Ealdwulf of East Anglia

Until 749, the long-lived independent kingdom of East Anglia (Old English: Ēast Engla Rīce) was ruled by the Wuffingas dynasty, named after Wuffa, the grandfather of Raedwald.

[4] Nothing is known of her before she was married into the East Anglian royal family,[4] other than that she was the daughter of a nephew of Edwin of Northumbria named Hereric and his wife, Breguswith.

[12] The Ecclesiastical History of the English People describes how Rædwald was converted to Christianity at the court of his overlord, Æthelberht of Kent.

[18] He was the last ruler of East Anglia known to Bede, who mentions him in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People as being in the 17th year of his reign at the time of the Council of Hatfield in 680.

[17] A plague swept across the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms during the 660s, leaving at one point Boniface (originally called Brigilsus or Berhtgisl)[16] of the East Anglian diocese of Dommoc the only English bishop left whose consecration was derived from Canterbury.

The settlement's continental trade partners may have been Domburg in Walcheren, and Dorestad, the large emporium on the Rhine south of Utrecht.

[27] Ealdwulf, along with Æthelred of Mercia and Aldfrith of Northumbria, were addressed by Pope Sergius in a letter of 693,[28] urging their acceptance of Berhtwald of Reculver as the successor to Theodore at Canterbury.

[29] The closing years of Ealdwulf's reign were coloured by the unsatisfactory rule of Ceolred of Mercia, who was castigated by Boniface for what the historian Barbara Yorke describes as "personal immorality and violation of church priviledges".

[31] His secluded retreat became a place of refuge for the Mercian royal counter-claimant, Æthelbald, who appears to have received encouragement and protection there from the East Anglian nobility.