Medieval Monks Recommend you do this one thing to keep skin young and fresh
Come with us as we dive into what led to Edward the Confessor becoming a saint…
[Kazoo fanfare]
Danielle: This podcast contains swearing, drinking, lame dad jokes, descriptions of gross body problems, and lots of history. Consider yourself warned.
Mike: Medieval monks recommend you do this one thing to keep skin young and fresh.
[Intro music]
Danielle: Welcome to Monarchs and Malarkey! The show where we take an alcohol-laden dive into the weird and quirky health histories – and deaths – of leaders throughout time. I’m your host, Danielle!
Mike: And I’m your co-host, Mike.
Danielle: And, it’s our first episode!
Mike: Whoo!
Danielle: Whoo! We’re here, we did it!
Mike: We did it.
Danielle: Well, maybe we did it. If we have listeners, we did it.
Mike: We listen.
Danielle: We listen. My mom will listen.
Mike: Your sister will listen.
Danielle: No, she won’t.
Mike: She’ll listen to one episode.
Danielle: Maybe. But, my friend Britta will listen. And my friend Alyssa will listen. And…my boss will listen. So, thank you, Leann, Alyssa, Britta, Mom! [laughs]
Mike: And everyone else.
Danielle: And everyone else. Since this is the first episode, shall we describe a bit about what we’re doing?
Mike: Yes.
Danielle: Do you want me to do that?
Mike: Yes.
Danielle: Okay. We love podcasts. We didn’t know we loved podcasts ’til we finally got roped into starting to listen to some last year. And, we got hooked! We don’t have a whole lot of time to listen to a whole bunch of millions of podcasts, but there were a few that really grabbed our attention and they mostly revolved around true crime, haunted happenings, and paranormal experiences. There are also some really good history podcasts out there. My dad loves those. But we couldn’t find one that delved into history and really weird deaths and really weird health problems, specifically about leaders around the world. I, being a history nut and a…is there such a thing as a Britiophile? Because I’m not an Anglophile, but I love Great Britain.
Mike: I don’t know.
Danielle: Whatever term that would be, I’m totally into that stuff. And I’ve got free time on my hands now that I’ve finally graduated, so we thought, hey, we could create our own podcast looking at the cool, weird stuff people don’t usually talk about on podcasts! Like, what happens after somebody dies?
Mike: Because there’s a lot that happens, apparently.
Danielle: Yeah, so like, with true crime podcasts, you’re looking at convictions and detective work and stuff like that. But people don’t really tell you about what happens when a monarch dies. Not just with government and future reign and stuff like that, but with the monarch.
Mike: And what happens to their bodies?
Danielle: What happens to their bodies? Why are the English so into digging bones up and losing them?
Mike: They lose a lot. Spoiler alert.
Danielle: That’s what we’re going to do! And, this is it! Let’s get started. In honor of the first podcast we ever listened to together, Wine and Crime, hi gals! We are going to do our own really shitty, cheap version of pairing alcoholic beverages with our episodes. Not necessarily because we think there’s anything unique about it, but because it gives us an excuse to drink while we’re recording!
Mike: It makes recording so much more interesting.
Danielle: It does! And, I mean, there’s certainly not just the Wine and Crime gals. We also super love And That’s Why We Drink! and Em and Christine have their milkshakes and their alcoholic beverages and stuff. So it’s definitely not something only a couple of people do. But, here’s the thing: we’re cheap.
Mike: Very cheap.
Danielle: Very cheap. And we have kinda crappy taste in alcohol. So tonight we are talking about somebody who was eventually made a saint and, in honor of that, we are drinking a wine called Saintsbury. This one was not too cheap, I mean it was like $8, which I guess is cheap to most people.
Mike: Kind of depends on your version of cheap.
Danielle: Yeah, for sure. But, we’re going to be drinking our Saintsbury, and we’re going to tell you about…
Mike: Edward the Confessor.
