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  should be besieged. In 756 he was again at war with the Strathclyde Welsh, and in alliance with the Pictish king compelled the surrender of Alcluyd or Dumbarton on 1 Aug. of that year. This was the last of his achievements, for ten days later his army was utterly destroyed. In 757 or 758 he received a letter from Pope Paul I exhorting him to restore three monasteries that he had taken away from a certain abbot named Forthred. He was evidently deeply afflicted by the loss of his army, for in 758 he resigned his crown in favour of his son Oswulf, voluntarily received the tonsure, and entered the monastery of St. Peter's at York. There he dwelt with his brother until Ecgberht's death in 766. He survived him about two years, died 19 Aug. 768, and was buried by his brother's side in one of the porches of the minster at York.



EADBERT or EADBRYHT PRÆN (fl. 796), king of Kent, a member of the kingly line, and related to Ealhmund, under-king of Kent, the father of Ecgberht of Wessex, had received the tonsure, which was probably forced upon him in order to disqualify him for the kingship, but nevertheless headed the resistance offered by the Kentish nobles to Mercian domination, which seems to have actually broken out before the death of Offa (Eccles. Documents, iii. 495–6). This caused great trouble to Archbishop Æthelheard, who was devoted to the Mercian cause, and Alcuin wrote to him, telling him that he had urged Offa to help him. On the death of Offa, in 796, Eadbert Præn was made king of Kent, and was upheld by the nobles of the kingdom. Æthelheard was forced to flee from Canterbury, and wrote to Leo III, asking him to condemn the ‘apostate clerk,’ which the pope accordingly did in a letter to Cenwulf of Mercia (ib. 524). In 798 Cenwulf invaded Kent, took Eadbert Præn prisoner, carried him to Mercia, and there caused his eyes to be torn out and his hands to be cut off. The independent existence of Kent was brought to an end, and Cenwulf handed it over to be ruled by Cuthred as under-king. Eadbert survived his mutilation, for William of Malmesbury records that at the dedication of Winchcombe Abbey in Gloucestershire, in 811, Cenwulf manumitted before the high altar a Kentish king whom he had taken captive. Some silver coins of Eadbert Præn are extant.



EADBURGA, EADBURH, BUGGA, or BUGGE, (d. 751), abbess of Minster in the Isle of Thanet, was a daughter of  [q. v.], king of the West-Saxons (see a poem ascribed to Ealdhelm, and with less probability to Alcuin, on the church she built), and a certain abbess named Eangyth (S. Bonif. Epistt. 30), and was brought up by her mother, who speaks of her in a letter to Boniface or Wynfrith (ib.) She took the veil and became abbess of the house founded in the isle of Thanet by the mother of St. Mildred, whom she succeeded. Finding the buildings of the monastery insufficient for the nuns, she raised a new church, which was dedicated by Archbishop Cuthberht, and therefore in or after 740, to SS. Peter and Paul, and translated thither the incorrupt body of her predecessor, St. Mildred, and also built a new house not far from the old one. Some time after the death of Radbod, king of the Frisians (719), she wrote to Boniface, sending him forty shillings and an altar-cloth, saying that it was not in her power to give more (ep. 3). She also gave him many presents of books and raiment at other times (epp. 18, 32). In after days, when she was old, Boniface wrote to her to comfort her under her afflictions (ep. 31). She made a pilgrimage to Rome (ep. 32), and appears to have met Boniface there. It is evident that she was a learned lady, and Leobgyth (Lioba) speaks of having learnt the art of poetry from her. She is said to have died in 751, and Archbishop Bregwin, writing to Lullus, archbishop of Mentz, between 759 and 765, informs him that the English church kept the day of her death on 27 Dec. (Eccl. Documents, iii. 398). A spurious charter of Æthelbald, king of the Mercians, purports to be a grant to the Abbess Eadburh.

[S. Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Giles; S. Bonifacii Epistolæ, ed. Giles; Elmham's Historia S. Augustini Cantuar. p. 117 (Rolls Ser.); Thorn, col.