History of King Alfred of England

LIBRARY

.ITY OF
CALUORNIA

SAN DIEGO

0ff

in. Color* by TK Sinrlfur,

HI S T 0 E I

KING ALFRED OF ENGLAND

BY JACOB ABBOTT.
U

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS.
1864.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one then/land
eight hundred and forty- nine, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

PREFACE.

IT is the object of this series of histories to
present a clear, distinct, and connected narra-
tive of the lives of those great personages who
have in various ages of the world made them-
selves celebrated as leaders among mankind,
and, by the part they have taken in the public
affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest
influence on the history of the human race.
The end which the author has had in view is
twofold: first, to communicate such informa-
tion in respect to the subjects of his narratives
as is important for the general reader to possess ;
and, secondly, to draw such moral lessons from
the events described and the characters deline-
ated as they may legitimately teach to the peo-
ple of the present age. Though written in a
direct and simple style, they are intended for,
and addressed to, minds possessed of some con-

viii PREFACE.

siderable degree of maturity, for such minds
only can fully appreciate the character and ac-
tion which exhibits itself, as nearly all that is
described in these volumes does, in close com-
bination with the conduct and policy of govern-
ments, and the great events of international
history.

CONTENTS.

I. THE BRITONS 13

II. THE ANGLO-SAXONS 34

III. THE DANES 57

iv. ALFRED'S EARLY TEARS 76

V. THE STATE OF ENGLAND 94

vi. ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE 115

VII. REVERSES 131

VIII. THE SECLUSION 154

IX. REASSEMBLING OF THE ARMY 172

X. THE VICTORY OVER THE DANES 190

XI. THE REIGN 209

XII. THE CLOSE OF LIFE . . . 227

ENGRAVINGS.

WALL OF SEVERUS 31

SAXON MILITARY CHIEF 41

THE SEA KINGS 65

LOTHBROC AND HIS FALCON 103

ANCIENT CORONATION CHAIR 133

THE FIRST BRITISH FLEET 148

ALFRED WATCHING THE CAKES 161

PORTRAIT OF ALFRED 208

HASTINGS BESIEGED IN THE CHURCH.. . 229

ALFRED THE GREAT.

CHAPTER I.
THE BRITONS.

Alfred the founder of (he British monarchy.

ALFRED THE GREAT figures in history
as the founder, in some sense, of the Brit-
ish monarchy. Of that long succession of sov-
ereigns who have held the scepter of that mon-
archy, and whose government has exerted so
vast an influence on the condition and welfare
of mankind, he was not, indeed, actually the
first. There were several lines of insignificant
princes before him, who governed such portions
of the kingdom as they individually possessed,
more like semi-savage chieftains than English
kings. Alfred followed these by the principle
of hereditary right, and spent his life in laying
broad and deep the foundations on which the
enormous superstructure of the British empire
has since been reared. If the tales respecting
his character and deeds which have come down

14 ALFRED THE GREAT. [B.C.800

Hereditary succession. The fabulous age of history.

to us are at all worthy of belief, he was an hon-
est, conscientious, disinterested, and far-seeing
statesman. If the system of hereditary suc-
cession would always furnish such sovereigns
for mankind, the principle of loyalty would have
held its place much longer in the world than it
is now likely to do, and great nations, now re-
publican, would have been saved a vast deal of
trouble and toil expended in the election of their
rulers.

Although the period of King Alfred's reign
seems a very remote one as we look back to-
ward it from the present day, it was still eight
hundred years after the Christian era that he
ascended his throne. Tolerable authentic his-
tory of the British realm mounts up through
these eight hundred years to the time of Julius
Caesar. Beyond this the ground is covered by
a series of romantic and fabulous tales, pretend-
ing to be history, which extend back eight
hundred years further to the days of Solomon ;
so that a much longer portion of the story of
that extraordinary island comes before than
since the days of Alfred. In respect, however
to all that pertains to the interest and import-
ance of the narrative, the exploits and the ar-
rangements of Alfred are the beginning.

B.C. 800.] THE BRITONS. 15

Tradition. The Trojan war. Adventures of jEneas

The histories, in fact, of all nations, ancient
and modern, run back always into misty regions
of romance and fable. Before arts and letters
arrived at such a state of progress as that pub-
lic events could be recorded in writing, tradi-
tion was the only means of handing down the
memory of events from generation to genera-
tion ; and tradition, among semi-savages, chang-
es every thing it touches into romantic and
marvelous fiction.

The stories connected with the earliest dis-
covery and settlement of Great Britain afford
very good illustrations of the nature of these
fabulous tales. The following may serve as a
specimen :

At the close of the Trojan war,* JEneas re-
tired with a company of Trojans, who escaped
from the city with him, and, after a great vari-
ety of adventures, which Virgil has related, he
landed and settled in Italy. Here, in process
of tune, he had a grandson named Silvius, who
had a son named Brutus, Brutus being thus
^Eneas's great-grandson.

One day, while Brutus was hunting in the
forests, he accidentally killed his father with

* For some account of the circumstances connected witl1
this war, see our history of Alexander, chap**"- IT.

16 ALFRED THE GREAT. [B.C. 800.

Wanderings of Brntus. Singular treaty of peace.

an arrow. His father was at that time King
of Alba — a region of Italy near the spot on
which Rome was subsequently built — and the
accident brought Brutus under such suspicions,
and exposed him to such dangers, that he fled
from the country. After various wanderings
he at last reached Greece, where he collected a
number of Trojan followers, whom he found
roaming about the country, and formed them
into an army. With this half-savage force he
attacked a king of the country named Pandra-
sus. Brutus was successful in the war, and
Pandrasus was taken prisoner. This compel-*
led Pandrasus to sue for peace, and peace was
concluded on the following very extraordinary
terms :

Pandrasus was to give Brutus his daughter
Imogena for a wife, and a fleet of ships as her
dowry. Brutus, on the other hand, was to take
his wife and all his followers on board of his
fleet, and sail away and seek a home in some
other quarter of the globe. This plan of a mon-
arch's purchasing his own ransom and peace for
his realm from a band of roaming robbers, by
offering the leader of them his daughter for a
wife, however strange to our ideas, was very
nharacteristic of the times. Imogena must

E.G. 800.] THE BRITONS. 17

Brutus lands on a deserted Uland. Response of the oracle.

have found it a hard alternative to choose be-
tween such a husband and such a father.

Brutus, with his fleet and his bride, betook
themselves to sea, and within a short time
landed on a deserted island, where they found
the ruins of a city. Here there was an ancient
temple of Diana, and an image of the goddess,
which image was endued with the power of ut-
tering oracular responses to those who consult-
ed it with proper ceremonies and forms. Bru-
tus consulted this oracle on the question in
what land he should find a place of final settle-
ment. His address to it was in ancient verse,
which some chronicler has turned into English
rhyme as follows :

" Goddess of shades and huntress, who at will

Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep,
On thy third reign, the earth, look now and tell
What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek?"

To which the oracle returned the following
answer :

" Far to the west, in the ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul a land there lies —
Sea-girt it lies — where giants dwelt of old.
Now void, it fits thy people ; thither bend
Thy course ; there shall thou find a lasting home."

It is scarcely necessary to say that this meant
Britain. Brutus, following the directions which
B

18 ALFRED THE GREAT. [B.C. 800

Brutua passes the Pillars of Hercules. He lands in Britain.

the oracle had given him, set sail from the isl-
and, and proceeded to the westward through the
Mediterranean Sea. He arrived at the Pillars
of Hercules. This was the name by which the
Rock of Gibraltar and the corresponding prom-
ontory on the opposite coast, across the straits,
were called in those days ; these cliffs having
been built, according to ancient tales, by Her-
cules, as monuments set up to mark the ex-
treme limits of his western wanderings. Bru-
tus passed through the strait, and then, turning
northward, coasted along the shores of Spain.

At length, after enduring great privations
and suffering, and encountering the extreme
dangers to which their frail barks were neces-
sarily exposed from the surges which roll in
perpetually from the broad Atlantic Ocean upon
the coast of Spain and into the Bay of Biscay
they arrived safely on the shores of Britain.
They landed and explored the interior. They
found the island robed in the richest drapery of
fruitfulness and verdure, but it was unoccupied
by any thing human. There were wild beasts
roaming in the forests, and the remains of a
race of giants in dens and caves — monsters as
diverse from humanity as the wolves. Brutus
and his followers attacked all these occupants

B.C. 800.] THE BRITONS. 19

Giants and wild beasts. Situation and extent of Great Britain.

of the land. They drove the wild beasts into
the mountains of Scotland and Wales, and kill-
ed the giants. The chief of them, whose name
was Gogmagog, was hurled by one of Brutus's
followers from the summit of one of the chalky
cliffs which bound the island into the sea.

The island of Great Britain is in the latitude
of Labrador, which on our side of the continent
is the synonym for almost perpetual ice and
snow ; still these wandering Trojans found it a
region of inexhaustible verdure, fruitfulness,
and beauty ; and as to its extent, though often,
in modern times, called a little island, they
found its green fields and luxuriant forests ex-
tending very far and wide over the sea. A
length of nearly six hundred miles would seem
almost to merit the name of continent, and the
dimensions of this detached outpost of the hab-
itable surface of the earth would never have
been deemed inconsiderable, had it not been
that the people, by the greatness of their ex-
ploits, of which the whole world has been the
theater, have made the physical dimensions of
their territory appear so small and insignificant
in comparison. To Brutus and his companions
the land appeared a world. It was nearly four
hundred miles in breadth at the place whera

20 ALFRED THE GREAT. [B.C. 800

Fertility and beauty of the island. Successors of Brutus,

they landed, and, wandering northward, they
found it extending, in almost undiminished
beauty and fruitfulness, further than they had
the disposition to explore it. They might have
gone northward until the twilight scarcely dis-
appeared in the summer nights, and have found
the same verdure and beauty continuing to the
end. There were broad and undulating plains
in the southern regions of the island, and in the
northern, green mountains and romantic glens ;
but all, plains, valleys, and mountains, were fer-
tile and beautiful, and teeming with abundant
sustenance for flocks, for herds, and for man.

Brutus accordingly established himself upon
the island with all his followers, and founded a
Kingdom there, over which he reigned as the
founder of a dynasty. Endless tales are told of
the lives, and exploits, and quarrels of his suc-
cessors down to the time of Caesar. Conflict-
ing claimants arose continually to dispute with
each other for the possession of power ; wars
were made by one tribe upon another; cities,
as they were called — though probably, in fact,
they were only rude collections of hovels — were
built, fortresses were founded, and rivers were
named from princes or princesses drowned in
them, in accidental journeys, or by the violence

B.C. 800.] THE BRITONS. 21

Tales and legends. The story of King Lear.

of rival claimants to their thrones. The pre-
tended records contain a vast number of le-
gends, of very little interest or value, as the
reader will readily admit when we tell him that
the famous story of King Lear is the most en-
tertaining one in the whole collection. It is this :

There was a king in the line named Lear.
He founded the city now called Leicester. He
had three daughters, whose names were Gonil-
la, Regana, and Cordiella. Cordiella was her
father's favorite child. He was, however, jeal-
ous of the affections of them all, and one day
he called them to him, and asked them for some
assurance of their love. The two eldest re-
sponded by making the most extravagant prot-
estations. They loved their father a thousand
times better than their own souls. They could
not express, they said, the ardor and strength
of their attachment, and called Heaven and
earth to witness that these protestations were
sincere.