Danielle: Edward the Confessor, yes. Edward the Confessor was one of the first kings of England as England. Do you want me to dive a little into that background before you start telling us about Edward?
Mike: Yes.
Danielle: Okay. In 927, England, as a kingdom, became a thing. up until that point, you had 7 different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to remember all of them, but you have Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia, Strathclyde, Northumbria, and then the Welsh Kingdoms. I feel like I’m forgetting one and I’m really embarrassed if I am. But, the person we’re talking about tonight, although he technically ruled the seven kingdoms, there were still a lot of people who were very autonomous in the kingdoms they were living in. The majority of his reign happened in the Wessex and into the Essex area. Most of the kings, also, they spent most of their time in Wessex and Essex. But, I mean, obviously, they would do stuff in other places because there was still a lot of fighting and a lot of arguing, and people didn’t always agree with who should be king.
Mike: And this was really kind of the first time they were all brought together. They weren’t used to the idea of being all considered one nation.
Danielle: Right. The Anglo-Saxons had come in and mostly lived along the shores on the east and up towards the north, but they started spreading out. But you still had Celts and you had Picts in that area. You still had some Roman remnants because, even though Rome had left in 200 AD, there were still people who had stayed behind. So you had this really big conglomeration of different languages, different people. English as we know it today was not being spoken, but English was being rooted in that time period, but it was not yet an official language. Latin and French were the most common languages among the not-little people.
Mike: Among the higher-ups.
Danielle: Yeah, among nobles and barons and earls and things like that.
Mike: Because they needed a common language to communicate to each other.
Danielle: Well, and the educated went to school as, well, not really school, but were educated in, especially Latin. A lot of them didn’t read or write, though. So, kind of an interesting little twist there. So most of the records of the time were made by monks and archbishops and people like that. There’s a little bit of background there. Just as an FYI, I am an anthropologist and Michael is…what is your title? Literary studier?
Mike: Well, I’m a ginger.
Danielle: You’re a ginger.
Mike: And an English major.
Danielle: Yeah, he graduated with his degree in literary studies. And I graduated with mine in anthropology with a minor in religious studies and now I’m in grad school for creative writing, which is going to be a surprise to my family because they thought I was going to do anthropology. Ha, ha, changed my mind, guys. I’m going to go for creative writing and literature.
Mike: So let’s dive into Edward the Confessor. Edward was the 7th son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy.
Danielle: And I love that name. Æthelred the Unready. Like, what was he not ready for?
Mike: He wasn’t ready for a lot of things, apparently. But you don’t get to pick your own nicknames, they’re just kind of bestowed upon you.
Danielle: I know, I know! But, I’m just saying, why Æthelred the Unready?
Mike: I don’t know. I didn’t research into him. But Edward himself was born between 1003 and 1005 in Islip near Oxford. We don’t have the exact date because records back then were pretty spotty at best, and this was over a thousand years ago. not all records are going to survive that area. England has a climate that isn’t very good for keeping records in.
Danielle: And, like we said, a lot of people weren’t even making records, so we are researching to the best of our abilities with the material we can get our hands on. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of the records are old and gone and, even the ones we get, a lot of them were written sometimes centuries after the fact and I think a lot of people are aware in this day and age, history is written by the victors, so take it with a grain of salt. But I just discovered why he was the unready, if you want to hear.
Mike: Why was he the unready?
Danielle: Okay, so it’s a play on his name. Back then, it wasn’t “unready” the way we think of it, it’s just kind of turned into that. But, it comes from the Old English world of unræd which means “poorly advised”. And it’s-
Mike: Oooh!
Danielle: Yeah, and it’s a pun on his name because his name Æthelred actually means “well-advised”. So there you go.
Mike: So he was Well-Advised the Unadvised.
Danielle: [Laughs] Yep.
Mike: So he was the mediocre-advised.
Danielle: Yeah, yeah. So, there, we learned something. High five. [Sound of high-fiving]. All right, carry on.
