From 520 – 917
Language Anglo-Saxon
History and events
794-826 Mercian domination
870 Conquest by the Danes
917 Submission to Wessex
The kingdom of East Angles or East Anglia is a kingdom that was established in the present-day provinces of Suffolk and Norfolk, England, by the Angles, a Germanic people who settled on the island of Britain around the middle of the 5th century. century.
History
The exact origins of the kingdom are unknown, but the tradition related by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (see Angles) places its foundation during the reign of Wuffa (?-578), first king of the Wuffinga dynasty, whose best-known ruler is Redwald (or Raedwald, 599-624 or 625).
Another late manuscript (BL Cotton Vespasian BVI folio 109 v, dated from the beginning of the 8th century) presents a genealogy of the dynasty of the East Angles:this links Wuffa to Odin, in accordance with Germanic tradition. The same manuscript also names the father of Wuffa, also known by the pen of the Breton Nennius, in his Historia Brittonum:Wehha. According to Nennius, Wehha was the first to rule "over the East Angles in Britain".
Very few other clues tell us about the early history of the Eastern Kingdom. The Sutton Hoo necropolis, excavated from 1938, attests to the existence of links between the English aristocracy and southern Sweden, at least at the beginning of the 7th century. These links could be those of Beowulf, an epic poem that narrates the adventures of an English prince in the service of the king of the Danes.
At Sutton Hoo was also discovered a royal or princely tomb under the hull of a buried ship:it is probable that this tomb was that of Rædwald who died in 625. It contained Merovingian coins, coming from Limoges, which confirms the existence of relations with the Franks, probably via the kingdom of Kent, at this time (see also Abbey of Faremoutiers).
We also know that Sigebert of East Anglia, who then reigned over the East Angles and died in a battle against Penda, pagan king of the Mercians, had taken refuge in Neustria during the reign of his uncle. Through him, and even if Redwald had already embraced the Christian faith in Kent before denying it, Christianity penetrated lastingly among the Eastern Angles (according to the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, by Bede the Venerable). The evangelization of the East Angles, still according to Bede, continued under the influence of Scottish monks from the North.
After having been threatened, then annexed by Mercia in the 7th and 8th centuries, the kingdom of the East Angles finally disappeared in the 9th century (in 879), when Danish invaders, led by Guthrum, settled there definitively in the following the baptism of their king.
Timeline
Around 550:Wehha is the first king of the Angles in the island of Britain (according to Nennius).
578:Death of Wuffa, the founder of the Wuffingas dynasty, and advent of Tyttla, father of Redwald (according to Roger of Wendover).
599:Death of Tyttla and accession of Redwald (Roger of Wendover).
Before 616:Redwald becomes king of the Angles from the east. His son Sigebert (Earpwald's uterine brother) took refuge in Gaul.
Between 611 and 616:Redwald converted to Christianity during a visit to the court of Æthelbert of Kent, but his wife withdrew the kingdom again to paganism soon after.
616:Death of Æthelbert of Kent. Redwald takes the mantle of imperium:he becomes king of the Anglo-Saxon kings.
617:Redwald kills Æthelfrid, king of the Northumbrians, in battle (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)
624 or 625:Death of Redwald, possibly buried at Sutton Hoo. His son Earpwald, a Christian, succeeded him but he was killed shortly afterwards, probably during a revolt of the pagan aristocracy. The East Angles are pagans.
631 or 632:return of Sigebert, a Christian, who takes power. He summons Saint Felix of Burgondie, who becomes the first bishop of East Anglia, and Saint Fursy and his brothers (Feuillen included), Irish missionaries from Connacht.
633 or 634:Sigebert becomes a monk and leaves the throne. Reign of his relative, Ecric.
636 or 637:death of Ecric and Sigebert against the pagan Penda. A Christian, Anna, becomes king.
653:Death of Anna in battle against the pagan Penda, and foundation of a famous monastery by Saint Botulphe.
749 :partition of the kingdom between Hun, Beonna and Alberht
794:murder of king Æthelberht by Offa, king of Mercia (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)
825:liberation of East Anglia from its domination by Mercia:the East Anglians kill King Beornwulf, in alliance with Ecgberht of Wessex. (according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)
869:Edmond, king-martyr killed by the Danes.
879:the Danes of Guthrum settle on the lands of the East Angles.