House of Godwin

Uncommon card · No. 184368

The House of Godwin (Old English: Godƿine) was the house consisting of the Anglo-Saxon family who were one of the leading noble families in England during the last fifty years before the Norman Conquest. Its most famous member was Harold Godwinson, King of England for nine months in 1066. The founder of the family's greatness, Earl Godwin, was raised from comparative obscurity by King Cnut and given the Earldom of Wessex c. 1018–1019. He retained his position during the reigns of Cnut's sons Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, and consolidated it when King Edward the Confessor conferred earldoms on Sweyn and Harold, Godwin's two eldest sons by his Danish wife Gytha. The family survived a short-lived exile in Flanders 1051–1052. After Godwin's death in 1053, his sons held the earldoms of Wessex, East Anglia, and later Northumbria; Harold, in particular, became the most powerful man in England, eclipsing the power of the king. When Edward the Confessor died childless in 1066, he was succeeded...

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