Gone Medieval - Edward the Confessor

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

One of the last kings of Anglo-Saxon England, Edward the Confessor regained the throne for the House of Wessex and is the only English monarch to become a Saint. But Edward the Confessor has also been blamed for causing the invasion of 1066―the last successful conquest of England by a foreign power. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega talks to Professor Tom Licence, author of Edward the Confessor: Last of the Royal Blood, about a compassionate and conscientious ruler, whose reign marked an interval of peace and prosperity between periods of strife.This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Joseph Knight and Rob Weinberg.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. King Edward the Confessor is probably best known for dying in 1066 and setting off the chain of events that would lead to the Norman conquest. But from the high medieval period onward, he was remembered not just as a king, but as a saint throughout Christendom. The 13th century golden legend of the lives of saints compiled by the Archbishop of Genoa noted of Edward that his ascent to the throne and reign was celebrated. Of him, the author wrote,

Oh, good Lord, what joy and gladness was then in England. For when the old felicity of this land was almost despaired, then it was kindled again by the coming of this blessed king, St. Edward. Then had the commons rest and peace, and the lords and gentlemen, rest and honour. And then Holy Church, The church received all her liberties again. Then was the sun lifted up and the moon set in his order.

That is to say, priests shined in wisdom and in holiness. The monasteries flourished in devotion by holy religion. The clerks gave light and prospered in their offices to the pleasure of God. The common people were content and were joyful in their degree. and in this king's days there was no venom. For this holy King Edward was ever full of meekness and of virtue, and never lifted up by vain glory, but ever he remembered the words of our Lord that saith,

I have set thee prince of the people, but be not therefore lifted up in vain glory, but be thou among them as one of them. His words were sad and discreet, meddled with mirth, and sometime he spake sharply as he saw need, correcting trespassers, gentle and sweet to good men. He was never elate, nay enhanced in pride, nay dishonest by gluttony. He would not be compelled by wrath, nay inclined for gift. He despised riches and was never sorry for loss of worldly goods and riches, nay the more glad for winning thereof. In such

wise that all men marveled of the sadness of him. This is all extremely touching. And it's also a masterful piece of propaganda, which obscures the fact that Edward was not just a religious guy who managed a kingdom well, but an incredibly canny political operator and one of the most calculated kings that England has ever seen. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and today on Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'm speaking with Professor Tom License, historian and author of the book, Edward the Confessor, Last of the Royal Blood, about one of the most complex and frequently misunderstood English kings to ever reign.

Well, Tom, thank you so much, first of all, for coming on to talk about what I think is one of the most name-recognizable English kings, but one that a lot of people aren't necessarily really familiar with. I suppose we should start the good listeners off with an introduction to what the lay of the land is when Edward comes onto the scene and is born. So he's born in about 2003, and he's the son of Ethelred the Unready, another one of those household names, and Emma of Normandy. And as a result of this, he spends a lot of his early life in Normandy, but there's all these kind of reasons behind that. You know, we've got these Danish invasions of England when Sven Forkbeard takes over. So what does this mean for a young lad like Edward? You know, this is a lot of kind of cultural

poles on one little guy, isn't it? Yeah, and I think that's one of the most interesting things about his career, all the different cultural pulls and influences he experiences from early on. It's a very difficult time to be born, I think, circa 1003. We've had Viking invasions at that time for a good 10 or 20 years and they're getting worse, they're getting larger, getting more organised. And the family situation is very complex. Ethelred, Edward's father, Ethelred the unreadies we know him, he already had had a wife in the past. And Edward had some older brothers when he was a boy, brothers who were already grown up, brothers who assumed that perhaps one of them might one day take the throne.

And Edward comes along as a sort of half-brothers to these brothers, a new boy. the family, potentially a threat to his older brothers. And he is the son of Ethelred's second wife, of course, Emma of Normandy. What does this mean in terms of being Emma's son, very specifically? Because he grows up in Normandy. What is early life for Edward like at the court there? Because it's quite different to English court, no? It would have been very different. And of course, Edward is forced to flee to Normandy when he's maybe 11 or 12 years old after his father's death on the invasion of the Danish ruler King Canute. So he has to go as a boy to Normandy. He probably goes with Emma in her company. And he's raised there by his uncle Richard,

