Anna of East Anglia

Anna was the son of Eni, a member of the ruling Wuffingas family, and nephew of Rædwald, king of the East Angles from 600 to 625. East Anglia was an early and long-lived Anglo-Saxon kingdom in which a duality of a northern and a southern part existed, corresponding with the modern English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Anna was married; Bede refers to the saint Sæthryth as "daughter of the wife of Anna, king of the East Angles". In Abbott Folcard's Life 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. The Liber Eliensis, on the other hand, names Hereswith, the sister of Hild, abbess of Whitby, as Anna's wife and the mother of Sæthryth, Seaxburh of Ely and Æthelthryth. However, the Liber 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. 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. In 631 Anna was probably at the Suffolk village of Exning, an important settlement with royal connections, and, according to the Liber Eliensis, the birthplace of his daughter Æthelthryth. By tradition, Æthelthryth is said to have been baptised at Exning in a pool known as St Mindred's Well. 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 the Fen edge and the headwaters of the River 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. ==King of the East Angles==

Accession and rule During 632 or 633 Edwin of Northumbria, with his centre of Christian power north of the River Humber, was overthrown. Edwin was slain and Northumbria was ravaged by Cadwallon ap Cadfan, supported by the Mercian king, Penda. The Mercians then turned on the kingdom of the East Angles and their king, Ecgric. At an unknown date (possibly in the early 640s), they routed the East Anglian army and Ecgric and his predecessor Sigeberht were both slain. Penda's victory marked the end of the line of kings of the East Angles who were directly descended from Rædwald. Some time after Penda's victory, Anna became king of the East Angles, though the date of his accession is quite uncertain. The Liber 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. However, the Liber Eliensis is regarded by some historians as unreliable on this point, 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. Due to their rivalry for control over the Middle Anglian people, Mercia and East Anglia probably became hereditary enemies and Penda repeatedly attacked the East Angles from the mid-630s to 654. Anna arranged an important diplomatic marriage between his daughter Seaxburh and Eorcenberht of Kent, cementing an alliance between the two kingdoms. It was by means of marriages such as this that the kings of Kent became well-connected to other royal dynasties. Not all of Anna's daughters were married into other royal families. During the 640s Anna's daughter Æthelburg and his stepdaughter Sæthryth entered Faremoutiers Abbey in Gaul to live religious lives under abbess Fara. 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. In 641 Oswald of Northumbria was slain in battle by Penda (probably at Oswestry in Shropshire). Due to his death, Northumbria was split into two. The northern part, Bernicia, accepted Oswald's brother Oswiu as their new king, but the southern Deirans refused to accept him and were ruled instead by a king of the original Deiran house, Oswine. Soon afterwards Cenwalh of Wessex, the brother of Oswald's widow and himself married to Penda's sister, renounced his wife. In 645, according to the Anglo-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, returning in 648 to rule Wessex as a Christian king. 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 South Gyrwe, a people living in the fens who may have been settled in the area around Ely. Æthelthryth, accompanied by her minister Owine, travelled from Ely to Northumbria when she married for the second time, to Ecgfrith. 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 brother Foillan. 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 of Merewalh of the Magonsætan, in western Shropshire. He returned to East Anglia in about 654. Death, burial place and successors Soon after 653, when Penda made his son Peada the ruler of the Middle Angles (but still continued to rule his own country), the Mercian assault on East Anglia was repeated. The opposing armies of Penda and Anna met at Bulcamp, near Blythburgh in Suffolk. The East Anglians were defeated and many were slain, including King Anna and his son Jurmin. Blythburgh, a mile from Bulcamp and situated near the fordable headwaters of the Blyth estuary, was afterwards believed to be the location of the tombs of Anna and Jurmin. Part of an 8th-century whalebone diptych or writing-tablet, used for liturgical purposes, has been found near the site. Saint Botolph began to build his monastery at Icanho, now conclusively identified as Iken, Suffolk, in the year that Anna was killed, possibly to commemorate the king. It is possible that Æthelhere was set up as a puppet ruler by Penda or was his ally, as he was one of the 30 duces that accompanied Penda when he attacked Oswiu of Northumbria at an unidentified location called the Winwæd in 655 or 656. Penda himself was killed at the Winwæd, after having steadily increased his power over a period of 13 years. Æthelhere (who was also slain at the Battle of the Winwæd) and Æthelwold were succeeded by the descendants of Anna's youngest brother, Æthelric. Bede praised Anna's piety in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and modern historians have since regarded Anna as a devout king, but his reputation as a devoted Christian is mainly because he produced a son and four daughters who were all made into Anglo-Saxon saints. Five hundred years after his death, his tomb at Blythburgh was (according to the Liber Eliensis) still "venerated by the pious devotion of faithful people". ==Family==

Anna's children were all canonised. The eldest, Seaxburh, was the wife of Eorcenberht of Kent. She ruled Kent from 664 until her son Ecgberht came of age. Æthelthryth, according to the Anglo-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 at Dereham (or possibly West Dereham), where there was a royal double monastery. She may never have existed: Bede fails to mention her and she first appears in a calendar in the late 10th century Bosworth Psalter. 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 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. Manuscript F of the Anglo-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. ==Notes==