EDWARD ILL, King of the Anglo-Saxons, surnamed the Confessor, was the eldest of the two sons of Ethelred II. by his second wife Emma, the daughter of Richard I., duke of Normandy. He was born at Islip, in Oxfordshire, probably in the year 1004. In the close of 1013, when the successes of Sweyn, the Dane, drove Ethelred from his throne, and compelled him to retire to the Isle of Wight, he sent over his wife, with Edward and his younger brother Alfred, to Normandy, to the care of their uncle Duke Richard II. Hither Ethelred himself, being assured of a favourable reception, followed his family, about tho middle of January 1014. When, on the death of Sweyn, within three weeks after, Ethelred was recalled by the Witeu agemote, he sent back his sou Edward along with the plenipotentiaries, whom he despatched previously to setting out himself to complete the arrangements for his restoration. On the death of Ethelred in 1016, Emma and her two sons returned to Normandy. When Canute the Dane obtained the throne in the latter part of the same year by the death of Edmund Ironside, it is affirmed that Duke Richard either fitted out a naval force or threatened to do so, with a view of support ing the claims of his nephew Edward ; but this intention, if it ever was entertained, was effectually diverted before it led to anything by the proposals which now proceeded from Canute for the hand of the widowed Emma. Canute and Emma were married in July 1017. From this time till the death of Canute in 1035, Edward appears to have remained quiet in Normandy. He is said to have spent his time chiefly in the performance of the offices of religion and in hunting, which continued to be his favourite occupations to the end of his days. Ou Canute's death, and the disputes for the succession between his sous Harold and Hardicanute, Edward was induced to make a momentary demonstration in assertiou of his pretensions : he crossed the channel with a fleet of forty ships, and landed at South ampton ; but finding that instead of being supported, he would be vigorously opposed by his mother, who was exerting all her efforts for her son Hardicanute, he gave up the attempt, and returned to Normandy after merely plundering a few villages. In 1037 his younger brother Alfred was tempted by an invitation purporting to come from Emma to proceed to England at the head of another expedition, which terminated in his destruction, brought about appa rently by treachery, though there dues not seem to be any sufficient ground for the horrid suspicion, which some writers have been disposed to entertain, that the contriver of the plot was his own mother.
When Hardicanute became undisputed king of all England by the death of Harold in 1040, he sent for his half-brother Edward, who immediately came to England, where he was allowed a handsome establishment, and appears to have been considered as the heir to the crown in default of issue of the reigeing king. Hardicauute died on the 4th of June 1042, and Edward was immediately recognised as king by the assembled body of the clerical and lay nobility ; the former, it is said, having been chiefly swayed by Livingus, bishop of Worcester, the latter by the powerful Earl Godwin.
A menace of opposition to this settlement of the English crown by Magnus, king of Norway, was defeated, after it had put Edward to the expense of fitting out a fleet to maintain his rights, first by the occupation which Magnus found at home in defending himself against another claimant to the Danish throne, Sweyn, the nephew of Canute, and soon after, more effectually, by the death of Magnus. In 1044, Edward, probably in compliance with a promise which he had made to Godwin, married Editba, the only daughter of that earl, having previously informed her however that although he would make her his queen, she should not share his bed. This unnatural proceeding, by which Edward gained from his church the honour of canonisation and the title of Confessor, and by which, to pass over his treatment of his wife and his violation of his marriage vows, he involved his country in the calamities of a disputed succession, and eventually of a foreign conquest, has been usually attributed to religious motives. The Confessor seems to have been without human affections of any kind. His first.act after coming to the throne was to proceed to the residence of his mother at Winchester, and to seize by force not only all her treasures, but even the cattle and corn upon her lauds. One account further states that he endeavoured to destroy her by an accusation from which she freed herself by the ordeal—though this part of the story has been generally rejected by modern writers.