Duke Richard the second of Normandy, who's a very different sort of figure to his late father, Ethelred the Unready. Richard doesn't seem to suffer from the paranoia, if we can use that term. which Ethelred displays again and again in wanting to purge his nobles whether or not they've betrayed him. Ethelred is a very suspicious man, whereas Richard builds bonds of peace with his kinsmen, with the other lords in northern France, he's very loyal to the French king, and he's a figure who maintains a sort of steady and peaceful reign when his realm Normandy isn't under attack. So very different to the experience of Edward's first ten years when the vicarious. Kings are continually attacking England and when his father is suspicious looking around for

enemies who are lurking in the corridors, lurking in the shadows, and when his mother, Emma, is perhaps in competition with some of those older half-brothers wanting to put Edward on the throne after Ethelred's death. So he comes from this very frightening, potentially traumatic climate for a young boy, into a calm and more peaceful environment in Normandy. Now, was there any, I suppose, we could say, consequences for what really is in exile? You know, he needs to get out in order to preserve his own safety. Does he come with different cultural baggage? Is he perceived as being quite different to other English members of the aristocracy?

Well, obviously, he has this special identity as the son of an English king, which makes him a member of an ancient bloodline going all the way back to a semi-mythical figure. called Kyrdick from the ancient dynasty of Wessex. So he is a royal son in exile, a prince who might one day come to the English throne. But he is also, of course, half Norman, the nephew of the Norman Duke, the son of Emma. And so he has that Norman connection, which would have been a bond he could build upon with the sons of Duke Richard II, his cousins. And there is some indication that he gets on well with his cousins, principally Robert, we're told by William of Jumier, writing in the 1050s, a Norman author, that Robert adopts Edward as a brother. So it seems as

that he's treated as a brother, and we're told also that Richard brought Edward up as one of his own sons, so he's treated as a son and a brother. But we should also remember that Edward has his younger brother, Alfred, there with him, Alfred being about seven or eight years younger than Edward. So there are two of them together, these brothers sharing in that exile, and perhaps being adopted into a new family, as it might have seemed for them. at the time. I find the family dynamics so interesting because as complex as this already is, things then get a little bit more complicated because here's Edward over in Normandy. He's being raised at the Norman court, which is a very lovely place, very wonderful place to be raised.

I mean, complex in its own ways, but very interconnected and wealthy. But meanwhile, his mother, Emma then gets married again to King Canute the Great after Ethelred dies, right? So now things are even more complex at this point. Right. So this is what's really going to mess with Edward's head, so to speak. Emma possibly comes to Normandy, first of all, possibly stays in England. The sources aren't clear. But a year after Edward goes over to Normandy, we know that Emma remarries and she marries who but King Canute, the new Danish conqueror of England, who is effectively the man who's driven Edward from his home and who's been responsible not quite for the death of Ember's father,

but certainly for the wars which have lost that dynasty, the throne. So Edward, as a boy of maybe 11 or 12, is in this very difficult situation of seeing his mother marry the very man who's driven him from his ancestral kingdom and who's taken the throne which perhaps one day could have been his. And you can imagine how from that point Edward would have had very mixed feelings potentially about his mother.

How do you deal with that? And Emma, for her part, makes a very successful marriage to Knut. We know from all the evidence that she got on better with Connutt than she'd ever got on with Edward's father. Indeed, a little bit later on when Emma commissions a history of the dynasty to be written,

Ethelwins the name is never mentioned. It's as though she's erased him completely. He's been cut from the family painting, if we like. Whereas Conut, his deal. are being celebrated and Emma is looking forward to this glorious dynasty. She's going to build with Knurt. And not only that, she begins to bear him children too. So these are like cuckoos in the nest from Edward's perspective. He's been shoved out. These cuckus are coming in and Emma is trying to build this new royal dynasty with sons by the man who's driven him out.

I just find it's so compelling. I really love these court dynamics of, you know, marriages and remarriages and who's in and who's out. But I suppose one way or another, and despite Emma's best intentions and all the wonderful histories she has written to glorify him, Knoot does end up dying, of course. And we see Edward returned to England in about 1041. And he then becomes king in 1042 when Hartha Kanoot dies. So this is sort of the end of Danish rule. But why was he brought back in the first place? I mean, Hartha Kanoot is still on the throne when he returned. So why do you bring your mostly Norman, the older half-brother over if you're a Hartha-Kadoot? Well, there's been this tradition since I think Victorian times, the thinking of Ed was a passive figure, you know, sitting in Normandy, waiting to be brought back when the time is right.

