During the 17th century the struggle between king and parliament and between puritanism and conservative tendencies in the church was felt in Corfe. One rector was sacked for not being sufficiently puritan! In the civil war Parliamentary gunners took over the church, took the lead from its roof to make shot and caused no less than £50 worth of damage, a huge sum in those days. Its decline seem to have continued in the 18th and 19th century. By 1859 the state of the church was so bad that everything except the tower was demolished and a new church in gothic style built. It has to be said that the new building suits the village ideally and after a century and a half has blended in remarkably well.

Edward the Martyr (Old English: Eadweard) (c. 962 – 18 March 978), was king of the English from 975 until he was murdered in 978. Edward was the eldest son of King Edgar, but not his father's acknowledged heir. On Edgar's death, the leadership of the England was divided, some supporting Edward's claim to be king and other supporting his much younger half-brother Ethelred. Edward was chosen as king and was crowned by his main clerical supporters, Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald of Worcester. Edward's reign began inauspiciously when a comet was sighted. A famine followed. The great nobles of the kingdom, ealdormen Elfhere and Ethelwine quarrelled and civil war almost broke out. In the so-called anti-monastic reaction the nobles took advantage of Edward's weakness to dispossess the Benedictine reformed monasteries of lands and other properties which King Edgar had granted to them. Edward's short reign was brought to an end by his murder at Corfe in circumstances which are not altogether clear. Edward's body was reburied with great ceremony at Shaftesbury Abbey early in 980. In 1001 his remains were moved to a more prominent place in the abbey, probably with the blessing of his half-brother King Ethelred. Edward was already reckoned a saint by this time. A number of lives of Edward were written in the centuries following his death in which he was portrayed as a martyr, generally seen as a victim of his stepmother Queen Dowager Elfthryth. He is today recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion.

Etheling, his date of birth is unknown, but it is likely that he was a teenager when he succeeded his father in 975, and was the eldest of Edgar's three children.[1] All that can be said with certainty of Edward's parentage is that he was King Edgar's son, but not the son of Queen Elfthryth. This much and no more is known from contemporary charters. For further information on Edward's mother it is necessary to rely on later sources of questionable reliability. The earliest such source is a life of Dunstan by Osbern of Canterbury, probably written in the 1080s. Osbern writes that Edward's mother was a nun at Wilton Abbey whom the king seduced.[3] When Eadmer wrote a life of Dunstan some decades later, he included an account of Edward's parentage obtained from Nicholas of Worcester. This denied that Edward was the son of a liaison between Edgar and a nun, and instead presented him the son of one EthelflEd, daughter of OrdmEr, "ealdorman of the East Anglians", whom Edgar had married in the years when he ruled Mercia, that is between 957 and Eadwig's death in 959. Yet further accounts are offered by Goscelin in his life of Edgar's daughter Saint Edith of Wilton, and in the histories of John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury. Summarising these various accounts Edward's mother probably was a noblewoman named EthelflEd, surnamed Candida or Eneda—"the White" or "White Duck". A charter of 966 describes Elfthryth, whom Edgar had married in 964, as the king's "lawful wife", and their son Edmund as legitimate son of the king. Edward is merely the king's son. The contradictions regarding who Edward's mother was, and the fact that Edmund appears to have been regarded as the legitimate heir until his death in 971, suggests that Edward was probably illegitimate.

Disputed succession Edmund's brother Ethelred may have inherited his position as favoured heir. Edgar's intentions may have been signalled by the fact that on a charter to the New Minster at Winchester, the names of Elfthryth and her son Ethelred appear ahead of Edward's name. Edgar's actual plans for the succession can only be conjecture as he died, still a young man aged about 32, on 8 July 975, leaving two sons, neither yet an adult. Edgar had been a strong ruler who had forced monastic reforms on a probably unwilling church and nobility, aided by the leading clerics of the day, Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Oswald of Worcester, Archbishop of York, and Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester. The endowment of the reformed Benedictine monasteries with the lands required for their support had seen many lesser nobles dispossessed outright and leases and loans of land rewritten to the benefit of the monasteries. Secular clergy, many of whom will have been members of the nobility, had been expelled from the new monasteries. While Edgar lived, he strongly supported the reformers, but following his death the discontents which these changes had provoked came into the open.