Cordiella, all this tune, stood meekly and si-
lently by, and when her father asked her how
it was with her, she replied, "Father, my love
toward you is as my duty bids. What can a
father ask, or a daughter promise more ? They
who pretend beyond this only flatter."

22 ALFRED THE GREAT. [B.C. 800.

Honest truth and empty professions. Ingratitude of Lear's daughters.

The king, who was old and childish, was
much pleased with the manifestation of love of-
fered by Gonilla and Regana, and thought that
the honest Cordiella was heartless and cold.
He treated her with greater and greater neg-
lect, and finally decided to leave her without
any portion whatever, while he divided his
kingdom between the other two, having pre-
viously married them to princes of high rank.
Cordiella was, however, at last made choice of
for a wife by a French prince, who, it seems,
knew better than the old king how much more
to be relied upon was unpretending and honest
truth than empty and extravagant profession.
He married the portionless Cordiella, and took
her with him to the Continent.

The old king now having given up his king-
dom to his eldest daughters, they managed, by
artifice and maneuvering, to get every thing
else awav from him, so that he became wholly
dependent upon them, and had to live with
them by turns. This was not all ; for, at the
instigation of their husbands, they put so many
indignities and affronts upon him, that his life
at length became an intolerable burden, and
finally he was compelled to leave the realm al-
together, and in his destitution and distress he

AD. 63.] THE BRITONS. 23

Julius Caesar. His conquest of Great Britain.

went for refuge and protection to his rejected
daughter Cordiella. She received her father
with the greatest alacrity and affection. She
raised an army to restore him to his rights, and
went in person with him to England to assist
him in recovering them. She was successful.
The old king took possession of his throne again,
and reigned in peace for the remainder of his
days. The story is of itself nothing very re-
markable, though Shakspeare has immortalized
it by making it the subject of one of his trag-
edies.

Centuries passed away, and at length the
great Julius Caesar, who was extending the
Roman power in every direction, made his way
across the Channel, and landed in England.
The particulars of this invasion are described
in our history of Julius Caesar. The Romans
retained possession of the island, in a greater or
less degree, for four hundred years.

They did not, however, hold it in peace all
this time. They became continually involved
in difficulties and contests with the native Brit-
ons, who could ill brook the oppressions of such
merciless masters as Roman generals always
proved in the provinces which they pretended
to govern. One of the most formidable rebel 1-

24 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.63

Queen Boadicea. Her person and character.

ions that the Romans had to encounter during
their disturbed and troubled sway in Britain
was led on by a woman. Her name was Boa-
dicea. Boadicea, like almost all other heroines,
was coarse and repulsive in appearance. She
was tall and masculine in form. The tones of
her voice were harsh, and she had the counte-
nance of a savage. Her hair was yellow. It
might have been beautiful if it had been neatly
arranged, and had shaded a face which possess-
ed the gentle expression that belongs properly
to woman. It would then have been called
golden. As it was, hanging loosely below her
waist and streaming in the wind, it made the
wearer only look the more frightful. Still, Bo-
adicea was not by any means indifferent to the
appearance she made in the eyes of beholders.
She evinced her desire to make a favorable im-
pression upon others, in her own peculiar way,
it is true, but in one which must have been ef-
fective, considering what sort of beholders they
were in whose eyes she figured. She was
dressed in a gaudy coat, wrought of various col-
ors, with a sort of mantle buttoned over it. She
wore a great gold chain about her neck, and
held an ornamented spear in her hand. Thus
equipped, she appeared at the head of an army

A.D.63.] THE BRITONS. 25

Death of Boadicea. Final subjugation of the Britons.

of a hundred thousand men, and gathering them
around her, she ascended a mound of earth and
harangued them — that is, as many as could
stand within reach of her voice — arousing them
to sentiments of revenge against their hated op-
pressors, and urging them to the highest pitch
of determination and courage for the approach-
ing struggle. Boadicea had reason to deem the
Romans her implacable foes. They had robbed
her of her treasures, deprived her of her king-
dom, imprisoned her, scourged her, and inflict-
ed the worst possible injuries upon her daugh-
ters. These things had driven the wretched
mother to a perfect phrensy of hate, and arous-
ed her to this desperate struggle for redress and
revenge. But all was in vain. In encounter-
ing the spears of Roman soldiery, she was en-
countering the very hardest and sharpest steel
that a cruel world could furnish. Her army
was conquered, and she killed herself by taking
poison in her despair.

By struggles such as these the contest be-
tween the Romans and the Britons was carried
on for many generations ; the Romans conquer-
ing at every trial, until, at length, the Britons
learned to submit without further resistance to
their sway. In fact, there gradually came upon

26 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 200.

The Picts and Scots. Their depredations.

the stage, during the progress of these centu-
ries, a new power, acting as an enemy to both,
the Picts and Scots ; hordes of lawless barba-
rians, who inhabited the mountains and mo-
rasses of Scotland and Ireland. These terrible
savages made continual irruptions into the
southern country for plunder, burning and de-
stroying, as they retired, whatever they could
not carry away. They lived in impregnable
and almost inaccessible fastnesses, among dark
glens and precipitous mountains, and upon
gloomy islands surrounded by iron-bound coasts
and stormy seas. The Roman legions made
repeated attempts to hunt them out of these re-
treats, but with very little success. At length
a line of fortified posts was established across
the island, near where the boundary line now
lies between England and Scotland ; and by
guarding this line, the Roman generals who
had charge of Britain attempted to protect the
inhabitants of the southern country, who had
learned at length to submit peaceably to their
sway.

One of the most memorable events which oc-
curred during the time that the Romans held
possession of the island of Britain was the visit
of one of the emperors to this northern extrem-

AD. 206.] THE BRITONS 27

Visit of the Emperor Severus. His dissolute BODS.

ity of his dominions. The name of this em-
peror was Severus. He was powerful and pros-
perous at home, but his life was embittered by
one great calamity, the dissolute character and
the perpetual quarrels of his sons. To remove
them from Rome, where they disgraced both
themselves and their father by their vicious
lives, and the ferocious rivalry and hatred they
bore to each other, Severus planned an excur-
sion to Britain, taking them with him, in the
hope of turning their minds into new channels
of thought, and awakening in them some new
and nobler ambition.

At the time when Severus undertook this
expedition, he was advanced in age and very
infirm. He suffered much from the gout, so
that he was unable to travel by any ordinary
conveyance, and was borne, accordingly, almost
all the way upon a litter. He crossed the Chan-
nel with his army, and, leaving one of his sons
in command in the south part of the island, he
advanced with the other, at the head of an enor-
mous force, determined to push boldly forward
into the heart of Scotland, and to bring the war
with the Picts and Scots to an effectual end.

He met, however, with very partial success,
His soldiers became entangled in bogs and mo-

25 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 206

Base conduct of Bassianus. His interview with his father.

rasses ; they fell into ambuscades ; they suffer-
ed every degree of privation and hardship for
want of water and of food, and were continually
entrapped by their enemies in situations where
they had to fight in small numbers and at a
great disadvantage. Then, too, the aged and
feeble general was kept in a continual fever of
anxiety and trouble by Bassianus, the son whom
he had brought with him to the north. The
dissoluteness and violence of his character were
not changed by the change of scene. He form-
ed plots and conspiracies against his father's
authority ; he raised mutinies in the army ; he
headed riots ; and he was finally detected in a
plan for actually assassinating his father. Se-
verus, when he discovered this last enormity of
wickedness, sent for his son to come to his im-
perial tent. He laid a naked sword before him,
and then, after bitterly reproaching him with
his undutiful and ungrateful conduct, he said,
" If you wish to kill me, do it now. Here I
stand, old, infirm, and helpless. You are young
and strong, and can do it easily. I am ready
Strike the blow."

Of course Bassianus shrunk from his father's
reproaches, and went away without commit-
ting the crime to which he was thus reproach-

A..D.206.] THE BRITONS. 29

Peace w:Jh the Picts and Scots. The Wall of Severus.

fully invited ; but his character remained un-
changed; and this constant trouble, added to
all the other difficulties which Severus encoun-
tered, prevented his accomplishing his object of
thoroughly conquering his northern foes. He
made a sort of peace with them, and retiring
south to the line of fortified posts which had
been previously established, he determined to
make it a fixed and certain boundary by build-
ing upon it a permanent wall. He put the
whole force of his army upon the work, and in
one or two years, as is said, he completed the
structure. It is known in history as the Wall
of Severus ; and so solid, substantial, and per-
manent was the work, that the traces of it have
not entirely disappeared to the present day.

The wall extended across the island, from the
mouth of the Tyne, on the German Ocean, to
the Solway Frith — nearly seventy miles. It
was twelve feet high, and eight feet wide. It
was faced with substantial masonry on both
sides, the intermediate space being likewise fill-
ed in with stone. When it crossed bays or mo-
rasses, piles were driven to serve as a founda-
tion. Of course, such a wall as this, by itself,
would be no defense. It was to be garrisoned
by soldiers, being intended, in fact, only as a

30 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 206.

Stations. Castles. Turrets. Ditch. Military road.

means to enable a smaller number of troops
than would otherwise be necessary to guard the
line. For these soldiers there were built great
fortresses at intervals along the wall, wherever
a situation was found favorable for such struct-
ures. These were called stations. The sta-
tions were occupied by garrisons of troops, and
small towns of artificers and laborers soon
sprung up around them. Between the stations,
at smaller intervals, were other smaller fortress-
es called castles, intended as places of defense,
and rallying points in case of an attack, but not
for garrisons of any considerable number of
men. Then, between the castles, at smaller
intervals still, were turrets, used as watch-tow-
ers and posts for sentinels. Thus the whole
line of the wall was every where defended by
armed men. The whole number thus employ-
ed in the defense of this extraordinary rampart
was said to be ten thousand. There was a
broad, deep, and continuous ditch on the north-
ern side of the wall, to make the impediment
still greater for the enemy, and a spacious and
well-constructed military road on the southern
side, on which troops, stores, wagons, and bag-
gage of every kind could be readily transported
along the line, from one end to the other.

AD. 435.] THE BRITONS. 33

Decline of the Roman empire. Distress of the Britons.

The wall was a good defense as long as Ro-
man soldiers remained to guard it. But in pro-
cess of time — about two centuries after Seve-
rus's day — the Roman empire itself began to
decline, even in the very seat and center of its
power ; and then, to preserve their own capital
from destruction, the government were obliged
to call their distant armies home. The wall
was left to the Britons ; but they could not de-
fend it. The Picts and Scots, finding out the-
change, renewed their assaults. They battered
down the castles ; they made breaches here and
there in the wall ; they built vessels, and, pass-
ing round by sea across the mouth of the Sol-
way Frith and of the River Tyne, they renew-
ed their old incursions for plunder and destruc-
tion. The Britons, in extreme distress, sent
again and again to recall the Romans to their
aid, and they did, in fact, receive from them
some occasional and temporary succor. At
length, however, all hope of help from this
quarter failed, and the Britons, finding their
condition desperate, were compelled to resort to
a desperate remedy, the nature of which will
be explained in the next chapter.
C

34 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.449

Constitutional and connate differences among men.

