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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
During the past two decades numerous scholarly works based upon the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial have illuminated aspects of Anglo-Saxon history and culture and have specifically focused attention upon the royal court of East Anglia. However, the one aspect of the burial which could define its time and setting most precisely is still controversial: whom does this magnificent monument commemorate? An attempt is made here to present a new candidate for the burial utilizing recently re-evaluated genealogical evidence.
The theory developed here proceeds from the hypotheses, convincingly advanced by such scholars as Mr Bruce-Mitford and Professor Chadwick, that the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial is a cenotaph of an East Anglian King.
In addition to fulfilling these requirements, any candidate must fulfil the criteria imposed by the archaeological evidence of the find and by the historical situation existing at the time of the burial. First, the East Anglian king must have ruled and died at a time, not only within the limits imposed by the dates of the Merovingian gold tremisses, but at a time peaceful and propitious enough to permit such a magnificent burial rite. Also, since this pagan mode of ship burial contains definite Christian elements, details of the life of the king so honoured should reflect a similar combination of paganism and Christianity.
1 H. M. Chadwick, ‘Who Was He?’ ANTIQUITY (1940), 76.
2 Cf. R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, ‘The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial: Recent Theories’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History (1952) 1-79 and ‘Appendix: The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial’, in R. H. Hodgkin, A History of the Anglo-Saxons, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 1952; also Chadwick, op. cit.
3 ‘East Anglian Kings of the Seventh Century’, The Anglo-Saxons, Edited by Peter Clemoes, London: Bowes and Bowes, 1959, 43-52. By re-examining the East Anglian genealogy in manuscript Cotton Vespasian B VI, he has shown that Aldwulf was not the son of Aethelhere but rather of one Aethelric. Consequently Aethelric is also the husband of Hereswith, sister of St. Hilda, who entered a French monastery sometime before 647.
4 The relationship implied by cognatus is ambiguous and has been variously translated. Perhaps Bede did not know the precise relationship, implying that it was not such a close relationship as brother or son. Yet, it could well mean ‘cousin’, i.e. the relationship existing between a child of Redwald and a child of Eni.
* M.S., B.M. Cotton Vespasian B VI, Folio 109v.
† Historia Brittonum, 59, T. Mommsen editor, Monumenta Germanae Historica, Chronica Minora, Vol. III, Auctorum Antiquissimorum, Tomus XIII, Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1898, p. 203.
5 Sir Frank Stenton has brought the genealogy in the Historia Brittonum to my attention. However, he views the contradictions in the two genealogical tables merely as miscopyings by the author of the Historia Brittonum, op. cit., 48.
6 Cf. Kenneth Sisam, ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1953, 393 and 335. According to Mr Sisam, the genealogies in the Historia Brittonum (compiled in late eighth or early ninth century) have an earlier source than that of Cotton Vespasian B VI (compiled c. 812).
7 Philip Grierson, ‘The Dating of the Sutton Hoo Coins’, ANTIQUITY (1952), 83-6.