ith the French,
Italians, and other nations on the continent, and tended to reclaim them
from that gross ignorance and barbarity, in which all the Saxon tribes
had been hitherto involved.[*****] Ethelbert also enacted,[******] with
the consent of the states of his kingdom, a body of laws, the first
written laws promulgated by any of the northern conquerors; and his
reign was in every respect glorious to himself and beneficial to his
people. He governed the kingdom of Kent fifty years; and dying in 616,
left the succession to his son, Eadbald. This prince, seduced by a
passion for his mother-in-law, deserted, for some time, the Christian
faith, which permitted not these incestuous marriages: his whole people
immediately returned with him to idolatry. Laurentius, the successor of
Augustine found the Christian worship wholly abandoned, and was prepared
to return to France, in order to escape the mortification of preaching
the gospel without fruit to the infidels.

[* Bede lib. i. cap. 30. Spell. Concil. p. 89.
Greg. Epist. lib. ix. epist. 71.]

[** Chron. Sax. p. 23,24.]

[*** H. Hunting, lib. iii. Spell. Concil. p. 83.
Bede, lib. i. Greg Epist. lib. ix. epist. 60.]

[**** Bede, lib. i. cap. 27.]

[***** W. Malms, p. 10.]

[****** Wilkins, Leges Sax. p. 13.]

Mellitus and Justus, who had been consecrated bishops of London and
Rochester, had already departed the kingdom,[*] when Laurentius, before
he should entirely abandon his dignity, made one effort to reclaim the
king. He appeared before that prince, and, throwing off his vestments,
showed his body all torn with bruises and stripes which he had received.
Eadbald, wondering that any man should have dared to treat in that
manner a person of his rank, was told by Laurentius, that he had
received this chastisement from St. Peter, the prince of the apostles,
who had appeared to him in a vision, and severely reproving him for his
intention to desert his charge, had inflicted on him these visible marks
of his displeasure.[**] Whether Eadbald was struck with the miracle,
or influenced by some other motive, he divorced himself from his
mother-in-law, and returned to the profession of Christianity:[***]
his whole people returned with him. Eadbald reached not the fame or
authority of his father, and died in 640, after a reign of twenty-five
years, leaving two sons, Erminfrid and Ercombert.

[* Bede, lib. ii. cap 5.]

[*