And we think in modern terms of next in the bloodline, you know, nobody would become king or queen of England if they weren't of that royal blood and Edwards of that royal blood. So maybe he's just sitting there in Normandy. This is the traditional line. We need to think of him as a more proactive figure. We know that from at least 1033, 1034, Edward is styling himself king. He's referred to as king in charters, particularly one charter that he himself issues as king, granting lands to a monastery in northern France. So he's positioning himself as king, and there are a couple of occasions where he mounts

what looks like it might be an invasion attempt of England. One in 1034, with the assistance of his adoptive brother, if we like, Duke Robert of Normandy, who's become Duke of Normandy at this time. And then again in 1036, shortly after Knut's death in 1035, when we know that Edward launches an invasion of 40 ships and attacks the South Coast and fights the battle. Now, he wins the battle,

but he has to go back to Normandy, probably because the support that he was anticipating didn't materialise. And so there he is, positioning himself as king, mounting invasion attempts, and by 1041, one year into the reign of Hatha Cunut. Hatha Kinnut's reign has become really unpopular. You know, everybody who said,

oh, bring over Hatha Kuntut is now unhappy with him. And they bring over Edward a year before Hathakunut dies, as it turns out, because they're fed up with Danish rule by this point, and they want to restore the old English dynasty. So it's the resurrection of the old English dynasty, if we like, that brings him back, this idea that there is this ancient dynasty out there, that the Danish rule has failed the English people. that Knut's sons have not lived up to Knut's own reputation.

This is all the context in which Edward is eventually brought back in 1041 and becomes king in 1042 a year later when Hathakun is drinking at a banquet and suddenly drops down dead. What a way to go. Good for him. What can I say? But it is one of those things where one does think about the sliding doors here. If he had been a good ruler at all whatsoever, then perhaps these questions wouldn't have been raised. And it does also go to show that there is this sort of political understanding of rule.

I think that sometimes there's a tendency for people to think that medieval rule is really simplistic. It's just whoever is king. These are people who are appointed by God. That is just kind of how things make sense. But really, there's a lot of behind the scenes brokering and back and forth that goes into this. And if you bet on the wrong horse with Hartha Canute, you can always say, okay, well, wait, don't we have had to somewhere around here? Go over, go get that guy. So there are always so many more things in play than just a really easy assumption of power, which I think is quite interesting.

I was going to say also that the women get left out of these stories, because the stories which are told at the time and which are told now, of course, stories about men. But we've got to remember that Knut's two sons, Harold and Hathar Kunut, who are there when Knut dies in 1035, they're teenagers. and the real power brokers behind them are their mothers, Queen Emma on the one hand, who's been queen now for decades, and Knut's other wife, because he had two wives, the mother of Harold, and we hear accounts in the 1030s when these two sons of Canuta fighting it out of the two mothers vying to win over the leading men by plying them with drink, for example. So this is what Harold's mother does.

She invites all the leading men to a banquet, plies them with drink, and then gets them to swear oaths to her son. Emma, meanwhile, is writing letters to Hatha Canut, writing letters to Edward in Normandy, persuading him to come over and invade. So you catch a glimpse of those two powerful women who really are pulling the strings in the background, trying to get their sons on the throne and trying to hang on to power at all costs in that window of time between Canute's death in 1035 and Edward's succession in 1042. So we have the succession of Edward in 1042.

But are there more specific challenges to this transition? The English are sort of fed up with what is going on with Danish rules. But are there still any true believers out there? Or is this kind of a bit of a walk-in that Edward manages to pull? There's a lot of propaganda coming out from the Danish regime. So the unknown monk, who Queen Emma gets to write the history of the Danish regime, he's got this text and he's looking forward to a glorious future of Arthur Cunerton, and further generations of Emma's Danish dynasty happening.

And he has to backpedal and rewrite the ending when Edward comes to the throne in 1042. you know, suddenly celebrating Edward and for the first time mentioning Etelred and saying that Ethelred was the most wonderful king since sliced bread sort of thing. So there are these court flasurers and there's a lot of noise in favour of the Danish regime. And of course there are those Danes whom Knut has put in power. But when Edward comes back in 1042, we see a resurgence of the old English aristocracy. And Edward begins to appoint one or two of his father's kin from that old English nobility. And we even see mention of a new category coming into the...

royal charters of the nobles and the nobles who appear, particularly those English old royal aristocratic kin, so the Danes begin to be squeezed out. And in the early years of Edward, one or two of those Danes whom Knut had appointed are forced to flee abroad and they usually go to Flanders in the first instance or Denmark. So there is a bit of a turnaround and a bit of a sweeping out of Knut's henchmen, if we like. But there aren't any of the purges that you see in 1017 when Kunut comes to power. Knut certainly has, members of the old regime executed. Edward doesn't seem to operate that way. So maybe this is a bit of that Norman influence. Just keep an eye on your enemies. You don't