CHAPTER II.
THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

ANY one who will look around upon the
families of his acquaintance will observe
that family characteristics and resemblances
prevail not only in respect to stature, form, ex-
pression of countenance, and other outward and
bodily tokens, but also in regard to the consti-
tutional temperaments and capacities of the
soul. Sometimes we find a group in which
high intellectual powers and great energy of
action prevail for many successive generations,
and in all the branches into which the original
stock divides ; in other cases, the hereditary
tendency is to gentleness and harmlessness of
character, with a full development of all the
feelings and sensibilities of the soul. Others,
again, exhibit congenital tendencies to great
physical strength and hardihood, and to powers
of muscular exertion and endurance. These
differences, notwithstanding all the exceptions
and irregularities connected with them, are ob-
viously, where they exist, deeply seated and

A.D.449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 35

Characteristics of nations. Five great race*

permanent. They depend very slightly upon
any mere external causes. They have, on the
contrary, their foundation in some hidden prin-
ciples connected with the origin of life, and
with the mode of its transmission from parent
to offspring, which the researches of philoso-
phers have never yet been able to explore.

These same constitutional and congenital pe-
culiarities which we see developing themselves
all around us in families, mark, on a greater-
scale, the characteristics of the different nations
of the earth, and in a degree much higher still,
the several great and distinct races into which
the whole human family seems to be divided.
Physiologists consider that there are five of
these great races, whose characteristics, mental
as well as bodily, are distinctly, strongly, and
permanently marked. These characteristics
descend by hereditary succession from father to
son, and though education and outward influ-
ences may modify them, they can not essen-
tially change them. Compare, for example, the
Indian and the African races, each of which has
occupied for a thousand years a continent of
its own, where they have been exposed to the
same variety of climates, and as far as possible
to the same general outward influences. How

36 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 449

Differences of races. The Caucasians.

entirely diverse from each other they are, not
only in form, color, and other physical marks,
but in all the tendencies and characteristics of
the soul ! One can no more be changed into
the other, than a wolf, by being tamed and do-
mesticated, can be made a dog, or a dog, by
being driven into the forests, be transformed
into a tiger. The difference is still greater be-
tween either of these races and the Caucasian
race. This race might probably be called the
European race, were it not that some Asiatic
and some African nations have sprung from it,
as the Persians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians,
the Carthaginians, and, in modern times, the
Turks. All the nations of this race, whether
European or African, have been distinguished
by the same physical marks in the conformation
of the head and the color of the skin, and still
more by those traits of character — the intellect,
the energy, the spirit of determination and pride
— which, far from owing their existence to out-
ward circumstances, have always, in all ages,
made all outward circumstances bend to them.
That there have been some great and noble spec-
imens of humanity among the African race, for
example, no one can deny ; but that there is a
marked, and fixed, and permanent constitution-

A.D.449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 37

Civilization of the Caucasians. Their permanency.

al difference between them and the Caucasian
race seems evident from this fact, that for two
thousand years each has held its own continent,
undisturbed, in a great degree, by the rest of
mankind ; and while, during all this time, no
nation of the one race has risen, so far as is
known, above the very lowest stage of civiliza-
tion, there have been more .than fifty entirely
distinct and independent civilizations origina-
ted and fully developed in the other. For three
thousand years the Caucasian race have con-
tinued, under all circumstances, and in every
variety of situation, to exhibit the same traits
and the same indomitable prowess. No calami-
ties, however great — no desolating wars, no de-
structive pestilence, no wasting famine, no night
of darkness, however universal and gloomy —
has ever been able to keep them long in degra-
dation or barbarism. There is not now a bar-
barous people to be found in the whole race, and
there has not been one for a thousand years.

Nearly all the great exploits, and achieve-
ments too, which have signalized the history of
the world, have been performed by this branch
of the human family. They have given celeb-
rity to every age in which they have lived, and
to every country that they have ever possessed,

38 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 449.

Achievements of the Caucasians. Ancient and modern Caucasians.

by some great deed, or discovery, or achieve-
ment, which their intellectual energies have ac-
complished. As Egyptians, they built the Pyr-
amids, and reared enormous monoliths, which
remain as perfect now as they were when first
completed, thirty centuries ago. As Phoeni-
cians, they constructed ships, perfected naviga-
tion, and explored, without compass or chart,
every known sea. As Greeks, they modeled
architectural embellishments, and cut sculpt-
ures in marble, and wrote poems and history,
which have been ever since the admiration of
the world. As Romans, they carried a com-
plete and perfect military organization over fifty
nations and a hundred millions of people, with
one supreme mistress over all, the ruins of
whose splendid palaces and monuments have
not yet passed away. Thus has this race gone
on, always distinguishing itself, by energy, ac-
tivity, and intellectual power, wherever it has
dwelt, whatever language it has spoken, and in
whatever period of the world it has lived. It
has invented printing, and filled every country
that it occupies with permanent records of the
past, accessible to all. It has explored the
heavens, and reduced to precise and exact cal-
culations all the complicated motions there. It

A.D. 449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. • 39

Subordinate differences. How accounted for.

has ransacked the earth, systematized, arrang-
ed, and classified the vast melange of plants,
and animals, and mineral products to be found
upon its surface. It makes steam and falling
water do more than half the work necessary for
feeding and clothing the human race ; and the
howling winds of the ocean, the very emblems
of resistless destruction and terror, it steadily
employs in interchanging the products of the
world, and bearing the means of comfort and
plenty to every clime.

The Caucasian race has thus, in all ages,
and in all the varieties of condition in which
the different branches of it have been placed,
evinced the same great characteristics, mark-
ing the existence of some innate and constant
constitutional superiority ; and yet, in the dif-
ferent branches, subordinate differences appear,
which are to be accounted for, perhaps, partly
by difference of circumstances, and partly, per-
haps, by similar constitutional diversities— di-
versities by which one branch is distinguished
from other branches, as the whole race is from
the other races with which we have compared
them. Among these branches, we, Anglo-Sax-
ons ourselves, claim for the Anglo-Saxons the
superiority over all the others.

40 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.449

The Anglo-Saxons. Their early qualities

The Anglo- Saxons commenced their career
as pirates and robbers, and as pirates and rob-
bers of the most desperate and dangerous de-
scription. In fact, the character which the An-
glo-Saxons have obtained in modern times for
energy and enterprise, and for desperate daring
in their conflicts with foes, is no recent fame.
The progenitors of the present race were cele-
brated every where, and every where feared
and dreaded, not only in the days of Alfred, but
several centuries before. All the historians of
those days that speak of them at all, describe
them as universally distinguished above their
neighbors for their energy and vehemence of
character, their mental and physical superior-
ity, and for the wild and daring expeditions to
which their spirit of enterprise and activity were
continually impelling them. They built ves-
sels, in which they boldly put forth on the wa-
ters of the German Ocean or of the Baltic Sea
on excursions for conquest or plunder. Like
then' present posterity on the British isles and
on the shores of the Atlantic, they cared not, in
these voyages, whether it was summer or whi-
ter, calm or storm. In fact, they sailed often
in tempests and storms by choice, so as to come
apon their enemies the more unexpectedly

SAXON MILITABT CHMF.

A.D.449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 43

Courage and enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons. Their nautical exploits.

They would build small vessels, or rather boats,
of osiers, covering them with skins, and in
fleets of these frail floats they would sally forth
among the howling winds and foaming surges
of the German Ocean. On these expeditions,
they all embarked as in a common cause, and
felt a common interest. The leaders shared in
all the toils and exposures of the men, and the
men took part in the counsels and plans of the
leaders. Their intelligence and activity, and
their resistless courage and ardor, combined
with their cool and calculating sagacity, made
them successful in every attempt. If they
fought, they conquered ; if they pursued their
enemies, they were sure to overtake them ; if
they retreated, they were sure to make their
escape. They were clothed in a loose and flow-
ing dress, and wore their hair long and hang-
ing about their shoulders ; and they had the
art, as their descendants have now, of contriv-
ing and fabricating arms of such superior con-
struction and workmanship, as to give them,
on this account alone, a great advantage over
all cotemporary nations. There were two other
points in which there was a remarkable simi-
larity between this parent stock in its rude, ear-
ly form, and the extended social progeny which

44 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 449

Conjugal fidelity. Pride and love of power.

represents it at the present day. One was the
extreme strictness of their ideas of conjugal
fidelity, and the stern and rigid severity with
which all violations of female virtue were judg-
ed. The woman who violated her marriage
vows was compelled to hang herself. Her body
was then burned in public, and the accomplice
of her crime was executed over the ashes. The
other point of resemblance between the ancient
Anglo-Saxons and their modern descendants
was their indomitable pride. They could never
endure any thing like submission. Though
sometimes overpowered, they were never con-
quered. Though taken prisoners and carried
captive, the indomitable spirit which animated
them could never be really subdued. The Ro-
mans used sometimes to compel their prisoners
to fight as gladiators, to make spectacles for
the amusement of the people of the city. On
one occasion, thirty Anglo-Saxons, who had
been taken captive and were reserved for this
fate, strangled themselves rather than submit
to this indignity. The whole nation manifest-
ed on all occasions a very unbending and un-
submissive will, encountering every possible
danger and braving every conceivable ill rath-
er than succumb or submit to any power ex-

A.D.449.J THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 45

Landing of the Anglo-Saxons. Commencement of English history

cept such as they had themselves created for
their own ends ; and their descendants, wheth-
er in England or America, evince much the
same spirit still.

It was the landing of a few boat-loads of these
determined and ferocious barbarians on a small
island near the mouth of the Thames, which
constitutes the great event of the arrival of the
Anglo-Saxons in England, which is so celebrat-
ed in English history as the epoch which marks
the real and true beginning of British great-
ness and power. It is true that the history of
England goes back beyond this period to nar-
rate, as we have done, the events connected
with the contests of the Romans and the abo-
riginal Britons, and the incursions and maraud-
ings of the Picts and Scots ; but all these abo-
rigines passed gradually — after the arrival of
the Anglo-Saxons — off the stage. The old
stock was wholly displaced. The present mon-
archy has sprung entirely from its Anglo-Saxon
original ; so that all which precedes the arrival
of this new race is introductory and preliminary,
like the history, in this country, of the native
American tribes before the coming of the En-
glish Pilgrims. As, therefore, the landing of
the Pilgrims on the Plymouth Rock marks the

46 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 449.

The three ships. Number of adventurers.

true commencement of the history of the Amer-
ican Republic, so that of the Anglo-Saxon ad-
venturers on the island of Thanet represents
and marks the origin of the British monarchy.
The event, therefore, stands as a great and
conspicuous landmark, though now dim and
distant in the remote antiquity in which it oc-
curred.

