The Prince of Aldi–the Prittlewell Saxon Tomb

In 2003, a Saxon burial in an intact burial chamber was unearthed between an Aldi shop  and a pub in Southend. Clearly an important person, almost certainly royalty, the items in the grave  make it the earliest Christian royal burial in England. Now, 16 years on, with conservation and studies complete, many of the items belonging to the ‘Prittlewell Prince’ are going on display in the Central Museum.

There was only one tooth remaining from the ‘prince’ himself but the array of preserved grave-goods was staggering: a lyre, a painted box that is a one of its kind, a golden belt buckle, golden crosses to cover his eyes, an iron stool, gold-decorated pottery and a sword with gold wire  around a hilt made of horn.  Parts of his coffin also survived and measurements indicate he was approximately 5ft 6.

So who was this wealthy early Christian Saxon? The best guess is that he was Saexa, the brother of King Saebert , who was King of Essex from AD604 to AD616. It was originally thought the burial might be Saebert himself but the carbon dates are slightly too early, more in keeping with the date of his brother’s death.

Some have likened this unique find to  opening King Tut’s tomb…

PRITTLEWELL PRINCE

So, who were the Saxon Kings of Essex? Here’s a genealogy. Note that, unlike the more geographically distant Wuffings of East Anglia, there seems to be no family link to the House of Wessex.

 

Raedwald again

Basil Brown’s work at Sutton Hoo, on secondment from Ipswich Museum, began in summer 1938 and reached “Mound One” today in 1939. In time, he explored the many mounds on that site, one of which probably includes the remains of Raedwald, King of East Anglia to about 624 and Bretwalda of England from 616. Raedwald, of the Wuffing dynasty, was a Christian convert and his collateral descendants fed into the House of Wessex and their successors from 1154.

Here are some pictures from The Cricketers, Ipswich, about Raedwald, his family and his times:

I’m Julian, this is my friend Mary?

(with apologies to any surviving “Round the Horne” fans)

On the right is Mary I, the penultimate “Tudor” monarch. Her brief reign was a reaction to the Reformations of her father and brother, reintroducing the Catholicism that prevailed until twenty years earlier but she died without issue and her religious policy was reversed by her half-sister.

On the left is the Roman Emperor known as “Julian the Apostate”, the last of the Constantian dynasty to hold that title. Succeeding his cousin Constantius II in 361, he sought to restore Rome’s pagan gods that had prevailed until the 312 conversion of his uncle Constantine I, but died in battle within two years and his successors restored Christianity.

 

Another Anglo-Saxon find?

This Cambridge article reveals a little about the possible early Christian burial site near Sutton Hoo, first discovered nearly eighty years ago and which probably contains Richard’s collateral ancestor Raedwald.

A GREENWOOD WEDDING ?

May 1 has just gone past–a date known in ancient Britain as the Feast of Beltaine, the ‘Fires of Bel (the Shining One)’. Of  all the old important pre-Christian dates, this is the one that the Church was never able to Christianise in any obvious way, retainings its traditions of merriment, dancing and bawdiness right down to the present. Even Halloween (All Hallows) had a vague Christian veneer placed over its supernatural and ancestral elements, and Midsummer’s Eve was associated with St John as well as with the summer Solstice several days earlier and the burning hilltop  bonfires.

It was of course on May 1 that Edward IV was supposed to have married Elizabeth Woodville, in a secret ceremony attended by her mother, a priest and child. The date is interesting, as May marriages were at one time considered to be unlucky. An old rhyme goes ‘Marry in the month of May and you will surely rue the day.’ The reason for this was that the time of the year was considered to be a frivolous one, connected with faithlessness and a lack of constancy.

May 1 in particular was the time for ‘greenwood weddings’–temporary ‘marriages’ that were of dubious legality. Often these, if they lasted longer than a few  nights, went on no longer than the traditional ‘year and a day’ of old-time fairy stories. The couple would then part, if they wished, and go on their seperate ways, no harm done.

Unless you were a king of England, of course, who may well have already pre-contracted a marriage in a similar style and who was expected to marry a foreign princess…

The fact that several sources quote May 1 as the date of Edward’s wedding is interesting. It may quite literally be the case…or it could well be that the writers (or those from whom they had gleaned the information from) were aware of the traditional significance of May 1 in regards to impermanent, irregular marriages.

Indeed, far be it from the idea some traditionalists seem to take, that Edward’s marriage was perfectly acceptable to all before Richard ‘invented’ the idea of a pre-contract, it seems that that many already had doubts of its legality. Mancini, for instance says that Elizabeth Woodville,  years before the events of 1483,  was  reproached with calumnies ‘namely that according to established usage she was not the legitimate wife of the king.’ He seemed to believe  this was because she had been married before and hence was not a virgin, but there was no such impediment to marriage within the English royal house–Eleanor of Aquitaine,for instance, had been married and had several children before espousing Henry II. So it had to be something else. Later Mancini mentions Edward being legally contracted to another woman. He mistakes this for Bona of Savoy, who Warwick sought as a bride for Edward, and he does not seem to doubt the veracity of  this ‘proxy marriage’, although he has the wrong woman.

Certainly, it seems that many people in late medieval England believed *something* was irregular about Edward and Elizabeth’s marriage, and giving it the traditional May 1st day may well be affirming that fact.

A recent article from History Today on Edward’s marriage and those of his infamous grandson Henry VIII:

http://www.historytoday.com/eric-ives/marrying-love-experience-edward-iv-and-henry-viii