Mike: His family spent several years in exile because there was a Danish invasion in 1013, so they fled over to Normandy. Æthelred himself was briefly reinstated as king, but died in 1016, leaving Cnut, who was the Danish invader, as king. Cnut then married Æthelred’s widow, Emma, and this was to secure an alliance between the two families where Æthelred already had a strong sense of leadership and tradition in ruling that area. Coming in as an invader, you need to marry people to get those alliances.
Danielle: Right, because, even though it’s been a “kingdom”, I put it in air quotes, since 927, it’s still really unstable. And, also, I have a really important question.
Mike: Shoot.
Danielle: Do you think Cnut ever looked at his mother and said ‘she turned me into a Cnewt?’
Mike: Then they got better.
Danielle: I got better. I’m just wondering.
Mike: Yes, it happened.
Danielle: I hope so, I hope so.
Mike: When Cnut died, he was succeeded by his son Harthacnut in 1040. Following Harthacnut’s death on June 8th, 1042, there wasn’t a clear line of succession. Harthacnut didn’t really have a whole lot of time to set that up. He was only king for two years.
Danielle: Well, what a loser. Jeez!I you’re going to be king, at least do the job right and do it for a while.
Mike: Well, he was still in his partying, honeymoon phase.
Danielle: Yeah, yeah, but still! He wasn’t Henry VIII whose one sole mission in life was to have sons?
Mike: Exactly.
Danielle: By any means necessary?
Mike: By all means necessary. So Emma and Godwin, who was the Earl of Wessex, wanted Emma’s son Cnut, from Cnut, to take the throne, but Æthelred’s children made a claim for it as well. And so, as we’re going to talk a lot about in this, they fought about it. The king died, you had two rival factions vying for the throne because there was no clear line of succession, and another war broke out. This becomes a running theme in English history. Æthelred’s children won against Cnut’s children, but all of them died except for Edward. Edward was the lone survivor. So, naturally, he was crowned king and Godwin then flip-flopped sides and decided to throw his support in for Edward to be king. And Godwin was supported by the people as well, so now we have Edward as having all these powers behind him so that he can actually rule.
Danielle: Although, Edmund Godwin, or Godwine, don’t exactly always get along.
Mike: No.
Danielle: There’s a lot of struggle back and forth between them. They’re frenemies more than anything, I’d say.
Mike: Definitely. Edward was crowned at the cathedral of Winchester on April–
Danielle: It was Winchester! I was right. Okay. You can keep that because I was right.
Mike: Yeah, you were right.
Danielle: I’m a little drunk already, sorry.
Mike: And that was in the year 1043. Two years later, Edward married Godwin’s daughter, Edith. I think that’s probably part of the agreement that Godwin made with Edward is ‘I’m going to throw my support behind you’–
Danielle: ‘But I want to have grandchildren who take the throne eventually’, yeah.
Mike: Exactly. Soon after, more of Godwin’s family were awarded Earldoms in southern England. Now, Edward himself did not have any children. This was believed because Edward wanted to live a conventional saint’s life of celibacy.
Danielle: Which, I really wonder about this, because my research indicates that he wasn’t especially pious. He wasn’t especially a good religious person. And part of me wonders did he just hate Edith so much for some reason that he was like ‘well, this is a good way to get out of having to have sex’. Because they didn’t talk about consent and things back then.
Mike: And my research showed that he was very devout in his religion, hence why he was a saint. And, while he was in exile, he even made a vow that, if he were able to make it to England safely, that he would make a pilgrimage to St. Peter’s in Rome.
Danielle: Oh, I forgot a kingdom. I forgot the kingdom of Kent. Sorry. Yeah, well, I mean, the research is kind of spotty, obviously, but it’s not that he wasn’t devout, it was that he didn’t really live a life of saintliness himself until he took this vow that happened after he got married.
Mike: The vow he made, it was when he was in exile back in 1013.
Danielle: See? And this is why I’m saying the research is all over the place because the records I saw indicated he just really wasn’t as saintly as people made him out to be after his death. But, whatever the case may be, he didn’t want to have sex with his wife, so.
