Anna (or Onna; killed 653 or 654) was king of East Anglia from the early 640s until his death. He was a member of the Wuffingas family, the ruling dynasty of the East Angles, and one of the three sons of Eni who ruled the kingdom of East Anglia, succeeding some time after Ecgric was killed in battle by Penda of Mercia. Anna was praised by Bede for his devotion to Christianity and was renowned for the saintliness of his family: his son Jurmin and all his daughters – Seaxburh, Æthelthryth, Æthelburh and possibly a fourth, Wihtburh – were canonised.
Little is known of Anna's life or his reign, as few records have survived from this period. In 631 he may have been at Exning, close to the Devil's Dyke. In 645 Cenwalh 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 around Ely was absorbed into East Anglia, following the marriage of Anna's daughter Æthelthryth. Anna richly endowed the coastal monastery at Cnobheresburg. 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 the Magonsæte. 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 at Iken 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.
Sources The kingdom of East Anglia () was a small independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom that comprised what are now the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and perhaps the eastern part of the Cambridgeshire Fens.
In contrast to the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex, 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 Anglian sees that occurred as the result of Viking raids and settlement.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, p. 58. The main primary sources for information about Anna's life and reign are the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), completed in Northumbria by Bede in 731, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, initially written in the ninth century, which mentions Anna's death. The mediaeval work known as the Liber Eliensis, written in Ely in the twelfth century, is a source of information about Anna's daughters, and also describes his death and burial.Fairweather, Liber Eliensis, pp. 8–10.
Early life and marriage
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.Kelly, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Anna (d. 654?), king of the East Angles. 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.Lapidge, Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, p. 154.
Anna was married; Bede refers to the saint Sæthryth as "daughter of the wife of Anna, king of the East Angles".Bede, (edition by Colgrave and Mynors), Ecclesiastical History of the English People, (Book III, Chapter 8), pp. 238–9, "... inter quas erat Saethryd, filia uxoris Annae regis Orientalium Anglorum". 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.Plunkett, Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times, pp. 116–17.
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.Fairweather, 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, pp. 14–15. 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.Love, Goscelin of Saint-Bertin: the Hagiography of the Female Saints of Ely, p. lxxxviii. 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.Hunter Blair, in Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 6.
In 631 Anna was probably at the Suffolk village of Exning, an important settlement with royal connections,Warner, The Origins of Suffolk, p. 119. and, according to the Liber Eliensis, the birthplace of his daughter Æthelthryth.Fairweather, 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, pp. 15–16. By tradition, Æthelthryth is said to have been baptised at Exning in a pool known as St Mindred's Well.James, Suffolk and Norfolk, p. 14. 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.Warner, The Origins of Suffolk, pp. 119–20.
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.Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 80–81. The Mercians then turned on the kingdom of the East Angles and their king, Ecgric. At an unknown date (possibly in the early 640s),Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, p. 62. they routed the East Anglian army and Ecgric and his predecessor Sigeberht were both slain. D. P. Kirby has suggested that as Sigeberht was alive when the Irish monk Fursey left for Gaul and found Erchinoald, (which happened after Erchinoald became Mayor of the Neustrian palace in 641), Sigeberht was probably killed around 640 or 641.Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 207–8. Penda's victory marked the end of the line of kings of the East Angles who were directly descended from Rædwald.Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 75. 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.Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 208 (note 26). However, the Liber Eliensis is regarded by some historians as unreliable on this point, and Barbara 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. It is probable that Anna became king with the assistance of the northern Angles.Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 79. 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.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon-England, pp. 62–3. 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.Dumville, Essex, Middle Anglia, and the Expansion of Mercia in the South-East Midlands, p. 132.
Anna arranged an important diplomatic marriage between his daughter Seaxburh and Eorcenberht of Kent, cementing an alliance between the two kingdoms.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 65–66. It was by means of marriages such as this that the kings of Kent became well-connected to other royal dynasties.Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, p. 36. 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. 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.
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.Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, pp. 55, 74. 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.Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses, p. 24.
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.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, p. 78. Soon afterwards Cenwalh of Wessex, the brother of Oswald's widow and himself married to Penda's sister, renounced his wife.Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 67. 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,Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 26. returning in 648 to rule Wessex as a Christian king. Anna probably provided military support for Cenwalh's return to his throne.Plunkett, Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times, p. 110.
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.Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 63, 65. Æthelthryth, accompanied by her minister Owine, travelled from Ely to Northumbria when she married for the second time, to Ecgfrith.
Exile