Kent , one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England , is probably geographic eng associated with the modern county known as the site of the first landing of Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain as the kingdom that was the first Roman mission to the Anglo-Saxons and for its special social and administrative customs.
Traditionally landed the first settlers, led by Hengest and Horsa, at the invitation of the British King Vortigern mid 5th century in the Ebbs fleet in Kent . After the reigns of Hengest and his son Aesc or Oisc (of whom members of the Kentish royal house were called Oiscingas), nothing is known about Kentish history from 512 to the reign (560–616 ) from Aethelberht known who had become overlord of all kingdoms south of 595 River Humber . His wife Bertha, daughter of Charibert, the Frankish king of Paris was a Christian, and for this reason Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine's mission to Æthelberht's court in 597. Aethelberht gave the missionaries after his conversion a place of residence in Canterbury , and hence this became the first and senior Archbishopric of the Church of England.
No Kentian king has ever regained suzerainty from Aethelberht, but his great-grandson Egbert (664–673) was king in both Surrey and Kent. Established from the mid-8th century Offa , the king of Mercia , his power in Kent, which was subject to Mercia until conquered by Egbert, king of Wessex, in 825. Henceforth Kent was a province of Wessex, whose kings became kings of all England in the mid-10th century.
The social organization of Kent had many peculiarities that support Venerable Bede's statement that its inhabitants were a tribe other than the Winkel and Sachsen were, namely the Juten . The place of their continental origin is disputed. Instead of two classes of nobles or Gesithcund like in Wessex and Mercia, Kent only had one, the Eorlcund; and the kentic Ceorl or Bauer was a person of far greater substance than those elsewhere. Land holdings in Kent were usually subject to a gavel or divisible inheritance. administratively, Kent was divided into lathes, apparently concentrated in royal villages.