And yet the event, though so wide-reaching
and grand in its bearings and relations, and in
the vast consequences which have flowed and
which still continue to flow from it, was appa-
rently a minute and unimportant circumstance
at the time when it occurred. There were only
three vessels at the first arrival. Of their size
and character the accounts vary. Some of
these accounts say they contained three hund-
red men ; others seem to state that the number
which arrived at the first landing was three
thousand. This, however, would seem impos-
sible, as no three vessels built in those days
could convey so large a number. We must
suppose, therefore, that that number is meant
to include those who came at several of the ear
lier expeditions, and which were grouped by
the historian together, or else that several other
vessels or transports accompanied the three,

A.JX449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 47

Vessels of the Anglo-Saxons. Hen gist and Horsa

which history has specially commemorated as
the first arriving.

In fact, very little can now be known in re-
spect to the form and capacity of the vessels in
which these half-barbarous navigators roamed,
in those days, over the British seas. Their
name, indeed, has come down to us, and that
is nearly all. They were called cyules; though
the name is sometimes spelled, in the ancient
chronicles, ceols, and in other ways. They
were obviously vessels of considerable capacity,
and were of such construction and such strength
as to stand the roughest marine exposures.
They were accustomed to brave fearlessly ev-
ery commotion and to encounter every danger,
raised either by winter tempests or summer
gales in the restless waters of the German
Ocean.

The names of the commanders who headed
the expedition which first landed have been pre-
served, and they have acquired, as might have
been expected, a very wide celebrity. They
were Hengist and Horsa. Hengist and Horsa
were brothers.

The place where they landed was the island
of Thanet. Thanet is a tract of land at tho
mouth of the Thames, on the southern side ; a

48 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.449.

The place of landing. The island of Thanet

sort of promontory extending into the sea, and
forming the cape at the south side of the estu-
ary made by the mouth of the river. The ex-
treme point of land is called the North Fore-
land, which, as it is the point that thousands of
vessels, coming out of the Thames, have to
round in proceeding southward on voyages to
France, to the Mediterranean, to the Indies,
and to America, is very familiarly known to
navigators throughout the world. The island
of Thanet, of which this North Foreland is the
extreme point, ought scarcely to be called an
island, since it forms, in fact, a portion of the
main land, being separated from it only by a
narrow creek or stream, which in former ages,
indeed, was wide and navigable, but is now
nearly choked up and obliterated by the sands
and the sediment, which, after being brought
down by the Thames, are driven into the creek
by the surges of the sea.

In the time of Hengist and Horsa the creek
was so considerable that its mouth furnished a
sufficient harbor for their vessels. They landed
at a town called Ebbs-fleet, which is now, how-
ever, at some distance inland.

There is some uncertainty in respect to the
motive which led Hengist and Horsa to make

A.D 449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 49

Objects of Hengist and Horsa. Vortigem.

their first descent upon the English coast.
Whether they came on one of their customary
piratical expeditions, or were driven on the
coast accidentally by stress of weather, or were
invited to come by the British king, can not
now be accurately ascertained. Such parties
of Anglo-Saxons had undoubtedly often landed
before under somewhat similar circumstances,
and then, after brief incursions into the interior,
had re-embarked on board their ships and sailed
away. In this case, however, there was a cer-
tain peculiar and extraordinary state of things
in the political condition of the country in which
they had landed, which resulted in first protract-
ing their stay, and finally in establishing them
so fixedly and permanently in the land, that
they and their followers and descendants soon
became the entire masters of it, and have re-
mained in possession to the present day. These
circumstances were as follows :

The name of the king of Britain at this peri-
od was Vortigern. At the time when the An-
glo-Saxons arrived, he and his government were
nearly overwhelmed with the pressure of diffi-
culty and danger arising from the incursion^ of
the Picts and Scots ; and Vortigern, instead of
being aroused to redoubled vigilance and energy

50 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.449

Character of Vortigern. He seeks the assistance of the Anglo-Saxons.

by the imminence of the danger, as Alfred aft-
erward was in similar circumstances, sank
down, as weak minds always do, in despair,
and gave himself up to dissipation and vice-
endeavoring, like depraved seamen on a wreck,
to drown his mental distress in animal sensa-
tions of pleasure. Such men are ready to seek
relief or rescue from their danger from any
quarter and at any price. Vortigern, instead
of looking upon the Anglo-Saxon intruders as
new enemies, conceived the idea of appealing
to them for succor. He offered to convey to
them a large tract of territory in the part of the
island where they had landed, on condition of
their aiding him in his contests with his other
foes.

Hengist and Horsa acceded to this proposal.
They marched their followers into battle, and
defeated Vortigern's enemies. They sent across
the sea to their native land, and invited new ad-
venturers to join them. Vortigern was greatly
pleased with the success of his expedient. The
Picts and Scots were driven back to their fast-
nesses in the remote mountains of the north,
and the Britons once more possessed their land
in peace, by means of the protection and the
aid which their new confederates afforded them.

AD. 449.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 51

Increase of the Anglo-Saxons. Story of Rowena.

In the mean time the Anglo-Saxons were
establishing and strengthening themselves very
rapidly in the part of the island which Vorti-
gern had assigned them — which was, as the
reader will understand from what has already
been said in respect to the place of their land-
ing, the southeastern part — a region which now
constitutes the county of Kent. In addition,
too, to the natural increase of their power from
the increase of their numbers and their military
force, Hengist contrived, if the story is true, to
swell his own personal influence by means of a
matrimonial alliance which he had the adroit-
ness to effect. He had a daughter named Row-
ena. She was very beautiful and accomplish-
ed. Hengist sent for her to come to England.
When she had arrived he made a sumptuous
entertainment for King Vortigern, inviting also
to it, of course, many other distinguished
guests. In the midst of the feast, when the
king was in the state of high excitement pro-
duced on such temperaments by wine and con
vivial pleasure, Rowena came in to offer him
more wine. Vortigern was powerfully struck,
as Hengist had anticipated, with her grace and
beauty. Learning that she was Hengist's
daughter, he demanded her hand. Hengist a1

52 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.449.

Power of Hengist and Horsa. Long contests.

first declined, but, after sufficiently stimulating
the monarch's eagerness by his pretended oppo-
sition, he yielded, and the king became the gen-
eral's son-in-law. This is the story which some
of the old chroniclers tell. Modern historians
are divided in respect to believing it. Some
think it is fact, others fable.

At all events, the power of Hengist and Hor-
sa gradually increased, as years passed on, until
the Britons began to be alarmed at their grow-
ing strength and multiplying numbers, and to
fear lest these new friends should prove, in the
end, more formidable than the terrible enemies
whom they had come to expel. Contentions
and then open quarrels began to occur, and at
length both parties prepared for war. The con-
test which soon ensued was a terrible struggle,
or rather series' of struggles, which continued
for two centuries, during which the Anglo-Sax-
ons were continually gaining ground and the
Britons losing; the mental and physical supe-
riority of the Anglo-Saxon race giving them,
with very few exceptions, every where and al-
ways the victory.

There were, occasionally, intervals of peace,
and partial and temporary friendliness. They
accuse Hengist of great treachery on one of

A.D. 530.] THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 53

Hengist accused of treachery. Exploits of King Arthur.

these occasions. He invited his son-in-law,
King Vortigern, to a feast, with three hundred
of his officers, and then fomenting a quarrel at
the entertainment, the Britons were all killed
in the affray by means of the superior Saxon
force which had been provided for the emer-
gency. Vortigern himself was taken prisoner,
and held a captive until he ransomed himself
by ceding three whole provinces to his captor.
-Hengist justified this demand by throwing the
responsibility of the feud upon his guests ; and
it is not, in fact, at all improbable that they
deserved their share of the condemnation.

The famous King Arthur, whose Knights of
the Round Table have been so celebrated in
ballads and tales, lived and flourished during
these wars between the Saxons and the Britons.
He was a king of the Britons, and performed
wonderful exploits of strength and valor. He
was of prodigious size and muscular power, and
of undaunted bravery. He slew giants, de-
stroyed the most ferocious wild beasts, gained
very splendid victories in the battles that he
fought, made long expeditions into foreign coun-
tries, having once gone on a pilgrimage to Je-
rusalem to obtain the Holy Cross. His wife
was a beautiful lady, the daughter of a chieftain

54 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AJX 530.

Death of Arthur. His contests with the Saxons

of Cornwall. Her name was Guenever.* On
his return from one of his distant expeditions,
he found that his nephew, Medrawd, had Won
her affections while he was gone, and a combat
ensued in consequence between him and Me-
drawd. The combat took place on the coast of
Cornwall. Both parties fell. Arthur was mor-
tally wounded. They took him from the field
into a boat, and carried him along the coast till
they came to a river. They ascended the river
till they came to the town of Glastonbury.
They committed the still breathing body to the
care of faithful friends there ; but the mortal
blow had been given. The great hero died, and
they buried his body in the Glastonbury church-
yard, very deep beneath the surface of the
ground, in order to place it as effectually as
possible beyond the reach of Saxon rage and
vengeance. Arthur had been a deadly and im-
placable foe to the Saxons. He had fought
twelve great pitched battles with them, in every
one of which he had gained the victory. In one
of these battles he had slain, according to the
traditional tale, four hundred and seventy men,
in one day, with his own hand.

Five hundred years after his death, King

* Spelled sometimes Gwenlyfar and Ginevra.

A.D.530.J THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 55

King Arthur's grave. Disinterment of his body.

Henry the Second, having heard from an an-
cient British bard that Arthur's body lay inter-
red in the Abbey of Glastonbury, and that the
spot was marked by some small pyramids erect-
ed near it, and that the body would be found in
a rude coffin made of a hollowed oak, ordered
search to be made. The ballads and tales
which had been then, for several centuries, cir-
culating throughout England, narrating and
praising King Arthur's exploits, had given him
so wide a fame, that great interest was felt in
the recovery and the identification of his re-
mains. The searchers found the pyramids' in
the cemetery of the abbey. They dug between
them, and came at length to a stone. Beneath
this stone was a leaden cross, with the inscrip-
tion in Latin, " HERE LIES BURIED THE BODY OF
GREAT KING ARTHUR." Going down still below
this, they came at length, at the depth of six-
teen feet from the surface, to a great coffin,
made of the trunk of an oak tree, and within it
was a heman skeleton of unusual size. The
skull was very large, and showed marks of ten
wounds. Nine of them were closed by concre-
tions of the bone, indicating that the wounds by
which those contusions or fractures had been
made had been healed while life continued.

56 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 530

Bones of Arthur's wife. Historic doubts.

The tenth fracture remained in a condition
which showed that that had been the mortal
wound.

The bones of Arthur's wife were found near
those of her husband. The hair was apparent-
ly perfect when found, having all the freshness
and beauty of life ; but a monk of the abbey,
who was present at the disinterment, touched
it and it crumbled to dust.

Such are the tales which the old chronicles
tell of the good King Arthur, the last and great-
est representative of the power of the ancient
British aborigines. It is a curious illustration
of the uncertainty which attends all the early
records of national history, that, notwithstand-
ing all the above particularity respecting the
life and death of Arthur, it is a serious matter
of dispute among the learned in modern times
whether any such person ever lived.

A.D. 450-850.] THE DANES. 57

Final subjugation of the Britons. The Saxon Heptarchj

CHAPTER III.
THE DANES.