Mike: The pope gave him clearance.
Danielle: Eventually. But we’ll get to why.
Mike: After Edward became the king, he realized that he was too busy to make a pilgrimage to Rome, a pilgrimage to St. Peter’s as he had taken a vow to do. There are probably a couple different reasons for this. One is his kingdom was still fairly unstable and, if he left, then who knows what would have happened. Someone else probably would have come in and tried to take power or splinter groups would have formed and started rebellions. It just wouldn’t have been a very good idea for him at the time.
Danielle: Yeah, because some of Cnut’s family still in Denmark were like ‘we actually have a claim to the throne’ so that was a concern.
Mike: Exactly.
Danielle: The other little kingdoms, especially Mercia, Mercia was just volatile, they were like ‘we want power back!’ so, gotta be careful.
Mike: He wrote the pope and said ‘totes sorry, I’m not going to be able to make that pilgrimage that I totally promised to do’ and the pope said ‘don’t worry about it, bro, I will release you from your vow on one condition. And what you have to do is, you have to build a new Norman-style cathedral to replace the Saxon church, St. Peter’s Abbey’. So between 1042 and 1052, Edward began rebuilding St. Peter’s Abbey to a royal burial church known today as Westminster Abbey.
Danielle: Westminster Abbey! We’ve been there.
Mike: Yes.
Danielle: I’ve been there a lot.
Mike: We’ve seen it with our very own eyeballs.
Danielle: So let me explain Westminster Abbey just for a moment because it’s actually a really important building in British history. The Saxon church that he was building on top of, it wasn’t even really a church. It was an abbey, even then, but it was very small, and it was a very quiet, simple place like you expect a place to be where monks and abbots live. And, if you ever go there, and you see the cathedral today, it is enormous, it is beautiful, it’s really, really extravagant though, and it’s a place that makes you feel good but also angry at the same time because it’s really impressive, there’s some really amazing people buried there, the history is so rich, there’s a coronation chair there that’s been there since the 14th century…I mean, it’s a really important, beautiful place. But the problem is, it’s lost something of that early Christian thought process of simple, pious, poverty, you know? We know monks and priests and people take vows of chastity, but also that say I’m not going to be wealthy, I’m going to live simply, like Jesus did. And, the inner courtyard is filled with the bodies of monks who died there over the centuries. They don’t have any markers of any kind. They don’t have any beautiful tombs, they’re just under the grass. And the abbots are buried alongside the parts that you can walk between the different places inside the abbey, kind of the arches that you go through. I can’t think off the top of my head what they’re called, but if you walk through there, there are some almost bench-looking things on the side, and all that’s left of their tombs aren’t even really tombs. They’re just rocks that had been formed in the shape of their bodies that have been worn down over time. So it’s a really neat place, but also it’s a really sharp contrast between nobility and quiet, worshipful people. And that’s what he built. On top of the quiet, he built the extravagant.
Mike: And he’s buried there, and you can even see his tomb.
Danielle: Yep, his tomb is, we’ll get into that.
Mike: So Edward, he didn’t have any children, so he didn’t have a direct heir and this would lead to issues for his line of succession. But Edward did become a saint. Do you want to tell us about how Edward died?
Danielle: Yes, I do! We don’t know. [pause] I mean, [laugh], everything that I found just, if it said anything, it all said natural causes. But, I mean, he was pretty old by this point, so that’s completely normal. His buddy there, Edmund Godwine, the two of them had been fighting just a couple years before he died, and then they kissed and made up. And while they were having dinner together, Edmund actually died of a stroke. So, there’s that. [laughs] That’s not so great. He died of natural causes, and he unfortunately did not get the funeral most kings would have gotten. He was buried very quickly. He did not lay in state. But what’s really interesting is what happened after he died.
Mike: So what happened after he died?
