Kingdom of Kent was ruled by Æthelberht. He had married a Christian princess named Bertha before 588, and perhaps earlier than 560. Bertha was the daughter of Charibert I, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks. As one of the conditions of her marriage she had brought a bishop named Liudhard with her to Kent as her chaplain. They restored a church in Canterbury that dated to Roman times, possibly the present-day St Martin's Church. Æthelberht was at that time a pagan but he allowed his wife freedom of worship. Liudhard does not appear to have made many converts among the Anglo-Saxons, and if not for the discovery of a gold coin, the Liudhard medalet, bearing the inscription Leudardus Eps (Eps is an abbreviation of Episcopus, the Latin word for bishop) his existence may have been doubted. One of Bertha's biographers states that, influenced by his wife, Æthelberht requested Pope Gregory to send missionaries. The historian Ian Wood feels that the initiative came from the Kentish court as well as the queen. Motivations Most historians take the view that Gregory initiated the mission, although exactly why remains unclear. A famous story recorded by Bede, an 8th-century monk who wrote a history of the British Church, relates that Gregory saw fair-haired Anglo-Saxon slaves from Britain in the Roman slave market and was inspired to try to convert their people. Supposedly Gregory inquired about the identity of the slaves, and was told that they were Angles from the island of Great Britain. Gregory replied that they were not Angles, but Angels. The earliest version of this story is from an anonymous Life of Gregory written at Whitby Abbey about 705. Bede, as well as the Whitby Life of Gregory, records that Gregory himself had attempted to go on a missionary journey to Britain before becoming pope. In 595 Gregory wrote to one of the papal estate managers in southern Gaul, asking that he buy English slave boys in order that they might be educated in monasteries. Some historians have seen this as a sign that Gregory was already planning the mission to Britain at that time, and that he intended to send the slaves as missionaries, although the letter is also open to other interpretations. The historian N. J. Higham speculates that Gregory had originally intended to send the British slave boys as missionaries, until in 596 he received news that