The Patron of the English Monarchy

 Saint Edward the Confessor, venerated as the Patron Saint of the English monarchy, was born around the year 1002 in Islip, near Oxford. The son of the Anglo-Saxon King Æthelred II and the Norman Emma, sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy, he spent much of his youth in exile at the Norman court, where he had taken refuge following the Danish invasion of 1013. He remained in Normandy for about twenty-five years, during which he developed a deep spirituality and a profound attachment to the Christian faith.