Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor or Eadweard III (c. 1004–January 4/5, 1066) was the penultimate Anglo-Saxon king of England and the last of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 until his death.1 His reign marked the continuing disintegration of royal power in England and the aggrandizement of the great territorial earls, and it foreshadowed the country's later connection with Normandy, whose duke William I was to supplant Edward's successors Harold and Edgar Ætheling as England's ruler.

Note

• The numbering of English monarchs starts from scratch after the Norman conquest, which explains why the regnal numbers assigned to English kings named Edward begin with the later Edward I (ruled 1272–1307) and do not include Edward the Confessor (Who was the third king Edward).