Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens by Malcolm Day Read Free Book Online

To make this abundantly clear he gave his famous demonstration on the beach.
    His courtiers had claimed, perhaps sycophantically, that Canute was so great that even nature would obey him. The king ordered his throne to be carried down to the water’s edge, whereupon he sat on it and ordered the sea to recede. Contrary to popular understanding of the legend, Canute was not trying to prove that he had power over the waves. He sat there as the waves lapped over his feet. Finally, shin deep in water, Canute announced, ‘Let it be known that the power of kings is empty and worthless compared with the majesty of God.’ This was now the Christian king, having once been a marauding Viking terrorist, whom the English had recast as their own.

Saintly Healer of the King’s Evil
But was the founder of Westminster Abbey really that pious?
    T he popular image of Edward the Confessor is of a tall white-haired man with a long aristocratic face. This noble demeanour certainly served future monks well in reinforcing the idea that this Englishman was a pious, almost ascetic, king whose marriage was reputedly celibate on the grounds of chastity. Hence no heir.

    Edward’s later canonisation, based largely on his apparent ability to heal scrofula (a form of tuberculosis of the neck) by touching the sufferer, led to his enormous popularity in the Middle Ages when pilgrims in their droves would visit his shrine in Westminster Abbey in the hope of being cured of their illnesses. This charismatic gift was perceived to come from the king’s divine authority, hence scrofula’s alternative name as the ‘King’s Evil’. If he could cure an individual, the logic ran, he could protect the nation; and so for 400 years Edward rode high as the patron saint of England.
    But was he all that religious really? The question arises because of other known facts about him. His everyday life was much as one would expect of a king at this time. He loved hunting, ‘delighting at the baying and scrambling of hounds’, enjoyed listening to bloody-thirsty Norse sagas in the evening, and did not shirk battle duty when required. By all accounts he was a red-blooded male, not otherworldly, as his icon suggests.
Marriage problems
    His marriage to Edith, the domineering daughter of Godwin, earl of Wessex, had its difficulties. Edward became increasingly suspicious of his father-in-law’s political motives and eventually they came to arms. In the end Edith became her husband’s open enemy. All her property was confiscated and she was sent to a nunnery.
    Is it not perfectly possible that Edward and Edith simply failed to conceive a child, or that the union was loveless? Perhaps later church figures embellished the virtue of Edward in order to justify, and promote further, his popularity.
    With his background as it was – his mother Emma was Norman, and he was brought up in Normandy where his Saxon father Ethelred lived in exile – you might think he favoured the French as much as the English. He may never have wished for the likes of Godwin (whose son would accede as Harold II) to take the English throne. So it was no wonder that Edward secretly promised the crown to his Norman nephew William, who of course would soon invade to take what he considered rightfully his.
Westminster Abbey
    The building of Westminster Abbey must go down as Edward’s major triumph. It easily became the largest church in England and one of the finest in western Europe. Again his inspiration no doubt came from France where, as a boy, he would have seen other cathedrals being built in the grand new Romanesque style.
    So why did Edward choose this difficult spot on Thorney Island surrounded by marshland when his dynastic roots lay in Winchester? He may well have been inspired by the tale that the ground was made holy by St Peter, but the real reason lies in its proximity to the City of London.
    Though the city had long been the commercial capital, it was here that Edward had fought Godwin