Tom Licence - Edward the Confessor

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

The Yale English Monarchs Series

THELSTAN by Sarah Foot

CNUT THE GREAT by Timothy Bolton

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR by Frank Barlow

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR by Tom Licence

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR by David Bates

WILLIAM RUFUS by Frank Barlow

HENRY I by Warren Hollister

KING STEPHEN by Edmund King

HENRY II by W. L. Warren*

RICHARD I by John Gillingham

KING JOHN by W. L. Warren*

HENRY III (2 vols) by David Carpenter

EDWARD I by Michael Prestwich

EDWARD II by Seymour Phillips

EDWARD III by W. Mark Ormrod

RICHARD II by Nigel Saul

HENRY IV by Chris Given-Wilson

HENRY V by Christopher Allmand

HENRY VI by Bertram Wolffe

EDWARD IV by Charles Ross

RICHARD III by Charles Ross

HENRY VII by S. B. Chrimes

HENRY VIII by J. J. Scarisbrick

EDWARD VI by Jennifer Loach

MARY I by John Edwards

JAMES II by John Miller

QUEEN ANNE by Edward Gregg

GEORGE I by Ragnhild Hatton

GEORGE II by Andrew C. Thompson

GEORGE III by Jeremy Black

GEORGE IV by E. A. Smith

* Available in the U.S. from University of California Press

Copyright 2020 Tom Licence

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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Set in Baskerville by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020938190

ISBN 978-0-300-21154-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Ben

CONTENTS

PLATES

(accessed 17 March 2020).

PREFACE

On Saturday 14 October 2017, on the grassy slopes beneath Battle abbey, I sat with one of my students, red and white flag in one hand, pint of cider in the other, as a host of Norman cavalry charged the English on the hill. No one dared believe history would be re-written that day, but most of us cheered Harold and booed the Norman duke, while a few waved flags for the latter, happy with the tide of events. Prior to the action, Harold and William had each put his case to the crowd. Edward the Confessor had croaked out his last words in a fit of hammy wheezing. Once more the stage was set for the re-enactment of the drama a drama inviting us to choose sides in a battle for English identity. It is a drama that reverberates to this day.

I was less familiar with Edward the Confessor in 2005 when I heard a recreation of music from his reign being performed in Westminster abbey. Music transports us back into the past. It frees a spirit long contained, like incense from a tomb. Arriving at the University of East Anglia in 2009, I started teaching the special subject on the Norman Conquest. Plans for a new Yale biography of Edward were hatched in the summer of 2013; and I began early drafts two years later during a period of study leave in Berlin. Another spell of leave in 2018 allowed me to prepare a final draft, but the rewriting and polishing ran into 2020.

Edward has not been attractive to historian-biographers. E. A. Freeman admired him as a saint but rejected him as a king. Frank Barlow, who wrote the previous biography of the Confessor in this series, in 1970, hardly warmed to him, though he did deem him competent. My sense was that the man and the reign were poorly understood; that over the years Edward had acquired too much baggage and become so entangled with an emotive national story about the downfall of Anglo-Saxon England that it was difficult for historians to approach him with an open mind.

In the fifty years since Barlows Edward took shape, scholars studying the Conquest era have made many important discoveries and filled a few holes. They have come at tough problems from new angles and chipped away old defences. I am greatly indebted to the late Frank Barlow, whose interests foreshadowed my own, and to the work of others, particularly David Bates, Pierre Bauduin, Stephen Baxter, Katherine Keats-Rohan, Simon Keynes, Levi Roach, Pauline Stafford, Liesbeth van Houts, and Ann Williams. They and many others have been putting together sections of the jigsaw, enabling me better to see and imagine a credible configuration.

Sarah Foot and Judith Green assisted at an early stage by sharing their experience on writing biography. Katherine Keats-Rohan has been attentive on Brittany and on the Bayeux Tapestry. Stephen Baxter has kindly shared his thoughts on the chroniclers, Domesday Book and the earls. Charles Insley, Chris Lewis, Simon Keynes, Richard Sharpe?, Nicholas Vincent and David Woodman have assisted with charters, and Susan Kelly refined my arguments for Appendix 2 (where any errors are mine). Rory Naismith, Hugh Pagan, Jo Porter and Gareth Williams addressed numismatic enquiries, and Jo and Rebecca Pinner supplied photos of the face I forgot to photograph in Copenhagen. Rosalind Love and Elizabeth Tyler have, for the past ten years, shared their thoughts on the Vita dwardi regis (The Life of King Edward). Levi Roach and Katy Cubitt have endured interrogations on the character of Edwards father, and I thank for their help Mark Bailey, Wendy Davies, Hugh Doherty, Veronique Gazeau, Robert Liddiard, Ben Pohl, Ben Savill, Francesca Tinti, Emily Ward, and Emily Winkler.

The lead acknowledgements remain. First, I am most grateful to Robert Baldock for commissioning the biography, and to Heather McCallum and her team for seeing it through to the shelf. Im also grateful to the few who have given me more scholarly assistance than anyone else. They are David Bates, who encouraged me to take on Edward; Simon Keynes, Liesbeth van Houts, and my PhD student Liam Draycott. Mistakes and oversights are mine. The five people who read drafts and helped improve the book were my husband, Ben Ross, David Bates, Stephen Church, Liesbeth van Houts, and Ann Williams, and it was Ben who got me thinking about character and plot and how to craft a good story. Like the re-enactors, I could not rewrite the ending, but I have at least shifted the light so that its shadow falls elsewhere.

ABBREVIATIONS