The first Christian king in England
Who was Æthelberht of Kent?
‘Æthelberht, king of Kent, was a very powerful monarch. The lands over which he exercised his suzerainty stretched as far north as the great river Humber, which divides the northern from the southern Angles.’ (Bede HE: I.25)
It would be fair to say that Æthelberht of Kent was a powerful ‘English’ king (in inverted commas because the concept of ‘Englishness’ would not exist for some time yet) with ambitions to elevate himself and his kingdom to the European political stage. His kingdom was, to all intents and purposes, a minor one in a backwater of the former Roman Empire, which had seen devastating social and political collapse in the years after the withdrawal of Imperial rule. Æthelberht may have been a powerful leader in ‘England’, but his Continental neighbours considered him unimportant; one text refers to him as the son of ‘some king’ across the sea, hardly the highest accolade. By the end of his reign, however, his kingdom had begun to look more like that of Francia, one of the major players in early medieval Europe, with an established Church, international diplomatic connections, and written laws. More work would need to be done over the coming years to cement his transformation of kingly power, but Æthelberht laid significant foundations. The sources for the period immediately preceding him are too vague on the structures of power to ascribe to Æthelberht the achievement of establishing kingship within Anglo-Saxon England; it is likely that some great men called themselves kings before his time, even if their stories have since been lost. He can, however, be credited with shaping significantly the concept of kingship for his contemporaries and successors.
Æthelberht of Kent is the first historically-verifiable king of a people group residing in what would later be called ‘England’, following the end of Roman rule in the early fifth century. He is the first king known certainly to have existed and the first to have left traces behind in a diverse range of sources: ecclesiastical, secular, insular, international. Several charismatic individuals are recorded before him as ‘kings’ or leaders, in sources such as Gildas’ The Ruin of Britain and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. These, however, are likely to have been semi-mythical figures, if not outright fictional creations: the construction of origin stories was popular during the Anglo-Saxon age, and if storytellers did not have accurate information about the past, they often made up characters or tales that would enhance (however fictitiously) the legitimacy and power of particular kings and dynasties.
The late sixth and early seventh centuries saw eastern Britain divided into a large number of distinct people groups, rather than the one nation that it is today. Some were very small, others very large; some were ruled by kings, others by lesser rulers; some are well known, others remain unidentified. Æthelberht ruled the kingdom of Kent, a people group settled in broadly the region covered by the modern county. It is likely that he became king of Kent in either A.D. 550 or c.585, succeeding his father Eormenric. According to Bede, Æthelberht was also ‘the third English king to rule over all the southern kingdoms, which are divided from the north by the river Humber and the surrounding territory’ (Bede HE: II.5); it seems that there was some system of overlordship of the various smaller kingdoms, which Æthelberht held for a time. Although much ink has been spilled seeking to understand precisely what this overlordship entailed, it remains a mysterious political structure. It is likely, however, that Æthelberht did hold power over kingdoms other than his own, which he would later use to support the expansionist aims of the Church. He was married first to a Frankish princess, Bertha, and probably married again after her death in the early seventh century, although the name of his second wife is uncertain. The best known of his children are his successor Eadbald and his daughter Æthelburh, who married a king of Northumbria, Edwin. Æthelberht’s life is perhaps most significant for his conversion to Christianity through the mission of Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury.
His conversion, however, obscures much information about him outside of his connection to the fledgling Church. Prior to Augustine’s arrival in A.D. 597, the skill of writing had been entirely lost from eastern Britain; no written sources remain today from this period. We start to see writing return with the arrival of the institutional church in eastern Britain in the closing years of the sixth century - but its focus was very much on the activities of the Church and the conversion of kings and kingdoms. Bede, our main source for this period, was interested in Æthelberht largely because he was ‘the first [overlord] to enter the kingdom of heaven’ (Bede HE: II.5). His material, therefore, focuses on the Kentish king’s conversion and includes very little on Æthelberht’s early years or secular activities. This has to be pieced together through fragments and hints found in other surviving documents. It is likely that there was a close connection between Kent and Francia in the sixth century. Æthelberht’s father (Eormenric) has a distinctly Frankish-sounding name, as did his grandson (Eorcenberht). A papal letter and a handful of early histories, additionally, suggest that the Frankish kings may have believed they exercised overlordship over the Kentish kingdom. The marriage between Æthelberht and Bertha certainly indicates that the Frankish kings did not consider Æthelberht their equal: although she was a princess, she was only a minor figure at the Frankish court.
