Anna
Marshland aroundBlythburgh, near where Anna met his death
King of the East Angles
Reign	c. 636 – 654 AD
Predecessor	Ecgric
Successor	Æthelhere
Died	653 or 654 AD Battle of Bulcamp
Burial	probablyBlythburgh, Suffolk, now lost
Consort	Sæwara
Issue	Jurmin Seaxburh Æthelthryth Æthelburh possiblyWihtburh
House	Wuffingas
Father	Eni
Religion	Christian

Anna (orOnna; killed 653 or 654) wasking of East Anglia from the early 640s until his death. He was a member of theWuffingas family, the ruling dynasty of the East Angles, and one of the three sons ofEni who ruled thekingdom of East Anglia, succeeding some time afterEcgric was killed in battle byPenda of Mercia. Anna was praised byBede for his devotion to Christianity and was renowned for the saintliness of his family: his sonJurmin and all his daughters –Seaxburh,Æthelthryth,Æthelburh and possibly a fourth,Wihtburh – werecanonised.

Little is known of Anna's life or his reign, as few records have survived from this period. In 631 he may have been atExning, close to theDevil's Dyke. In 645Cenwalh of Wessex was driven from his kingdom by Penda and, due to Anna's influence, he was converted to Christianity while living as an exile at the East Anglian court. Upon his return from exile, Cenwalh re-established Christianity in his own kingdom and the people of Wessex then remained firmly Christian.

Around 651 the land aroundEly was absorbed into East Anglia, following the marriage of Anna's daughter Æthelthryth. Anna richly endowed the coastal monastery atCnobheresburg. In 651, in the aftermath of an attack by Penda on Cnobheresburg, Anna was forced to flee into exile, perhaps to the western kingdom of theMagonsæte. He returned to East Anglia in about 653, but soon afterwards the kingdom was attacked again by Penda and at the Battle of Bulcamp the East Anglian army, led by Anna, was defeated by the Mercians, and both Anna and his son Jurmin were killed. Anna was succeeded by his brother,Æthelhere.Botolph's monastery atIken may have been built in commemoration of the king. After Anna's reign, East Anglia seems to have been eclipsed by its more powerful neighbour,Mercia.

The kingdom of East Anglia (Old English:Ēast Engla Rīce) was a small independentAnglo-Saxon kingdom that comprised what are now the English counties ofNorfolk andSuffolk and perhaps the eastern part of the CambridgeshireFens.^[1]

In contrast to the kingdoms ofNorthumbria, Mercia andWessex, little reliable evidence about the kingdom of the East Angles has survived, because of the destruction of its monasteries and the disappearance of the two East Angliansees that occurred as the result ofViking raids and settlement.^[2] The main primary sources for information about Anna's life and reign are theHistoria ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), completed in Northumbria by Bede in 731, and theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, initially written in the ninth century, which mentions Anna's death. The mediaeval work known as theLiber Eliensis, written inEly in the twelfth century, is a source of information about Anna's daughters, and also describes his death and burial.^[3]

Anna was the son of Eni, a member of the ruling Wuffingas family, and nephew ofRædwald, king of the East Angles from 600 to 625.^[4]East Anglia was an early and long-livedAnglo-Saxon kingdom in which a duality of a northern and a southern part existed, corresponding with the modern English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk.^[5]

Anna was married; Bede refers to the saintSæthryth as "daughter of the wife of Anna, king of the East Angles".^[6] InAbbott Folcard'sLife of St Botolph, written in the 11th century, Botolph is described as having been at one time the chaplain to the sisters of a king, Æthelmund, whose mother was named Sæwara. Folcard names two of Sæwara's kinsmen as Æthelhere and Æthelwold. Since these are the names of two of Anna's brothers, Steven Plunkett suggests that it is "tempting" to consider that Sæwara was married to Anna, and that Æthelmund might either be Anna's full name, or the name of an otherwise unknown East Anglian sub-king.^[7]

TheLiber Eliensis, on the other hand, namesHereswith, the sister ofHild, abbess of Whitby, as Anna's wife and the mother of Sæthryth, Seaxburh of Ely and Æthelthryth.^[8] However, theLiber Eliensis is regarded with caution by historians:Rosalind Love says that the mediaeval writers who interpreted Bede's information about Hereswith made an "erroneous assumption" regarding her connection with Anna and his family.^[4][9] Bede is clear that Hereswith had left East Anglia as a widow before Hild visited the kingdom, at which time Anna was very much alive. Historians now believe that Hereswith was Anna's sister-in-law, and some have thought that around the time that she married into the East Anglian royal family, Anna had already been king for a decade.^[10]

