East Anglia
Overview
The Kingdom of East Anglia was organised in the first or second quarter of the 6th century, with Wehha listed as the first King of the East Angles, followed by Wuffa.
Until 749 the kings of East Anglia were Wuffingas, named after the semi-historical Wuffa. During the early 7th century under Rædwald of East Anglia, it was a powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Rædwald, the first East Anglian king to be baptised a Christian, is seen by many scholars to be the person buried within (or commemorated by) the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, near Woodbridge. During the decades that followed his death in about 624, East Anglia became increasingly dominated by the kingdom of Mercia. Several of Rædwald's successors were killed in battle, such as Sigeberht (killed about 641), under whose rule and with the guidance of his bishop, Felix of Burgundy, Christianity was firmly established.
From the death of Æthelberht II by the Mercians in 794 until 825, East Anglia ceased to be an independent kingdom, apart from a brief reassertion under Eadwald in 796. It survived until 869, when the Vikings defeated the East Anglians in battle and their king, Edmund the Martyr, was killed. After 879, the Vikings settled permanently in East Anglia. In 903 the exiled Æthelwold ætheling induced the East Anglian Danes to wage a disastrous war on his cousin Edward the Elder. By 917, after a succession of Danish defeats, East Anglia submitted to Edward and was incorporated into the kingdom of England, afterwards becoming an earldom.
Settlement
East Anglia was settled by the Anglo-Saxons about 450, earlier than many other regions. It emerged from the settlement and political consolidation of Angles in the approximate area of the former territory of the Iceni and the Roman civitas, with its centre at Venta Icenorum, close to Caistor St Edmund. According to Bede, the East Angles were descended from natives of Angeln. The first reference to the East Angles is from about 704–713, in the Whitby Life of St Gregory.
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