616/7. Sæberht of East Saxons dies
Sæberht's three sons succeed to East Saxons; restore paganism
Sæberht's death in mentioned in Bede (HE, ii.5), but not in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. As Plummer has shown (II.88), the date is very likely either 616 or 617: Bede's wording implies it is after Æthelberht's death (February 616), and the expulsion of Christian clerics which followed Sæberht's death must be in January 618 or earlier (because Mellitus spent one year in exile in Gaul (HE, ii.6), and he was made archbishop of Canterbury in February 619, some indeterminate time after his return (HE, ii.7)).
After Sæberht's death, his three sons succeeded, Sæward, Seaxred, and probably Seaxbald (see Yorke, p.52). They had restrained their heathen practices during their Christian father's reign, but now went back to openly worshipping idols and allowing their subjects to do the same. Bede records the story that the three sons of Sæberht saw the bishop celebrating mass (Mellitus, in London), and they asked him why he would not give them the Eucharistic bread just as he had given it to their father. The bishop replied that they could not partake of the bread unless they were baptised, and after much argument they threw him out of the kingdom (HE, ii.5).
C. Plummer, Venerabilis Baedae Historiam Ecclesiasticam Gentis Anglorum [...] (Oxford: 1896)
B. Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England (London: 1990)