In 631 Anna was probably at the Suffolk village ofExning, an important settlement with royal connections,^[11] and, according to theLiber Eliensis, the birthplace of his daughter Æthelthryth.^[12] By tradition, Æthelthryth is said to have been baptised at Exning in a pool known as St Mindred's Well.^[13] Exning was an important place strategically, as it stood just on the East Anglian side of the Devil's Dyke, a major earthwork stretching between theFen edge and the headwaters of theRiver Stour, built at an earlier date to defend the East Anglian region from attack. An early Anglo-Saxon cemetery discovered there suggests the existence of an important site nearby, possibly a royal estate or regio.^[14]

During 632 or 633Edwin of Northumbria, with his centre of Christian power north of the RiverHumber, was overthrown. Edwin was slain and Northumbria was ravaged byCadwallon ap Cadfan, supported by the Mercian king,Penda.^[15] The Mercians then turned on the kingdom of the East Angles and their king,Ecgric. At an unknown date (possibly in the early 640s),^[16] they routed the East Anglian army and Ecgric and his predecessorSigeberht were both slain.^[17] D. P. Kirby has suggested that as Sigeberht was alive when the Irish monkFursey left for Gaul and foundErchinoald, (which happened after Erchinoald becameMayor of the Neustrian palace in 641), Sigeberht was probably killed around 640 or 641.^[18] Penda's victory marked the end of the line of kings of the East Angles who were directly descended from Rædwald.^[19] Some time after Penda's victory, Anna became king of the East Angles, though the date of his accession is quite uncertain. TheLiber Eliensis says that Anna died in the nineteenth year of his reign, and since he died in the mid-650s this would indicate a date around 635.^[20] However, theLiber Eliensis is regarded by some historians as unreliable on this point,^[4] andBarbara Yorke suggests a possible date in the early 640s for Anna's accession, noting that it could not have been after 645 as Anna is recorded as giving refuge to Cenwalh of Wessex in that year.^{[21][note 1]} It is probable that Anna became king with the assistance of the northern Angles.^[24] Throughout his reign he was the victim of Mercian aggression under Penda, but he also seems to have challenged the rise of Penda's power.^[25] Due to their rivalry for control over theMiddle Anglian people, Mercia and East Anglia probably became hereditary enemies and Penda repeatedly attacked the East Angles from the mid-630s to 654.^[26]

Anna arranged an important diplomatic marriage between his daughter Seaxburh andEorcenberht of Kent, cementing an alliance between the two kingdoms.^[27] It was by means of marriages such as this that thekings of Kent became well-connected to other royal dynasties.^[28] Not all of Anna's daughters were married into other royal families. During the 640s Anna's daughter Æthelburg and his stepdaughter Sæthryth enteredFaremoutiers Abbey inGaul to live religious lives under abbessFara.^[27] They were the first royal Anglo-Saxons to become nuns, making religious seclusion "an acceptable and desirable vocation for ex-queens and royal princesses", according to Barbara Yorke.^{[note 2]}

D. P. Kirby uses the presence of East Anglian princesses living under the veil in Gaul as evidence of the Frankish orientation of Anna's kingdom at this time, continued since the reign of his predecessor Rædwald.^[31] The Wuffingas dynasty may have been connected with monastic foundations in the area around Faramoutiers through Anna's predecessor Sigeberht, who had spent several years as an exile in Gaul and had become a devout and learned Christian due to his experiences of monastic life.^[32]

In 641Oswald of Northumbria was slain in battle by Penda (probably atOswestry in Shropshire). Due to his death, Northumbria was split into two. The northern part,Bernicia, accepted Oswald's brotherOswiu as their new king, but the southernDeirans refused to accept him and were ruled instead by a king of the original Deiran house,Oswine.^[33] Soon afterwardsCenwalh of Wessex, the brother of Oswald's widow and himself married to Penda's sister, renounced his wife.^[34] In 645, according to theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, Penda drove Cenwalh from his kingdom and into exile. During the following year, while a refugee at Anna's court, he was converted to Christianity,^[35] returning in 648 to rule Wessex as a Christian king.^[4] Anna probably provided military support for Cenwalh's return to his throne.^[36]

Anna's hold on the western limits of his kingdom, which bordered on the Fen lands that surrounded the Isle of Ely, was strengthened by the marriage in 651 (or slightly later) of his daughter Æthelthryth to Tondberht, a prince of the SouthGyrwe, a people living in the fens who may have been settled in the area around Ely.^{[21][note 3]} Æthelthryth, accompanied by her minister Owine, travelled from Ely to Northumbria when she married for the second time, toEcgfrith.^[38]

