THE princely burial at Prittlewell has cast a blazing shaft of light into the Dark Ages, when Roman Britain was giving way to Saxon England.

Dating from the middle of the 7th century AD, a generation later than King Raedwald’s pagan ship-tomb at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, it offers some of the best information about the establishment of Christianity in East Anglia. It is just possible, indeed, that this new find might be the grave of the king who finally established an enduring Christian kingdom among the East Saxons.

While identification remains speculative, the site’s date coincides neatly with that of King Sigeberht, who, according to the historian the Venerable Bede, was the ruler who reintroduced Christianity to Essex after a pagan lapse.

The new faith had been brought there when St Mellitus, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, converted King Sabert in AD 604, but his sons and heirs abandoned the faith until Sigeberht’s reign almost half a century later.

The dead man’s Christianity is revealed by the two gold foil crosses found in the grave and by the remarkably small amount of jewellery apparently found on the body itself — the most striking piece is a plain gold belt buckle.

Pagan burials were often accompanied by precious items, but Christians avoided such proclamations of status.

The crosses, which are well known from burials in south Germany and northern Italy in the later 7th century and early 8th century, have never before been found at an English site. They “appear to be unambiguous evidence of Christian allegiance”, according to John Hines, a professor at Cardiff University.

The Prittlewell site has been known for more than 70 years and a series of warrior graves featuring swords, spears and shields, and several with the seaxe curved sword now used for Essex’s county coat of arms, had been reported in the early 1920s.

The burial “is immensely valuable in that it is completely undisturbed and has been excavated to the highest professional standards”, Professor Hines said. “This is a really penetrating insight into the highest levels of early Saxon society and their funerary rituals.”

Equally important is that the new find fits into an emerging pattern of early Saxon elite burials in eastern and southern England.

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