THE destruction of all documents relating to East Anglia, during the irruptions of the Danes, has rendered this period the most obscure of any period of our history. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes having subjugated the fair territory of England, they divided it into seven kingdoms, called the Heptarchy, in which Norfolk formed a part of East Anglia. The Anglo-Saxon leader, Uffa, established himself in this part of the island, in 575; and assumed dominion over that portion of the eastern district now divided into Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, giving it the name of East Anglia, of which Norwich was made the metropolis. Norwich was, therefore, a royal city, and the residence of the kings. Uffa, the first king, is supposed to have formed here a strong entrenchment of earth on the site of the present castle, encircled by broad ramparts and a ditch, as under the present Saxon arch. Uffa, who died A.D. 578, was succeeded by his son Titul; on whose demise, in 599, his son Redwald assumed the reins of government and embraced Christianity, but by the influence of his wife renounced it again. He was succeeded, A.D. 624, by his son Erpenwald, who was killed by a relation named Richbert, A.D. 633. His half brother Sigebert, who succeeded to the crown, established the bishopric of Dunwich, in Suffolk, and formed the first seminary for religious instruction, which led to the establishment of the university in Cambridge. Fatigued with the crown and its cares, he resigned it, A.D. 644, to his kinsman Egric, and retired into the famous monastery at Bury St. Edmund’s. Norwich then became one of the chief seats of Anna, king of the East Angles, who gave the castle, with the lands belonging to it, to his daughter Ethelfrida on her marriage with Tombert, a prince of the _Gyrvii_ or Fenmen, who inhabited the fens of Lincolnshire and the adjacent parts of Norfolk. At the same time Tombert granted to Ethelfrida, as a marriage settlement, the isle of Ely, which for greater security was to be held by castle guard service to the castle of Norwich.