ETHELBERT, or Aethelberîit, king of Kent, ascended the throne in 560. In 568 he was defeated by the West Saxons, and his authority limited to Kent, but ultimately he conquered the Saxons of Middlesex and Essex, and about 590 he was acknowledged as over-lord as far north as the Humber. About 575 he married Bertha or Bercta, daughter of the Frankish king Charibert. The Franks had already been converted to Christianity, and when Pope Gregory the Great heard that a Frankish princess was married to the king of Kent, he seized the opportunity to send Augustine to attempt the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. In 597 Augustine and his companions landed in the Isle of Thanet, and on learning of their arrival Ethelbert, prompted doubtless by Bertha, at once invited them to an interview. Not being certain whether they might not use enchantments against him, he received them, for greater security, in the open air; and after listening to a long sermon from Augustine, he was so far impressed, that although not prepared at once to forsake his old religion, he granted liberty to the monks to preach to his people. According to the accounts that have been handed down their success was almost unprecedented, and as many as 10,000 baptisms are said to have taken place in a single day. Very shortly afterwards Ethelbert gave in his adhesion to Christianity, and immediately all the inhabitants of Kent followed his example. He gave up his palace for the monks to live in, and adjoining it he built a church, on the site of which was afterwards erected the cathedral of Canterbury. He died in 616, and was canonized, his day being the 24 th February. The earliest code of Anglo-Saxon laws now extant was issued by Ethelbert in 600. With the exception of a provision for the protection of the property of ...

ETHELRED (or Aethelred) IL, surnamed the Unready (968-1016), an Anglo-Saxon king, the son of Edgar and Elfrida, was born in 968. On the murder of Edward the Martyr in 979, Ethelred succeeded him on the Anglo-Saxon throne. He is said to have owed his surname “Unready” lim., without rede or counsel) to Dunstan, who even when he placed the crown on Ethelred’s head prophesied that during his reign, on account of the sins of Elfrida, evils should fall upon the English such as they had never yet suffered. Such evils did fall upon them, and were doubtless chiefly due to the king. He possessed considerable energy when roused to exert himself, but it was only exercised fitfully, and generally misdirected, being always awanting at critical periods, and never used but to the disadvantage of his kingdom. Careless of everything but his immediate comfort or the gratification of an immediate whim, and listless and fond of ease, he allowed his kingdom and himself to be managed by worthless favourites, whose acts of, as it seems to us, open treachery were not only allowed to pass unpunished, in a manner which appears to us unaccountable, but seemed almost to form steps in their ladder of advancement to special influence and favour with the king. The successes attending the Danish invasions in the reign of Ethelred were due almost wholly to three causes,—the unpreparedness of the Anglo-Saxons, the treachery of the earls, and the failure of the king to follow up victories which were often won with no special preparation, and without adequate leaders. About two years after Ethelred mounted the throne the Danish invasions recommenced, but it was not till a later period that their inroads assumed the serious aspect of an attempt to conquer the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. In 988 they were ...

ETHELWULF, or Aethelwulf, an Anglo-Saxon king, succeeded his father Egbert about 836. His reign, like that of his father, was almost wholly occupied with wars against the Danish invaders. For a long time he held them in check, and when in 851 they took Canterbury and London, and defeated Beohrtwulf, king of the Mercians, he met them at Ockley in Surrey, and there “made the greatest slaughter among the heathen army that we have heard tell of unto the present day, and there got the victory.” But the Northmen were persevering in their efforts; and it is stated that in 855 they, for the first time, remained over winter in Sheppey. In the same year Ethelwulf made a journey to Rome, accompanied by his youngest and favourite son Alfred, to get the latter consecrated as his successor; and as his first wife Osburga had been for some time dead, he elayed a few months in France to marry Judith, daughter of t θ king of the Franks, Ethelbald, his eldest surviving son, indignant at his youngest brother being preferred to him as successor to his father’s throne, took advantage of his father’s absence to stir up a revolution against him, and obtained the support of so powerful a party that an unnatural civil war was only prevented by Ethelwulf agreeing to grant to his son the government of Wessex, he himself being recognized as over-lord, and retaining the rest of the kingdom. He died in 858.