Edward the Confessor crowned king of England

June 8, 1042

With Cnut's Danish line extinguished, the surviving Anglo-Saxon claimant was recalled from thirty years of Norman exile. Edward's piety was admired, his political skill uneven. His reign ended the Danish interlude and led, through a complicated tangle of promises and heirs, toward 1066. The decades he spent at the Norman court left him surrounded by French-speaking favorites who angered the powerful Godwin family at every turn.