St Edward the Confessor

Edward was nearly the last Anglo-Saxon King before the Norman conquest of 1066. (His successor at his death on 5^thJanuary 1066 was Harold Godwinson who was defeated at the Battle of Hastings later that year.) Edward endowed the construction of St Peter’s Abbey, Westminster, the first Romanesque church in England, where he was himself eventually buried. He was hailed throughout his life as a gentle, loyal and devoted king, renowned for his life of prayer, chaste marriage and love of the poor; he is the only King of England to have been canonised, nearly a century after his death, in 1161. His feast is celebrated on the day of the transfer of his remains to Westminster Abbey.