not necessarily out of evil motives, but perhaps because he was the only person who could hold the north and the south of England together. William, on the other hand, was an opportunist. He'd done this before. In 1062, he'd pushed his way into the county of Maine, claiming that the young count who'd recently died had left it to him. Well, he hadn't, but this is William's excuse. He was trying to push into Brittany and as soon as he saw that England now was divided and that it had a king who was illegitimate, who didn't have a drop of royal blood in it? Him. What better opportunity for William, now the strongest man in northern France, to push into England, have a go at that and make up his excuses later? So I don't blame Edward at all, except perhaps for allowing a bit of mismanagement towards the end of his Reign and inviting crisis to follow.
- [44:32]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
So finally, let's turn to look at Edward's legacy. Firstly, we've talked about how he was made a saint, he was canonised. Why was this the case? And why was he venerated in later years so prominently?
- [44:47]
Tom Licence (Historian)
This is the aura that we have around Edward's reputation and it's very important to remember, of course, he was a red blooded monarch, but later on he becomes this rather almost wishy washy saint figure. And that all begins, I think, with Edith's biography. Because at first Edith wanted a biography to be written that celebrated her family. Things all then went horribly wrong. Brothers were killing brothers, they were getting killed by Normans. Edward died, of course. So this worked, this biography, this family biography, was no longer viable and it had to become something else, something that would soothe Edith and give her a sense that something could be salvaged out of the rubble. And so in the second half of this biography, the biographer starts to paint Edward as a saint and attribute miracles to him. Emphasizes his piety, his holiness, these sorts of qualities. And so the seeds are sown for this cult. Now Edward is buried in Westminster Abbey, which he refounds as his great mausolea. Same place, of course, that Harold is crowned in 1066. And the monks of Westminster Abbey, they take hold of this seed and they water it and they nurture it and they begin to write new lives of Edward, add new miracles, cultivate his shrine. Pilgrims start going along wanting to touch this, this shrine or be in the presence of a great healer. And this is how cults of saints grow up. And we could talk about any number of examples of saints growing saints, cults growing up at monasteries in this way that the monks take over and the cult is cultivated and eventually he's one of the first English saints. I think he is the first English Saint in 1161 to be canonized by a pope. The papal procedure of canonizing sort of kicking in at this point, particularly in English affairs. There's a great drive, as you might imagine, on the part of the royal family to promote this cult. So King Henry ii, the same man who does in Becket a few years later, he's instrumental in this. And there had been an earlier attempt to too, it seems, under Stephen. So the royals are on board, Westminster Abbey's are on board. It's a very high profile cult and eventually becomes the patron saint of the English royal family. And he's still down there with Edith, they're still there in Westminster Abbey, one of the few saints bodies that wasn't disturbed by Henry VIII at the Reformation.
- [46:52]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
His legacy is not only this saintly cult that has grown up around him, but also imparts his responsibility, or perhaps not for this succession crisis and the subsequent Norman Conquest, but also Westminster Abbey as well. In terms of legacy, what would you say are his main contributions to history?
- [47:13]
Tom Licence (Historian)
One thing he did was introduce castles to England. You know, we often say it's the Normans who bring them over. Actually, the first castles come over under Edward. He brings over the Norman castellans to establish castles on the Welsh March. He also builds up the fleet. He establishes an arrangement with five ports in the southeast, later known as the sink ports, or they become sink ports for a standing fleet for operations. So there are some key contributions he makes in terms of defence, actually, which we don't often think about. More obviously, there's Westminster Abbey and the saintly figure we've come to regard as Edward the Confessor, who resides there, I think, also keeping England pretty much in peace for 24 years in perhaps the most turbulent century of them all, and living longer than any other king who was alive in that century are legacies we can't overlook. Edward was a creative monarch, he was innovative. He's thinking on his feet. And a contemporary wrote of him that he was very generous to foreign clergy who were skilled in arts and music and literature. Historians looking back on his reign, they see him as that little window of peace between the Viking wars of Aethelred and Cnut and the bloodshed of the Norman Conquest and the nightmares that followed of Norman oppression, the Norman yoke. Edward is that little window of peace. He's Edward the Good, he's Edward the Saint. This is the golden age and that's got to be worth something.
- [48:38]
Narrator / Producer
That was Tom Lysance, professor of Medieval History and consumer Culture at the University of East Anglia and author of Edward the Last of the Royal Blood. He was speaking to me.
- [48:51]
Interviewer / Host (Emily Briffetts)
Emily Briffetts, thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next.
- [48:59]
Narrator / Producer
Time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.
- [49:09]
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