THE WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 3, 5 January 1931, Page 6

THE WEEK'S GREAT DAY.

JANUARY S.=—DEATH OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. • /

(Cdpyrighted.) Eight hundred and sixty-five years ago, on January 5, 1066, Edward the Confessor, £be last but one of Britain's Saxon kings, died at about the age of sixty-one. He was the son of Ethelred 11., who is known in history as "The Unready," or "The Redeless," owing to his inability to discern good "rede," or counsel, and--he was born at Islip, in Oxfordshire, some time in the year 1005. When he was eight years of age his father lost his throne and was succeeded by Sweyn,- the Dane, and he was then takefi to the court of the Duke of Normandy, which was his home for the next twenty-seven years. > In 1041 he was recalled to England by King* Hardicanute, who nominated him as his successor, and on Hardicanute's death in the following year he was elected king by the people of England, not because he had been chosen by the late sovereign, but owing to the influence of Earl Godwine, who was the most v powerful man in the kingdom. Edward's lengthy stay at the Norman court had made him more foreign than English ill his. tastes, and he speedily surrounded himself with a number of favourites from overseas, but during the early years of his reign necessity compelled him to permit Godwine and his sons to enjoy unlimited power, and in 1044 lie married the Earl's daughter, Edith. He was, however, imbued with the narrowest of monkish ideals, and at the time of his marriage he told Edith that he had made her his wife simply for State reasons, and that she must never expect to becomc his wife in anything more than name. His reign of twenty-four years would have' been quite uneventful had it not been for the constant state of' friction which existed between the national' party, of which Godwine and his. sons were the leaders, and' the foreign favourites, but it was,not until 1051 |hat the strength of the English and the Norman factions were tried in any direct encounter, and In that year a broil led to the temporary banishment of Godwine and his sons and the imprisonment of the Queen.' During the Earl's exile William, Duke of Normandy, visited England, and it was then th'at he received the promise of succession from Edward, upon which he based his later Claim to the throne. - The nation soon revolted against the foreign regime, and Godwine, who was recalled in 1052, and was .then placed in a. position of greater power than he had formerly enjoyed, expelled all the Norman favourites from the <jountrv. He died in the following year, but his mantle descended upon his son, Harold, who maintained the ascendancy of his family in the realm until the death of Edward thirteen years later. On his deathbed Edward repented of the promise which he had made to the Duke of Normandy, and he expressed the wish that Harold sho.uld succeed him, provided it plea/sed the nation to elect him, but he expressed grave doubts as to the possibility of Harbld being able to retain the throne in the face of the forces which the duke would be able to muster to enforce his claim. These doubts were abundantly realised, for . Harold, who was elected kiilg by the Witanagemot on the day following Edward's death, lost both his throilc and his at the epoch-marking Battle of Hastings nine months later. ■ During his ixile Edward vowed a pilgrimage to Rome if the English throne should be restored to him, but on his accession he was absolved from ♦the vow by the Pope, who ordered as a substitute the erection of a great church in honour of St. Peter, and as, a result Edward devoted one-tenth of his possessions to the building of the original Westminster' Abbey, in which his was the first burial. He was canonised hundred years after his death, and on the rebuilding of the Abbey church in the thirteenth century his remains were placed in a gorgeous shrine, which still stands in the Chapel of the Confessor at the rfear of the', altar in the historic Valhalla of the Empire.