Hello and welcome to the History of England, episode 18, the end of the Danish dynasty

and Edward the Confessor. This week I'm going to cover the end of Knut's short-lived

dynasty and the first decade also of his successor Edward the Confessor. We left off last week,

with Knut's death aged somewhere between 1450, his death came at an inconvenient time for his

empire since he left the succession rather unsecure. But before we start and all that,

it's going to get a bit confusing and let's make sure that we've got all the relationships

of the various pretenders to the English throne worked out. I've put a family tree on the website

to help, but maybe it will be a good idea to have an introduction to the Dramatist person I

before we get into the meat of this week's episode. So we've got five groups that you need to

worry about, and I've put these in chronological order. Firstly, there are the children of Arthur

Reddy and Reddy. Arthur Reddy was married twice, firstly to Elf Githu, with whom he had ten, yes,

that's ten children, but actually you can forget all of these, and actually you can forget about

this Elf Githu as well. Then he married Emma of Normandy. He had another three children by her,

two of which you do need to worry about. These are Alfred and Edward the Confessor,

born somewhere around one thousand and three to five. These two are living in Normandy with Emma's

family, deserted by Emma when she decided to marry Knut. Then there's Knut's children. He also

married twice, and spookily his first wife was also called Elf Githu, called commonly Elf Githu

Northampton, to differentiate her. He had two children by her, surveying the eldest, and Harold.

Though most of the chronicles accuse Harold of having absolutely nothing to do with Knut,

but that's just rumour, probably put around by Emma. Anyway, but at the time of Knut's death,

Spain has died after a disastrous period of all in Norway, so you don't actually have to worry

about Spain either, just worry about Harold. Harold was often called Harold Herford on a

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