during the Battle of Hastings. Marriage and life as queen Edith married Edward on 23 January 1045. Unlike most wives of the Saxon kings of England in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Edith was crowned queen. The marriage produced no children. Later ecclesiastical writers claimed that this was either because Edward took a vow of celibacy, or because he refused to consummate the marriage because of his antipathy to Edith's family, the Godwins. However, this is dismissed by modern historians. In the view of Edward's biographer, Frank Barlow, "the theory that Edward's childlessness was due to deliberate abstention from sexual relations lacks authority, plausibility and diagnostic value." In 1051 Godwin and his sons fell out with Edward and fled the country. Edith was sent to a nunnery, possibly because she was childless and Edward hoped to divorce her. When the Godwins effected their return through force in 1052, Edith was reinstated as queen. In later years, she became one of Edward's inner group of advisers. In the Vita Edwardi, according to Barlow, "although she is always placed modestly behind the throne, the author does not minimize her power or completely conceal her will. Whenever we catch sight of her elsewhere, we see a determined woman, interfering, hard, probably bad-tempered." As the king's wife, she was responsible for his regal presentation. She commissioned works for his personal ornament, and had at least one goldsmith among her tenants. When he died, the Domesday Book shows that she was the richest woman in England, and the fourth wealthiest individual, after the king, Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, and her brother Harold. She held land valued at between £1,570 and £2,000 per annum. She was close to her brother Tostig, and in 1055 she and Harold secured his appointment as Earl of Northumbria. His rule was unpopular, and in 1064 Edith was accused at court of engineering the murder of the Northumbrian noble Gospatrick in Tostig's interest. In 1065 Tostig was probably hunting with King Edward when the northerners rebelled and elected Morcar, Harold's brother-in-law, as earl. Tostig charged Harold with conspiring with the rebels, a charge which Harold purged himself of with a public oath. Edward demanded that the rebels be suppressed, but to his and Edith's fury Harold and the English thegns refused to enforce the order. Morcar was confirmed as earl and Tostig forced into exile. Later life and death Upon Edward's