Danielle: Okay, it’s kind of a long story. Let me talk first about some of the stuff he was buried with and then we’ll get into some of the stuff that led to him being canonized as a saint. He was buried, first of all, with a ring. And this ring, allegedly, had belonged to St. John a.k.a. the John of the Bible. The story, the legend of it is that this ring was given by St. John to a really super poor person because John did not have any alms, any money to give. So he gives the poor man this ring and somewhere along the way, several centuries later, two men were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and St. John’s ghost appeared to them and said ‘take my ring.’
Mike: So where did John’s ghost get the ring back from?
Danielle: Well, I don’t know. And, more importantly, what I want to know is how the hell does a ghost carry a ring? Don’t get me wrong, spooky shit happens and I don’t know how a ghost carries a ring, I just, I’ve seen some spooky shit in my life, so I know they sometimes move objects, but carrying a ring to two people and then appearing before them, I have no idea. But he did, according to this legend. And he tells the two men ‘take this ring and in six months time, return it to paradise’ which I couldn’t find anything that indicated what exactly that meant. That’s just what they reported, that they were told to return it to paradise. So maybe their mission was actually to die and take it to Heaven? I don’t know. But whatever the case may be, Edward the Confessor ends up with this ring and it gets buried with him. And he was also buried with a gold crucifix around his neck, and that’s important, that comes in later. The ring of St. John ended up eventually being placed with a bunch of other relics by Henry II, but we’ll get to what relics are in a second. Let’s talk first about how one becomes a saint and we’ll talk a little bit involved with that why it is that he was put up for sainthood. There was, in 1089, a question of whether or not he was worthy of sainthood because, all of a sudden, people were super into Edward the Confessor. This is where my research kind of veers off from yours. He was being made out to be much holier and much more devout than he had probably been in life and, again, records written after this time period are going to show him that way. In 1089, people were like ‘let’s check him out! let’s go look!’ So they opened up his tomb and, I’m going to read for you what they found. This is from a chronicler named Aelred of Rievaulx and says…oh, by the way, the person opening it is Gundulf, bishop of Rochester; ‘There issued out such aromatic odors as filled the church with their fragrance. In the first place the burial cloths were clean and substantial. Next, unfolding his vestments, they found his underhabit (aka underwear) and ornaments in the same state. They stretched out his arms, bent his fingers, and found the whole body sound and flexible. They next examined the flesh, which was firm and pure as crystal, whiter than snow. But when, after a long a suspense, none durst ventured to touch his face, the bishop, Gundulfulus’ I really hope that was actually Gandalf.
Mike: It was.
Danielle: It was totally Gandalf, I knew it.
Mike: There’s even a ring involved.
Danielle: I know! Hobbits are real. “Bishop Gundulfus [I’m just going to call him Gandalf], Bishop Gandalf laid his hand upon his forehead cloth and, stroking it over the face, drew it over the beard, which was white as frost. surprised at this, he attempted to draw a hair from the beard.” See, it is Gandalf, he wants to do magic with that hair. “Draw a hair from the beard, but that adhered strictly” which is kind of weird that he couldn’t pull a hair. “For which, being gently reproved by the abbot, he owned his fault which excessive love occasioned. After this, they preserved the grave dressings and clothed him a new, and re-interred him.” So in other words, they opened up the tomb, and he’s in excellent shape. This is what is known as being incorruptible, which is one of the aspects a body must have in order to be turned into a saint. The body must be so well-preserved that it has not gone through the decaying process. So, the fact that he looked healthy, he looked fresh, this is why they were like ‘okay, we can start this process’.
Mike: So, they basically buried him in the medieval version of Tupperware.
Danielle: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about that process.
Mike: Do you think they have to burp him every couple of years?
Danielle: Well, they did in 1089, clearly. And they’re going to do it a few more times, too, actually. So, he’s in his Tupperware, which, it’s stone and it’s kind of hard to get oxygen and bacteria and insects and things like that through stone inside of a building. He’s in a really temperate climate where it’s really cool, and the humidity isn’t really going to get into the tomb with it being so well-sealed. We’ve seen these tombs. They are really well-built. Also, it mentions the aromatic odor. He smelled good.
