Ealhmund,
King of Kent
Compiled by
D. A. Sharpe
Ealhmund, thought to have been born
about 758 AD, was King of Kent in 784. The only
contemporary evidence of him is an abstract of a charter dated in that year, in
which Ealhmund granted land to the Abbot of Reculver. By the following year, Offa of Mercia seems to
have been ruling directly, as he issued a charter without any mention of a
local king.
Ealhmund is the 10th great grandfather
of "Count Poitou" William, the 14th great grand uncle of Sir Edward
Southworth, the first husband of Alice Carpenter, my 7th great grandmother, my
descending through her second husband, Plymouth Colony Governor William
Bradford.
There is a consensus
that he is identical to the Ealhmund found in two pedigrees in the Winchester
(Parker) Chronicledas
, compiled during the
reign of Alfred the
Great. The genealogical preface to this manuscript, as well as the annual
entry (covering years 855-859) describing the death of ®thelwulf, both make king Egbert of Wessex the son
of an Ealhmund, who was son of Eafa, grandson of Eoppa, and great-grandson of
Ingild, the brother of king Ine of Wessex, and descendant of founder Cerdic, and therefore
a member of the House
of Wessex. A further entry has been added in a later hand to the 784 annal, reporting Ealhmund's reign in Kent. Finally, in the Canterbury
Bilingual Epitome, originally compiled after the Norman conquest of
England, a later scribe has likewise added to the 784 annual not only
Ealhmund's reign in Kent, but his explicit identification with the father
Egbert. Based on this reconstruction, in which a Wessex scion became king of
Kent, his own Kentish name and that of his son, Egbert, it has been suggested
that his mother derived from the royal house of Kent, a connection dismissed by
a recent critical review. It has likewise been suggested that Ealhmund might have
been a Kentish royal scion, and that his pedigree was forged to give son Egbert
the descent from Cerdic requisite to reigning in Wessex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealhmund_of_Kent
He is not known to
have struck any coins, and the only contemporary evidence of him is an abstract
of a charter dated 784, in which Ealhmund granted land to the Abbot of Reculver By the following year Offa
of Mercia
seems to have been ruling directly, as he issued a charter without any mention of a local king.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealhmund_of_Kent
Compiled by:
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