He was seduced by his wife and by certain evil teachers
Who was King Rædwald of the East Angles?
Hello there!
Today’s post is a biography of Rædwald, king of the East Angles (his precise dates are unknown, but he lived during the first quarter of the seventh century A.D.). He’s a shadowy figure in the surviving written sources, but known to most today as the king probably (possibly?) buried in the Sutton Hoo ship burial (more on this later). The treasure from this burial, including the spectacular helmet and gold-and-garnet jewellery, are on display in the British Museum for all to see. But who is the man supposedly laid to rest there?
What do we know about Rædwald?
Rædwald was a king of the East Angles at the beginning of the seventh century, lord of a people group rather than a geographically-defined territory. Thanks to a reference in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, we know that he was broadly contemporary with Æthelberht of Kent, whose wife Bertha is the protagonist in the serialised novel I’m building here on Substack.
‘Even during the life of Æthelberht [Rædwald] was gaining the leadership [of his kingdom] for his own race.’1
This places Rædwald within the political sphere before A.D. 616, as this is when Æthelberht is known to have died. At this time, kingship was not necessarily hereditary: little is known about Rædwald’s predecessors and he is likely to have had to fight for his position as king, proving himself militarily and defeating others with legitimate claims to kingship.
According to Bede, he was ‘the son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa, from whom the kings of East Anglia are called Wuffings’.2 Such origin claims should be read with caution: many were fabricated to create an illusion of legitimacy for newly-emergent elites, amounting to no more than pure myth. It is almost impossible to verify Bede’s claim.
How important was he?
Rædwald was certainly a powerful king, able to influence events beyond the borders of his own kingdom. He hosted Edwin, later king of the Northumbrians, during his exile forced by Æthelfrith’s grip on power in the north. Exile was a common feature of early Anglo-Saxon politics, made necessary by the abundance of competing claims to kingship. Indeed, Rædwald’s own stepson, Sigeberht, was exiled to Gaul during the king’s reign, only able to return once he had died.3
On hearing that Edwin was residing with the East Angles, Æthelfrith offered large sums of money to Rædwald to slay him.
He sent a second and a third time, offering even larger gifts of silver and further threatening to make war on him if Rædwald despised his offer. The king, being either weakened by his threats or corrupted by his bribes, yielded to his request and promised either to slay Edwin or to give him up to the messengers.4
Thankfully for Edwin, Rædwald was encouraged by his wife to come to his senses. He helped Edwin to gain the throne of the Northumbrians whilst also defeating his enemy Æthelfrith.
Rædwald met him with a much greater force and slew him on the Mercian border on the east bank of the river Idle.5
It’s worth noting just how far away from East Anglia these events took place: it was hardly on Rædwald’s doorstep, and yet he was able to march through Mercian territory to defeat one of the superpowers of the day.
Was he an over-king?
Bede lists Rædwald as one of seven kings ‘to rule over all the southern kingdoms’, a list that included Æthelberht and Edwin.6 This concept, which is given the name imperium in Latin, has been notoriously difficult to understand. It seems to imply a system of institutionalised overlordship and many have interpreted it that way, but given the lack of references to such a system outside of the pages of Bede’s Historia, this seems unlikely.7
It may have been a commonplace shorthand for the most powerful ruler at any given time, perhaps when relating to Continental contemporaries. It probably preserves the names of those who were able to wield power across kingdom boundaries: this is backed up by other references, although Bede certainly missed out a few rulers powerful by this standard, most notably Æthelbald of the Mercians.
He lived during the Conversion period: was he a Christian king?
In short - no.
But the story is not quite that simple. Note the following description from Bede, when discussing Eorpwald’s conversion to Christianity:
His father Rædwald had long before been initiated into the mysteries of the Christian faith in Kent, but in vain; for on his return home he was seduced by his wife and by certain evil teachers and perverted from the sincerity of his faith, so that his last state was worse than his first. After the manner of the ancient Samaritans, he seemed to be serving both Christ and the gods whom he had previously served; in the same temple he had one altar for the Christian sacrifice and another small altar on which to offer victims to devils.8
Oh dear.
As with the origin stories, we must be careful with Bede’s description of pagan worship9: it is often the case that churchmen developed their picture of paganism from ancient texts and hearsay, which used inflammatory language to nail home the wrong-ness of these religious practices. There is little evidence, archaeological, written or otherwise, for paganism so we really don’t know what it looked like.
What we do know, however, is that Rædwald apparently had a temple with altars to his ‘gods’, to which he added an altar to Christ. He seemed to think that the Christian God was another he could add to his pantheon, rather than one to be worshipped above all others. The idea of serving one God, integral to Christianity, was a novel one in Anglo-Saxon England, and Rædwald seems to have not quite understood this.
Was he buried at Sutton Hoo?
Finally we return to the question we started with: and as I am fast approaching my self-imposed word limit, I think it is one I may have to return to in another post (a biography of a place perhaps, the royal burial ground at Sutton Hoo, for March’s biography post?). Sorry!
Sutton Hoo Mound 2 (as the burial is known) is perhaps the most spectacularly rich Anglo-Saxon burial currently known, located in Suffolk (crucially, for our purposes, within the kingdom of the East Angles). Excavated first in 1939 (if we discount sixteenth-century grave robbers), it has been explored extensively since then, due to its potential value for studies of early kingship and political development, as well as networks of connection with northern Europe and social stratification, during something of a true ‘dark age’ for written records.
Numismatic analysis gives the burial a likely date in the first half of the seventh century, therefore locating it perfectly in the right time and the right place for it to be the final resting place of Rædwald. BUT, it is almost impossible (and a foolhardy mission) to identify the graves of specific, named individuals.10 Given the lack of a skeleton in this grave due to the acidic nature of the soil, and the certain impossibility of finding living descendants, Rædwald’s presence in the grave can never be truly confirmed.
I happen to believe, however, that quite a strong case can be made for this sensational burial being his - but I really will have to leave that story for another post.
Had you heard of Rædwald and Sutton Hoo before this post? Did you learn anything new?
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HE II.5, tr. McClure & Collins, p.78.
HE II.15, tr. McClure & Collins, p.99.
It is probable that Sigeberht was Rædwald’s stepson rather than his son. In a passage dealing with Eorpwald’s conversion [Eorpwald was Rædwald’s known son], Bede says that Sigeberht was Eorpwald’s brother, rather than Rædwald’s son. HE III.18 (tr. McClure & Collins, p.138; also p.392).
HE II.12, tr. McClure & Collins, p.92.
Ibid.
HE II.5, tr. McClure & Collins, pp.77-8.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle names those wielding imperium as Bretwalda (maybe ‘Britain-ruler’), but its content for the early Anglo-Saxon age is lifted almost entirely from Bede and so really is just copying his ideas here.
HE II.15, tr. McClure & Collins, p.98.
The term ‘pagan’, simply meaning not one of the major world religions, is the one most often used to describe the belief system of the Anglo-Saxons before the Conversion. As argued by Aleks Pluskowski, it is probably more accurate to talk about Anglo-Saxon ‘paganisms’ (plural), but the singular will be used here as shorthand for non-Christian belief systems in Anglo-Saxon England.
Excepting certain fifteenth-century kings, of course…
Fascinating as always Holly! I vividly remember seeing the helmet in the British Museum in primary school and drawing it for the front cover of my Anglo Saxon history topic book! I wonder if I still have it. So great to learn so much more of the history here, thank you xx