necessarily have to push them out completely. Well, Edward, I think, though, has, for my money, he's made some of my favorite medieval things in London. I'm forever walking by Westminster Abbey and saying, well, I know it was quite expensive, but I do enjoy looking at it. But he's got some really significant achievements. It's not just all the political plays going on behind him, no? Absolutely. You can look at achievements in all sorts of different areas. So you're starting with religion, for example. Edward rebuilt Westminster Abbey, as we now know it, and he probably also rebuilt the original palace at Westminster. So that's a massive investment in the church. And he was generally remembered as a king who'd been very favourable to the church, and particularly

as a king who had welcomed foreign churchmen over, a king who was kind and generous to foreigners who wanted to come over and settle in England and make a living there in the arts and in learning. So he was a patron of the arts, I should say, and of culture. And then in the political sphere, one of the things that comes to the forefront by the end of his reign is that he has established very positive relations with all the neighbouring powers to the extent that his reign, after 1066, is regarded as an interval of 25 years of peace between warring periods, the Danish Viking wars of his father's reign, and of course, William's conquest in 1066 and all the wars and rebellions that followed that. So he's a king who, in troubled

times, manages to sit on the throne and maintain peace for a quarter of a century, and that's no mean achievement in the 11th century. These cultural things, since I'm kind of a social girl, these are the things that are really quite interesting to me. I love when someone commissions a chronicle. That's what I'm looking for in terms of kingship. But, you know, this incredibly pronounced piety, these donations to the church, does all of this help to curry favor or influence with the nobility at the time as well? Or is this just more of a thing that's going on between Edward and the church more specifically? It's an interesting question, and his patronage is always targeted. So, for example, early in his reign, he invest in the cult of St. Edmund, at Bereson-Edmonds. Now, Brescent Edmonds, obviously in modern-day Suffolk, that's in the Danes. Law region in East Anglia, it's a region where Knut had a lot of influence, and Knut indeed was the original sponsor of that monastery. And Edward goes out of his way in the early 1040s to

build links with that community by sponsoring it. So not only is he demonstrating his piety there in some quite interesting ways. He makes a pilgrimage on foot, for example, to the shrine of St. Edmund, but he's also thinking politically about establishing his influence in a region which is still quite largely Danish. So we see things like that happening. And we also see interesting things where Edward chooses not to invest in a particular monastery, perhaps because of its associations. So he doesn't invest, for example, in the richest monastery in the land, Glastonbury, where his half-brother Edmund Ironside was buried, perhaps because he doesn't want to promote that line of the family, you know, that kind of aspect of his past. So he chooses carefully,

and he does give some gifts also to Norman monasteries, gratitude, presumably for the help they gave him during his years in Normandy. He also makes some really shrewd moves in terms of, well, marriage, I would say. He marries Edith of Wessex, which I think is a quite good bit of skatescraft here. You know, when you were kind of saying, we're reestablishing the old English line, I think it's very clever to come and choose a very English bride from a very good, important family. But she's incredibly strong-willed, and she's got rather a lot of influence in enough herself. Yes.

Yes. Ed is a very interesting figure, I think. So she's the one who commissions the work we know of as the life of St. Edward. And she seems to be the person who is stage managing Edward's public persona. So we know from that account that she commissioned that she chooses his outfits and that she herself adorns them in gold and silver. And she employs the goldsmiths and the silversmiths who put together his. public paraphernalia. So I think of her as the person who is stage managing his public image. And she too invests in the church and the monastery of Wilton. And as you say, she comes from,

well, she is the daughter of Earl Godwin, perhaps the most powerful Earl in England at the time. So Edward's marriage to her is a shrewd decision and she proves herself not only someone who I think takes charge of him, the suggestion in that work is that he doesn't really go in for, fancy royal-looking clothes. He would rather be happier in plain garments. But she dresses him up and makes him look like a king, I think. And she's also very important in his royal councils. So one thing we hear again and again is how he values her council in the meetings of the Witte and the council of the elders. And indeed, when Edward dies in 1066, there's a sense that she's no longer being listened to because her brothers, Harold in particular, don't value her

counsels as much. But Edward seems to hold her in very high regard, and rightly so, by everything we can see in the sources. I suppose this is a good as place as any to talk a little bit about the Godwin family, right? Because you've got Edith, who's really, you know, behind Edward and, you know, in very many ways stage managing his career, really kind of pushing him to do various kingly things, I suppose. But the Godwin family are this incredibly powerful and wealthy. family, not just because Edith is the queen now, but we talk a little bit about them and how they rose to prominence. Yes. Well, we have their story about how they rose to prominence in this work that Edith commissioned, but underneath that, there's probably a darker reality. Godwin is

