It begs the question, what was so special about Kent, or Æthelberht? Its natural wealth as a ‘garden of England’ is one explanation; its geographical proximity to the kingdom of Frankia is another. The lands ruled by the Merovingian dynasties had never entirely shaken off their Romanitas; by comparison with the earliest English kingdoms they were

On the other side of the North Sea/Channel famous Frisian trading centres existed at Dorestad on the Rhine and Quentovic (another wic name; probably sited at Montreuil on the River Canche). Most of the early wic sites probably owed their origins to markets held periodically on beaches, where opportunistic Frisian traders could haul their boats up

The idea that Kentish kings regarded themselves as direct inheritors of the late Roman state is reinforced by the minting of coins in the late seventh century at Canterbury. One, found in a hoard at Crondall, Hampshire, bears the inscription DOROVERNIS CIVITAS.*7 That a Canterbury mint of that late date should call Canterbury a civitas—an

The suffix wic—Sandwich on the East Kent coast is a prime example—seems to reflect the sites of beach or estuarine markets.*4 When kings began to see opportunities for controlling and taxing them in the seventh century they were given royal protection and patronage and developed into what have become known as emporia. Hamwic, near Southampton, is

Kent was unlike the other kingdoms of Britain. Its modern name is little changed from the tribal folk-name Cantium by which Julius Caesar knew it.19 It maintained close links with the Continent and the courts of the Frankish kings. Its land-holding structures were different from elsewhere in English-held territories—East Kent was divided into units

The real dark age in British history, the yawning gap in its continuous narrative history, can be found in Book I of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, between Chapter 21, in which the fifth-century Gaulish bishop Germanus puts down a heresy among British Christians, and Chapter 23 which opens with events in 582. Germanus’s visit is generally dated to

Thanks to the sensational discovery of a hoard of battle-booty in a field near Lichfield in Staffordshire in 2009, we now have an idea of just what the spoils of Dark Age warfare looked like. Here are more than seventeen hundred objects of gold and silver, precious stones, millefiori and cloisonné, the peak of Early Medieval craftsmanship, equal in

Three items show that at least some of the participants in the battle or battles from which the hoard came were Christian. Two are crosses of marvellous workmanship, made of thin sheets of Byzantine gold and Indian garnets, both folded as if to compress them.

The seventh century is outstanding for the number of women who played active, sometimes decisive roles in the fortunes of kingdoms, both earthly and spiritual. They are not to be underestimated. They had their own queenly agendas, engineering lines of patronage for their families, acting as brakes on hot-headed husbands, as brokers of deals, as