The Shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey

St Edward the Confessor, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, died on January 5th of the year 1066. His body was buried the following day in the church of a Benedictine abbey which he himself had built, in a tomb right in front of the altar. When he was canonized 95 years later by Pope Alexander III, a shrine was built for his relics, but this no longer exists, since the whole abbey, originally titled to St Peter, but known simply known as Westminster Abbey, was completely rebuilt in subsequent centuries. His feast day, October 13, is the date of this translation, which took place in 1163, under St Thomas Becket, who would also be canonized by the same Pope.

The shrine of St Edward is one of two such shrines in all of England which were not destroyed by the impiety of Henry VIII and his successors. (The other is of a Saint called Wite of whom nothing is known.) A few days ago, I stumbled across this very interesting video about it on the YouTube channel of a man named Allan Barton, which gives a nice summary of the history of his cultus, and of shrine chapel as it now stands in the abbey, and the relics which it preserves. The second video talks about the tombs of the Plantagenet monarchs which were later added to the chapel.