Short answers, pulled from the story.
Edward the Confessor was King of the English from 1042 until his death on the 5th of January 1066. He was the last reigning monarch of the House of Wessex, the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy.
The title Confessor was applied to saints who lived a holy life without suffering martyrdom. It distinguished Edward from his uncle King Edward the Martyr, who died violently. The epithet reflects Edward's later reputation for piety, though most historians regard his canonisation as politically motivated.
Pope Alexander III issued the bull of canonisation on the 7th of February 1161, roughly a century after Edward's death. The canonisation resulted from an alignment of interests between Westminster Abbey, King Henry II, and Pope Alexander III, whose recognition Henry had helped secure after a disputed papal election in 1159.
Harold Godwinson was crowned on the 6th of January 1066, the day of Edward's burial. Harold was defeated and killed later that year at the Battle of Hastings by the Normans under William the Conqueror. Edward's great-nephew Edgar Ætheling was proclaimed king after Hastings but was peacefully deposed after about eight weeks without ever being crowned.
Edward began building Westminster Abbey between 1042 and 1052 as a royal burial church and it was the first Norman Romanesque church in England. It was consecrated on the 28th of December 1065, days before his death, and was completed in about 1090. The building was demolished in 1245 to make way for Henry III's new structure, which still stands today.
Edward spent roughly a quarter of a century in exile, mainly in Normandy, after Viking conquests made England dangerous for the sons of Æthelred the Unready. When Sweyn Forkbeard seized the throne in 1013, the royal family fled to Normandy. Cnut became undisputed king in 1016 after the death of Edward's half-brother Edmund Ironside, and in 1017 Edward's mother Emma married Cnut, removing her from any interest in Edward's return.