Sigeberht of East Anglia - Family Background, Exile, Conversion and Education

Family Background, Exile, Conversion and Education

Sigeberht ruled the kingdom of East Anglia (Old English: Ēast Engla Rīce), 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.

It is not known when Sigeberht was born and nothing is known of his life before he exiled from East Anglia prior to becoming king, as few records have survived from this period of English history. The most reliable source for Sigeberht's background and career is Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (produced in 731), in which Bede stated that Sigeberht was the brother of Eorpwald and the son of Rædwald, who ruled the kingdom of East Anglia from about 599 to 624, but William of Malmesbury described him as Rædwald's stepson. The stepson theory is strengthened by the fact that the name Sigeberht is without comparison in the East Anglian Wuffingas dynasty, but closely resembles the naming fashions of the East Saxon royal house. If this identification is correct (and Charles Cawley warns that it should be treated with scepticism), Rædwald's wife had previously been married to an East Saxon prince or ruler. Rædwald's own principal heir was Rægenhere (a youth of warrior age in 616, when he was slain in battle) and his second heir was Eorpwald, slain by the heathen Ricberht in about 627. (There is no ancient record that Ricbehrt was a son of Rædwald's, nor that he was a king.)

Eorpwald, despite his father Rædwald's personal conversion and baptism before 616 and the existence of a Christian altar in Rædwald's temple, was not himself a convert at the time of his accession in about 624. Since it is known that Rædwald's wife (who was Sigeberht's mother) did not become a Christian, Sigeberht must have received limited encouragement to convert to Christianity before being sent to Gaul and remaining there as an exile for many years during the lifetime of Eorpwald, "while fleeing from the enmity of Rædwald", as Bede reports. His exile supports the stepson theory, if Rædwald was protecting Eorpwald's succession against a possible claim by a son who was not of the Wuffingas line.

Whilst living in Gaul as an exile, Sigeberht was converted and baptized and became a devout Christian and a man of learning. He was strongly impressed by the religious institutions and schools for the study of reading and writing which he found during his long exile.