text: anna of east anglia anna ( or onna ; killed 653 or 654 ) was king of east anglia from the early 640s until his death . he was a member of the wuffingas family , the ruling dynasty of the east angles . he was one of the three sons of eni who ruled the kingdom of east anglia , succeeding some time after ecgric was killed in battle by penda of mercia . anna was praised by bede for his devotion to christianity and was renowned for the saintliness of his family : his son jurmin and all his daughters – seaxburh , æthelthryth , æthelburh and possibly a fourth , wihtburh – were canonised . little is known of anna 's life or his reign , as few records have survived from this period . in 631 he may have been at exning , close to the devil 's dyke . in 645 cenwalh of wessex was driven from his kingdom by penda and , due to anna 's influence , he was converted to christianity while living as an exile at the east anglian court . upon his return from exile , cenwalh re - established christianity in his own kingdom and the people of wessex then remained firmly christian . around 651 the land around ely was absorbed into east anglia , following the marriage of anna 's daughter æthelthryth . anna richly endowed the monastery at cnobheresburg . in 651 , in the aftermath of an attack by penda on cnobheresburg , anna was forced to flee into exile , perhaps to the western kingdom of the magonsæte . he returned to east anglia in about 653 , but soon afterwards the kingdom was attacked again by penda and at the battle of bulcamp the east anglian army , led by anna , was defeated by the mercians , and anna and his son jurmin were both killed . anna was succeeded by his brother , æthelhere . botolph 's monastery at iken may have been built in commemoration of the king . after anna 's reign , east anglia seems to have been eclipsed by its more powerful neighbour , mercia . early life and marriage anna was the son of eni , a member of the ruling wuffingas family , and nephew of rædwald , king of the east angles from 600 to 625 . east anglia was an early and long - lived anglo - saxon kingdom in which a duality of a northern and a southern part existed , corresponding with the modern english counties of norfolk and suffolk . anna was married , according to bede , who refers to the saint sæthryth as " daughter of the wife of anna , king of the east angles " . in abbott folcard 's life of st botolph , written in the 11th century , botolph is described as having been at one time the chaplain to the sisters of a king , æthelmund , whose mother was named sæwara . folcard names two of sæwara 's kinsmen as æthelhere and æthelwold . since these are the names of two of anna 's brothers , steven plunkett suggests that it is " tempting " to consider that sæwara was married to anna , and that æthelmund might either be anna 's full name , or the name of an otherwise unknown east anglian sub - king . the liber eliensis names hereswith , the sister of hild , abbess of whitby , as anna 's wife and the mother of sæthryth , seaxburh of ely and æthelthryth . however , the liber eliensis is regarded with caution by historians : rosalind love says that the mediaeval writers who interpreted bede 's information about hereswith made an " erroneous assumption " regarding her connection with anna and his family . historians now believe that hereswith was anna 's sister - in - law and that around the time that she married into the east anglian royal family , anna had already been king for a decade . in 631 anna was probably at the suffolk village of exning , an important settlement with royal connections , and , according to the liber eliensis , the birthplace of his daughter æthelthryth . by tradition , æthelthryth is said to have been baptised at exning in a pool known as st 's well . exning was an important place strategically , as it stood just on the east anglian side of the devil 's dyke , a major earthwork stretching between the fen edge and the headwaters of the river stour , built at an earlier date to defend the east anglian region from attack . an early anglo - saxon cemetery discovered there suggests the existence of an important site nearby , possibly a royal estate or regio . king of the east angles accession and rule during 632 or 633 edwin of northumbria , with his centre of christian power north of the river humber , was overthrown . edwin was slain and northumbria was ravaged by cadwallon ap cadfan , supported by the mercian king , penda . the mercians then turned on the kingdom of the east angles and their king , ecgric . at an unknown date ( possibly in the early 640s ) , they routed the east anglian army and ecgric and his predecessor sigeberht were both slain . d. p. kirby has suggested that as sigeberht was alive when the irish monk fursey left for gaul and found erchinoald , ( which happened after erchinoald became mayor of the palace in 641 ) , sigeberht was probably killed around 640 or 641 . penda 's victory marked the end of the line of kings of the east angles who were directly descended from rædwald . some time after penda 's victory , anna became king of the east angles , though the date of his accession is quite uncertain . the liber eliensis says that anna died in the nineteenth year of his reign , and since he died in the mid - 650s this would indicate a date around 635 . however , the liber eliensis is regarded by some historians as unreliable on this point , and barbara yorke suggests a possible date in the early 640s for anna 's accession , noting that it could not have been after 645 as anna is recorded as giving refuge to cenwalh of wessex in that year . it is probable that anna became king with the assistance of the northern angles . throughout his reign he was the victim of mercian aggression under penda , but he also seems to have challenged the rise of penda 's power . the british medievalist david dumville has written that due to their rivalry for control over the middle anglian people , mercia and east anglia probably became hereditary enemies and penda repeatedly attacked the east angles from the mid - 630s to 654 . anna arranged an important diplomatic marriage between his daughter seaxburh and eorcenberht of kent , cementing an alliance between the two kingdoms . it was by means of marriages such as this that the kings of kent could become well - connected to other royal dynasties . not all of anna 's daughters were married into other royal families . during the 640s anna 's daughter æthelburg and his stepdaughter sæthryth entered faremoutiers abbey