Rædwald
Rædwald was the king of the East Angles for a quarter of a century in the generation after the Roman mission landed in Kent, the fourth man Bede counts as holding overlordship of the southern English, who was baptised in Kent and then kept, in the same temple, an altar for Christ and a smaller one for the old gods. He sheltered the Northumbrian exile Edwin when Aethelfrith of Northumbria offered gold and then threats for his head, was talked out of surrendering him by his wife, and marched north and killed Aethelfrith on the river Idle in 616 or 617, putting Edwin on the throne. He is, by general agreement and no proof, the man buried in the ship under the mound at Sutton Hoo. His father was Tytila and his grandfather Wuffa, from whom the dynasty took the name Wuffingas, and the family's Scandinavian connections, shown by the Sutton Hoo helmet and shield, have been taken to mean they came from Sweden. He reigned from about 599, in the years when Aethelberht of Kent was the strongest king in the south, and it was at Aethelberht's court that he accepted baptism, with the political meaning that had. Bede, writing a century later, says he was seduced on his return by his wife and certain evil teachers and held both religions at once, and that a later king had seen the two altars standing. After Aethelberht died in 616 the overlordship passed to Rædwald. The Idle was fought on the Mercian border with a large East Anglian army in which Rædwald's son Raegenhere was killed, and Edwin, who owed him his kingdom, became the greatest king in England after him. He died about 624 and was succeeded by a son, Eorpwald, whom Edwin persuaded to be baptised and who was killed by a pagan within the year. The ship burial, with its Byzantine silver, Merovingian coins minted no later than the 620s, and a sceptre that looks like a claim to rule over other kings, fits a man of his rank and date and no other so well.
- Nationality: Anglo-Saxon
- Roles: king, monarch
