David Woodman - Edward the Confessor

Now in paperback

The origins of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lie in the court of King Alfred the Great in the early 890s, to which additions were made at various subsequent stages in the Anglo-Saxon period and beyond. Information for Edwards reign is provided by three principal manuscript copies of the Chronicle, referred to by the letters C, D and E. For some entries these different versions contain broadly similar detail. For others (and this is particularly evident in their accounts of 10512) they exhibit stark differences that reflect the time in which they were written and the bias/interests of their authors. Versions C and E were seemingly written closer in time to the events they describe than D, which, in parts, may exhibit a post-1066 perspective. Arguments have been made that C was composed at various places, including Abingdon, Canterbury and, most recently, Evesham; it has been connected with the house of Leofric, Earl of the North-West Midlands. D has information in particular about the west Midlands and northern England and is connected with Archbishop Ealdred of York. E, although it survives as part of a manuscript copied at Peterborough around 1120, is for the period 1043 to 1063 considered to have been a near-contemporary chronicle kept at St Augustines, Canterbury; broadly speaking, it is more favourable to the Godwines, although it also expresses disagreement with some of their actions relating to the south-east.

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First published by Allen Lane in 2020

Copyright David Woodman, 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover design by Pentagram
Jacket art by Jeff Fisher

ISBN: 978-0-241-38302-5

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For Sasha,

who is simply perfect

On 7 February 1161, Pope Alexander III issued a papal bull a form of public decree which bestowed sainthood on Edward, the king who ruled in England between 1042 and 1066. From this moment Edward was admitted to the ranks of the holy confessors (those saints who died of natural causes) from where he derives his honorific the Confessor. This is how Edward is best known to us: as a royal saint who lies buried in Westminster Abbey. But this is the Edward of myth, not the Edward of history. The majority of this book is concerned with the eleventh-century Edward, before we survey (in ) his afterlife, the circumstances in which he was canonized and the ways in which he remained an important national figure into the thirteenth century.

The Edward of the mid to late eleventh century is accessible to us in various ways. A number of near-contemporary sources have fortunately been preserved. These range from narrative texts about Edwards mother (the