initially one of Ethelred's men, we assume, in the 1010s, but he quickly goes over to Kunut, and he rises under King Kunut, while other earls fall by the wayside. one by one. It's almost as though we see Godwin climbing the ladder until he becomes Knut's number one Earl. And then he has to navigate the very difficult period when Kunut's two sons and their respective mothers are vying for the throne. And again in that period Godwin seems to switch sides initially giving his backing to Harthakhanot, then moving over to Harold. And there's an incident where, As I mentioned, Edward mounts an invasion and his brother Alfred comes over too, and Godwin, of course, presents himself to Alfred when Alfred lands in Kent as Alfred's first supporter,

takes him off to a nice dinner with his followers, and then during the night, Harold's men turn up and sees Alfred, put all his followers in chains, and eventually Alfred is blinded and he dies of his injuries. And of course, all of this is happening at the point where Godwin has switched. allegiance to Harold. So Godwin is playing quite a dark political game at this point. There's an interesting question as to Edward's role in this and how Edward felt at the time about Alfred's murder by effective death at the hands of Godwin and his agents. We don't really know much about how Edward felt about that. Their mother, Emma, was very upset by it. But Edward and Alfred may not have been best friends, that they were potential rivals for the throne in 1036. And when Edward

became king in 1042. The first thing he did was to think, right, who's going to be helpful to me, but also who holds the strings of power, who can provide ships. Ships are power by this point. Godwin supplies ships, he has a navy. And Godwin's wife, Githra, is an interesting figure. She seems to have earned some of her wealth, not only through her Danish connections, because she's a sister-in-law of Knurz, but also by engaging in the slave trade, there's some indication that she is buying and selling, organizing the buying and selling of a particular kind of slave or enslaved person, later known as the fancy trade,

slaves who have a sort of specialist sexual interest. So Gobwin and Githa were quite a dark power couple, and this is the interesting power couple that Edward allies with when he becomes king. I think that that's such a good point to make, because quite rightly we spend a lot of time talking about, you know, Danish naval supremacy or, you know, the interesting and wonderful things that come out. of Viking power, but that is really all facilitated in the trade of human beings as well.

You know, it's like one of the big things getting traded. It's not all Baltic Amber, is it? You know, it's also a rather a lot of people. And I find that a really kind of compelling thing to think about, especially when we're talking about this period and about who's going to come to the throne. Because to a certain extent, one of the big powers is facilitated in this really quite distasteful way, I would say. But I suppose that Edward does a good job of trying to bring these people on board. I think that's the smartest thing you can do if you're kind of coming in to take over a country. If you want to survive. I would try to keep those people on board, absolutely. But he doesn't always keep them sweet, does he? There is conflict in there. I think going back to what we were saying earlier about his

mother, of course, and his upbringing, Edward is used to being in two minds about people. He's had to live with this state of mind where he knows that people can be both good and bad at once. And with the Godwins, he's always in two minds about them. I mean, he has to be politically to survive. He knows, I'm sure, that these are people who might turn on him if they need to. At a couple of points in his reign, members of that family do. The thing that complicates it is that the Godwins are not a coherent political block. You know, it's sometimes the case, particularly in Victorian early 20th century,

writing about them, we even write down to the modern day that historians talk about the Godwins as though they are a united faction. And often they aren't. Often Edward can drive a wedge between them. So Godwin himself will not always be thinking the same as his daughter Edith, will not always be thinking the same as his son's Harold and Swain. And Edward becomes part of that family. He is enmeshed with the Godwins. He's entangled with them. So for most of the reign, he's able to play them off against each other, but there are points in the reign, such as 1051, where the godwins unite and pose a threat, it seems, to Edward, another one at the end of the rain in 1065. So it's a complex situation he's handling.

I suppose one of the things that we tend to say about Edward, especially towards the later end of his reign, there are some people who argue that he's a bit of a puppet for the Godwins, and that really they're the power behind the throne. and Edward is just kind of this sort of hapless, very religious, very devoted man who doesn't understand the intricacies of government. And really, it's the Godwins who are pulling all the strings. Is that something that you would agree with? Or do you find that to be an oversimplification? It's certainly a simplification. It was a traditional line. And that story begins to appear in the 12th century, really as a way of extricating Edward from the perceived wickedness by that point of the Godwin family.

