General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> King Of Kent
Ruled BET. 560 - 616 2
Note:
Æthelberht I (d. Feb. 24, 616), king of Kent (560-616) who issued the first extant code of Anglo-Saxon laws, a code that established the legal position of the clergy and many secular regulations. Æthelberht's marriage to Bertha (or Berhta), daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, and a Christian, may account for the tolerant reception that he accorded Augustine and other missionaries dispatched to Kent by Pope Gregory I the Great in 597. Æthelberht gave them a dwelling at Canterbury and later accepted Christianity himself, though he did not force it on his subjects. According to the English historian and theologian Bede, his kingdom included all of England south of the Humber, but probably only at the end of his reign. [Encyclopædia Britannica CD '97, AETHELBERHT I]
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Ethelbert or Æthelbert, King of Kent (c.560-616], the first English king to adopt Christianity. During his long reign, Kent achieved hegemony over England S of the Humber. He received with kindness the Christian mission from Rome led by St Augustine, which landed in Thanet in 596, and allowed them to settle at Canterbury, and he himself was baptized with his court. He was responsible for the first written code of English laws. [David Crystal, The Cambridge Biographical Encyclopedia, Cambridge University Press, 1995]