Edward the Confessor King Henry II and Pope Alexander III He was called 'Confessor' as the name for someone who was believed to have lived a saintly life but was not a martyr. In the 1230s King Henry III became attached to the cult of Saint Edward, and he commissioned a new life by Matthew Paris. Henry also constructed a grand new tomb for Edward in a rebuilt Westminster Abbey in 1269. He named his eldest son after him. Until about 1350, Edmund the Martyr, Gregory the Great and Edward the Confessor were regarded as English national saints, but Edward III preferred the
The Last English King The Last English King The Last English King (1997) is a historical novel by English writer Julian Rathbone. The novel covers the time of the Battle of Hastings. It revolves around Walt Edwinson, a housecarl of Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. The story starts with Walt returning to his home at Iwerne in Dorset four years after the Battle of Hastings. He had fled England after the defeat of the Anglo-Saxons and had spent the time travelling across Europe and Asia Minor. The story of his journey from Constantinople via Nicomedia and Nicaea to Side is then