II. The Court of King Æthelberht of Kent

Abstract

One of the most interesting features of modern historical work on the Anglo-Saxon settlements in recent years has been the tendency to admit a possible connexion between the Jutes and the Franks; or even to stress the possible associations, either of race or culture, between the Germanic conquerors of Kent and the mixed Germanic races of the middle Rhine and northern Gaul. That the language of the Cantware, or whatever they called themselves, was not very different from that of the subjects of the kings of Paris is suggested by the sending of Frankish interpreters along with the Italians of Augustine's mission. Linguists admit this, and they have been delighted to find remnants of the Frankish gau embedded in Kentish placenames. Archaeologists tell us that the early Kentish kings minted no coins of their own, but used Frankish ones, or else used their own rings and bracelets for money; when they did begin to have mints of their own, they copied Merovingian coins in weight, though not in design. Frankish coins, for that matter, were used farther afield than Kent: the coins found at Sutton Hoo were all Merovingian. It is in this pleasantly pro-Frankish context that the subject of the court officers of king Æthelberht of Kent is here offered for consideration. Someone may say: Æthelberht I know, and queen Bertha I know, and Augustine I know, and, in fact, all that Bede tells us about Æthelberht I know: but who are these officers of the court of Æthelberht that you are speaking of? We know, they say, that Æthelberht's law speaks of eorlcund men who had a wergeld of 300 shillings, and ceorls, who had a wergeld of 100 shillings: but we cannot remember that the individual officers of Æthelberht's court are mentioned by anybody; or at least, by any source that is reliable.