| Æthelwold | |
|---|---|
| King of the East Angles | |
| Reign | c. 654–664 |
| Predecessor | Æthelhere |
| Successor | Ealdwulf |
| Died | 664 |
| Consort | unknown |
| House | Wuffingas |
| Father | Eni |
Æthelwold, also known asÆthelwald orÆþelwald (Old English:Æþelwald "noble ruler"; reigned c. 654 – 664), was a 7th-century king ofEast Anglia, the long-livedAnglo-Saxon kingdom which today includes the English counties ofNorfolk andSuffolk. He was a member of theWuffingas dynasty, whichruled East Anglia from theirregio (centre of royal authority) atRendlesham. The two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries atSutton Hoo, the monastery atIken, the East Angliansee atDommoc and the emerging port ofIpswich were all in the vicinity of Rendlesham.
Æthelwold lived during a time of political and religious upheaval in East Anglia, whose Christian kings in the decades prior to his succession all died violent deaths, having proved unequal to the task of defending the newly converted kingdom against attacks from its neighbouring kingdom,Mercia, led by its pagan king,Penda. Æthelwold was the last of the nephews ofRædwald to rule East Anglia. He died in 664 and was succeeded byEaldwulf, the son of his brother Æthelric.
Few records relating to East Anglia have survived and almost nothing is known of Æthelwold's life or reign. He succeeded his elder brotherÆthelhere, after Æthelhere was killed with Penda of Mercia at theBattle of the Winwæd in about 655. During his rule he witnessed a setback in the aspirations of Mercia to dominate its neighbours, following the Battle of the Winwæd and the murder of Penda's son,Peada.
He was king during the last decade of the co-existence in England of the ChristianRoman rite, centred atCanterbury, and theCeltic rite based inNorthumbria. At theSynod of Whitby, in 664, the Roman cause prevailed and the division of ecclesiastical authorities ceased. In 662,Swithelm of Essex was persuaded to adopt Christianity and wasbaptised at Rendlesham, with Æthelwold present as his sponsor. East Anglia became more closely allied to Northumbria,Kent and lands in theFens by means of royal marriages such as that between the NorthumbrianHereswitha and the East Anglian Æthilric.
The history ofEast Anglia and its kings is known fromThe Ecclesiastical History of the English People, compiled by theNorthumbrian monkBede in 731, and a genealogical list from theAnglian collection, dating from the 790s, in which the ancestry ofÆlfwald of East Anglia was traced back through fourteen generations toWōden.[1]
East Anglia was a long-livedAnglo-Saxon kingdom in which a duality of a northern and a southern part existed, corresponding with the modern English counties ofNorfolk andSuffolk.[2] It was formed during the 5th century, following the ending ofRoman power in Britain in 410.[3] The east of Britain became settled at an early date bySaxons andAngles from the continent. During the 5th century, groups of settlers of mixed stock migrated intothe Fens and up the major rivers inland.[4] From Bede it is known that the people who settled in what became East Anglia were Angles, originally from what is now part ofDenmark. By the 6th century, new settlements had also appeared along the river systems of the east coast of East Anglia, including theDeben, theAlde and theOrwell.[5] The settlers were unaffected by Roman urban civilisation and had their ownreligion and language. As more of the region fell under their control, new kingdoms were formed, replacing the function of the Romanterritoria.[6] Surrounded by sea, fenland, large defensive earthworks such as theDevil's Dyke and wide rivers, all of which acted to disconnect it from the rest of Britain, the land of the East Angles eventually became united by a single ruling dynasty, the Wuffingas.
The first king of the East Angles of whom more than a name is known wasRædwald, described by Bede as 'the son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa',[7] who reigned from about 599 until approximately 624. According to Bede, he was converted toChristianity at the court of his overlordÆthelberht of Kent in about 604. Later in his reign he was powerful enough to holdimperium over severalAnglo-Saxon kingdoms. In 616, he defeatedÆthelfrith of Northumbria and installed the exiledEdwin as the new king.[8] He is thought to have been given aship burial and interred amongst a magnificent array of personal treasures and symbols of regal power that were discovered under Mound 1 atSutton Hoo, in Suffolk.[9] His sonEorpwald succeeded him and reigned briefly before he was killed soon after his baptism, by a heathen namedRicberht, after which the East Angles reverted to paganism.[10] Ricberht was replaced bySigeberht, whose Christian education ensured that Christianity was reestablished. During Sigeberht's joint reign withEcgric, the East Angliansee atDommoc was established.[11]
During 632 or 633, Edwin of Northumbria was overthrown and slain and his kingdom was ravaged byCadwallon ap Cadfan, supported byPenda of Mercia.[12] The Mercians then turned on the East Angles and their king, Ecgric. In 640 or 641, they routed the East Anglian army in a battle in which Ecgric and his predecessor Sigeberht both perished.[13]
Ecgric's successor, Æthelwold's brotherAnna, who was renowned for his devout Christianity and the saintliness of his children, proved ineffective in preventing East Anglia from being invaded by the Mercians. Following a Mercian attack in 651 on the monastery atCnobheresburg, Anna was exiled by Penda, possibly to the kingdom of theMagonsæte. After his return, East Anglia was attacked again by Penda, Anna's forces were defeated and he was killed. During the reign of his successor,Æthelhere (another brother of Æthelwold), East Anglia was eclipsed by Mercia. In 655, after the Battle of the Winwæd, nearLeeds, in which Æthelhere was slain fighting beside Penda,[14] a new political situation arose. Penda's sonPeada, who had ruled theMercian province of theMiddle Angles as a Christian king from 653,[14] now succeeded Penda as king of Mercia, but he was murdered a year later.[15] Peada's death dealt a severe blow to Mercian aspirations of dominion over the other kingdoms of England.
