Did Edward the Confessor make an offer?

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Did Edward make the offer?

        

English succession had been a growing problem for at least the previous fifteen years. To many observers, Edward the Confessor seemed a devious ruler, sporadically rash, and a dubious saint. He was known as a pious man, as a man of God he may have been determined to maintain a celibate marriage. If this is true, Edward would be searching for an heir to compensate for the offspring he could not produce.

There are many reasons to why Edward would have made an offer to William as he was an excellent claimant to the throne. Firstly, Duke William was his second cousin also Duke William was a Norman and Edward had found refuge at the Norman Court during the Viking Invasion of  1013, furthermore, a Norman Duke interested in the English throne was a useful counter to the continuing menace from Scandinavia. The only opposition that was now a possibility was from the attitude of the English earls or more precisely the Godwin family.

According to a Norman source by William of Jumiegès, “Edward... according to the dispensation of God, without an heir, sent Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the duke as heir to the kingdom which God had entrusted to him.” This could be evidence of an offer from Edward to William; a source that could confirm this is the Peterborough version (E) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which also states that, ‘King Edward appointed Robert.., Archbishop of Canterbury; and in the same spring he went to Rome for his pallium.’ Although there is no direct evidence of an offer, it is highly likely that Edward sent Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury with a message for William which most probably contained an offer.

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The Worcester version (D) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that in ‘1051… Then soon came the duke William from beyond the sea with a great retinue of Frenchmen, and the king received him,’ but there is evidence from Golding that says that William had his own troubles in Normandy. If this is true, this cannot be evidence of an offer as William would not have been able to leave Normandy to be received by the king. Although, there is circumstantial evidence that Edward did offer the throne to counterbalance Godwin as he had become too politically powerful.

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