The leading figures had all been supporters of the reform, but they were no longer united. Relations between Archbishop Dunstan and Bishop Ethelwold may have been strained. Archbishop Oswald was at odds with Ealdorman Elfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia,[13] while Elfhere and his kin were rivals for power with the affinity of Ethelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia. It is said that Dunstan questioned Edgar's marriage with Queen Dowager Elfthryth and the legitimacy of their son Ethelred. These leaders were divided as to whether Edward or Ethelred should succeed Edgar. Neither law nor precedent offered much guidance. The choice between the sons of Edward the Elder had divided his kingdom, and Edgar's elder brother Eadwig had been forced to give over a large part of the kingdom to Edgar. It is certain that the Queen Dowager supported the claims of Ethelred, her son, aided by Bishop Ethelwold, and that Dunstan supported Edward, aided by his fellow archbishop Oswald. It is likely that Ealdorman Elfhere and his allies supported Ethelred and that Ethelwine and his allies supported Edward, although some historians suggest the opposite. The arguments employed by the factions are largely unknown, although later sources suggest that perceptions of legitimacy played a part, as did the relative age of the two candidates. In time, Edward was anointed by Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald at Kingston upon Thames, most likely in 975. There is evidence that the settlement involved a degree of compromise. Ethelred appears to have been given lands which normally belonged to the king's sons, some of which had been granted by Edgar to Abingdon Abbey and which were now forcibly repossessed for Ethelred by the leading nobles.

Edward's reign The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, after recording Edward's succession, reports that a comet appeared and that famine and "manifold disturbances" followed. The "manifold disturbances", sometimes called the anti-monastic reaction, appear to have started soon after Edgar's death. During this time the experienced Ealdorman Oslac of Northumbria, effective ruler of much of northern England, was exiled in circumstances which are unknown. Oslac was followed as ealdorman by one Thored, either Oslac's son of that name or the Thored Gunnar's son mentioned by the Chronicle in 966. Edward, or rather those who were wielding power on his behalf, also appointed a number of new ealdormen to positions in Wessex. Little is known of two of these men, and it is difficult to determine which faction, if any, they belonged to. Edwin, probably ruling in Sussex, and perhaps also parts of Kent and Surrey, was buried at Abingdon, an abbey patronised by Elfhere. EthelmEr, who oversaw Hampshire, held lands in Rutland, perhaps suggesting links to Ethelwine. The third ealdorman, Ethelweard, today best known for his Latin history, ruled in the west. Ethelweard was a descendant of King Ethelred of Wessex and probably the brother of King Eadwig's wife. He appears to have been a supporter of Edward rather than of either faction.

A penny minted during Edward's reign at Stamford, Lincolnshire, one of the Five BurghsIt appears that in some places the secular clergy who had been driven from the monasteries returned, driving the regular clergy out in their turn. Bishop Ethelwold had been the main enemy of the seculars, and Archbishop Dunstan appears to have done little to aid his fellow reformer at this time. More generally, the magnates took the opportunity to undo many of Edgar's grants to monasteries and to force the abbots to rewrite leases and loans to favour the local nobility. Ealdorman Elfhere was the leader in this regard, attacking Oswald's network of monasteries across Mercia. Elfhere's rival Ethelwine, while a staunch protector of his family monastery of Ramsey Abbey, treated Ely Abbey and other monasteries harshly. At some point during these disorders Elfhere and Ethelwine appear to have come close to open warfare. This may well have been related to Elfhere's ambitions in East Anglia and to attacks upon Ramsey Abbey. Ethelwine, supported by his kinsman Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex and others unspecified, mustered an army and caused Elfhere to back down.

Very few charters survive from Edward's reign, perhaps as few as three, and the absence of a sizable body of charters such as are found in the reign of Edgar and Ethelred leave much of Edward's reign in obscurity. All of the surviving charters concern the royal heartland of Wessex, two dealing with Crediton where Edward's former tutor Sideman was bishop. Whereas during Edgar's reign dies for coins were cut only at Winchester and distributed from there to other mints across the kingdom, during Edward's reign this system no longer prevailed. Dies were now cut locally at York and at Lincoln. The general impression is of a reduction or breakdown of royal authority in the midlands and north. Nonetheless, the machinery of government evidently continued to function as councils and synods continued to meet during Edward's reign, at Kirtlington in Oxfordshire after Easter 977, and again at Calne in Wiltshire the following year. The meeting at Calne saw the death and injury of some councillors when the floor of the room in which they were meeting collapsed.

The version of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which contains the most detailed account records that Edward was murdered, probably at or near the mound on which the ruins of Corfe Castle now stand, in the evening of 18 March 978, while visiting Elfthryth and Ethelred. It adds that he was buried at Wareham "without any royal honours". The compiler of this version of the Chronicle, manuscript E, called the Peterborough Chronicle, says "No worse deed for the English race was done than this was, since they first sought out the land of Britain. Men murdered him, but God exalted him. In life he was an earthly king; after death he is now a heavenly saint. His earthly relatives would not avenge him, but his Heavenly Father has much avenged him". Other recensions of the Chronicle report even less detail, the oldest text stating only that he was killed, while versions from the 1040s say that he was martyred. Of other early sources, the life of Oswald of Worcester attributed to Byrhtferth of Ramsey adds that Edward was killed by Ethelred's advisors who attacked him when he was dismounting. It agrees that he was buried without ceremony at Wareham. Archbishop Wulfstan II alludes to the killing of Edward in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, written not later than 1016. A recent study translates his words as follows:

And a very great betrayal of a lord it is also in the world, that a man betray his lord to death, or drive him living from the land, and both have come to pass in this land: Edward was betrayed, and then killed, and after that burned. Later sources, further removed from events, such as the late 11th century Passio S. Eadwardi and John of Worcester, claim that Elfthryth organised the killing of Edward, while Henry of Huntingdon has her kill Edward herself.

