My name is Thomas Holmes. I am the royal historian for the reign of King Edmund III. Edmund by most accounts was a mediocre ruler whom was already in poor health when he became King. He was beloved by the common folk however, as he was a man of peace and kindness.
King Edmund III ascended the throne, after the death of his father in the year 1155, at the remarkable age of sixty-one. Upon his ascension he immediatly started to decrease the royal tax burden upon the class, as he felt this was right to do and would increase loyalty throughout the land. He realized that he must make up the money that was being lost in some fashion, so in that same year he set about instituting what he called a Naval Commerce Building program. In this program the orders to begin construction on Ports, Shipyards, and Merchant's Guilds were spread to all realms of the kingdom.
King Edmund did very little on the international diplomacy stage, save for two changes which occured in 1158. In that year the Almohads attacked the Aragonese. Upon hearing the news, Kind Edmund III immediatly sent word that his alliance with the Almohads was broken. Kind Edmund did not send troops to aid Aragon as he felt there was too much war seen in his father's reign and did not desire to deliver the horrors of war to the people again. In that same year, the Egyptians sent an emmisary asking for an alliance, to which King Edmund agreed.
Near the end of his reign, a Papal Inquisitor by the name of Don Alberto Bordelli tried and exectued several English generals for heresy. There were rumors that King Edmund had sent an assassin or two in order to kill the Inquisitor, but those rumors were never confirmed.
Kind Edmund died in his sleep in 1163 at the age of sixty-nine, his eight year reign drawing to a close. At the time of his death, the naval commerce building program was just beginning to bear the fruit the King had forseen; the royal income level had surpassed that of his father, and Edmund III accomplished this with a lower taxation level.