Æthelweard (died 854) was a 9th-century king of

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

, the long-lived

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

kingdom which today includes the English counties of

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

and

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

. Little is known of Æthelweard's reign and even his regnal dates are not known for certain. He was succeeded by

Edmund Edmund is a masculine given name in the English language. The name is derived from the Old English elements ''ēad'', meaning "prosperity" or "riches", and ''mund'', meaning "protector". Persons named Edmund include: People Kings and nobles *Ed ...

, who was said to have been crowned on 25 December 854.

9th century East Anglia

Prior to the arrival of the

Vikings Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

, the 6th century

Kingdom of the East Angles The Kingdom of the East Angles (; ), informally known as the Kingdom of East Anglia, was a small independent kingdom of the Angles during the Anglo-Saxon period comprising what are now the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and perhaps ...

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. According to the historian

Barbara Yorke Barbara Yorke FRHistS FSA (born 1951, Barbara Anne Elizabeth Troubridge) is a historian of Anglo-Saxon England, specialising in many subtopics, including 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism. She is currently emeritus professor of early Medieval histo ...

, Viking attacks eventually destroyed all the East Anglian

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which m ...

, where books and charters would have been kept.

Life and reign of Æthelweard

As with

Æthelstan Æthelstan or Athelstan (; ; ; ; – 27 October 939) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first wife, Ecgwynn. Modern histori ...

, whom he succeeded, textual evidence for Æthelweard's reign is very limited. He is not mentioned in the ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...

''. However,

numismatic Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals, and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inclu ...

evidence in the form of surviving coinage suggests that he was the ruler of an independent kingdom and not subject to

Mercia Mercia (, was one of the principal kingdoms founded at the end of Sub-Roman Britain; the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlan ...

Wessex The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886. The Anglo-Sa ...

. 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

, later known as Saint Edmund, who was said to have been crowned on 25 December 854.Kirby, ''The Earliest English Kings'', p. 161

References

Sources

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External links

*; see also East Anglian monarchs 854 deaths 9th-century English monarchs Year of birth unknown {{UK-royal-stub