It was through his marriage, however, that Christianity found a permanent home in Æthelberht’s kingdom. Although the Church was alive and flourishing in western Britain, it had almost entirely disappeared from eastern Britain after the end of Roman rule. Even if a handful of believers existed in the east, there was no institutional church. Bertha was a Christian woman determined to keep her faith despite marrying a pagan: as part of her marriage agreement she brought a bishop with her, Liudhard, and was given a church in which to worship. Æthelberht continued in his pagan ways throughout most of his marriage, reconsidering only after interacting with Augustine’s mission. He was initially suspicious: Bede wrote that Æthelberht ‘took care that they should not meet in any building’ as he was worried that ‘if they practised any magic art, they might deceive him and get the better of him as soon as he entered’ (Bede HE: I.25). After this meeting, Æthelberht apparently stated that though ‘the words and the promises’ the missionaries spoke to him were ‘fair enough’, he could not abandon the beliefs he and his ancestors had held for so long (Bede HE: I.25). Bede did not describe precisely how the king’s mind was changed, but by the next chapter of his history, he records how ‘the king, as well as others, believed and was baptized’ (Bede HE: I.26). Shortly thereafter, Augustine was consecrated archbishop of the English, with his seat at Canterbury, and the missionaries’ eyes were set on expanding their Church beyond Æthelberht’s realm.
Following Æthelberht’s conversion, Bede considered him to be a good Christian king, a model for his eighth-century readers to follow (one overarching aim of Bede’s history was to provide a model of Christian kingship). Æthelberht supported the aims of the nascent Church, providing buildings and using his overlordship to establish churches and bishoprics in neighbouring kingdoms. Although Bede was undoubtedly positive about the king following his conversion, there is perhaps a hint of disappointment in the following statement: ‘although he rejoiced at their conversion and their faith, [he] compelled no one to accept Christianity; though none the less he showed greater affection for believers since they were his fellow citizens in the kingdom of heaven’ (Bede HE: I.26).
Æthelberht died in A.D. 616, at an unknown age, and was buried ‘in the chapel of St Martin, within the church of the Apostles St Peter and St Paul, where his queen, Bertha, also lies’ (Bede HE: II.5). His resting place began a tradition of church-associated burial for royal Christians, which would slowly spread to other kingdoms before coming the established norm. Æthelberht’s legacy also includes the first written law-code in Anglo-Saxon England, which would be emulated subsequently by other kings seeking to establish their legitimacy. He was succeeded by his son Eadbald, who initially rejected the Christian faith and married his stepmother (Æthelberht’s second wife) to further prove this point. The survival of the church in Kent, which had flourished during Æthelberht’s lifetime, looked uncertain upon his death.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. McClure, Judith, and Roger Collins, eds. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Gildas. The Ruin of Britain. Winterbottom, Michael, ed. Gildas: The Ruin of Britain, and Other Works. London: Phillimore, 1978.
Secondary Sources
Campbell, James, ed. The Anglo-Saxons. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1982.
Kirby, D. P. The Earliest English Kings. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1991.
Wood, Ian. ‘Frankish Hegemony in England’. In The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe, edited by Martin Carver, 235–41. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1992.
Yorke, Barbara. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Taylor and Francis, 1990.
—. ‘The Bretwaldas and the Origins of Overlordship in Anglo-Saxon England’. In Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, edited by Stephen Baxter, Catherine Karkov, Janet Nelson, and David Pelteret, 81–95. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.