The Goblins are blamed for the Norman conquest. They're blamed for everything that was going on in the 11th century. Edward is being modelled as a saint. And so it's Anglo-Norman historians in the 12th century who begin to try to extricate Edward and exonerate him by saying that, oh, he was a simple king. He didn't really understand what was going on. He was too involved in the church, too much a monk, if you like, to be responsible for any of the things. that happened. I wouldn't agree with that line, and indeed I don't agree with that line in

Edmund, the Confessor. I think Edward is much more politically astute. He knows how to handle this family. He has to learn on the job, and there are a couple of times when it goes wrong for him, but he manages very well with the Godwins. And really, we should see his reign as one of cooperation between Edward and the Godwins. Indeed, one built on that cooperation. It's his cooperation with them, which maintains peace for 25 years. There are a couple of times when the Godwins unite against him and rebel, and they managed to make up, certainly in 1052. So I think it is a simplification, and I think we need to think of Edward as one of the Godwins, indeed as head of the Godwins, as head of that family, particularly after Godwin's

death in 1053. I find that really compelling, actually, because I think that it really turns these things on their head. And of course, we have to be so careful with the way that medieval sources talk about things, because every single history is commissioned by some rich person who wants us to understand a very particular way of relating to the people involved in it. So, of course, we have to control for that. But I think this idea that you've just said, Edward is not just the King of England,

he is the head of the Godwins. That is really quite interesting to me because it really turns this on its head. How much can you really control this fractious group of people who all have different motives and different things they want? of course, what they want is power. But they're incredibly wealthy. They're very well embedded into society. And it actually makes more sense when you consider the very shrewd political moves that Edward is involved in to think of him as keeping a very complex team of horses moving forward, I suppose.

Well, the key thing to understand about the Godwin's is that they are not united and they all hate each other at some deep level. So Godwin and Githa fall out over various things. They fall out, for example, over how Godwin treats a particular nunnery. Godwin's involved in dissolving this nunnery. Geitha doesn't like this fact. So Godwin has to buy her a special manner she can stay on, so she doesn't have to stay on the manner of the nunnery that they're exploiting. Godwin and Geitha's first son, their eldest, Swain,

he's going around saying that Godwin isn't his real father, that actually he's the son of Knut. And Geith is really unhappy about this. She swears on oath that he is her son, but obviously Swain's having none of it, and he's a classic example of the firstborn son, who's rebelling against his father's influence. Harold tries to step into Swain's shoes and be the model son and be like Godwin,

but one of their daughters, Gunnhild, she doesn't want to be married off by her parents. She wants to go off and live as a recluse in the cell, punishing her sinful flesh as she sees it. So their children, the choices their children are making are not all suggesting that this is a family that is united, that thinks along the same lines politically, that functions as a political unit. And indeed, Edward is able to exploit that division in the various crises of his career. And when Gobwin dies in 1053, Edward, as king, simply claims a lot of Gobwin's land back for himself, including family land, and Harold is left with a reduced earldom of Wessex to inherit from his father. We have to think about these tensions and divisions which go all the way back to Harold and Tosty and Edith's childhood,

probably being raised by Godwin, a father figure who isn't the kindest father one might imagine. Although talking about those sources you mentioned, it's spun very differently, of course. Gobwin is the perfect father. He's a father to England. He's the most loyal of men. That loyalty is repeated and emphasized again and again in the sources. Gobwin is the most loyal of men in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He's the most loyal of men in the life of Eber the Confessor. We know that he wasn't loyal if he needed not to be. He could certainly knife his lord in the back when he wanted to. And I mean, I would have to say that taking familial land off of your dead comrade is hardly the actions of a man who was being controlled by a puppet master either, which shows that Edward is certainly a much more canny political person than is otherwise understood rather a lot.

I think arguably the thing that Edward is most famous for is dying. So he dies on the 5th of January 1066, right? And he's got no heirs. And this creates the huge succession crisis that eventually culminates in the Norman invasion, the Battle of Hastings, everything later in that gear. And there's a lot of theories about what happens on his deathbed and who he promised the throne to is that Harold Godwinson, is that William the conqueror. Not to put you on the spot, Tom, but which horse have you got in this race? So who do you think? Well, feel free to put me in the spot.

That's why I'm here on the spot. And I do have a horse in the race, so to speak. So I would say that Edward does have an air. One of the arguments that's been so powerful ever since 1066 is it, was it William, was it Harold? Because both William and Harold had their supporters who wrote their stories, who made their arguments for them. My argument in Eber the confessor, the book I wrote, obviously, is that Edward has always had it in mind to produce an air of the blood. of the Royal Blood of Wessex, which is thought to be passed down on the male line. So at first he's trying for a child by Edith,

and they are, for whatever reason, we don't know, unable to have children, something that must have been very hard for both of them. When that becomes clear, there's a period around about 1051 where he's thinking about remarriage, in the hope, obviously, of having its son by a new queen. For one reason or another, that doesn't happen, and there's a crisis in the Gobwin family around that point. And then after that, he begins looking around thinking,

well, who is the next heir of the blood? And the next heir of the blood is his half-nephew, Edward the exile, rather confusingly called Edward, but we're calling Edward the exile, the son of Edmund Ironside, Edward the confessor's half-brother, who is off in Hungary by this point. He's gone into exile many years ago. And there is this concerted diplomatic effort to bring back Edward the exile with a view to producing an heir for England. The idea is he'll come back, he'll then be next in line, he'll live at court and Edward the confessor will prepare Ebb of the exile to take the throne once he's dead. Well, Eber the exile does eventually come back in 1057, but unfortunately he dies straight away, leaving his son Edgar Etheling.

