Feast Day: 13th October Patron Saint of difficult marriages
St Edward pray for us
Relics of St Edward the Confessor are in the reliquary (a container for relics) in the Cathedral's Borromeo Chapel
For a colouring page of St Edward Confessor click here
Edward the Confessor was born about 1003, the son of King Ethelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. Edward spent the first part of his life in Normandy, away from his family and in a strange land. It is said that Edward’s childhood was not a happy one.
In 1040, Edward was re-called to England by his half-brother King Hardicanute. Hardicanute died after a drinking party in 1042 and Edward became king of England.
Edward married in 1045. His wife, Edith, was the daughter of Godwin of Wessex, the most important nobleman in England. They had no children as Edward had taken a vow of celibacy. Between 1052 and 1066, Edward put all of his energy into the building of Westminster Abbey. He died In January 1066 leaving no children. The dispute over who should succeed him led to the Norman invasion of October 1066 and the Battle of Hastings.
Edward the Confessor was the first Anglo-Saxon to be canonized, and the only king of England to have been officially declared a saint. However, he was part of a tradition of uncanonised English royal saints, such as King Edgar the Peaceful and King Edward the Martyr. Until about 1350, King Edmund the Martyr, Pope Gregory the Great and King Edward the Confessor were all regarded as English national saints. Edward III, however, preferred the more war-like figure of St George. In 1348 he established the Order of the Garter with St George as its patron. The chapel of St Edward the Confessor at Windsor Castle was rededicated to St George, who was officially acclaimed as patron of England in 1351. The shrine of Saint Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey remains where it was after the final translation of his body to a chapel east of the sanctuary on 13 October 1269 by Henry III. The day of his translation, 13 October, is regarded as his feast day, and each October the Abbey holds a week of festivities and prayer in his honour. For some time the Abbey had claimed that it possessed a set of coronation regalia that Edward had left for use in all future coronations. Following Edward's canonization, these were regarded as holy relics, and thereafter they were used at all English coronations from the 13th Century until the destruction of the crown jewels by Oliver Cromwell in 1649. The current crown used at coronations made for Charles II is still named “St Edward’s Crown.”