The royal seat of Rendlesham, specified by Bede,[16] seals the evident importance of the Deben estuary headwaters as a centre of royal power, demonstrated for an earlier period by the royal cemetery of Sutton Hoo.[17] Rendlesham, a short distance fromIken, the site of Botolph's monastery, stands at a strategic point between the rivers Deben and Alde at the headwaters of theButley estuary, which intersects the peninsula between the two major rivers. The dedication of Rendlesham's church toSt Gregory suggests its early, perhaps primary connection with the royal dwelling mentioned by Bede. If the Dommoc bishopric was atWalton, as the monks ofRochester Cathedral claimed in the thirteenth century, then this was also immediately within the sphere of Rendlesham[citation needed]. Archaeologists have revealed that the quay of Gipeswic (now modernIpswich), at a ford of the River Orwell estuary, was then growing in importance as a centre of seaborne trade to the continent, under direct royal patronage.[18]
Æthelwold (Old English 'noble ruler')[19] was a member of the Wuffingas dynasty, the youngest son ofEni and a nephew of Rædwald of East Anglia. Two of his brothers, Anna and Æthelhere, ruled in succession before him.[20]
His accession is mentioned by the 12th-century historianWilliam of Malmesbury, inGesta Regum Anglorum:
Dynastic alliances bound Æthelwold's kingdom strongly to the Christiankingdom of Kent, whereSeaxburh, the eldest daughter of Æthelwold's elder brother Anna, wasEorcenberht of Kent's queen.[22] East Anglia's western stronghold in the Fens was held by Seaxburh's sisterÆthelthryth and, like Kent, it was devoutly attached to the Roman Church. There was also an important Northumbrian connection: in 657,Hilda established the monastery of Streoneshalh (identified withWhitby), which later became the burial-place of Edwin and other Northumbrian kings. Hilda's sisterHereswitha married Æthelwold's youngest brother Æthelric in around 627–629.[23]
The influence of theCeltic rite in East Anglia had been strong whilst the monastery ofSaint Fursey andSaint Foillan atCnobheresburg had existed. The authority of East Anglian Christianity still resided in the East Anglian see at Dommoc, obedient toCanterbury.Saint Botolph began to build his monastery at Iken, on a tidal island site in the River Alde, in about 653, the year that Anna was killed at the Battle of Bulcamp.[24]
Oswiu successfully persuadedSigeberht II of the East Saxons to receive baptism[25] andCedd, a Northumbrian disciple of Aidan's, was diverted from the Northumbrian mission to the Middle Angles under Peada to become Bishop of the East Saxons and re-convert the people. Cedd built monasteries atTilbury in the south and atYthancæster, where there was an old Roman fort, at what is nowBradwell-on-Sea, in north-eastEssex.[26] Sigebert was assassinated by his own thegns and was succeeded by the paganSwithelm of Essex. Cedd persuaded him to accept the faith and, according to Bede, his baptism by Cedd took place atRendlesham, in the presence of King Æthelwold:[14]
"Sigebert was succeeded in the kingdom by Suidhelm, the son of Sexbald, who was baptized by the same Cedd, in the province of the East Angles, at the king's countryseat, called Rendelsham, that is, Rendil's Mansion; and Ethelwald, king of the East Angles, brother to Anna, king of the same people, was his godfather."[27][quote 2]
In the early 660s, two important marriages took place.Ecgfrith of Northumbria, the fifteen-year-old son of Oswiu, married Æthelthryth ofEly, the daughter of Anna of East Anglia (who was about fourteen years older than him), and moved to live with him at his Northumbrian court. She had remained a virgin for Christ during her first marriage; she continued in this resolve as Ecgfrityh's bride, with the result that he could not expect to father an heir. Æthelthryth retained Ely as her own possession during this marriage.[28]
Meanwhile,Wulfhere of Mercia, a brother of Peada, emerged from safe retreat and was proclaimed king. He was not Christian, but was soon converted and subsequently married Eormenhilda, daughter of Eorcenberht of Kent and Seaxburh.[22] Soon afterwards he founded the monastery ofMedeshamstede, which later became known asPeterborough, under abbot Seaxwulf.
Following the death ofFinan, bishop of Lindisfarne,Alhfrith of Deira, in collusion withWilfred of York,Agilbert of Wessex and others, were determined to persuade Oswiu to rule in favour of the Roman rite of Christianity within the kingdoms over which he hadimperium. The case was debated in Oswiu's presence at theSynod of Whitby in 664, withColmán, Hild and Cedd defending the Celtic rite and the tradition inherited fromAidan, and Wilifred speaking for the Roman position.[29] The Roman cause prevailed and the former division of ecclesiastical authorities was set aside. Those who could not accept it, including Colmán, departed elsewhere.[30]
At that timeplague swept through Europe and Anglo-Saxon England. Amongst its victims was Bishop Cedd, ArchbishopDeusdedit of Canterbury, and Eorconbehrt of Kent. Æthelwold also died in 664.
| English royalty | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | King of East Anglia 654–664 | Succeeded by |