Aldwulf, king of that same province, who lived in our time, testifies that this temple had stood until his time, and that he had seen it when he was a boy.” It was Rædwald’s renunciation of Christianity which prompted Bede to call him “noble by birth, though ignoble in his actions”. Rædwald was, at some stage, converted to Christianity in Kent, “but in vain”, says Bede ( HE II, 15): “for on his return home, he was seduced by his wife and certain perverse teachers, and turned aside from the sincerity of the faith and thus his latter state was worse than the former so that, like the Samaritans of old, he seemed at the same time to serve Christ and the gods whom he served before and in the same temple he had an altar for the Christian Sacrifice, and another small one at which to offer victims to devils. Bede notes ( HE II, 5) that Æthelberht was the third ruler to have overlordship of all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms south of the river Humber – an achievement to which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle would later attach the title Bretwalda. During the earlier part of his reign, though, Æthelberht – who was the first Anglo-Saxon king to adopt Christianity, having received the mission of St Augustine in 597 – ruled Kent. There is no date for Rædwald’s accession. It is widely suggested that the burial’s occupant was Rædwald. In the pedigree of the later East Anglian king, Ælfwald, preserved in the so-called Anglian Collection of royal genealogies, Wuffa’s son is given as Tyttla.īede ( HE II, 15): “King Rædwald, being noble by birth, though ignoble in his actions, was the son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa, from whom the kings of the East Angles are called Wuffingas.” Pictured below is a modern replica of an ornate helmet, based on remains found in the famous ship burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk.

These indications of date may represent nothing more than educated guesses.

578, he says: “At this period, Wuffa, king of the East Angles, from whom the kings of that province are called Wuffingas, was succeeded by Tytil his son, who was the father of Rædwald, the tenth from Woden.” Roger asserts that Tytil was still ruling East Anglia in 586. 571, declares categorically: “Wuffa reigns in East Anglia.” Then, s.a. Writing a century after Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Wendover, s.a. Afterwards his son Tytil held it, the father of the mightiest king of East Anglia, Rædwald.” Henry slots these remarks between events dated 571 and 577 by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The first to hold this kingdom was Wuffa, from whom the kings of the East Angles are called Wuffingas. 578 ? – 599 ? Tytil / Tyttla Son of Wuffa.īede notes ( HE II, 15) that: “King Rædwald … was the son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa, from whom the kings of the East Angles are called Wuffingas.” According to the Historia Brittonum, though, it was Wuffa’s father, Wehha (spelled Guecha in the Historia), who “reigned first over the people of the East Angles in Britain” (§59).Īfter the Norman Conquest, four centuries after Bede, Henry of Huntingdon wrote ( HA II, 25): “There began the kingdom of East Anglia, which comprises Norfolk and Suffolk.

King of the East Angles 571 ? – 578 ? Wuffa Son of Wehha. The treasure is now housed in the British Museum, and the Sutton Hoo Estate is owned by the National Trust. Frankish coins, which had been inside a purse, suggested a burial date in the 620s, and so the favourite candidate for the occupant’s identity is King Rædwald. There weren’t any skeletal remains in the central burial chamber, but later soil analysis indicated that there once was a body. In the Prologue to Beowulf, the funeral of a king (or ring-giver) is described: The last Viking king of East Anglia was killed in 917, as Edward the Elder, king of Wessex, fought to reclaim England from the Scandinavian interlopers. In late 869, however, following their killing of King Edmund, the Vikings became the masters of East Anglia. At the end of the 8th century East Anglia was under Mercian control, but, in the aftermath of a resounding West Saxon victory over Mercia in 825, the East Angles recovered their independence. Sorry, you need JavaScript enabled to view this page correctly.Įast Anglia – the kingdom of the East Angles – enjoyed a brief period of supremacy, under Rædwald, at the beginning of the 7th century.

Where is the helm of raedwald