And the few bits of evidence we have on Edgar Etheling are that Edward and Edith adopt him as their son. Now, processes of adoption, his date aren't formalised, but one indication we have is that they give him the title Etheling. And Etheling is a title only previously given to sons of the royal blood who are considered to be throne-worthy, that is potential theirs to the throne. So we know that Edgar is Edgar Etheling and he's being paraded around as the heir.

There's an interesting record in the Book of Life of Newminster Abbey Winchester, which is a royal monastery in the heart of Royal Winchester, where we see Edward and Queen Edith and Edgar described as Etheling in this entry. as a trio going along to a ceremony in which they're entering confraternity with the monks. And the idea of confraternity is that you become a member of that community, the monks will pray for you, so on and so forth,

and hopefully you'll get into heaven as a result of their prayers. But it involves a big gift to the monastery, and it involves a public ceremony. And we've got to imagine Edward and Edith appearing on the balcony, if we like, with the young Edgar Etheling there, and everyone understanding that he is their heir to be. And we even have a neutral source from Polly, Monteur, a county next to Flanders, in which we are told by, I think, a reliable author,

that Edward gets his chief men, and particularly Harold, to swear an oath, that after his death in 1066, they will recognise Edgar's claim to the throne. So my line, the licence thesis, if you like, is that all through his reign, Edward is lining up the blood air, whoever the blood air happens to be, and when he died in 1066, he and other people were hoping and expecting that Edgar Etheling would come to the throne after him. I mean, he doesn't, does he? He absolutely doesn't, no.

I personally love Edward Ethling. I mean, this is just a kind of Central European thing that I have. You know, anyone who's brought up in Hungary is all right with me. You know, that's absolutely fine. What we could have had, you know. Yeah, and of course, there's an interesting Russian connection there because his mother, Agatha, is the daughter, one of the daughters of Yaroslav, grand prince of Kaiv.

and there's a royal sort of Russian or Kaivan blood connection. So he's a very interesting figure in the European sense. I mean, imagine. Absolutely. Maybe a peaceful reign rather than an invasion. But inside, of course, we got Harold Godwinson immediately, right? This is the big power grab that happens. And how does Harold go about doing this?

I mean, if you've got Edgar, who's been brought out and paraded around, how is it that Harold manages to get in there and do this pincer? movement, so that suddenly everyone's looking at him as though he is the king? For that, we need to go to 1065, so the immediate context before Edward dies. I think in 1065, Edward is imagining that there are enough important people in England in his inner circle who will give their backing to Edgar to make Edgar's kingship viable. Because, of course, Edgar can't be king unless people like Harold Gobinson, Earl of Wessex, the most powerful Earl in England, are ready to support him.

And we see again and again through English history occasions when that doesn't happen. So 1483, for example, which the third Duke of Gloucester decides not to support the young king Edward V, his brother's son, and takes the throne instead. So Edward in 1065 is hoping that there are enough powerful people around him in the court circle to support Edgar. But then there's a massive rebellion. The north rebels. The north that sounds a bit vague, I know, but all the earldoms, Northumbria, the Yorkshire part of that, if you're a lot of that, if you're not. eventually Mercia, get involved in the rebellion. And this rebellion ousts Earl Tostig, Harold's younger brother. Now, Tosting and Harold are two great powers. And of course, Edith the Queen is another great power.

And looking at the politics of it, I would say probably in 1065, Edith and Tosty are very clearly pro-Edward. They're on Edward's team. They're batting for Edgar Etheling. The Archbishop of York is also batting for Edgar Etheling, I think. He's been involved in negotiations to bring back Edward the exile and then Edgar Etheling. Harold is probably keeping his opinions to himself, as is the Archbishop of Canterbury. And then you've got two other important earls who are Harold and Tosty's younger brothers, Gertan Leifwyn, who might swing either way. So Edward is hoping that they will all act responsibly and crown Edgar Etheling on his death. But Harold has got other ideas by 1065. And the rebellion changes things, because the rebellion is a rebellion against Edward's regime,

and particularly Tosti's regime in the north. Tosti has been an earl in Northumbria for ten years. He's become very unpopular, he's made enemies, and the northern men want rid of him. Once he's gone, the northern earldom goes to a different earl, and the balance of power begins to shift very rapidly over to Harold. Now, Harold then has a choice on the 5th of January 1065. He has a decision to make.

