Execution of King Æthelberht II

Date: May 20, 794 • Location: Polesworth, United Kingdom

While visiting the royal Mercian court at Sutton Walls with a view to marrying princess Ælfthryth, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia is taken captive and beheaded.

Mercia was an early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, one of the seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon period. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlands of England.