FI1HE landing of Hengist and Horsa, the first
-•• of the Anglo-Saxons, took place in the year
449, according to the comnKjaly received chro-
nology. It was more than two hundred years
after this before the Britons were entirely sub-
dued, and the Saxon authority established
throughout the island, unquestioned and su-
preme. One or two centuries more passed
away, and then the Anglo-Saxons had, in their
turn, to resist a new horde of invaders, who
came, as they themselves had done, across the
German Ocean. These new invaders were the
Danes.

The Saxons were not united under one gen-
eral government when they came finally to get
settled in their civil polity. The English ter-
ritory was divided, on the contrary, into seven
or eight separate kingdoms. These kingdoms
were ruled by as many separate dynasties, or
lines of kings. They were connected with each
other by friendly relations and alliances, more

58 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 450-&50.

Boldness and energy of the Saxons. Story of a Saxon princess.

or less intimate, the whole system being known
in history by the name of the Saxon Heptarchy.

The princes of these various dynasties show-
ed in their dealings with one another, and in
their relations with foreign powers, the same
characteristics of boldness and energy as had
always marked the action of the race. Even
the queens and princesses evinced, by their
courage and decision, that Anglo-Saxon blood
lost nothing of its inherent qualities by flowing
in female veins.

For example, a very extraordinary story is
told of one of these Saxon princesses. A cer-
tain king upon the Continent, whose dominions
lay between the Rhine and the German Oceau,
had proposed for her hand in behalf of his son,
whose name was Radiger. The consent of the
princess was given, and the contract closed.
The king himself soon afterward died, but be-
fore he died he changed his mind in respect to
the marriage of his son. It seems that he had
himself married a second wife, the daughter of
a king of the Franks, a powerful continental
people ; and as, in consequence of his own ap-
proaching death, his son would come unexpect-
edly into possession of the throne, and would
need immediately all the support which a pow-

A.D. 450-850.] THEDANES. 59

Faithlessness of Radiger. Indignation of the princess.

erful alliance could give him, he recommended
to him to give up the Saxon princess, and con-
nect himself, instead, with the Franks, as he
himself had done. The prince entered into
these views ; his father died, and he immedi-
ately afterward married his father's youthful
widow — his own step-mother — a union which,
however monstrous it would be regarded in our
day, seems not to have been considered any
thing very extraordinary then.

The Anglo-Saxon princess was very indig-
nant at this violation of his plighted faith on
the part of her suitor. She raised an army and
equipped a fleet, and set sail with the force
which she had thus assembled across the Ger-
man Ocean, to call the faithless Ra'diger to ac-
count. Her fleet entered the mouth of the
Rhine, and her troops landed, herself at the
head of them. She then divided her army into
two portions, keeping one division as a guard
for herself at her own encampment, which she
established near the place of her landing, while
sha sent the other portion to seek and attack
Radiger, who was, in the mean time, assem-
bling his forces, in a state of great alarm at this
sudden and unexpected danger.

In due time this division returned, reporting

60 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 450-850

Radiger a prisoner. He marries the princess.

that they had met and encountered Radiger,
and had entirely defeated him. They came
back triumphing in their victory, considering,
evidently, that the faithless lover had been well
punished for his offense. The princess, how-
ever, instead of sharing in their satisfaction,
ordered them to make a new incursion into the
interior, and not to return without bringing
Radiger with them as their prisoner. They
did so ; and after hunting the defeated and dis-
tressed king from place to place, they succeed-
ed, at last, in seizing him in a wood, and
brought him in to the princess's encampment.
He began to plead for his life, and to make ex-
cuses for the violation of his contract by urging
the necessities of his situation and his father's
dying commands. The princess said she was
ready to forgive him if he would now dismiss
her rival and fulfill his obligations to her. Rad-
iger yielded to this demand ; he repudiated his
Frank wife, and married the Anglo-Saxon lady
in her stead.

Though the Anglo-Saxon race continued thus
to evince in all their transactions the same ex-
traordinary spirit and energy, and met gener-
ally with the same success that had character-
ized them at the beginning, they seemed at

AD. 450-850.] THE!)ANES. 61

The Danes. Their habits and character

length to find their equals in the Danes. These
Danes, however, though generally designated
by that appellation in history, were not exclu-
sively the natives of Denmark. They came
from all the shores of the Northern and Baltic
Seas. In fact, they inhabited the sea rather
than the land. They were a race of bold and
fierce naval adventurers, as the Anglo-Saxons
themselves had been two centuries before.
Most extraordinary accounts are given of their
hardihood, and of their fierce and predatory
habits. They haunted the bays along the coasts
of Sweden and Norway, and the islands which
encumber the entrance to the Baltic Sea. They
were banded together in great hordes, each rul-
ed by a chieftain, who was called a sea king,
because his dominions scarcely extended at all
to the land. His possessions, his power, his
subjects pertained all to the sea. It is true
they built or bought their vessels on the shore,
and they sought shelter among the islands and
in the bays in tempests and storms ; but they
prided themselves in neve* dwelling in houses,
or sharing, in any way, the comforts or enjoy-
ments of the land. They made excursions ev-
ery where for conquest and plunder, and were
proud of their successful deeds of violence and

62 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 450-850.

Piratical habits of the Danes. Younger sons of nobles.

wrong. It was honorable to enter into their
service. Chieftains and nobles who dwelt upon
the land sent their sons to acquire greatness,
and wealth, and fame by joining these piratical
gangs, just as high-minded military or naval
officers, in modern times, would enter into the
service of an honorable government abroad.

Besides the great leaders of the most power-
ful of these bands, there was an infinite num-
ber of petty chieftains, who commanded single
ships or small detached squadrons. These were
generally the younger sons of sovereigns or
chieftains who lived upon the land, the elder
brothers remaining at home to inherit the
throne or the paternal inheritance. It was dis-
creditable then, as it is now in Europe, for any
branches of families of the higher class to en-
gage in any pursuit of honorable industry.
They could plunder and kill without dishonor,
but they could not toil. To rob and murder
was glory ; to do good or to be useful in any
way was disgrace.

These younger sons went to sea at a very
early age too. They were sent often at twelve,
that they might become early habituated to the
exposures and dangers of their dreadful com-
bats, and of the wintery storms, and inured to

A.D. 450-850.] THE!)ANES. 63

Piratical excursions. Booty and spoil

the athletic exertions which the sea rigorously
exacts of all who venture within her dominion.
When they returned they were received with
consideration and honor, or with neglect and
disgrace, according as they were more or less
laden with booty and spoil. In the summer
months the land kings themselves would organ-
ize and equip naval armaments for similar ex-
peditions. They would cruise along the coasts
of the sea, to land where they found an un-
guarded point, and sack a town or burn a cas-
tle, seize treasures, capture men and make them
slaves, kidnap women, and sometimes destroy
helpless children with their spears in a manner
too barbarous and horrid to be described. On
returning to their homes, they would perhaps
find their own castles burned and their own
dwellings roofless, from the visit of some sim-
ilar horde.

Thus the seas of western Europe were cov-
ered in those days, as they are now, with fleets
of shipping ; though, instead of being engaged,
as now, in the quiet and peaceful pursuits of
commerce, freighted with merchandise, manned
with harmless seamen, and welcome wherever
they come, they were then loaded only with
ammunition and arms, and crowded with fierce

64 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 450-850.

Ragnar Lodbrog. Harold Defeat of Ragnar.

and reckless robbers, the objects of universal
detestation and terror.

One of the first of these sea kings who ac-
quired sufficient individual distinction to be
personally remembered in history has given a
sort of immortality, by his exploits, to the very
rude name of Ragnar Lodbrog, and his charac-
ter was as rude as his name.

Ragnar's father was a prince of Norway.
He married, however, a Danish princess, and
thus Ragnar acquired a sort of hereditary right
to a Danish kingdom — the territory including
various islands and promontories at the en-
trance of the Baltic Sea. There was, however,
a competitor for this power, named Harald.
The Franks made common cause with Harald.
Ragnar was defeated and driven away from the
land. Though defeated, however, he was not
subdued. He organized a naval force, and
made himself a sea king. His operations on
the stormy element of the seas were conducted
with so much decision and energy, and at the
same time with so much system and plan, that
his power rapidly extended. He brought the
other sea kings under his control, and establish-
ed quite a maritime empire. He made more
and more distant excursions, and at last, in OT»

A.D. 450-850.] THE DANES. 67

Ragnar invades France. Incursions into Spain.

der to avenge himself upon the Franks for their
interposition in behalf of his enemy at home,
he passed through the Straits of Dover, and
thence down the English Channel to the mouth
of the Seine. He ascended this river to Rouen,
and there landed, spreading throughout the
country the utmost terror and dismay. From
Rouen he marched to Paris, finding no force
able to resist him on his way, or to defend the
capital. His troops destroyed the monastery
of St. Germain's, near the city, and then the
King of the Franks, finding himself at their
mercy, bought them off by paying a large sum
of money. With this money and the other
booty which they had acquired, Ragnar and his
horde now returned to their ships at Rouen, and
sailed away again toward their usual haunts
among the bays and islands of the Baltic Sea.
This exploit, of course, gave Ragnar Lod-
brog's barbarous name a very wide celebrity.
It tended, too, greatly to increase and establish
his power. He afterward made similar incur-
sions into Spain, and finally grew bold enough
to brave the Anglo-Saxons themselves on the
green island of Britain, as the Anglo-Saxons
had themselves braved the aboriginal inhabit-
ants two or three centuries before. But Rag-

68 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 450-850.

Ragnor's descent upon England. He loses his ships.

nar seems to have found the Anglo-Saxon
swords and spears which he advanced to en-
counter on landing in England much more for-
midable than those which were raised against
him on the southern side of the Channel. He
was destroyed in the contest. The circum-
stances were as follows ;

In making his preparations for a descent
upon the English coast, he prepared for a very
determined contest, knowing well the character
of the foes with whom he would have now to
deal. He built two enormous ships, much
larger than those of the ordinary size, and arm-
ed and equipped them in the most perfect man-
ner. He filled them with selected men, and
sailing down along the coast of Scotland, he
watched for a place and an opportunity to land.
Winds and storms are almost always raging
among the dark and gloomy mountains and isl-
ands of Scotland. Ragnar's ships were caught
in one of these gales and driven on shore. The
ships were lost, but the men escaped to the
land. Ragnar, nothing daunted, organized and
marshaled them as an army, and marched into
the interior to attack any force which might
appear against them. His course led him to
Northumbria, the most northerly Saxon king-

A.D. 850.] THE DANES. 69

Ragnar defeated by the Saxons. Hifl cruel death.

dom. Here he soon encountered a very large
and superior force, under the command of Ella,
the king; but, with the reckless desperation
which so strongly marked his character, he ad-
vanced to attack them. Three times, it is said,
he pierced the enemy's lines, cutting his way
entirely through them with his little column.
He was, however, at length overpowered. His
men were cut to pieces, and he was himself
taken prisoner. We regret to have to add that
our cruel ancestors put their captive to death in
a very barbarous manner. They filled a den
with poisonous snakes, and then drove the
wretched Ragnar into it. The horrid reptiles
killed him with their stings. It was Ella, the
king of Northumbria, who ordered and directed
this punishment.

