 Although Bede 's narrative is widely accepted , an alternative chronology has been proposed by D.P. Kirby . Kirby points out that Boniface 's letter to Æthelburg makes it clear that the news of Eadbald 's conversion is recent , and that it is unthinkable that Boniface would not have been kept up to date on the status of Eadbald 's conversion . Hence Eadbald must have been converted by Justus , as is implied by Boniface 's letter to Justus . The pallium accompanying that letter indicates Justus was archbishop by that time , and the duration of Mellitus 's archiepiscopate means that even if Bede 's dates are somewhat wrong in other particulars , Eadbald was converted no earlier than 621 , and no later than April 624 , since Mellitus consecrated a church for Eadbald before his death in that month . The account of Laurence 's miraculous scourging by St Peter can be disregarded as a later hagiographical invention of the monastery of St Augustine . 
