# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Centwine

​CENTWINE or KENTEN (d. 685), king of the West Saxons, was the son of Cynegils and the brother of Cenwalh [q. v.] Accepting the statement of Bæda (Eccl. Hist. iv. 12) that after Cenwalh's death the under-kings of the West Saxons divided the kingdom between them for about ten years, we must hold that Centwine had considerably less power than his brother had enjoyed. The ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ however, says nothing of any such division. Neither in it nor in the list of West-Saxon kings given by Florence of Worcester is there any hint of an interruption of the head kingship. After the death of Cenwalh comes the one year's rule of his widow Sexburh; then Æscwine, a member of another branch of the house of Cutha, reigns, until on his death he is succeeded by Centwine in 676. The reign of Centwine is marked by a renewal of the West-Saxon victories over the Welsh, which seem to have ceased for a while after Centwalh in 658 had advanced the frontier to the Parret, for in 682 ‘Centwine drove the Britons to the sea’ (A.-S. Chron.), or, in other words, subdued the coast west of the Parret, and made his people masters of the Quantock range. Such vigorous action implies considerable strength, and seems to make it certain that if Bæda is right in asserting that the head kingship of the West Saxons was for a time in abeyance, Centwine must by this time have revived it, and that the under-kings must have obeyed him. The assertion of the disturbed state of Wessex seems incidentally corroborated by the omission of the name of any West-Saxon king in the record of the council of Hatfield held in 680; it is, however, possible that the circumstances that led to the war of 682 may have given the headship of the kingdom to Centwine. By thus shortening the interval of divided kingship, the apparently contradictory accounts given by Bæda and the Chronicle are in a measure reconciled. Centwine married a sister of Eormenburh, the wife of Ecgfrith of Northumbria, and the enemy of Wilfrith. Accordingly, when Wilfrith, having been forced to leave Mercia, fled for refuge to Wessex and was received by the king, the queen after a little while persuaded her husband to drive him out of the land (Eddius). Dr. Freeman holds that Centwine is the Kenten described by Faricius as the father of Aldhelm [see reference below]. Against this opinion must be set a poem addressed by Aldhelm to Bugge (Eadburh), the daughter of Kenten (Centwine). In this poem ‘Kenten’ is spoken of as a mighty king, very religious, who after winning three great battles retired from his throne to become a monk; the writer, however, does not hint at any relationship between the king and himself. Faricius, indeed, says that Aldhelm's father, Kenten, was the brother of King Ine. Wil​liam of Malmesbury points out that this is impossible, mentions it as one of the unfounded assertions of Faricius, and says that in King Alfred's Handbook it is clearly stated that Kenten (or Centwine) was not the brother, but a near kinsman of Ine. It certainly seems impossible to refuse to believe that the Kenten of Aldhelm's poem was other than King Centwine, and equally impossible to suppose that Aldhelm could have been writing about his own father. Centwine's retirement from the throne may have been only a very short time before his death, which took place in 685. He is said to have been buried at Winchester. He was succeeded by Ceadwalla [q. v.], in whose person the house of Ceawlin [q. v.] regained the kingship. Centwine is claimed as one of the benefactors of Glastonbury.
[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Florence of Worcester; Henry of Huntingdon, p. 718, Mon. Hist. Brit.; William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum, i. c. 29, 36 (Eng. Hist. Soc.); Gesta Pontiff. 332, 352, 354, 360 (Rolls Ser.); Eddius's Vita Wilfridi, c. 40, ap. Historians of York (Rolls Ser.); Aldhelmi Opera, 114 (ed. Giles); Haddan and Stubbs's Councils and Eccl. Docs. iii. 141–4; Freeman's King Ine, Somerset Archæological Society's Journal, xviii. ii. 39–43, xx. ii. 24.]
W. H.