Sledd (or Sledda) was King of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

in the late 6th century, possibly between (?) 587 - ''c''. 604. Extremely little is known about him. An East-Saxon genealogy preserved as

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Add. MS 23211, possibly of the late 9th century, makes him a son and successor of King Æscwine. The post-Conquest historians

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(''Historia Anglorum''),

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(''Flores Historiarum'') and

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(''Chronica Majora'') substitute the name Eorcenwine (''Erkenwine'', ''Erchenwine'') as his father. Though their testimony is centuries removed from Sledd's floruit, it is thought that they drew on alternative pre-Conquest material. Although Æscwine or Eorcenwine is sometimes credited with the foundation of the kingdom, genealogies included in the works of

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and

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(''Chronicon'' B) make Sledd the first king of Essex, while the genealogies in Add. MS 23211 use Sledd as their point of convergence. This suggests that Sledd may have been regarded as the founder of the East Saxon house. On no known authority, Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris state that Sledd directly succeeded his father on his death in 587. Sledd married Ricula, sister of King

Æthelberht of Kent Æthelberht (; also Æthelbert, Aethelberht, Aethelbert or Ethelbert; ang, Æðelberht ; 550 – 24 February 616) was King of Kent from about 589 until his death. The eighth-century monk Bede, in his ''Ecclesiastical History of the Engli ...

. Sledd was father of Sæberht, whose rule began in ''c''. 604, and of another son, Seaxa, whose descendants supplanted those of Sæberht in the mid-8th century. Seaxa is perhaps identical to Seaxbald, father of king Swithelm, of unknown placement within the royal family, but Yorke thinks this unlikely on chronological grounds.

References

*Yorke, Barbara. "The Kingdom of the East Saxons." ''Anglo-Saxon England'' 14 (1985): 1-36. 604 deaths East Saxon monarchs 7th-century English monarchs 6th-century English monarchs {{England-bio-stub