Eadbald of Kent

Eadbald () was King of Kent from 616 until his death in 640. He was the son of King Æthelberht and his wife Bertha, a daughter of the Merovingian king Charibert. Æthelberht made Kent the dominant force in England during his reign and became the first Anglo-Saxon king to convert to Christianity from Anglo-Saxon paganism. Eadbald's accession was a significant setback for the growth of the church, since he retained his people's paganism and did not convert to Christianity for at least a year, and perhaps for as many as eight years. He was ultimately converted by either Laurentius or Justus, and separated from his first wife, who had been his stepmother, at the insistence of the church. Eadbald's second wife was Emma, who may have been a Frankish princess. They had two sons, Eormenred and Eorcenberht, and a daughter, Eanswith.

Eadbald's influence was less than his father's, but Kent was powerful enough to be omitted from the list of kingdoms dominated by Edwin of Northumbria. Edwin's marriage to Eadbald's sister, Æthelburg, established a good relationship between Kent and Northumbria which appears to have continued into Oswald's reign. When Æthelburg fled to Kent on Edwin's death in about 633, she sent her children to Francia for safety, fearing the intrigues of both Eadbald and Oswald. The Kentish royal line made several strong diplomatic marriages over the succeeding years, including the marriage of Eanflæd, Eadbald's niece, to Oswiu, and of Eorcenberht to Seaxburh, daughter of King Anna of East Anglia.

Eadbald died in 640 and was buried in the Church of St Mary, which he had built in the precincts of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul in Canterbury (a church later incorporated within the Norman edifice of St Augustine's).

He was succeeded by Eorcenberht. Eormenred may have been his oldest son, but if he reigned at all it was only as a junior king.

Early Kent and early sources

thumb|200px|right|The state of Anglo-Saxon England at about the time of Eadbald's birth

Settlement of Kent by continental peoples, primarily Jutes, was complete by the end of the sixth century. Eadbald's father, Æthelberht, probably came to the throne in about 589 or 590, though the chronology of his reign is very difficult to determine accurately. Æthelberht was recorded by the early chronicler Bede as having imperium, or overlordship, over other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This dominance led to wealth in the form of tribute, and Kent was a powerful kingdom at the time of Æthelberht's death in 616, with trade well-established with the European mainland.

An important source for this period in Kentish history is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731 by Bede, a Benedictine monk from Northumbria. Bede was primarily interested in the Christianization of England, but he also provides substantial information about secular history, including the reigns of Æthelberht and Eadbald. One of Bede's correspondents was Albinus, abbot of the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul (subsequently renamed St. Augustine's) in Canterbury. A series of related texts known as the Legend of St Mildrith provides additional information about events in the lives of Eadbald's children and throws some light on Eadbald himself. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals assembled in about 890 in the kingdom of Wessex, also provides information. Other sources include papal letters, regnal lists of the kings of Kent, and early charters. Charters were documents drawn up to record grants of land by kings to their followers or to the church, and they provide some of the earliest documentary sources in England. None survive in original form from Eadbald's reign, but some later copies exist.

Ancestry and immediate family

thumb|300px|left|Eadbald's ancestry and siblings

The ancestry of Æthelberht, Eadbald's father, is given by Bede, who states that he was descended from the legendary founder of Kent, Hengist. However, historians believe that Hengist and his brother Horsa were probably mythical figures. It is known that Æthelberht married twice as Eadbald married his step-mother after his father's death, to the consternation of the church.

Eadbald had a sister, Æthelburg, who was probably also the child of Bertha. Æthelburg married Edwin, King of Northumbria, one of the dominant Anglo-Saxon kings of the seventh century. It is possible that there was another brother, named Æthelwald: or it may be merely a scribal error which should be read as referring to Eadbald.

Archbishop Laurence of Canterbury persuaded Eadbald to accept Christianity and give up his wife.

East and West Kent

The surviving regnal lists show only one king reigning at a time in Kent, but subkingdoms were common among the Anglo-Saxons and from the reign of Hlothhere, in the late seventh century, there is evidence that Kent was usually ruled by two kings, though often one is clearly dominant. It is less clear that this is the case before Hlothhere. Forged charters preserve a tradition of Eadbald ruling during his father's reign, presumably as a subking over west Kent. The papal letter that has been interpreted as indicating the existence of Æthelwald, a brother of Eadbald's, refers to Æthelwald as a king; if he existed, he would presumably have been a junior king to Eadbald.

Accession and pagan reaction

Eadbald came to the throne on the death of his father on 24 February 616, or possibly 618. Although Æthelberht had been Christian since about 600 and his wife Bertha was also Christian, Eadbald was a pagan. Bertha died some time before Eadbald's accession, and Æthelberht remarried. The name of Æthelberht's second wife is not recorded, but it seems likely that she was a pagan, since on his death she married Eadbald, her stepson: a marriage between a stepmother and stepson was forbidden by the church. but was eventually persuaded to abandon paganism and give up his wife.

