From Wikipedia: "Saint Edward the Confessor or Eadweard III (c. 1003/1004 – 4 January 1066), son of Ethelred the Unready, was the penultimate Anglo-Saxon King of England and the last of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 until his death. His reign marked the continuing disintegration of royal power in England and the aggrandisement of the great territorial earls, and it foreshadowed the country's later connection with Normandy, whose duke William I was to supplant Edward's successors Harold Godwinson and Edgar Ætheling as England's ruler."
"He succeeded his half-brother Harthacanute, who had successfully regained the throne of England after being dispossessed by his half-brother, Harold Harefoot. Edward and his brother Alfred the Ætheling, both sons of Emma of Normandy by Ethelred the Unready, had previously failed to depose Harold in 1036. When Edward died in 1066 he had no son to take over the throne so a conflict arose as three people claimed the throne of England."
"Edward was canonised in 1161 and is considered a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, which regards Edward the Confessor as the patron saint of kings, difficult marriages, and separated spouses, and by the Church of England and other Anglican Churches. From the reign of Henry II of England to 1348 he was considered the patron saint of England, and he has remained the patron saint of the Royal Family."