in gaul to live religious lives under abbess fara . the first royal anglo - saxons to become nuns , they made religious seclusion " an acceptable and desirable vocation for ex - queens and royal princesses " , according to barbara yorke . d. p. kirby uses the presence of east anglian princesses living under the veil in gaul as evidence of the frankish orientation of anna 's kingdom at this time , continued since the reign of his predecessor rædwald . the wuffingas dynasty may have been connected with monastic foundations in the area around through anna 's predecessor sigeberht , who had spent several years as an exile in gaul and had become a devout and learned christian due to his experiences of monastic life . in 641 oswald of northumbria was slain in battle by penda ( probably at oswestry in shropshire ) . due to his death , northumbria was split into two . the northern part , bernicia , accepted oswald 's brother oswiu as their new king , but the southern deirans refused to accept him and were ruled instead by a king of the original deiran house , oswine . soon afterwards cenwalh of wessex , the brother of oswald 's widow and himself married to penda 's sister , renounced his wife . in 645 , according to the anglo - saxon chronicle , penda drove cenwalh from his kingdom and into exile . during the following year , while a refugee at anna 's court , he was converted to christianity , returning in 648 to rule wessex as a christian king . anna probably provided military support for cenwalh 's return to his throne . anna 's hold on the western limits of his kingdom , which bordered on the fen lands that surrounded the isle of ely , was strengthened by the marriage in 651 ( or slightly later ) of his daughter æthelthryth to , a prince of the south gyrwe , a people living in the fens who may have been settled in the area around ely . æthelthryth , accompanied by her minister , travelled from ely to northumbria when she married for the second time , to ecgfrith . exile during his reign anna endowed the monastery at cnobheresburg with rich buildings and objects . the monastery was built in about 633 by fursey after he arrived in east anglia . in time , weary of attacks on the kingdom , fursey left east anglia for good , leaving the monastery to his brother foillan . when in 651 penda attacked the monastery , anna and his men arrived and held the mercians back . this gave foillan and his monks enough time to escape with their books and valuables , but penda defeated anna and drove him into exile , possibly to the kingdom of merewalh of the magonsætan , in western shropshire . he returned to east anglia in about 654 . death , burial place and successors soon after 653 , when penda made his son peada the ruler of the middle angles ( but still continued to rule his own country ) , the mercian assault on east anglia was repeated . the opposing armies of penda and anna met at bulcamp , near blythburgh in suffolk . the east anglians were defeated and many were slain , including king anna and his son jurmin . anna 's death is mentioned in the anglo - saxon chronicle in the entry for 653 or 654 , " her anna ... " – ' here anna was killed ' – but no other details of the battle in which he died are given . blythburgh , a mile from bulcamp and situated near the fordable headwaters of the blyth estuary , was afterwards believed to be the location of the tombs of anna and jurmin . it is a candidate for a monastic site or a royal regio ( estate ) . according to peter warner , the latin derivation of part of the nearby place - name ' bulcamp ' indicates its ancient origins , and mediaeval sources which claim continuous christian worship at blythburgh throughout the anglo - saxon period provide circumstantial evidence of its connections with east anglian royalty and christianity . part of an 8th - century whalebone diptych or writing - tablet , used for liturgical purposes , has been found near the site . saint botolph began to build his monastery at , now conclusively identified as iken , suffolk , in the year that anna was killed , possibly to commemorate the king . anna was succeeded in turn by his two brothers æthelhere and æthelwold , who may have ruled jointly . it is possible that æthelhere was set up as a puppet ruler by penda or was his ally , as he was one of the 30 duces that accompanied penda when he attacked oswiu of northumbria at an unidentified location called the winwæd in 655 or 656 . penda himself was killed at the winwæd , after having steadily increased his power over a period of 13 years . æthelhere ( who was also slain at the battle of the winwæd ) and æthelwold were succeeded by the descendants of anna 's youngest brother , æthelric . bede praised anna 's piety in his ecclesiastical history of the english people , and modern historians have since regarded anna as a devout king , but his reputation as a devoted christian is mainly because he produced a son and four daughters who were all made into anglo - saxon saints . five hundred years after his death , his tomb at blythburgh was ( according to the liber eliensis ) still " venerated by the pious devotion of faithful people " . descendants anna 's children were all canonised . the eldest , seaxburh , was the wife of eorcenberht of kent . she ruled kent from 664 until her son ecgberht came of age . æthelthryth , according to the anglo - saxon chronicle , founded the monastery at ely in 673 . another daughter , æthelburh , spent her life at the nunnery of faremoutiers . anna 's son , jurmin , was of warrior age in 653 when he was killed in battle . by tradition , anna is said to have had a fourth daughter , wihtburh , an abbess at dereham ( or possibly west dereham ) , where there was a royal double monastery . she may never have existed : bede fails to mention her and she first appears in a calendar in the late 10th century bosworth psalter . she may have been a character specifically created by the religious community at ely , where her remains were supposed to have been taken after being stolen from dereham and subsequently used as visual proof of the incorruptibility of a saint 's body , a substitute for her sister æthelthryth , whose body had to remain unexamined in her tomb . manuscript f of the anglo - saxon chronicle , which dates from about 1100 , mentions wihtburh 's death when it records that her body was found uncorrupted in 798 , 55 years after she died . the resulting date for her death of 743 is too far too late for her to have been a sister of æthelthryth , who was born in 636 .