burial was thought to have taken place later, has been Rædwald; his kingdom, East Anglia, is believed to have had its seat at Rendlesham, upriver from Sutton Hoo. The case for Rædwald, by no means conclusive, rests on the dating of the burial, the abundance of wealth and items identified as regalia, and, befitting a king who kept two altars, the presence of both Christian and pagan influences. Rædwald What scant information is known about King Rædwald of East Anglia, according to the Anglo-Saxon historian Simon Keynes, could fit "on the back of the proverbial postage stamp". Almost all that is recorded comes from the eighth-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by the Benedictine monk Bede, leaving knowledge of Rædwald's life, already poorly recorded, at the mercy of such things as differing interpretations of Ecclesiastical Latin syntax. Bede writes that Rædwald was the son of Tytila and grandson of Wuffa, from whom the East Anglian Wuffingas dynasty derived its name. In their respective works Flores Historiarum and Chronica Majora, the thirteenth-century historians Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris appear to place Tytila's death, and Rædwald's presumed concurrent succession to the throne, in 599. Yet as reasonable as this date sounds, these historians' demonstrated difficulty with even ninth-century dates leaves ample room for doubt. In any event, Rædwald would have ascended to power by at least 616, around when Bede records him as raising an army on behalf of Edwin of Northumbria and defeating Æthelfrith in a battle on the east bank of the River Idle. According to Bede, Rædwald had almost accepted a bribe from Æthelfrith to turn Edwin over, before Rædwald's wife persuaded him to value friendship and honour over treasure. After the ensuing battle, during which Bede says Rædwald's son Rægenhere was slain, Rædwald's power was probably significant enough to merit his inclusion in a list of seven kings said by Bede to have established rule over all of England south of the River Humber, termed an imperium; the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle expanded Bede's list to eight and applied the term bretwalda or brytenwalda, literally "ruler of Britain" or "ruler of the Britains". Bede records Rædwald converting to Christianity while on a trip to Kent, only to be dissuaded by his wife upon his return; afterwards he kept a temple with two altars, one pagan and one Christian. In the likely event that this was during Æthelberht's rule of