Æthelweard of East Anglia

Prior to the arrival of the Vikings, the 6th century Kingdom of the East Angles was rich and powerful, with a distinctive ecclesiastical culture. Between this time and the early Norman period, practically nothing is known of the history of East Anglia, except that the kingdom was rich and powerful enough to remain independent. Its kings are in some cases known only from the coins issued during their reigns.[1] According to the historian Barbara Yorke, Viking attacks eventually destroyed all the East Anglian monasteries, where books and charters would have been kept.[2]

As with Æthelstan, whom he succeeded, textual evidence for Æthelweard's reign is very limited. He is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, numismatic evidence in the form of surviving coinage suggests that he was the ruler of an independent kingdom and not subject to Mercia or Wessex. The date when Æthelweard became king is uncertain, but it is conventionally dated to the middle or late 840s. It appears that he died in 854. He was succeeded as king by his fourteen-year-old son Edmund, later known as Saint Edmund, who was said to have been crowned on 25 December 854.[3]

• Campbell, James (1991). The Anglo-Saxons. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-014395-9.
• Kirby, D.P. (2000). The Earliest English Kings. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-4152-4211-8.
• Yorke, Barbara (2002). Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16639-X.

• Æthelweard 62 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England; see also Æthelweard 77