Medieval Kent

Index

The Name Kent
St Auguntine
William the Conqueror
Black Death

The Name Kent

East Kent became one of the kingdoms of the Jutes during the fifth century AD and the area was later known as Cantia in around AD 730 and Cent in AD 835. The early Mediaeval inhabitants of Kent were known as the Cantwara or Kent people, whose capital was at Canterbury.

St Augustine

Augustine of Canterbury (birth unknown, died May 26, 604) was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Ethelbert was King of Kent from around 580 or 590. Ethelbert's wife Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain with her (Liudhard) and either built a church, or restored a church in Canterbury from Roman times, and dedicated it to St. Martin of Tours

Ethelbert asked Pope Gregory I to send missionaries. Ethelbert permitted the missionaries to settle and preach in his town of Canterbury and before the end of the year he was converted and Augustine was consecrated bishop at Arles.  

Augustine reconsecrated and rebuilt an old church at Canterbury as his cathedral and founded a monastery in connection with it. He also restored a church and founded the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul outside the walls. He is claimed to have founded The King's School, Canterbury, which would make it the world's oldest school; however there may be little more to this than that some teaching took place at the monastery.

William the Conqueror

Following the invasion of William the Conqueror the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta meaning undefeated and claiming (quite wrongly) that they had frightened the Normans away, presumably in an attempt to defame the people of Hastings in neighbouring Sussex. During the medieval period, Kent produced several rebellions including the Peasants' Revolt led by Wat Tyler and later, Jack Cade's rebellion of 1450. Thomas Wyatt led an army into London from Kent in 1553, against Mary I. Canterbury became a great pilgrimage site following the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket. Canterbury's religious role also gave rise to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a key development in the rise of the written English language and ostensibly set in the countryside of Kent.

Black Death

In 1220 the population of Canterbury was about 6,000 by 1340 it had risen to 10,000. Within the next hundred years the population fell to about 3,000. The cause was the Black Death. It killed both the rich and the poor, three masters of the Eastbridge Pilgrims Hospital died in three years. Hundreds of men and women were struck down, the population declined rapidly and parishes were combined, businesses collapsed and the Cathedral saw its income from rents reduced by 75%.

For most people the comforts of medicine had not changed since the end of the Roman Empire. Common sense solutions, herbal remedies were provided by women and local healers who still offered most of the health care for the poor. Faith in God provided hope for many. The rich were able to call on the attentions of doctors but some of the treatments, such as bleeding, often did more harm than good. The superior diet of the rich and their ability to get out of the towns probably had a greater impact than anything else.

The events of 1348 and the spread of the Black Death are best described by someone who was there at the time. William Dene, a monk at Rochester Cathedral wrote the following account. ‘In this year a plague of a kind which had never been met with before ravaged our land of England. The Bishop Haymo of Rochester , who maintained only a small household, lost four priests, five esquires, ten attendants, seven young clerics and six pages, so that nobody was left to serve him in any capacity.

Many Kent villages and parishes were deserted as people fled from infected areas.

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