Mike: So they Frebrezed him.
Danielle: They Frebrezed him. When he died, he would have had his body most likely cut open and had his entrails and things removed because, usually, like I said before, usually you’re going to have a king laying in state for a while before the burial, so they don’t want him to get all stinky and gross, to the best of their abilities.
Mike: But Edward didn’t lay in state.
Danielle: He didn’t, but they would have still most likely prepped the body while Harold was off doing his thing to try to take the throne, but we’ll get there later. They would have opened him up, most likely, taken out his organs, his entrails, and then stuffed him with straw and with herbs and then also stuffed his clothing with herbs to help cover the yucky smell of a dead body.
Mike: Because dead bodies smell bad.
Danielle: They small bad, especially when you don’t have any way to embalm them the way we do now. Although I don’t like embalming. I don’t want to be embalmed. But, they didn’t have any way to really preserve it, so that was the best they could do. This was the first step to becoming a saint.
Mike: It’s fine that they were uncorruptible.
Danielle: Incorruptible.
Mike: Incorruptible.
Danielle: Incorruptible. Yes. Next, the bishop of the diocese is going to start an investigation. He has to gather evidence and testimony to see if this person has lived a saintly life, including any writings, and since, after his marriage, at least, he was very much into being that pious, devout man, always closeted in prayer and reading his scriptures and things like that, that part, the archbishop was able to do. Because he saw he lived with sufficient holiness, he then asks something called the congregation for the causes of saints to make a recommendation to the pope. If the pope accepts the case, then the person is called a servant of God, because it means the pope’s at least given the approval that they were a good Christian.
Mike: Right.
Daniella: The next step is verified miracles. There has to be evidence of a miracle and it has to be gathered and investigated. This has to be something that’s verified as unexplainable scientifically, but in this point in time, in the 1060s, that’s like…science? They don’t know very much. They can’t actually explain things, so back then it was a lot easier to be like ‘we don’t know, so it must be a miracle’. But, it can take a long time to get this all done, especially the miracle portion. So here’s what had to happen: because he had not performed any miracles before death, he has to perform miracles after death.
Mike: I mean, it’s hard enough to perform a miracle before you die. But after you die?
Danielle: Right, and this is where relics come into the picture. A relic is something belonging to a saint that is said to have specific properties of usually healing or other miraculous things: I touched it and all of a sudden I was able to afford to eat, things like that. relics often tend to be a body part from a saint, and almost every Catholic church in the world has at least one relic. It’s not always body parts, but it often is a bone. It can be something that belonged to the saint, so the ring of St. John is a relic already.
Mike: Or things like a piece of the true cross.
Danielle: Right. Pieces of the crucifix, the Shroud of Turin, things like that are considered relics.
Mike: Ark of the Covenant.
Danielle: Gotta find that Ark, God. Anyway, the miracles he performed, well there are only a couple, but they’re pretty impressive. After William the Conqueror takes the throne, the bishop of Worcester, Wulfstan, was told by Primate Lanfranc to give up his ring and staff to the tomb. Now, a primate, by the way, is another word for an archbishop. At first Worcester’s like ‘no’…Wulfstan, sorry it’s Wulfstan is bishop of Worcester, it’s kind of confusing. Wulfstan’s like ‘no, man, I don’t want to give my stuff up’ and they were, Primate Lanfranc was like ‘do it! just do it!’ so he’s like, ‘fine’. According the miraculous legend, his ring and staff became embedded in the tomb. So really, what they’re doing is inventing the legend of King Arthur because all these dudes come and try to pull the staff and pull the ring out of the tomb, and they can’t. But, lo and behold, newly coronated King William comes along and pulls them out.
Mike: Instead of the sword in the stone, it’s the stick.
Danielle: It’s the staff in–
Mike: The staff in the coffin.
