around the grasping Alice, enriching themselves at
public expense. In the Good Parliament of 1376 Com-
mons impeached the courtiers and called for sweeping
reforms, Edward, who did not participate, was forced to
grant its demands. He died less than a year later, on 21
June 1377, and was succeeded by his grandson Richard
II, whose father, the Black Prince, had died in 1376.
Edward’s character is diffi cult to reconstruct, because
chroniclers tended to treat him heroically without offer-
ing personal insights. He clearly inspired great esprit de
corps among the nobility and soldiers. He loved display
and indulged in tournaments, ceremonies, and pageants.
He was also quick-tempered and tended to blame others
for his misfortunes. He was conventionally pious, mak-
ing pilgrimages to holy sites in England before and after
campaigns and giving to the church; he also distrusted
clergymen and for the fi rst time appointed laymen as
chancellor and treasurer in 1341 and 1371. Finally,
despite their immediate glory, his victories in France
did not bring lasting success nor were they universally
popular in England, where peasants and townsfolk had
to shoulder the burden of paying for war.
See also Froissart, Jean; Richard III
Further Reading
Allmand, C.T. The Hundred Years War: England and France
at War, c. 1300–c. 1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988.
Given-Wilson, Chris. The English Nobility in the Late Middle
Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Community. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
McKisack, May. The Fourteenth Century, 1307–1399. Oxford
History of England 5. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.
Ormrod, W.M. The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political
Society in England, 1327–1377. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1990.
Prestwich, Michael. The Three Edwards: War and State in Eng-
land, 1272–1377. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980.
Tout, T.F. Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval
England: The Wardrobe, the Chamber and the Small Seals.
Vol. 3. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1928.
Waugh, Scott L. England in the Reign of Edward III. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Scott L. Waugh
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
(1002/05–1066; r. 1042–66)
Edward owes his tide of Confessor to his canonization
in 1161 by Pope Alexander III at the request of Henry
II and the church and at the instigation of the monks of
Westminster Abbey, where he was buried. Although the
historical fi gure and the image of the Confessor have
little in common, the title serves to distinguish him
from such Anglo-Saxon kings as Edward the Elder and
Edward the Martyr.
Edward was born at Islip, near Oxford, between 1002
and 1005, the seventh son of Æthelred II, “the Unready,”
and the fi rst from his second marriage, to Emma, sister
of Duke Richard II of Normandy, an alliance designed to
protect the king from Viking attacks. Edwards “miracu-
lous” acquisition of the throne in 1042, after 24 years of
obscure exile in Normandy and its environs (1017–4l),
was made possible by the deaths of the Danish usurpers
Cnut and his sons, Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, and
of most other potential pretenders, his younger brother,
Alfred, and his six senior half-brothers, represented
only by Edmund Ironside’s son, Edward “the Exile,”
in Hungary.
But to gain and hold the throne Edward had to ac-
cept the protection of Godwin, earl of Wessex, marry
Godwin’s daughter, Edith (Eadgyth), and raise his sons
to earldoms. Edward found it hard to break free. Because
of Cnut’s division of the kingdom into great provincial
earldoms and the erosion of the royal demesne Edward
could provide only small estates for his French fol-
lowers. Although he had more scope in the church and
appointed some interesting continentals to bishoprics,
his best hope of independence lay in the suspicion of
Godwin felt by the other great earls, the English Leofric
of Mercia and the Danish Siward of Northumbria.
Like his father, Æthelred II, Edward has an unde-
served reputation as a weak king, Healthy, a keen hunter
and soldier, a great survivor, and—although occasion-
ally rash and ill advised—determined not to go on his
travels again, he warded off his external enemies by
warlike gestures and shrewd diplomacy. He exploited
his childlessness—explained by later legend as due to
an unconsummated marriage—as a diplomatic asset,
making empty promises of the succession to Earl God-
win’s nephew, King Swein of Denmark, in the 1040s;
his cousin-once-removed William duke of Normandy,
at the end of the decade; his half-nephew, Edward the
Exile, in 1054–57. He may also have aroused the hopes
of other relatives of his parents and wife.
In 1051, under the infl uence of Robert of Jumièges,
a Norman abbot whom he made bishop of London and
then archbishop of Canterbury, Edward fell foul of his
father-in-law and provoked a showdown. Godwin’s
half-hearted rebellion collapsed when earls Leofric
and Siward supported the king; the rebel and his sons
were outlawed and fl ed abroad. In the following year,
however, they returned by force and, as Leofric and
Siward, alienated by Edward’s willfulness, now stood
aloof, secured their restoration. This time it was Robert
of Jumièges and other Frenchmen who fl ed.
After Godwin’s death in 1053 Edward and the
Godwinsons reached a modus vivendi, and a period
of prosperity set in. According to the Vita Aedwardi
regis, an early account of the reign, the dominance of
Godwin’s children made England great. Harold, earl ofEDWARD III