The. expedition of Ragnar thus ended with-
out leading to any permanent results in Anglo-
Saxon history. It is, however, memorable as
the first of a series of invasions from the Danes
—or Northmen, as they are sometimes called,
since they came from all the coasts of the Bal-
tic and German Seas — which, in the end, gave
the Anglo-Saxons infinite trouble. At one time,
in fact, the conquests of the Danes threatened
to root out and destroy the Anglo-Saxon power

70 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 851.

Danger of the Saxons. Other invasions.

from the island altogether. They would prob-
ably have actually effected this, had the nation
not been saved by the prudence, the courage,
the sagacity, and the consummate skill of the
subject of this history, as will fully appear to
the reader in the course of future chapters.

Ragnar was not the only one of these North-
men who made attempts to land in England
and to plunder the Anglo-Saxons, even in his
own day. Although there were no very regu-
lar historical records kept in those early times,
still a great number of legends, and ballads,
and ancient chronicles have come down to us,
narrating the various transactions which occur-
red, and it appears by these that the sea kings
generally were beginning, at this time, to har-
ass the English coasts, as well as all the other
shores to which they could gain access. Some
of these invasions would seem to have been of
a very formidable character.

At first these excursions were made in the
summer season only, and, after collecting their
plunder, the marauders would return in the au-
tumn to their own shores, and winter in the
bays and among the islands there. At length,
nowever, they grew more bold. A large band
of them landed, in the autumn of 851, on the

A.D.851.] THE DANES. 71

Plunder of London and other places. Defeat of the Danes.

island of Thanet, where the Saxons themselves
had landed four centuries before, and began
very coolly to establish their winter quarters on
English ground. They succeeded in maintain-
ing their stay during the winter, and in the
spring were prepared for bolder undertakings
still.

They formed a grand confederation, and col-
lected a fleet of three hundred and fifty ships,
galleys, and boats, and advanced boldly up the
Thames. They plundered London, and then
marched south to Canterbury, which they plun-
dered too. They went thence into one of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms called Mercia, the in-
habitants of the country not being able to op-
pose any effectual obstacle to their marauding
march. Finally, a great Anglo-Saxon force
was organized and brought out to meet them.
The battle was fought in a forest of oaks, and
the Danes were defeated. The victory, how-
ever, afforded the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms only
a temporary relief. New hordes were contin-
ually arriving and landing, growing more and
more bold if they met with success, and but lit-
tle daunted or discouraged by temporary fail-
ures.

The most formidable of all these expeditions

72 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 851

The sons and relatives of Ragnar. Their plans and preparations

was one organized and commanded by the sons
and relatives of Ragnar, whom, it will be rec-
ollected, the Saxons had cruelly killed by pois-
onous serpents in a dungeon or den. The rel-
atives of the unhappy chieftain thus barbar-
ously executed were animated in their enter-
prise by the double stimulus of love of plunder
and a ferocious thirst for revenge. A consider-
able time was spent in collecting a large fleet,
and in combining, for this purpose, as many
chieftains as could be induced to share in the
enterprise. The story of their fellow-country-
man expiring under the stings of adders and
scorpions, while his tormentors were exulting
around him over the cruel agonies which their
ingenuity had devised, aroused them to a phren-
sy of hatred and revenge. They proceeded,
however, very deliberately in their plans. They
did nothing hastily. They allowed ample time
for the assembling and organizing of the con-
federation. When all was ready, they found
that there were eight kings and twenty earls
in the alliance, generally the relatives and com-
rades of Ragnar. The two most prominent of
these commanders were Guthrum and Hubba.
Hubba was one of Ragnar's sons. At length,
toward the close of the summer, the formidable

A.D.851.] THE DANES 73

The Danes winter in England. Alarm of the Saxons.

expedition set sail. They approached the En-
glish coast, and landed without meeting with
any resistance. The Saxons seemed appalled
and paralyzed at the greatness of the danger.
The several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, though
they had been imperfectly united, some years
before, under Egbert, were still more or less
distinct, and each hoped that the one first in-
vaded would be the only one which would suf-
fer ; and as these kingdoms were rivals, and
often hostile to each other, no general league
was formed against what soon proved to be the
common enemy. The Danes, accordingly, qui-
etly encamped, and made calm and deliberate
arrangements for spending the winter in their
new quarters, as if they were at home.

During all this time, notwithstanding the
coolness and deliberation with which these
avengers of their murdered countryman acted,
the fires of their resentment and revenge were
slowly but steadily burning, and as soon as the
spring opened, they put themselves in battle
array, and marched into the dominions of Ella.
Ella did all that it was possible to do to meet
and oppose them,' but the spirit of retaliation
and rage which his cruelties had evoked was
too strong to be resisted. His country was rav-

74 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 867.

Horrible death of Ella. Ravages of the Danes.

aged, his army was defeated, he was taken
prisoner, and the dying terrors and agonies of
Ragnar among the serpents were expiated by
tenfold worse tortures which they inflicted upon
Ella's mutilated body, by a process too horrible
to be described.

After thus successfully accomplishing the
great object of their expedition, it was to have
been hoped that they would leave the island
and return to their Danish homes. But they
evinced no disposition to do this. On the con-
trary, they commenced a course of ravage and
conquest in all parts of England, which con-
tinued for several years. The parts of the coun-
try which attempted to oppose them they de-
stroyed by fire and sword. They seized cities,
garrisoned and occupied them, and settled in
them as if to make them their permanent
homes. One kingdom after another was sub-
dued. The kingdom of Wessex seemed alone
to remain, and that was the subject of contest.
Ethelred was the king. The Danes advanced
into his dominions to attack him. In the bat-
tle that ensued, Ethelred was killed. The suc-
cessor to his throne was his brother Alfred, the
subject of this history, who thus found himself
suddenly and unexpectedly called upon to as-

A.D.867.] THE DANES. 75

Alfred. His sudden elevation to power.

sume the responsibilities and powers of supreme
command, in as dark and trying a crisis of na-
tional calamity and danger as can well be con
ceived. The manner in which Alfred acted in
the emergency, rescuing his country from her
perils, and laying the foundations, as he did, of
all the greatness and glory which has since ac-
crued to her, has caused his memory to be held
in the highest estimation among all nations,
and has immortalized his name.

76 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 850-855

Alfred's early life. Influences under which his character was formed.

CHAPTER IV.
ALFRED'S EARLY YEARS.

BEFORE commencing the narrative of Al-
fred's administration of the public affairs
of his realm, it is necessary to go back a little,
in order to give some account of the more pri-
vate occurrences of his early life. Alfred, like
Washington, was distinguished for a very ex-
traordinary combination of qualities which ex-
hibited itself in his character, viz., the combina-
tion of great military energy and skill on the
one hand, with a very high degree, on the other,
of moral and religious principle, and conscien-
tious devotion to the obligations of duty. This
combination, so rarely found in the distinguish-
ed personages which have figured among man-
kind, is, in a great measure, explained and ac-
counted for, in Alfred's case, by the peculiar
circumstances of his early history.

It was his brother Ethelred, as has already
been stated, whom Alfred immediately suc-
ceeded. His father's name was Ethelwolf; and
it seems highly probable that the peculiar turn
which Alfred's mind seemed to take in after

A.D. 850-855.] EARLY YEARS. 77

Alfred's father. Ethelwolf. Monasteries

years, was the consequence, in some considera-
ble degree, of this parent's situation and char-
acter. Ethelwolf was a younger son, and was
brought up in a monastery at Winchester. The
monasteries of those days were the seats both
of learning and piety, that is, of such learning
and piety as then prevailed. The ideas of re-
ligious faith and duty which were entertained a
thousand years ago were certainly very differ-
ent from those which are received now; still,
there was then, mingled with much supersti-
tion, a great deal of honest and conscientious
devotion to the principles of Christian duty, and
of sincere and earnest desire to live for the hon-
or of God and religion, and for the highest and
best welfare of mankind. Monastic establish-
ments existed every where, defended by the sa-
credness which invested them from the storms
of violence and war which swept over every
thing which the cross did not protect. To these
the thoughtful, the serious, and the intellectual
retired, leaving the restless, the rude, and the
turbulent to distract and terrify the earth with
their endless quarrels. Here they studied, they
wrote, they read ; they transcribed books, they
kept records, they arranged exercises of devo-
tion, they educated youth, and, in a word, per

78 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 850-855.

Cthelwolf retires to a monastery. He is released from his vowi.

formed, in the inclosed and secluded retreats
in which they sought shelter, those intellectual
functions of civil life which now can all be per-
formed in open exposure, but which in those
days, if there had been no monastic retreats to
shelter them, could not have been performed at
all. For the learning and piety of the present
age, whether Catholic or Protestant, to malign
the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon times is for the
oak to traduce the acorn from which it sprung.

Ethel wolf was a younger son, and, conse-
quently, did not expect to reign. He went to
the monastery at Winchester, and took the
vows. His father had no objection to this plan,
satisfied with having his oldest son expect and
prepare for the throne. As, however, he ad-
vanced toward manhood, the thought of the
probability that he might be called to the throne
in the event of his brother's death led all par-
ties to desire that he might be released from his
monastic vows. They applied, accordingly, to
the pope for a dispensation. The dispensation
was granted, and Ethel wolf became a general
in the army. In the end, his brother died, and
he became king.

He continued, however, during his reign, to
manifest the peaceful, quiet, and serious char-

A.D.853.] EARLY YEARS. 79

Ethelwolf 's minister. Ethelwolf 'a religious habits.

acter which had led him to enter the monas-
tery, and which had probably been strengthen-
ed and confirmed by the influences and habits
to which he had been accustomed there. He
had, however, a very able, energetic, and war-
like minister, who managed his affairs with
great ability and success for a long course of
years. Ethelwolf, in the mean time, leaving
public affairs to his minister, continued to de-
vote himself to the pursuits to which his predi-
lections inclined him. He visited monasteries ;
he cultivated learning ; he endowed the Church ;
Ue made journeys to Rome. All this time, his
kingdom, which had before almost swallowed
up the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy, be-
came more and more firmly established, until,
at length, the Danes came in, as is described in
the last chapter, and brought the whole land
into the most extreme and imminent danger*
The case did not, however, become absolutely
desperate until after Ethelwolf 's death, as will
be hereafter explained.

Ethelwolf married a lady whose gentle, quiet,
and serious character corresponded with his
own. Alfred was the youngest, and, as is often
the case with the youngest, the favorite child.
He was kept near to his father and mother, and

80 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 853

Alfred sent to Rome. Pomp of the journey

closely under their influence, until his mother
died, which event, however, took place when he
was quite young. After this, Ethelwolf sent
Alfred to Rome. Rome was still more the
great center then than it is now of religion and
learning. There were schools there, maintain-
ed by the various nations of Europe respect-
ively, for the education of the sons of the no-
bility. Alfred, however, did not go for this pur-
pose. It was only to make the journey, to see
the city, to be introduced to the pope, and to
be presented, by means of the fame of the ex-
pedition, to the notice of Europe, as the future
sovereign of England ; for it was Ethelwolf 's
intention, at this time, to pass over his older
sons, and make this Benjamin his successor on
the throne.

