East Anglia

East Anglia consists of the modern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. For five hundred years, from its Saxon foundation until 1075, East Anglia was treated as one of the constituent nations of the English people. Before the coming of the Vikings the Kingdom appears to have consisted of the North Folk, the South Folk and the sub-kingdoms of North and South Gyrwa (corresponding to the Soke of Peterborough and the Isle of Ely).

The Kingdom of East Anglia was founded by the legendary Wuffa, founder of the Wuffing dynasty, in 571 and occupied the old lands of the Iceni tribe, the last to submit to the Romans. The Wuffings were Angles from southern Denmark and shared a cultural affinity with the Angles who occupied Northumbria. The East Saxons who occupied Essex belonged to a different tribe and had quite distinct cultural traditions. It is likely that the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, where the Romans built shore forts to defend against the Angles and Saxons, were among the first areas of the country to be ceded to the Germanic tribes. The greatest of the Wuffing kings, Raedwald, was considered Bretwealda or overking of Britain during his reign from c. 600-c. 624, when he was interred with great splendour at Sutton Hoo. In 793 King Aethilberht II was assassinated by Offa of Mercia and the Kingdom seized by the Mercians, who ruled until a resurgence of the Wuffing dynasty in 827.

The death of Edmund marked the end of the Wuffing dynasty; the Kingdom survived as a Danish fiefdom and the Norse kings took the names of Edmund’s predecessors, thus acknowledging that they wished to be recognised by the people as Kings of the East Anglian Kingdom. In 917 East Anglia was ceded to Edward the Elder, King of Wessex and heir of Alfred the Great, who set an Earl of East Anglia over the Kingdom. The last Earl, Ulfcytel, was killed at Ashingdon in 1016. The new Danish King of England, Canute, appointed a Jarl of East Anglia until Edward the Confessor appointed an Earl in the form of Harold Godwinson (later King of England) in 1044. The last Saxon Earl, Harold’s brother Gyrth, died at Hastings, but this did not prevent William the Conqueror appointing the Breton Ralph de Guader as Earl. Ralph was stripped of his Earldom after participating in the Revolt of the Earls against William in 1075 (during which Norwich was one of the last rebel strongholds) and this marked the final end of East Anglia as a unified political entity; thereafter it was split into Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

Nevertheless, the contours of the ancient Kingdom were preserved by ecclesiastical land donations. The Bishopric of the East Angles had been established by Felix at Dommoc (Walton Castle), later moved to Elmham and then Thetford after the Norman Conquest; finally the see was established at Norwich. Edmund’s acclamation as a martyr saint ensured that coins continued to be minted in his name; furthermore the presence of his body at Beodericsworth (renamed Bury St. Edmunds) guaranteed privileges in the name of King Edmund the Martyr, culminating in Canute’s (or Edward the Confessor’s) donation of eight and a half hundreds (later the county of West Suffolk) to the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. As a consequence of the relative independence of this part of East Anglia the Abbey was largely unaffected by the Norman Conquest and the Civil War of Stephen and Matilda. The Abbot exercised royal power in the eight and a half hundreds as Sheriff and Justice, with the authority to mint coins and raise his own army. Likewise, the Abbey at Ely retained the Kingdom of South Gyrwa donated by King Tondbert to Aethelthryth, daughter of King Anna of East Anglia and foundress of the Abbey, as well as the Wicklaw consisting of a large area of southeast Suffolk including Sutton Hoo, leading to suggestions that this was the dynastic heartland of the Wuffings. These lands, known as the Liberty of St. Etheldreda, remained independent in many respects until the Reform Act of 1832 and were under the direct rule of the Bishop of Ely. The Liberty of St. Edmund lost its independence on the dissolution of St. Edmund’s Abbey in 1539 but West Suffolk remained a county until 1974. Norfolk and Suffolk rose against Edward VI in 1549 but the rebellion was quashed when the future Duke of Northumberland invaded East Anglia. In 1553 the men of Norfolk rose again, this time in support of Mary Tudor whose success in East Anglia propelled her to the throne.

East Anglia is a part of England with its own distinctive history and identity, which deserves greater recognition as a unified region as the centralising tendencies of England’s constitutional history are increasingly questioned. The division of England into counties has aided that centralisation as it has undermined the ‘national’ identities of the original seven kingdoms of the English Heptarchy. Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire are a single cultural unit and ought to be treated as such.

The flag of East Anglia was devised by the East Anglian Society in 1904. It is based on the arms attributed by later heralds to the Wuffing dynasty, which acknowledge the link between the Wuffings and the Scyldings, the royal house of Sweden. The arms are superimposed on the English flag. It was used at the Bury St. Edmunds pageant in 1907 and has enjoyed sporadic use since (including by Waitrose on the packaging of local groceries). The flag has no official recognition but local variants exist, such as the version used in Bury St. Edmunds where arrows are added to the three crowns to form the arms of the Abbey. The flag has become increasingly popular and is often displayed enthusiastically at events such as the Bury St. Edmunds Beer Festival.

East Anglia’s national day is 20th November, the Feast of St. Edmund and the day on which in 869 Edmund was killed and the independence of the Kingdom came to an end.