Islip: birthplace of a king and saint

He was canonised in 1161 by Pope Alexander III, successor to the only English Pope Hadrian IV, after Henry II — who built the wall around his Royal Park at Woodstock exactly 900 years ago this year — had strenuously argued his Cause for six years, even dispatching the monk of Westminster, Osbert de Clare, to Rome in order to plead Edward’s eligibility for sainthood.

In fact, Edward the Confessor spent very little time in Islip since his mother, the Norman Queen Emma, took him away to Normandy in early childhood — and there he remained for the next 25 years. Shortly after becoming king of England in 1043, however, he granted the manor and living of his birthplace to the Abbey of Westminster, which he founded and where his former Saint’s Feast Day, October 13, is still observed.

For almost a couple of centuries — until 1348 — Edward was venerated as the patron saint of England. And even today he is the patron saint of the Royal Family, of Kings generally, and also, curiously enough, of difficult marriages and separated spouses. He was known as the Confessor, incidentally, to distinguish him from his grandfather, St Edward the Martyr, English king from 975, who was murdered at Corfe Castle in Dorset in 978.

Saints at that time were broadly considered to be either martyrs, who had died for their Christian faith, or confessors. In either case, miracles were needed for any Cause to have a chance of success, and in the case of Edward the Confessor, those promoting his cult — not least Henry II — pointed to his ability to cure the nasty skin disease scrofula, otherwise known as the King’s Evil, by simply touching sufferers.

But how saintly was Edward? Certainly he was extremely religious, even other worldly, and was credited with lots of miracles (besides scrofula-curing), but that arch political spinner Henry II had much to gain by promoting his cult. Ever since the Norman invasion of 1066, the Norman kings had maintained that that they were rulers of the English not only by right of conquest but also by legal right of succession, claiming that the sainted king had nominated William I as his heir.

Some say all this is important still because a feeling persists that English national identity was somehow sold short by Edward (if he did indeed nominate William). In the 19th century, particularly, the matter rankled much in the minds of some writers and thinkers, with Walter Scott pointing out that as far as the language was concerned, the meat placed upon the table for the rulers to eat had Norman nomenclature — such as beef and mutton — but the animals themselves, cows and sheep reared by those they ruled, kept names of Saxon derivation. In any case, to play Devil’s Advocate a little more, Edward was hardly kind to his mother, Queen Emma. She had been first married to his father, Ethelred the Unready, but after he died she married the Danish conqueror Canute — and was crowned alongside him in Oxford in 1018.

On Canute’s death, Edward backed charges against her of having had an affair with the Bishop of Winchester — to whom, incidentally, she gave the Bishop’s Palace in Witney, the remains of which are open to the public. Legend has it that she was tried by Ordeal, which in her case involved walking barefoot across hot plough shears.

And whether thanks to a holy vow of chastity or a row with her family, he was not that kind to his wife Edith either: in 1051 he sent her to a nunnery in Hampshire, after her father, Earl Godwin, had led an English uprising against him on the grounds of his favouring too many Normans. She was later reinstated as his wife, though the couple remained childless, and her brother Harold, defeated at Hastings, succeeded him. A chapel associated with Edward once stood near the church of St Nicholas in Islip. It was damaged in the Civil War and demolished in the 18th century.