Danielle: The staff in the coffin. This is considered a really extremely impressive miracle, and that’s enough. The next step is that he’s now called ‘blessed’. Canonization is the final step to declaring a deceased person a saint, and that is completely on the heads of the Vatican. They’re the ones who have to decide for sure. He was the first and only Anglo-Saxon king to be canonized. In fact, he was the only king to have ever been canonized, so that’s kind of cool. And after he gets canonized, he gets a new tomb. Henry III actually built a whole new shrine, but then the tomb gets pillaged to hell and back. Part of it is from people sneaking in, grave robbers were a real thing. Part of it was Henry VIII went through his hissy fit of ‘churches should not have nice things’ and so it got badly damaged when his good buddy Thomas was out there, busting up all churches and taking relics and destroying property inside the churches. But, King Henry VIII’s daughter Mary actually ended up restoring the tomb, and when that happened, there were some holes in the tomb at that point, so they looked in there [laughs] and they said–
Mike: I mean, I would, too.
Danielle: Right? And they said the body was still firm and whole. So my guess is, being inside the stone tomb–
Mike: Inside the Tupperware.
Danielle: Right, inside the Holy Tupperware, it leeched out any fluids that were left and this almost mummified him rather than skeletonizing him. That’s actually not my area of expertise, but from what I have learned in bio-archaeology, I’m guessing that it’s something like that. In the 17th century, you remember that gold crucifix I told you about?
Mike: I do!
Danielle: Okay, you want to hear the horrible thing that happened to it?
Mike: Yes.
Danielle: [laughs] This is bad. A Mr. Henry Kean found the crucifix, he stuck his hand in there because, again, the tomb was falling apart, and he finds the crucifix, he’s got his hand in there, reaching around, and he’s like ‘oh, there’s something here’ and he takes it.
Mike: That’s how curses start.
Danielle: That is absolutely how curses start and here’s the curse, this is what happens: James II ends up with the crucifix. Mr. Henry Kean’s never heard from again. And then, James II, after getting this crucifix, ends up having to flee England in 1688 and, on his way to France, the fishermen rowing him to France steal the crucifix from him. And it’s lost to this day. Nobody knows where it is.
Mike: Probably because the fishermen then drowned because it was cursed.
Danielle: Because it was cursed! Right! But if you have a gold crucifix in your family that’s been there for the last 300 plus years, and you notice a lot of really horrible, tragic things happen to the portion of the family holding onto it, please return it to Westminster Abbey at London, UK [laughs] and don’t touch it, you might want to get it blessed first, even though it’s a gold crucifix [laughs].
Mike: Yeah, put some gloves on.
Danielle: Yeah. my question is: did St. John ever go to the tomb and take his ring back?
Mike: I don’t know.
Danielle: Do you think those two men are going to have to be cursed to hell because they did not follow the promptings to return it to the paradise?
Mike: Well, you had one job. When a ghost comes down and give you instructions to take his holy ring somewhere? You gotta do it, otherwise, you’re going to be cursed, too.
Danielle: Guys! You had one job. I know, it’s tragic. So that is the really cool and rather lengthy history of Edward the Confessor and stay tuned next time to hear about King Harold.
Mike: Thank you for listening. And where can they find us on social medias?
Danielle: On social medias? [laughs]
Mike: There are many of them.
Danielle: There are. We’re on Twitter @monarchmalarkey. We’re on Facebook Monarchs&Malarkey. And if you have trouble listening on your current podcast, you can also find us on all the others. We’re on iTunes, we’re on Stitcher, we’re on Spotify, we’re on iHeartRadio, we’re on…what else are we on?
Mike: We’re on Google and Tunein.
Danielle: And Tunein. So look for us there.
Mike: And if you have any ideas about monarchs or leaders that you would like us to cover, you can shoot us an email at monarchsandmalarkey@gmail.com.
Danielle: That’s Monarchs and Malarkey, AND, all one word. And don’t worry, we will not only be covering British history, we will be expanding out.
[Outro music]
Transcripted Podcasts 