A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



were so orientated, would it be wise to conclude that all were Christian 

 burials, for that direction was often adopted purely with reference to sunrise 

 and sunset. Suffolk, on the whole, gives colour to the theory that cremation 

 was the earlier practice, for while no relics of late character are associated 

 with the cinerary urns, most of the grave-furniture in the other group 

 indicates the 6th or early 7th century, and it may reasonably be assumed 

 that the Anglians arrived on our eastern coast in some number between 450 

 and 550."° It is in Suffolk that some of the earliest Teutonic relics have 

 been found ; and a careful comparison of finds in East Anglia with those of 

 counties that were presumably conquered by the Anglo-Saxons after their 

 conversion to Christianity may eventually settle the stages of their advance 

 and lead to a final classification of their remains. 



Signs of intercourse with Kent were noticed in Norfolk,"^ but are still 

 more evident in Suffolk, and are an interesting confirmation of the historical 

 records. When English history begins in the closing years of the 6th cen- 

 tury, Kent is the dominant kingdom, and the Bretwalda ^thelbert is over- 

 lord of East Anglia. In the year 616 this connexion was interrupted by the 

 death of the Kentish king after a reign of nearly fifty years, and Redwald of 

 East Anglia succeeded to the hegemony of Britain. His kingdom shortly 

 afterwards passed into the hands of the redoubtable champion of the old 

 faith, Penda of Mercia, whose fall at Winwaed in 655 inaugurated the period 

 of Northumbrian supremacy and led to the final evangelization of East 

 Anglia. The northern kingdom, however, was soon overshadowed by 

 Mercia, and the eastern Angles were ruled from the midlands till the foun- 

 dation of the English kingdom by Ecgberht in the second quarter of the 

 9th century. 



It is evident therefore that most of the burials that can be identified as 

 Anglo-Saxon by their position or furniture must be referred to the period of 

 Kentish supremacy, and these, for obvious reasons, are inhumations. Those 

 who practised cremation in Early England did not, as a rule, place on the 

 pyre objects of metal or other material that might resist the flames, for if 

 combs survived (as at Eye), brooches and other such ornaments would also 

 have been spared. A corollary from this is that the numerous bronzes found 

 in the county without any notice of interments are probably from inhuma- 

 tions either perished or destroyed, and the probability becomes a practical 

 certainty when such articles are found in pairs or in groups, for objects 

 accidentally lost would be found, if at all, in isolation. On these grounds 

 some of the sites have been marked on the map as burials even where there 

 is no record of human remains either burnt or unburnt. 



Though East Anglia was the first Danish kingdom in England, and 

 belonged to the Danelagh after the partition under Alfred, it has been 

 inferred from certain social indications that ' Guthrum's Danes did not, like 

 their northern kindred, drive out a portion of the earlier population and 

 establish themselves as a superior class above the remainder, but settled 

 among the original East Anglians on a footing of comparative equality.' '^^ 



"" Mr. Chadwick quotes Hisloria Briltonum, § 59, but thinks it unlikely that Wehha, the first King of 

 East Anglia and great-grandfather of Redwald, lived at the time of the invasion. {Oripn of the English 

 'Nation, 183.) 



'" V.C.H. Norf. i, 345. '" Robertson, Scotland under her Early Kings, ii, 43;, 240. 



354 



