kingdom of East Anglia

Anglo-Saxon migrants settled in East Anglia in the late 5th cent. Its difficult western boundary in the Fens ensured a degree of independence and the East Angles preserved in what became the two shires of Norfolk and Suffolk their own social customs. Their ruling dynasty, the Wuffingas, appears to have had some affinity with Sweden. The greatest of their early rulers, Rædwald, who died c.625, was probably the king commemorated in the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo. In the 8th cent. the East Angles fell increasingly under Mercian control. East Anglia bore the main brunt of the Danish invasions in 9th cent. Its last king, St Edmund, was martyred in 870, and for a period East Anglia was governed by Scandinavian kings. On its recovery by Edward the Elder and Athelstan, it was absorbed into the shire system of England