EADBALD (d. 64o)  , king of Kent, succeeded to the throne on the death of his father AEthelberht in 616 . He had not been influenced by the teaching of the Christian missionaries, and his first step on his accession was to marry his father's widow . After his subsequent conversion by Laurentius, archbishop of Canterbury, he recalled the bishops Mellitus and Justus, and built a church dedicated to the Virgin at Canterbury . He arranged a marriage between his sister fEthelberg and Edwin of Northumbria, on whose defeat and death in 633 he received his sister and Paulinus, and offered the latter the bishopric of Rochester . Eadbald married Emma, a Frankish princess, and died on the loth of January 64o . See Bede, Historia ecclesiastica (ed . C . Plummer, Oxford, 1896) ; Saxon Chronicle (ed . J . Earle and C . Plummer, Oxford, 1899) .