A brief history of St Edward, King & Martyr
Born ~962, acceeded ~975, died ~978

His Life
King Edward the Martyr or Eadweard II (c. 962 - March 18, 978/979) succeeded his father, Edgar the Peaceful (who set up the English shires) as King of England in 975. He was the son of Edgar's first wife Ethelfleda (d. c963/4).

He had the support of the establishment and the church and was crowned by St Dunstan, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. He was uncle to St Edward the Confessor.

Even before he was crowned, he had displayed elements of sanctity and was considered popular by his people on account of his virtue.

He was murdered on the orders of his stepmother, Queen Elfrida (or Aelfthryth), on 18th March 978 (or 979, there is some uncertainty about the year) at the age of about 16 or 17. The Queen lived at Corfe Castle (which is on the outskirts of Wareham, about 30 miles due south of Shaftesbury) and he called there while on a hunting party. The story goes that he was offered a glass of mead at the castle gate, and while he was drinking it, still in the saddle, he was stabbed. He managed to ride off in spite of the wound but eventually fell from the horse and into a crevasse. He would have remained there undetected but a pillar of light appeared above the body, leading the search party to it. The Queen's motive was to ensure the crown went to her own son Ethelred (the Unready).

 

St Edward's Memorial Stone at Corfe Castle

 

Burial
He was buried in Wareham and miraculous cures were attributed to him by visitors to the grave but three years later, his body was moved to Shaftesbury Abbey (which was a prominent Benedictine monastery of the day and the first to be for nuns alone) by St Dunstan and the Earl of Mercia, who believed that he deserved a burial place of greater stature. (The Earl of Mercia had been one of his opponents while he had been alive).

Such was St Edward’s power of healing of that at some point, parts of the body were removed and distributed among other churches as was the custom at that time.

Following the move to the new Abbey grave, the cover of the grave was observed to levitate slightly. St Edward is also said to have appeared in a dream to a devout man saying that he no longer wished to lie in his particular grave. The devout man reported his dreams to the Abbess who, in turn, reported it to the King, Ethelred the Unready. The King issued a Royal Charter in 1001 which states that "I, King Ethelred, King of the English, with humble prayer, offer the monastry ... my brother Edward, whom the Lord himself deigns to exault in our days by many signs of virtue, after his blood was shed."
The shrine was duly built in the Abbey and he was canonised as Saint Edward the Martyr in 1008.

Detail of St Edward's statue on the reredos

 

The Dissolution of the Monasteries
The shrine was venerated continuously from the time of its completion until the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536-1541) under Henry VIII when it was desecrated and demolished but the wily nuns had disinterred the body before the King's men arrived and moved it into the Church. Following the Dissolution of the Abbey, it fell into disuse and the stone used in its buildings was systematically removed to build other buildings in the surrounding area so that very little indeed remains today.

 

An archaeological dig
In 1931 it was decided to conduct an archaeological investigation of the site and during the dig, a crude casket was unearthed. The remains were studied and pronounced consistent with the injuries received by St Edward. The Director of the Excavations, a John Wilson-Claridge (1905-1993), whose family then owned the site, then began years of painstaking negotiations with all the major churches in order to find a suitable resting place for the relics.

John Wilson-Claridge imposed three conditions on the recipients:

(1) that they would be recognised as the relics of a saint,
(2) that a shrine would be established for their reception, and
(3) that St Edward's feast days would be observed by the recipients.

 

The 1980s
Only the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile was prepared to meet these conditions, and they entered into detailed negotiations with Mr Wilson-Claridge in the late 1970s.

At about the same time the Russian Orthodox Church purchased a site in Brookwood in Surrey, with the intention of using one of the two mortuary chapels on the site for the reception of St Edward's bones and it was re-consecrated as a Church in the name of St Edward the Martyr. Eventually, a formal ceremony of enshrinement took place on 15th & 16th September 1984. So for the first time in nearly 450 years the remains of St Edward (arguably England's least important king) were given a proper resting place within a Church.

2001 marked the one thousandth anniversary of the glorification of St Edward and a special service was held in the Brookwood Church on 31 March 2001 to celebrate this event. The Hierarchical Liturgy was led by Archbishop Mark who was Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Germany and Great Britain at the time.

An article in The Independent about the bones is available here.