dates the arrival of Luidhard, was the
daughter of Charibert, king of that part of the domains of his grandfather
Clovis which gave to its sovereign the title of King of Paris. Her mother
was Ingoberga; and if the statement of Gregory of Tours, that king
Charibert married Ingoberga, is to be taken strictly, i.e. if he married
her after his accession, Bertha was born about 561. But I much doubt
whether Charibert had time for all his many marital wickednesses in his
short reign, and I am inclined to think that he married a good deal
earlier. He was the eldest son of his father Clotaire, who died in 561,
and the known dates of Clovis make it probable that Charibert was of
marriageable age a good many years before he succeeded his father.

So far as these considerations go, Bertha may have been of much the same
age as her husband Ethelbert, and their marriage may have taken place
about the year 575. I find nothing in the notices of Gregory of Tours
inconsistent with this. Indeed, it may fairly be said that Gregory's facts
indicate a date quite as early as that I have suggested. Ingoberga put
herself under Gregory's own special charge. He describes her admirable
manner of life in her widowhood, passed in a religious life, without any
hint that her daughter was with her; and when she died in 589, Gregory
guessed her age at seventy.

The chief reason for assigning a later date to the marriage is that King
Edwin of Northumbria married Ethelberga, Bertha's daughter, in 625. Edwin
was then a middle-aged widower, but that does not quite decide for us what
sort of age he was likely to look for in a second wife. If Ethelberga was
thirty when she married Edwin, Bertha would be about forty, or a little
more, when her daughter was born.

There is one argument in favour of Bertha's marriage having been long
before the coming of Augustine, which has, I think, generally escaped
notice. In the letter which Gregory sent from Rome to Bertha,
congratulating her on the conversion of her husband, Gregory urges her,
now that, the time is fit, to repair what has been neglected; he remarks
that she ought some time ago, or long ago, to have bent her husband's mind
in this direction; and he tells her that the Romans have earnestly prayed
for her life. All this, especially the "some time ago," or "long ago,"
looks unlike a recent marriage. It is interesting to notice, in view of
recent assertions and claims, that Gregory does not make reference to