The East Anglian State was probably formed in the sixth century, for Bede tells us of its King Rædwald, son of Tytilus, whose father was Uffa,[1] and Rædwald is certainly historical.
The East Anglian people in the ninth century do not appear to have been regarded as different in designation from those of Essex, for Asser, in his ‘Life of Alfred,’ says, under the year 866, that ‘a large fleet of pagans came to Britain and wintered in the kingdom of the Eastern Saxons which is called in Saxon East Anglia.’ The important later ethnological circumstance in Norfolk and Suffolk is the large settlement of Danes, who appear to have been, according to Malmesbury, the ancestors of the free tenants or sokemen who were so numerous at the time of the Domesday Survey. Ethelweard, in his Chronicle, tells us that after the peace between Alfred and Guthrum the Danes went into East Anglia and reduced all the inhabitants of those parts to subjection. Malmesbury also tells us that they held East Anglia in subjection during their later invasions, and that in the early part of the eleventh century—i.e., in the time of Cnut—they distributed themselves as best suited their convenience in the towns or in the country.
Among the Essex place-names apparently derived from those of known Germanic tribes is Ongar, which appears to have come from the Old Saxon Angarian tribal name. Its old forms in Domesday Book are Angra and Angre. In a Saxon charter[2] a stream called Angrices-burne is also mentioned.
The name Coggeshall may possibly have been derived from a settler of the Chaucian tribe, and Amberden or Amberdon from the Old Saxon Ambrones. In the north-west corner of the county we find old places named Radwinter and Quendon, and these words, Wintr and Quén, are Old Danish or Norrena for Wend and Fin.
In this district, also, there are names such as Wixhoe,