The journey was made with great pomp and
parade. A large train of nobles and ecclesias-
tics accompanied the young prince, and a splen-
did reception was given to him in the various
towns in France which he passed through on
his way. He was but five years old ; but his
position and his prospects made him, though so
young, a personage of great distinction. After
spending a short time at Rome, he returned
again to England.

A.D.853.] EARLY YEARS. 81

Ethelwolf goes to Rome. Arrangements for the journey.

Two years after this, Ethelwolf, Alfred's fa-
ther, determined to go to Rome himself. His
wife had died, his older sons had grown up,
and his own natural aversion to the cares and
toils of government seems to have been increas-
ed by the alarms and dangers produced by tho
incursions of the Danes, and by his own ad-
vancing years. Having accordingly arranged
the affairs of the kingdom by placing his oldest
sons in command, he took the youngest, Alfred,
who was now seven years old, with him, and,
crossing the Channel, landed on the Continent,
on his way to Rome.

All the arrangements for this journey were
conducted on a scale of great magnificence and
splendor. It is true that it was a rude and
semi-barbarous age, and very little progress had
been made in respect to the peaceful and indus-
trial arts of life ; but, in respect to the arts con-
nected with war, to every thing that related to
the march of armies, the pomp and parade of
royal progresses, the caparison of horses, the
armor and military dresses of men, and the pa-
rade and pageantry of military spectacles, a
very considerable degree of advancement had
been attained.

King Ethelwolf availed himself of all the re-
F

82 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 853.

Ethelwoirs retinue. Presents to the pope

sources that he could command to give eclat to
his journey. He had a numerous train of at-
tendants and followers, and he carried with
him a number of rich and valuable presents for
the pope. He was received with great distinc-
tion by King Charles of France, through whose
dominions he had to pass on his way to Italy.
Charles had a daughter, Judith, a young girl,
with whom Ethelwolf, though now himself
quite advanced in life, fell deeply in love.

Ethelwolf, after a short stay in France, went
on to Rome. His arrival and his visit here at-
tracted great attention. As King of England,
he was a personage of very considerable conse-
quence, and then he came with a large retinue,
and in magnificent state. His religious predi-
lections, too, inspired him with a very strong
interest in the ecclesiastical authorities and in-
stitutions of Rome, and awakened, reciprocally,
in these authorities, a strong interest in him.
He made costly presents to the pope, some of
which were peculiarly splendid. One was a
crown of pure gold, which weighed, it is said,
four pounds. Another was a sword, richly
mounted in gold. There were also several uten-
sils and vessels of Saxon form and construction,
some of gold and others of silver gilt, and also a

A.D.853.] EARLY YEARS. 83

Distribution of money. Ethelwolf ' a resources.

considerable number of dresses, all very richly
adorned. King Ethelwolf also made a distri-
bution in money to all the inhabitants of Rome :
gold to the nobles and to the clergy, and silver
to the people. How far his munificence on this
occasion may have been exaggerated by the
Saxon chroniclers, who, of course, like other
early historians, were fond of magnifying all
the exploits, and swelling, in every way, the
fame of the heroes of their stories, we can not
now know. There is no doubt, however, that
all the circumstances of Ethelwolf 's visit to the
great capital were such as to attract universal
attention to the event, and to make the little
Alfred, on whose account the journey was in a
great measure performed, an object of very gen-
eral interest and attention.

In fact, there is every reason to believe that
the Saxon nations had, at that time, made such
progress in wealth, population, and power as to
afford to such a prince as Ethelwolf the means
of making a great display, if he chose to do so,
on such an occasion as that of a royal progress
through France and a visit to the great city of
Rome. The Saxons had been in possession of
England, at this time, many hundred years ;
and though, during all this period, they had been

84 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 854.

Rome. Its schools of learning,

involved in various wars, both with one another
and with the neighboring nations, they had
been all the time steadily increasing in wealth,
and making constant improvements in all the
arts and refinements of life. Ethelwolf reigned,
therefore, over a people of considerable wealth
and power, and he moved across the Continent
on his way to Rome, and figured while there,
as a personage of no ordinary distinction.

Rome was at this time, as we have said, the
great center of education, as well as of religious
and ecclesiastical influence. In fact, education
and religion went hand in hand in those days,
there being scarcely any instruction in books
excepting for the purposes of the Church. Sep-
arate schools had been established at Rome by
the leading nations of Europe, where theii
youth could be taught, each at an institution
in which his own language was spoken. Eth-
elwolf remained a year at Rome, to give Alfred
the benefit of the advantages which the city
afforded. The boy was of a reflective and
thoughtful turn of mind, and applied himself
diligently to the performance of his duties. His
mind was rapidly expanded, his powers were
developed, and stores of such knowledge as was
adapted to the circumstances and wants of the

A.D.855.] EARLY YEARS. 85

The Saxon seminary burned. Rebuilt by Ethelwolt

times were laid up. The religious and intel-
lectual influences thus brought to bear upon
the young Alfred's mind produced strong and
decided effects in the formation of his character
— effects which were very strikingly visible in
his subsequent career.

Ethelwolf found, when he arrived at Rome,
that the Saxon seminary had been burned the
preceding year. It had been founded by a for-
mer Saxon king. Ethelwolf rebuilt it, and
placed the institution on a new and firmer
foundation than before. He also obtained some
edicts from the papal government to secure and
confirm certain rights of his Saxon subjects re-
siding in the city, which rights had, it seems,
been in some degree infringed upon, and he thus
saved his subjects from oppressions to which
they had been exposed. In a word, Ethelwolf 's
visit not only afforded an imposing spectacle to
those who witnessed the pageantry and the cer-
emonies which marked it, but it was attended
with permanent and substantial benefits to
many classes, who became, in consequence of
it, the objects of the pious monarch's benevolent
regard.

At length, when the year had expired, Eth-
elwolf set out on his return. He went back

86 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AJX 855.

Ethelwolf in France. He falls in love with Judith.

through France, as he came, and during his
stay in that country on the way home, an event
occurred which was of no inconsiderable conse-
quence to Alfred himself, and which changed
or modified Ethelwolf's whole destiny. The
event was that, having, as before stated, be-
come enamored with the young Princess Ju-
dith, the daughter of the King of France, Eth-
elwolf demanded her in marriage. We have
no means of knowing how the proposal affected
the princess herself; marriages in that rank
and station in life were then, as they are now,
in fact, wholly determined and controlled by
great political considerations, or by the personal
predilections of powerful men, with very little
regard for the opinions or desires of the party
whose happiness was most to be affected by the
result. At all events, whatever may have been
Judith's opinion, the marriage was decided upon
and consummated, and the venerable king re-
turned to England with his youthful bride.
The historians of the day say, what would seem
almost incredible, that she was but about twelve
years old.

Judith's Saxon name was Leotheta. She
made an excellent mother to the young Alfred,
though she innocently and indirectly caused her

A..D.855.] EARLY YEARS. 87

Ethelwolf ' a death. Ethelbald

husband much trouble in his realm. Alfred's
older brothers were wild and turbulent menv
and one of them, Ethelbald, was disposed to
retain a portion of the power with which he had
been invested during his father's absence, in-
stead of giving it up peaceably on his return.
He organized a rebellion against his father,
making the king's course of conduct in respect
to his youthful bride the pretext. Ethelwolf
was very fond of his young wife, and seemed
disposed to elevate her to a position of great
political consideration and honor. Ethelbald
complained of this. The father, loving peace
rather than war, compromised the question with
him, and relinquished to him a part of his king-
dom. Two years after this he died, leaving
Ethelbald the entire possession of the throne.
Ethelbald, as if to complete and consummate
his unnatural conduct toward his father, per-
suaded the beautiful Judith, his father's widow,
to become his wife, in violation not only of all
laws human and divine, but also of those uni-
versal instincts of propriety which no lapse of
time and no changes of condition can eradicate
from the human soul. This second union
throws some light on the question of Judith's
action. Since she was willing to marry her

88 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 857.

Alfred's character. Judith's interest in him.

husband's son to preserve the position of a
queen, we may well suppose that she did not
object to uniting herself to the father in order
to attain it. Perhaps, however, we ought to
consider that no responsibility whatever, in
transactions of this character, should attach to
such a mere child.

During all this time Alfred was passing from
his eighth to his twelfth year. He was a very
intelligent and observing boy, and had acquired
much knowledge of the world and a great deal
of general information in the journeys which he
had taken with his father, both about England
and also on the Continent, in France and Italy.
Judith had taken a great interest in his prog-
ress. She talked with him, she encouraged his
inquiries, she explained to him what he did not
understand, and endeavored in every way to
develop and strengthen his mental powers. Al-
fred was a favorite, and, as such, was always
very much indulged ; but there was a certain
conscientiousness and gentleness of spirit which
marked his character even in these early years,
and seemed to defend him from the injurious
influences which indulgence and extreme atten-
tion and care often produce. Alfred was con-
siderate, quiet, and reflective ; he improved the

A.D.857.] EARLY YfeARS. 89

Alfred's fondness for Anglo-Saxon poetry. ' Its character.

privileges which he enjoyed, and did not abuse
the kindness and the favors which every one by
whom he was known lavished upon him.

Alfred was very fond of the Anglo-Saxon po-
etry which abounded in those days. The poems
were legends, ballads, and tales, which describ-
ed the exploits of heroes, and the adventures of
pilgrims and wanderers of all kinds. These
poems were to Alfred what Homer's poems
were to Alexander. He loved to listen to them,
to hear them recited, and to commit them to
memory. In committing them to memory, he
was obliged to depend upon hearing the poems
repeated by others, for he himself could not
read.

And yet he was now twelve years old. It
may surprise the reader, perhaps, to be thus
told, after all that has been said of the attention
paid to Alfred's education, and of the progress
which he had made, that he could not even read.
But reading, far from being then considered, as
. it is now, an essential attainment for all, and
one which we are sure of finding possessed by
all who have received any instruction whatever,
was regarded in those days a sort of technical
art, learned only by those who were to make
some professional use of the acquisition Monks

90 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.857

Alfred's inability to read. The Anglo-Saxon manuscript

and clerks could always read, but generals, gen-
tlemen, and kings very seldom. And as they
could not read, neither could they write. They
made a rude cross at the end of the writings
which they wished to authenticate instead of
signing their names — a mode which remains to
the present day, though it has descended to the
very lowest and humblest classes of society.

In fact, even the upper classes of society
could not generally learn to read in those days,
for there were no books. Every thing recorded
was in manuscripts, the characters being writ-
ten with great labor and care, usually on parch-
ment, the captions and leading letters being
often splendidly illuminated and adorned by
gilded miniatures of heads, or figures, or land-
scapes, which enveloped or surrounded them
Judith had such a manuscript of some Saxon
poems. She had learned the language while in
France. One day Alfred was looking at the
book, and admiring the character in which it
was written, particularly the ornamented let-
ters at the headings. Some of his brothers were
in the room, they, of course, being much older
than he. Judith said that either of them might
have the book who would first learn to read it.
The older brothers paid little attention to this

A.D.859.J EARLY YEARS. 91

Alfred desires to learn Latin. Latin literature.

proposal, but Alfred's interest was strongly
awakened. He immediately sought and found
some one to teach him, and before long he read
the volume to Judith, and claimed it as his
own. She rejoiced at his success, and fulfilled
her promise with the greatest pleasure.

