death (5 January 1066), he was succeeded by Edith's brother, Harold Godwinson. At the Battle of Stamford Bridge (25 September 1066) and the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066), Edith lost four of her remaining brothers (Tostig, Harold, Gyrth and Leofwine). Her brother Wulfnoth, who had been given to Edward the Confessor as a hostage in 1051 and soon afterwards became a prisoner of William the Conqueror, remained in captivity in Normandy. Edith was therefore the only senior member of the Godwin family to survive the Norman conquest on English soil, the sons of Harold having fled to Ireland. Carola Hicks, an art historian, has recently put her forward as a candidate for the author of the Bayeux Tapestry. After Edward's death, Edith read the lives of English saints, and gave information about St Kenelm to his hagiographer, Goscelin. She died at Winchester on 18 December 1075. Matthew Paris records a tradition that her death brought an end to an illness from which she had been suffering at some length. She was buried together with her husband in Westminster Abbey and her funeral was arranged by William. The northern author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Manuscript D, reports: See also House of Wessex family tree Godwin family tree Cnut the Great's family tree Citations Bibliography Barlow, Frank (1997) Edward the Confessor, Yale University Press: London Stafford, Pauline (1997). Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-Century England, Blackwell Stafford, Pauline (2009). 'Edith, Edward's Wife and Queen', pp. 129–138 in Richard Mortimer ed., Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend, The Boydell Press External links |- 1020s births 1075 deaths Anglo-Saxon women Anglo-Saxon royal consorts House of Godwin 11th-century English people 11th-century English women Burials at Westminster Abbey House of Wessex Daughters of British earls