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Aethelberht I
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St. Augustine, in white robes, gestures while preaching to King Aethelberht I and his court, who are seated under a tree, in a 19th-century colored wood engraving.
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Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon in Coronation Robes or Napoleon I Emperor of France, 1804 by Baron Francois Gerard or Baron Francois-Pascal-Simon Gerard, from the Musee National, Chateau de Versailles.
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Quick Facts
Died:
Feb. 24, 616 or 618
Title / Office:
king (560-616), Kent
Role In:
Heptarchy
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Aethelberht I
Aethelberht I St. Augustine preaching to Aethelberht I, 19th-century colored wood engraving.

Aethelberht I

king of Kent
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History

Aethelberht I (died Feb. 24, 616 or 618) was the king of Kent (560–616) who issued the first extant code of Anglo-Saxon laws. Reflecting some continental influence, the code established the legal position of the clergy and instituted many secular regulations. Aethelberht’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. Aethelberht gave them a dwelling at Canterbury and later may have accepted Christianity himself; 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.

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