During his reign Anna endowed the monastery atCnobheresburg with rich buildings and objects.^[39] The monastery was built in about 633 by Fursey after he arrived in East Anglia. In time, weary of attacks on the kingdom, Fursey left East Anglia for good, leaving the monastery to his brotherFoillan.^[17] When in 651 Penda attacked the monastery, Anna and his men arrived and held the Mercians back. This gave Foillan and his monks enough time to escape with their books and valuables, but Penda defeated Anna and drove him into exile, possibly to the kingdom ofMerewalh of theMagonsætan, in westernShropshire.^[40] He returned to East Anglia in about 654.^[41]

Soon after 653, when Penda made his sonPeada the ruler of the Middle Angles (but still continued to rule his own country),^[42] the Mercian assault on East Anglia was repeated. The opposing armies of Penda and Anna met at Bulcamp, nearBlythburgh in Suffolk. The East Anglians were defeated and many were slain, including King Anna and his sonJurmin.^[17] Anna's death is mentioned in theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle in the entry for 653 or 654, "Her Anna cining werð ofslagen ..." – 'Here Anna was killed' – but no other details of the battle in which he died are given.^{[43][note 4]}

Blythburgh, a mile from Bulcamp and situated near the fordable headwaters of theBlyth estuary, was afterwards believed to be the location of the tombs of Anna and Jurmin.^[4][38] It is a candidate for a monastic site or a royal regio (estate). According to Peter Warner, the Latin derivation of part of the nearby place-name 'Bulcamp' indicates its ancient origins, and mediaeval sources which claim continuous Christian worship at Blythburgh throughout the Anglo-Saxon period provide circumstantial evidence of its connections withEast Anglian royalty and Christianity.^[45] Part of an 8th-century whalebonediptych or writing-tablet, used for liturgical purposes, has been found near the site.^[46]

Saint Botolph began to build his monastery at Icanho, now conclusively identified asIken, Suffolk,^[47] in the year that Anna was killed, possibly to commemorate the king.^[38] Anna was succeeded in turn by his two brothers Æthelhere andÆthelwold, who may have ruled jointly.^[48] It is possible that Æthelhere was set up as a puppet ruler by Penda or was his ally, as he was one of the 30duces that accompanied Penda when he attacked Oswiu of Northumbria at an unidentified location called theWinwæd in 655 or 656. Penda himself was killed at the Winwæd, after having steadily increased his power over a period of 13 years.^[49] Æthelhere (who was also slain at the Battle of the Winwæd) and Æthelwold were succeeded by the descendants of Anna's youngest brother, Æthelric.^[50]

Bede praised Anna's piety in hisEcclesiastical History of the English People,^[51] and modern historians have since regarded Anna as a devout king,^[52] but his reputation as a devoted Christian is mainly because he produced a son and four daughters who were all made intoAnglo-Saxon saints.^[53] Five hundred years after his death, his tomb at Blythburgh was (according to theLiber Eliensis) still "venerated by the pious devotion of faithful people".^[54]

Anna's children were all canonised. The eldest, Seaxburh, was the wife of Eorcenberht of Kent. She ruled Kent from 664 until her sonEcgberht came of age.Æthelthryth, according to theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, founded the monastery at Ely in 673. Another daughter,Æthelburh, spent her life at the nunnery of Faremoutiers. Anna's son, Jurmin, was of warrior age in 653 when he was killed in battle.

By tradition, Anna is said to have had a fourth daughter,Wihtburh, an abbess atDereham (or possiblyWest Dereham), where there was a royaldouble monastery.^[55] She may never have existed: Bede fails to mention her and she first appears in a calendar in the late 10th centuryBosworth Psalter.^[56] She may have been a character specifically created by the religious community at Ely, where her remains were supposed to have been taken after being stolen from Dereham^[38][57] and subsequently used as visual proof of the incorruptibility of a saint's body, a substitute for her sister Æthelthryth, whose body had to remain unexamined in her tomb.^[58] Manuscript F of theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, which dates from about 1100, mentions Wihtburh's death when it records that her body was found uncorrupted in 798, 55 years after she died. The resulting date for her death of 743 is far too late for her to have been a sister of Æthelthryth, who was born in 636.^[59][60]

Primary sources

• Bede;Bertram Colgrave;R. A. B. Mynors (1969).Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Cambridge:Clarendon Press.ISBN 9-780-19822-202-6.
• Earle, John (1892).Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (in Old English and English). Vol. 1. Oxford:Clarendon Press.
• Gaskett, G. A.; Bishop, Edmund (1908).The Bosworth Psalter. London: George Bell and Sons.
• Fairweather, Janet (trans.), ed. (2005).Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely from the Seventh Century to the Twelfth, compiled by a Monk of Ely in the Twelfth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell.ISBN 978-1-84383-015-3.
• Swanton, Michael (1997).The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. London: Routledge.ISBN 978-0-415-92129-9.

