Edward the Confessor (c. 1003 – 5 January 1066) was an Anglo-Saxon English king and saint. Usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, he ruled from 1042 until his death in 1066.
Edward was the seventh son of Æthelred the Unready, and the first by his second wife, Emma of Normandy daughter of Richard I the Fearless Duke of Normandy and Gunnor. The names of Gunnor’s parents are unknown, but Robert of Torigni wrote that her father was a forester from the Pays de Caux and according to Dudo of Saint-Quentin she was of noble Danish ancestry. Gunnor was probably born c. 950. Her family held sway in western Normandy and Gunnor herself was said to be very wealthy.
Edward was born between 1003 and 1005 in Islip, Oxfordshire, and is first recorded as a ‘witness’ to two charters in 1005. He had one full brother, Alfred, and…
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