ABSTRACT
In 1989 Nicholas Brooks published a paper on the early history of the kingdom of Kent which contained a masterly exposition of what he described as ‘The Kentish Origin Myth’.1 The study established the dividing line between Kent’s mythical origins and the point at which the traditions of its royal house entered the historical horizon with Irminric, the father of Æthelbert. With this paper Nicholas contributed to the assault made by a number of writers on the historical validity of AngloSaxon sources purporting to come from the fifth and sixth centuries,2 and helped to establish that they should no longer be accepted as straightforward records of what might actually have occurred during that timespan. That is not to say, as Nicholas himself stressed, that the sources have no contribution to make to our knowledge of the early middle ages, but simply that they should not be taken at face value for the period they purport to describe. What certain people in Kent and elsewhere wanted to believe about the origins of their kingdoms is potentially very valuable information for our basic understanding of ethnogenesis and kingdom formation, and one that can be revisited in the light of recent work, not least by Nicholas himself, on early medieval identities.3 It may therefore be useful to examine the origin legends that have survived from early Anglo-Saxon England as a distinctive type of early medieval record in order to establish their common features and to consider the circumstances that may have lain behind their construction, and in the hope that this will be a suitable tribute to an inspirational historian and friend.
