The first king of the East Angles of whom more than a name is known was Rædwald, described by Bede as 'the son of Tytil, whose father was Wuffa', who reigned from about 599 until approximately 624.
He was the first king of the East Angles to become a Christian, converting at Æthelberht's court some time before 605, whilst at the same time maintaining a pagan temple.
Vanished though the realms of Northumbria and Mercia, of the East Angles and West Saxons, of Essex, and Sussex, and Kent may be, the memory of them has not entirely faded.
Bede regarded Wuffa as the first king of the East Angles, but the author of the Historia Brittonum, writing a century later, named Wehha as the first ruler.
Eorpwald was still a pagan when he became king of the East Angles, following the death of Rædwald in around 624. D. P. Kirby maintains that Sigeberht fled from East Anglia to Gaul during the internal strife that followed Eorpwald's accession and that the new king's paganism created tension between Christian and pagan factions within the kingdom, which resulted in a reduction in his influence.
The East Angles formed one of the seven kingdoms known to post-mediaeval historians as the Heptarchy, a scheme used by Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth century.
The kingdom of the East Angles, today known as the Kingdom of East Anglia, was a small independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom that comprised what are now the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and perhaps the eastern part of the Cambridgeshire Fens.
The extent of the kingdom of the East Angles can be determined from a variety of sources.
It may also be that Penda made war against the East Angles with the intention of securing Mercian dominance over the area of Middle Anglia, where Penda established his son Peada as ruler.
