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county and appears to have made his brother Mul king,
but next year Mul was burnt to death by the men of Kent.35 Essex
also appears in those troubled years to have had some sort of
overlordship over Kent. Swafheard, who apparently reigned along with
Oswine,36 was the son of’ Sebbe rex,’ probably the king
of Essex of that name.37
Bede says of this time ‘regnum aliquod temporis spatium
reges dubii vel externi disperdiderunt.’38 There
was a return to tranquillity under Wihtred, who apparently came to the
throne in 690.39 In 694 he made submission to Ine of
Wessex, and the men of Kent paid a heavy ‘wer’ for the death of Mul
eight years before.40 On his death in 725 he
left three sons, Ethelbert, Eadbert, and Alric, who appear to have
reigned jointly for a time.41 One of the few human touches
giving life to these shadowy kings occurs in a letter of Ethelbert to
St. Boniface, asking him to send him two falcons for hawking.42
The latter half of the eighth century was a time of great
confusion in Kent. ‘The evidence of charters . . . shows that the
kingdom . . . was broken up among a number of small and dependent
princes, attached to Mercia, Wessex or Essex, at different points, and
that the only continuous ruling power in the land itself was that of the
archbishop, himself very much at the mercy of Offa and his son Cenwulf.’43
Offa invaded Kent and defeated its forces at Otford near Sevenoaks in
773 or 774.44 Eadbert Praen, who may have
belonged to the old royal race, was made king on Offa’s death in 796 45
and for a time freed Kent from Mercian domination. Archbishop
AEthelheard, however, obtained his condemnation by the pope as an ‘apostate
priest,’46 and two years later Cenwulf invaded
Kent ‘as far as the marsh’ of Romney, took Eadbert prisoner and,
having put out the wretched man’s eyes and cut off his hands, carried
him off to Mercia.47 He then placed the crown on his
own head,48 but afterwards set up his brother Cuthred as
under-king.49
In the course of his struggle with Mercia for the
supremacy, Egbert of Wessex sent his son Ethelwulf in 825 to annex Kent,
Surrey, Sussex and Essex, ‘because they had formerly been wrongly
forced away from his kin.’50
35 Anglo.-Sax. Chron. 686,
687.
36 Birch, op. cit. No.
40. 37 Ibid. No. 42, ann. 676.
38 Op. cit.
iv, 26.
39 Bede, v, 23, says he died in
725, having reigned 34½ years. In v. 8 he mentions Wihtred and
Swafheard as kings of Kent in 692, and this is copied by the Chronicle
(MSS. E, F) with variations in spelling which led Henry of
Huntingdon and other later writers into sad confusion. The Chronicle then
mentions Wihtred’s accession in 694, as if it were a new fact, meaning
perhaps his accession to sole power. But it is difficult to make a clear
story out of these statements.
40 The sum was 30,000 of
some coin.
41 Ethelbert and Eadbert
appear together in a charter of 738. According to the Chronicle, Eadbert
died in 748 and was succeeded by Ethelbert, who died in 760; but there
is a charter of Eadbert dated 761 (Birch, op. cit. No. 190) and one of
Ethelbert dated 762 (ibid. No. 191).
42 Monumenta Moguntina,
254—6; cited by Plummer, Boedat Op. Hist. ii, 338.
43 Stubbs. Will.
Ma/mesh. Gesta Reg. (Rolls Ser.’), ii, p. xxiii.
44 Hen. Huntingdon, Hut. Angl. (Rolls Ser.),
126. The Chronicle mentions the battle
without giving the result.
45 Angl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 794 (796).
46 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii, 49-6, 524.
47 Angl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 796 (798).
48 Symeon of Durham, Hut. Reg. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
59
49 Flor. Worcester, Chron. (Engi. Hist. Soc.), i,
260.
50 Angl.-Sax. Chron. sub anno 823 (825). The hereditary claim
to Kent at any rate is supported by an entry in the Chronicle (MS.
F) ann. 784, ‘Then Ealmund was king of Kent. He was Egbert’s father.’
Plummer, Two Sax. Chron. ii, 71, suggests that this entry was
made up from a charter of Ealmund, ‘king of Kent’ of the same year
(Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 243). |