Succession Crisis?

If there was a succession crisis in 1051, then it was perhaps already assumed that King Edward would have no legitimate child to succeed him. The King was by now in his late 40s. His queen, Edith, was much younger. Either Edward was judged incapable of fathering children, or it was widely supposed that he had no intention of producing an heir by a wife sprung from the family of Godwin. Crucially, in 1051, at the same time that Godwin and Harold were exiled, Edith herself was put away in a nunnery. Even her propagandists were forced to concede that her relationship with the King was more like that between father and daughter than husband and wife. In both political and personal terms the events of 1051–2 marked Edward’s great bid for freedom. In both respects, he failed miserably. The Godwins returned. Rather than risk civil war, the other earls backed down, with the memory of Aethelred’s reign constantly in their minds, fearing that the pursuit of vendettas amongst the ruling class might merely pave the way for foreign invasion. Edward was forced to receive back those he most hated, including Edith, now reinstated as queen.