Æthelberht of Kent

Æthelberht was king of Kent from about 589 until his death in 616, and the first Anglo-Saxon king to accept Christianity. Bede lists him as the third ruler to hold imperium over the other English kingdoms, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls him a bretwalda, a ruler of Britain. He was the son of Eormenric. His marriage mattered more than his descent: he took Bertha, a Christian and the daughter of the Frankish king Charibert I, which tied the small kingdom of Kent to the strongest power in western Europe. Bertha kept her faith and her own bishop, and her presence probably prompted Pope Gregory I to send a mission. Augustine landed on Thanet in 597 with about forty companions. Æthelberht received them in the open air, out of caution about their possible sorcery, gave them a dwelling in Canterbury and permission to preach, and was baptised himself, though Bede is careful to say he compelled nobody. Canterbury has been the seat of the English church ever since. He issued the earliest surviving law code written in English, and the earliest written in any Germanic language, a tariff of compensations for injuries that sets out what each rank of person was worth. Its opening clauses protect church property, which shows the new religion being written into the legal order immediately. His kingdom's pre-eminence did not outlive him by long, and his son Eadbald initially returned to paganism. Bede gives the length of his reign as fifty-six years, which would make it one of the longest of the Anglo-Saxon period. He was buried in the church of St Peter and St Paul at Canterbury, later St Augustine's Abbey, and was venerated as a saint.

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