Kingdom of East Anglia

Names and origin

The Kingdom of the East Angles (Old English Ēast Engla Rīce) covered the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, together with the Isle of Ely and eastern Cambridgeshire. The ruling dynasty was the Wuffingas, named after Wuffa, grandfather of Rædwald; Bede (HE II.15) writes that the East Anglian kings "are called Wuffingas" after him, while the Historia Brittonum claims Wuffa's father Wehha (Guecha) was the first to rule the East Angles. The dynasty may have had Swedish connections, a suggestion strengthened by parallels between the Sutton Hoo grave-goods and Vendel-period Sweden.

Dates and structure

The kingdom emerged in the later 6th century and endured until the Viking conquest of 869–870. It was a pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdom that early accepted first Kentish and later Mercian overlordship. Sources are unusually thin because, as the Rædwald literature notes, the Viking invasions of the 9th century destroyed the monasteries in East Anglia where many documents would have been kept.

Rulers and events

The regnal chronology before the mid-7th century is vague. Tytila (perhaps c. 578–599, dates uncertain) preceded Rædwald (c. 599 – c. 624), the most famous king. Rædwald initially accepted the overlordship of Æthelberht of Kent but, after Æthelberht's death (616), Bede lists him as the fourth holder of the imperium over the southern English. In c. 616 he sheltered the exiled Deiran prince Edwin and, refusing bribes from Æthelfrith of Northumbria (reportedly on his queen's urging), marched north and defeated and killed Æthelfrith at the Battle of the River Idle (c. 616), on the western edge of Lindsey; Rædwald's son Rægenhere fell in the battle. The victory installed Edwin in Northumbria. Rædwald was baptised (probably in Kent) but kept a pagan altar alongside a Christian one — a vivid emblem of syncretic conversion. He is widely believed to be the occupant of the great Sutton Hoo ship burial, whose helmet, gold buckle, shoulder-clasps and Byzantine silver are among the supreme treasures of Anglo-Saxon art (now in the British Museum), though the identification is not certain.

Later kings included Eorpwald (converted, then killed), Sigeberht (a learned Christian who founded a school and abdicated to a monastery), and Ecgric; both Ecgric and Sigeberht were killed c. 636 fighting Penda of Mercia. Anna (d. 654) and his family were famed for piety. From the mid-7th century East Anglia fell increasingly under Mercian domination. In the 9th century Edmund ruled; he was killed by the Great Heathen Army in 869 and venerated as St Edmund the Martyr, later giving his name to Bury St Edmunds. The kingdom then passed under Danish rule, becoming part of the Danelaw, and was reconquered by Wessex in the 910s–920s.

Significance

East Anglia's chief legacy is archaeological and cultural — above all Sutton Hoo, which transformed understanding of 7th-century kingship, craftsmanship, and North Sea connections — and the enduring cult of St Edmund.