Secondary sources

• Bishop, Edmund; Gasquet, F. A. (1908).The Bosworth Psalter. London: George Bell & Sons.
• Blair, John (September 2004). "Botwulf (fl. 654 – c. 670), abbot of Iken". InGoldman, Lawrence (ed.).Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dumville, David (1989). "Essex, Middle Anglia, and the Expansion of Mercia in the South-East Midlands". In Basset, Steven (ed.).The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. London: Leicester University Press. pp. 123–140.ISBN 978-0-7185-1317-7.
• Fox, Sir Cyril; Dickens, Bruce (1950).The Early Cultures of North-West Europe: (H. M. Chadwick memorial studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1986).Handbook of British Chronology (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 216.ISBN 978-0-521-56350-5.
• Gransden, Antonia (1974).Historical Writing in England: c. 500 to c. 1307. Ithaca, New York State: Cornell University Press. p. 270.ISBN 978-0-8014-0770-3.
• Hollis, Stephanie (1992).Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.ISBN 978-0-85115-317-9.
• Hunter Blair, Peter (2010). "Whitby as a centre of learning in the seventh century". In Lapidge, Michael; Gneuss, Helmut (eds.).Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies Presented to Peter Clemoes on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-12871-1.
• James, M. R. (1987) [1930].Suffolk and Norfolk: A Perambulation of the Two Counties with Notices of Their History and Their Ancient Buildings. Bury St. Edmunds: Alastair Press.ISBN 978-1-870567-10-7.
• Kelly, S. E. (September 2004). "Anna (d. 654?), king of the East Angles". InGoldman, Lawrence (ed.).Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kirby, D. P. (2000).The Earliest English Kings. London and New York: Routledge.ISBN 978-0-415-24211-0.
• Lapidge, Michael (2001).The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Blackwell.ISBN 978-0-631-22492-1.
• Love, Rosalind C. (2004).Goscelin of Saint-Bertin: the Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-820815-0.
• Matthew, Colin, ed. (2004).Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved12 March 2011.
• Plunkett, Steven (2005).Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times. Stroud: Tempus.ISBN 978-0-7524-3139-0.
• Raguin, Virginia Chieffo; Stanbury, Sarah, eds. (2005).Women's Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church. State University of New York. p. 49.ISBN 978-0-7914-6365-9.
• Stenton, Sir Frank (1988).Anglo-Saxon England. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-821716-9.
• Warner, Peter (1996).The Origins of Suffolk. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.ISBN 978-0-7190-3817-4.
• Wessex Archaeology."Blythburgh Priory, Blythburgh, Suffolk, Archaeological Evaluation and Assessment of Results". Retrieved31 May 2010.
• West, S. E.; Scarfe, N.; Cramp, R. J. (1984)."Iken, St Botolph, and the Coming of East Anglian Christianity".Proc. Suffolk Institute of Archaeology.15:279–301. Archived fromthe original on 8 August 2010.
• Yorke, Barbara (2002).Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London and New York: Routledge.ISBN 978-0-415-16639-3.
• Yorke, Barbara (2003).Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses. London and New York: Continuum.ISBN 978-0-8264-6040-0.

• Anna 1 atProsopography of Anglo-Saxon England
• An episode ofTime Team (Series 16, Episode 13 –Skeletons in the Shed: Blythburgh, Suffolk, first broadcast on 29 March 2009), athttp://www.channel4.com, in which the historical association of the village of Blythburgh with Anna is explored.
• Southern England in the Eighth Century (Map). Maps of Anglo-Saxon England. University of Cambridge (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic). Archived fromthe original on 15 March 2012. Retrieved6 June 2011.
• Information about the Blythburgh writing-tablet, now at the British Museum (in London), can be foundhere.

• 650s deaths
• 7th-century English monarchs
• Anglo-Saxons killed in battle
• East Anglian monarchs
• Anglo-Saxon warriors
• Monarchs killed in action
• House of Wuffingas
• Burials at Blythburgh Priory

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