Two graves from a well-preserved sixth and seventh-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Finglesham have yielded a bronze pendant and a gilt buckle with designs that are related to each other and may be symbolic of religious activity involving the Germanic deity Woden. These objects probably date from the period of the pagan reaction.

Bede's account

Bede's account of Eadbald's rejection of the church and subsequent conversion is quite detailed but not without some internal inconsistency.

617: Justus and Mellitus both return from Francia "the year after they left". Justus is restored to Rochester.
619–624: Eadbald builds a church which is consecrated by Archbishop Mellitus.
By 625 Edwin of Deira, king of Northumbria, asks for the hand in marriage of Æthelburg, Eadbald's sister. Edwin is told he must allow her to practice Christianity and must consider baptism himself.
21 July 625: Justus consecrates Paulinus bishop of York.

Alternative chronology

Although Bede's narrative is widely accepted, an alternative chronology has been proposed by D.P. Kirby. Kirby points out that Boniface's letter to Æthelburg makes it clear that the news of Eadbald's conversion is recent, and that it is unthinkable that Boniface would not have been kept up to date on the status of Eadbald's conversion. Hence Eadbald must have been converted by Justus, as is implied by Boniface's letter to Justus. The pallium accompanying that letter indicates Justus was archbishop by that time, and the duration of Mellitus's archiepiscopate means that even if Bede's dates are somewhat wrong in other particulars, Eadbald was converted no earlier than 621, and no later than April 624, since Mellitus consecrated a church for Eadbald before his death in that month. The account of Laurence's miraculous scourging by St Peter can be disregarded as a later hagiographical invention of the monastery of St Augustine. The relationship would have been valuable to Eadbald, too; it may have been as a result of this alliance that Edwin's overlordship of Britain did not include Kent. Paulinus eventually returned to Kent, where at Eadbald's and Archbishop Honorius's request he became bishop of Rochester, and York was not made an archbishopric for another century. Within a year of Edwin's death in 633 or 634,

Eadbald and Ymme had a daughter, Eanswith (who founded the very first nunnery on English soil at Folkestone, 15 miles from Canterbury), and two sons, Eorcenberht and Eormenred. Eormenred was the older of the two, and may have held the title of regulus, perhaps implying that he held the junior kingship of Kent. He appears to have died before his father, leaving Eorcenberht to inherit the throne. An additional son, Ecgfrith, is mentioned in a charter of Eadbald's, but the charter is a forgery, probably dating from the eleventh century.

Several of Eadbald's near relatives were involved in diplomatic marriages. King Anna of East Anglia married his daughter, Seaxburh, to Eorcenberht, and their daughter Eormenhild married Wulfhere of Mercia, one of the most powerful kings of his day. Eanflæd, Eadbald's niece, married Oswiu, king of Northumbria and the last of the northern Angles Bede listed as holding imperium over southern England. Eadbald's granddaughter Eafe married Merewalh, king of the Magonsæte.

Trade and connections to the Franks

There is little documentary evidence about the nature of trade in Eadbald's reign. It is known that the kings of Kent had established royal control of trade in the late seventh century, but it is not known how early this control began. There is archaeological evidence that suggests that the royal influence predates any of the written sources, and it may have been Eadbald's father, Æthelberht, who took control of trade away from the aristocracy and made it a royal monopoly. The continental trade provided Kent access to luxury goods, which was an advantage in trading with the other Anglo-Saxon nations, and the revenue from trade was important in itself. Kent traded locally made glass and jewelry to the Franks; Kentish goods have been found as far south as the mouth of the Loire, south of Brittany. There was probably also a flourishing slave trade. The wealth this commerce brought to Kent may have been the basis of the continuing, though diminished, importance of Kent in Eadbald's reign.

Coins were probably first minted in Kent in Æthelberht's reign, though none bear his name. These early golden coins were probably the shillings () that are mentioned in Æthelberht's laws. Thrymsas are known from Eadbald's reign, but few are known that carry his name: one such was minted at London and inscribed "AVDVARLD". It has been suggested that kings did not have a monopoly on the production of coinage at that time.

Connections with Francia went beyond trade and the royal marriages Æthelberht and Eadbald made with Frankish princesses. Eadbald's granddaughter, Eorcengota, became a nun at Faremoutiers, and his great-granddaughter, Mildrith, was a nun at Chelles. When Edwin was killed in about 632, Æthelburg, escorted by Paulinus, fled by sea to Eadbald's court in Kent, but in a further sign of her family's ties across the channel she sent her children to the court of King Dagobert I of the Franks, to keep them safe from the intrigues of Eadbald and Oswald of Northumbria.

Notes

References

Primary sources

Secondary sources

External links

Coin with image of Eabald Archived on 6 August 2008