King Aethelbert (Ethelbert)

   Ethelbert was the king of Kent. Although defeated by the West Saxons in 568, he became the strongest ruler in England. His wife, Bertha, daughter of a Frankish king, was a Christian. Ethelbert received the missionaries sent by Pope Gregory I to England and was converted by St. Augustine of Canterbury. The first Christian king in Anglo-Saxon England, he made his capital, Canterbury, a great Christian center. The code of laws issued by him is the earliest surviving document in the Anglo-Saxon vernacular.