Kingdom of Kent

The first English kingdom to be recorded, converted and written down, and the smallest to matter so much. Kent faced the continent across the narrowest sea, which made it the point of arrival for almost everything - Bede names Hengist and Horsa's landing here as the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, and the kingdom kept unusually close ties to Frankish Gaul. Aethelberht, its king around 600, had married the Christian Frankish princess Bertha, which is why Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Canterbury rather than anywhere else in 597. Aethelberht's conversion made Canterbury the seat of the English church, and it remains so fourteen centuries later. He also issued the earliest surviving document written in English, a law code of some ninety clauses setting compensation for injuries, which is the oldest text in any Germanic vernacular. Kentish law and land tenure stayed distinctive: gavelkind, dividing inheritance among all sons rather than passing it to the eldest, survived there until 1925. The kingdom's political power faded after Aethelberht, falling under Mercian control in the eighth century and West Saxon control after 825. Its wealth came from cross-Channel trade through Sandwich and Fordwich. Canterbury's archbishops outlasted every Kentish king. The county keeps the white horse as its emblem. Canterbury and Rochester are the two oldest English sees. The kingdom was for a time divided between east and west with two kings. Its people were described by Bede as Jutes rather than Angles or Saxons. Kentish glass and garnet jewellery show direct Frankish and Mediterranean contact.

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