Is he going to throw his weight behind Edgar Etheling, as Edward the confessor wanted, and prop up the regime which has come under a lot of fire from the north, also potentially prop up a monarch, a young king, because Eggers probably no more than 14, 15, who might decide to bring back Tostis and go into exile and continue Edward's form of government, or is he going to take the throne for himself, forge an alliance with the Northern Earls and hold England together? So that's his decision, and one thing he has to bear in mind, of course, is that young kings have a habit, once they come of age of throwing off their powerful guardians. So who knows whether a couple of years down the line, Edgar Ethling might think,

oh right, Harold's too powerful. I don't want him to be Earl of Wessex anymore. I want Tosty, say, to be Earl of Wessex. One thing we often forget, because we don't have a propagandist writing on Edgar's behalf, we've got one for William and for Harold, but not for Edgar, is that by this point in time, Edgar would have had opinions of his own. He would have liked some people and disliked others. And for all we know, he might have disliked Harold.

He might have liked either. He might have liked Tosti. So Harold is in a very dangerous position. Any regime change is potentially dangerous. But Harold has to make calculations based on whether he thinks he's likely to survive and whether he thinks England's likely to hold together. And the decision he makes, of course, is to take the throne with the help of the Northern Earls. I suppose that's how we get one of the most widely talked about periods of English history. But this is fundamentally a conversation about Edward more specifically. And we need. know that after his death, he's canonized less than 100 years after his death. So he's canonized in 1161. Eid gets her way. I'd argue that Edward kind of got his way on that one as well. And now when we talk about him, this saintliness is a big part of the way that we think of him and his legacy. And would you say that this becomes the guiding principle of his legacy? Or do we just look at the mess that happens after his death? If we say that Edward has a legacy, I suppose, what is it?

The saintly myth that begins to surround Edward, the aura, I think to an extent it's already there, it's being crafted in his reign by the likes of Edith, who's putting him on this stage dressed up as almost a quasi-saintly patriarchal figure. But when the life of Eber the confessors we call it, or rather the history of his dynasty, comes to an abrupt and hideous end in 1066 because of all the bloodshed, the author then changes it, possibly Edith's direction, because she is his patron. into a history of the saintly Edward and the miracles he has worked. And this is how she processes the trauma, rather than focusing on the horror and the death of all the brothers that she loved and her beloved husband. She likes to look back on Edward as a saintly figure, who will then inherit eternal life in the life to come.

So this is psychologically, we might say, it is fantasy. And then that gets taken over by monks at Westminster who write up these accounts of Edward as though he's a saint, neglecting all the murders that were done by members of his court, and the assassinations and all the dark stuff. And this becomes a dominant legend. So by the 19th century when historians are writing up the history of Norman conquest, Edward is this saintly figure and this sort of monkish figure

and this rather withdrawn figure who 19th century historians in the Age of Empire, such as Edward Augustus Freeman, don't find very appealing, to be honest. He's populace long as England's a Catholic country, and saints of that sort are in demand. But with the advent of what we might call modernity and muscular Protestantism, those who are constructing England's history and looking round for more robust figures who go out and wave swords around, such as Harold and such as Alfred.

So Edward is pushed aside and seen as a weak and retreating and failing kind of monkish figure, which I think is a far removed from the Edward we've been talking about, of course. But that legend does kick in quite early, and it kicks in as a way of preserving this sort of memory of a happier time in an age of bloodshed and violence that follows his comparatively peaceful reign. I think we have to leave it there, Tom,

thank you so much for complicating what I think is often an oversimplified story about one of the more interesting English kings. And now you mentioned very quickly in passing your book, if our listeners want to learn more about Edward, where could they find more of your work? Well, I wrote the Yale English Monarch's biography of Eber the Confessor

that came out in 2020, so all these arguments are pretty much in there. and I'm now working on the Yale English monarchs biography of Harold, 1066 Harold. So that'll be out in maybe a couple of years or so. And I'll further develop some of these arguments, but from Harold's perspective in that biography too. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you, Eleanor. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening.

And thank you once again to Tom for joining me. If you're interested in learning more about the aftermath of Edward's death, you can check out your episodes on the Battle of Hastings and the persons involved in it, which include Harold Godwinson, William the Conqueror, and Harold Hardruder. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can always drop us an email at Gone Medieval at HistoryHit.com. Otherwise, my co-host Matt Lewis will retake the Gone Medieval Throne on Friday, and I'll be back again, as always, next Tuesday. Until next time.