Eadbald - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

EADBALD (d. 640), king of Kent, succeeded to the throne on the death of his father lEthelberht in 616. He had not been influenced by the teaching of the Christian missionaries, and his first step on his accession was to marry his father's widow. After his subsequent conversion by Laurentius, archbishop of Canterbury, he recalled the bishops Mellitus and Justus, and built a church dedicated to the Virgin at Canterbury. He arranged a marriage between his sister ZEthelberg and Edwin of Northumbria, on whose defeat and death in 633 he received his sister and Paulinus, and offered the latter the bishopric of Rochester. Eadbald married Emma, a Frankish princess, and died on the 10th of January 640.

See Bede, Historia ecclesiastica (ed. C. Plummer, Oxford, 1896); Saxon Chronicle (ed. J. Earle and C. Plummer, Oxford, 1899).