1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rædwald

RÆDWALD (d. c. 620), king of the East Angles, was the son of King Tytili. He became a Christian during a stay in Kent, but on his return to East Anglia he sanctioned the worship both of the Christian and the heathen religions. Very little is known about his reign, which probably began soon after 600. For a time he recognized the overlordship of Æthelberht, king of Kent, but he seems to have shaken off the Kentish yoke. He gained some superiority over the land south of the Humber with the exception of Kent and is counted among the Bretwaldas. Rædwald protected the fugitive Edwin, afterwards king of Northumbria, and in his interests he fought a sanguinary battle with the reigning Northumbrian king, Æthelfrith, near Retford in Nottinghamshire, where Æthelfrith was defeated and killed in April 617. He was followed as king of the East Angles by his son Eorpwald.

See Bede, Historiae ecclesiasticae, edited by C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896); and J. R. Green, The Making of England (1897—1899).