Elfthryth looks on as Edward is stabbed to death: from a Victorian edition of Foxe's Book of MartyrsModern historians have offered a variety of interpretations of Edward's killing. Three main theories have been proposed. Firstly, that Edward was killed, as the life of Oswald claims, by nobles in Ethelred's service, either as a result of a personal quarrel, or to place their master on the throne. Although it may be a trope of hagiography, the life of Oswald portrays Edward as an unstable young man who, according to Frank Stenton: "had offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behavior. Long after he had passed into veneration as a saint it was remembered that his outbursts of rage had alarmed all who knew him, and especially the members of his own household."The second case is much the same as the first, except that Elfthryth would be in some manner implicated, either beforehand by plotting the killing, or afterwards in allowing the killers to go free and unpunished. A third alternative, noting that Edward in 978 was very close to ruling on his own, proposes that Ealdorman Elfhere was behind the killing so as to preserve his own influence and to prevent Edward taking revenge for his actions earlier in the reign.

Reburial and early cult Edward's body lay at Wareham for a year before being disinterred. This was initiated by Elfhere, perhaps as a gesture of reconciliation. According to the life of Oswald, Edward's body was found to be incorrupt when it was disinterred. The body was taken to the Shaftesbury Abbey, a nunnery with royal connections which had been endowed by King Alfred the Great and where Edward and Ethelred's grandmother Elfgifu had spent her latter years. Edward's remains were reburied with lavish public ceremony. Later accounts, such as the Passio S. Eadwardi have more complicated accounts, including the concealment of Edward's body in a marsh, where it was revealed by miraculous events. The Passio dates the reburial to 18 February. The Great Seal of Shaftesbury Abbey, where Edward's relics lay until the English ReformationIn 1001, Edward's relics, for by now he was reckoned a saint, were translated to a more prominent place within the nunnery at Shaftesbury. The ceremonies are said to have been led by the then-Bishop of Sherborne, Wulfsige III, accompanied by a senior cleric whom the Passio calls Elsinus, sometimes identified with Elfsige, he abbot of the New Minster, Winchester. King Ethelred, preoccupied with the threat of a Danish invasion, did not attend in person, but he issued a charter to the Shaftesbury nuns late in 1001 granting them lands at Bradford on Avon which is thought to be related. A 13th century calendar of saints gives the date of this translation as 20 June.

Corfe Castle
Corfe Castle is a village, civil parish and ruined castle with views stretching across the width of the Isle of Purbeck. The castle, which overlooks the village, commands a gap in the Purbeck hills between Wareham and Swanage and this important location has given rise to a long and colourful history. While the oldest surviving structure on the site of the castle dates from the 11th century, burial mounds suggest the area was occupied as far back as 6,000 BC and there is evidence of a Celtic field system worked by the pre-Roman tribe known as the Durotriges.

During Norman Times the castle, whose 'massively thick walls and steep approaches from all sides (made it) one of the most impregnable in the kingdom' was used mostly as a fortress, prison and treasure trove. King John (1166-1216) apparently stashed fifty thousand marks here in preparation for his French campaign.

In the 16th century Elizabeth I sold the castle to her Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, who in turn sold it to Sir John Bankes, the Attorney General to Charles I, in 1635. The castle remained in the Bankes family throughout the Civil War, when it came under siege twice and was defended by Sir John's wife, Lady Mary Bankes, who became known as Brave Dame Mary. During the second siege, however, the castle was betrayed by a member of the garrison and subsequently destroyed by the Parliamentarians. After the Restoration of 1660 the Bankes family regained their property, although they elected not to rebuild the Castle at Corfe. The ruined castle and surrounding land remained with the Bankes family right up until the 1980s when Ralph Bankes gave the entire estate to the National Trust. In 2006 the Trust undertook an urgent three year multi-million pound restoration project. During this period an 'appearance door' was found in the keep. Designed for Henry I, this door indicates that Corfe Castle would have been even more important than was previously thought. One, in fact, of the most important castles in the whole of England. The project was completed successfully in early 2009 and full public access has now been restored.