Edward the Confessor Crowned King of England But a Bunch of Other Stuff Happened First
Edward the Confessor was born in 1003 to King Ethelred the Unready and his second wife Emma, the sister of Richard, Duke of Normandy. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king to sit on the throne of England. Edward was responsible for the building of Westminster Abbey, one of the great churches of England, and where many of the country’s most illustrious monarchs and distinguished personages were laid to rest.
When Edward entered the world, his dad was keeping busy trying to offset the Viking invasions that kept popping up all over England’s coastlines. He managed to hold them off for over a decade, but when Edward was ten King Ethelred was deposed, and the Royal family was exiled in Normandy under Uncle Richard’s protection.
Aethelred regained England’s throne in 1014, but for some reason sent Edward back to represent him. This was quite the dangerous undertaking for such a young kid, but he appointed himself so nobly that the Witan, or Council, forbade any future Danish kings in England.
But only two years later King Ethelred was dead, and his son from his first marriage, Edmund Ironside, was fighting to keep the English throne from the Danish King Cnut (explosive typo potential here.) Then Edmund bought the farm in 1016, and Cnut talked the Witan into…