Alfred soon acquired, by his Anglo-Saxon
studies, a great taste for books, and had next a
strong desire to study the Latin language. The
scholars of the various nations of Europe form-
ed at that time, as, in fact, they do now, one
community, linked together by many ties. They
wrote and spoke the Latin language, that being
the only language which could be understood
by them all. In fact, the works which were
most highly valued then by the educated men
of all nations, were the poems and the histories,
and other writings produced by the classic au-
thors of the Roman commonwealth. There
were also many works on theology, on ecclesi-
astical polity, and on law, of great authority
and in high repute, all written in the Latin
tongue. Copies of these works were made by
the monks, in their retreats in abbeys and mon-
asteries, and learned men spent their lives in
perusing them. To explore this field was not
properly a duty incumbent upon a young prince

92 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.860

Alfred's skill in hunting. Ethelbald puts away bis wife.

destined to take a seat upon a throne, but Al-
fred felt a great desire to undertake the work.
He did not do it, however, for the reason, as he
afterward stated, that there was no one at court
at the time who was qualified to teach him.

Alfred, though he had thus the thoughtful
and reflective habits of a student, was also act-
ive, and graceful, and strong in his bodily de-
velopment. He excelled in all the athletic rec-
reations of the time, and was especially famous
for his skill, and courage, and power as a hunt-
er. He gave every indication, in a word, at
this early age, of possessing that uncommon
combination of mental and personal qualities
which fits those who possess it to secure and
maintain a great ascendency among mankind.

The unnatural union which had been formed
on the death of Ethelwolf between his youthful
widow and her aged husband's son did not long
continue. The people of England were very
much shocked at such a marriage, and a great
prelate, the Bishop of Winchester, remonstrated
against it with such sternness and authority,
that Ethelbald not only soon put his wife away,
but submitted to a severe penance which the
bishop imposed upon him in retribution for his
sin. Judith, thus forsaken, soon afterward sold

A.D.860.] EARLY YEARS. 93

Judith returns to her native land. She marries a third time.

the lands and estates which her two husbands
had severally granted her, and, taking a final
leave of Alfred, whom she tenderly loved, she
returned to her native land. Not long after
this, she was married a third time, to a conti-
nental prince, whose dominions lay between
the Baltic and the Rhine, and from this period
she disappears entirely from the stage of Al-
fred's history.

94 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 860.

The Danes. Their hostility to Christianity

CHAPTER V.
STATE OF ENGLAND.

HAVING thus brought down the narrative
of Alfred's early life as far and as fully as
the records that remain enable us to do so, we
resume the general history of the national af-
fairs by returning to the subject of the depreda-
tions and conquests of the Danes, and the cir-
cumstances connected with Alfred's accession to
the throne.

To give the reader some definite and clear
ideas of the nature of this warfare, it will be
well to describe in detail some few of the inci-
dents and scenes which ancient historians have
recorded. The following was one case which
occurred :

The Danes, it must be premised, were par-
ticularly hostile to the monasteries and religious
establishments of the Anglo-Saxons. In the
first place, they were themselves pagans, and
they hated Christianity. In the second place,
they knew that these places of sacred seclusion
were often the depositories selected for the cus-
tody or concealment of treasure; and, besides

A.D. 860.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 95

Plunderings of the Danes. Their cruelties to monks and nuns.

the treasures which kings and potentates often
placed in them for safety, these establishments
possessed utensils of gold and silver for the serv-
ice of the chapels, and a great variety of valu-
able gifts, such as pious saints or penitent sin-
ners were continually bequeathing to them.
The Danes were, consequently, never better
pleased than when sacking an abbey or a mon-
astery. In such exploits they gratified their
terrible animal propensities, both of hatred and
love, by the cruelties which they perpetrated
personally upon the monks and the nuns, and
at the same tune enriched their coffers with tho
most valuable spoils. A dreadful tale is told
of one company of nuns, who, in the consterna-
tion and terror which they endured at the ap-
proach of a band of Danes, mutilated their faces
in a manner too horrid to be described, as the
only means left to them for protection against
the brutality of their foes. They followed, in
adopting this measure, the advice and the ex-
ample of the lady superior. It was effectual.

There was a certain abbey, called Crowland,
which was in those days one of the most cele-
brated in the island. It was situated near the
southern border of Lincolnshire, which lies on
the eastern side of England. There is a great

96 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 860.

Abbey of Crowland. Its rains still remain.

shallow bay, called The Wash, on this eastern
shore, and it is surrounded by a broad tract of
low and marshy land, which is drained by long
canals, and traversed by roads built upon em-
bankments. Dikes skirt the margins of the
streams, and wind-mills are engaged in perpet-
ual toil to raise the water from the fields into
the channels by which it is conveyed away.

Crowland is at the confluence of two rivers,
which flow sluggishly through this flat but
beautiful and verdant region. The remains of
the old abbey still stand, built on piles driven
into the marshy ground, and they form at the
present time a very interesting mass of ruins.
The year before Alfred acceded to the throne,
the abbey was in all its glory ; and on one oc-
casion it furnished two hundred men, who went
out under the command of one of the monks,
named Friar Joly, to join the English armies
and fight the Danes.

The English army was too small, notwith-
standing this desperate effort to strengthen it.
They stood, however, all day in a compact band,
protecting themselves with their shields from the
arrows of the foot soldiers of the enemy, and
with their pikes from the onset of the cavalry.
At night the Danes retired, as if giving up the

A.D. 860.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 97

A terrible battle. Scene of consternation.

contest ; but as soon as the Saxons, now released
from their positions of confinement and re-
straint, had .separated a little, and began to feel
somewhat more secure, their implacable foes re-
turned again and attacked them in separate
masses, and with more fury than before. The
Saxons endeavored in vain either to defend
themselves or escape. As fast as their comrades
were killed, the survivors stood upon the heaps
of the slain, to gain what little advantage they
could from so slight an elevation. Nearly all at
length were killed. A few escaped into a neigh-
boring wood, where they lay concealed during
the day following, and then, when the darkness
of the succeeding night came to enable them to
conceal their journey, they made their way to
the abbey, to make known to the anxious in-
mates of it the destruction of the army, and to
warn them of the imminence of the impending
danger to which they were now exposed.

A dreadful scene of consternation and terror
ensued. The affrighted messengers told their
tale, breathless and wayworn, at the door of
the chapel, where the monks were engaged at
their devotions. The aisles were filled with ex-
clamations of alarm and despairing lamenta-
tions. The abbot, whose name was Theodore,
G

98 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 860.

Proceedings at the monastery. Part of the treasure sent away.

immediately began to take measures suited to
the emergency. He resolved to retain at the
monastery only some aged monks and a few
children, whose utter defenselessness, he thought,
would disarm the ferocity and vengeance of the
Danes. The rest, only about thirty, however,
in number — nearly all the brethren having gone
out under the Friar Joly into the great battle
— were put on board a boat to be sent down the
river. It seems at first view a strange idea to
send away the vigorous and strong, and keep
the infirm and helpless at the scene of danger ;
but the monks knew very well that all resist-
ance was vain, and that, consequently, their
greatest safety would lie in the absence of all
appearance of the possibility of resistance.

The treasures were sent away, too, with all
the men. They hastily collected all the valu-
ables together, the relics, the jewels, and all of
the gold and silver plate which could be easily
removed, and placed them in a boat — packing
them as securely as their haste and trepidation
allowed. The boats glided down the river till
they came to a lonely spot, where an anchorite
or sort of hermit lived in solitude. The men
and the treasures were to be intrusted to his
charge. He concealed the men in the thickets

A..D.860.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 99

The remaining treasure concealed. Abbot Theodore and the monks.

and other hiding-places in the woods, and bur-
ied the treasures.

In the mean time, as soon as the boats and
the party of monks which accompanied them
had left the abbey, the Abbot Theodore and the
old monks that remained with him urged on
the work of concealing that part of the treas-
ures which had not been taken away. All of
the plate which could not be easily transported,
and a certain very rich and costly table employ-
ed for the service of the altar, and many sacred
and expensive garments used by the higher
priests in their ceremonies, had been left behind,
as they could not be easily removed. These
the abbot and the monks concealed in the most
secure places that they could find, and then,
clothing themselves in their priestly robes, they
assembled in the chapel, and resumed their ex-
ercises of devotion. To be found in so sacred a
place and engaged in so holy an avocation would
have been a great protection from any Chris-
tian soldiery ; but the monks entirely miscon-
ceived the nature of the impulses by which hu-
man nature is governed, in supposing that it
would have any restraining influence upon the
pagan Danes. The first thing the ferocious
marauders did, on breaking into the sacred pre-

100 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.860.

Slaughter of the abbot and monks. The boy Turgar.

cincts of the chapel, was to cut down the ven-
erable abbot at the altar, in his sacerdotal robes,
and then to push forward the work of slaying
every other inmate of the abbey, feeble and
helpless as they were. Only one was saved.

This one was a boy, about ten years old.
His name was Turgar. He was a handsome
boy, and one of the Danish chieftains was
struck with his countenance and air, in the
midst of the slaughter, and took pity on him.
The chieftain's name was Count Sidroc. Si-
droc drew Turgar out of the immediate scene
of danger, and gave him a Danish garment, di-
recting him, at the same time, to throw aside
his own, and then to follow him wherever he
went, and keep close to his side, as if he were
a Dane. The boy, relieved from his terrors by
this hope of protection, obeyed implicitly. He
followed Sidroc every where, and his life was
saved. The Danes, after killing all the others,
ransacked and plundered the monastery, broke
open the tombs in their search for concealed
treasures, and, after taking all that they could
discover, they set the edifices on fire wherever
they could find wood- work that would burn, and
went away, leaving the bodies slowly burning
in the grand and terrible funeral pile.

AD. 860.] STATE OP ENGLAND. 101

The Danes plunder another abbey. Escape of Turgar

From Crowland the marauders proceeded,
taking Turgar with them, to another large and
wealthy abbey in the neighborhood, which they
plundered and destroyed, as they had the abbey
at Crowland. Sidroc made Turgar his own at-
tendant, keeping him always near him. When
the expedition had completed their second con-
quest, they packed the valuables which they
had obtained from both abbeys in wagons, and
moved toward the south. It happened that
some of these wagons were under Count Si-
droc's charge, and were in the rear of the line of
march. In passing a ford, the wheels of one of
these rear wagons sank in the muddy bottom,
and the horses, in attempting to draw the wagon
out, became entangled and restive. While
Sidroc's whole attention was engrossed by this
difficulty, Turgar contrived to steal away un-
observed. He hid himself in a neighboring
wood, and, with a degree of sagacity and dis-
cretion remarkable in a boy of his years, he con-
trived to find his way back to the smoking ruins
of his home at the Abbey of Crowland.

The monks who had gone away to seek con-
cealment at the cell of the anchorite had re-
turned, and were at work among the smoking
ruins, saving what they could from the fire, and

102 ALFRED THE GREAT. fA.D. 860.

Story of King Edmund. The Dane Lothbroc.

gathering together the blackened remains of
their brethren for interment. They chose one
of the monks that had escaped to succeed the
abbot who had been murdered, repaired, so far
as they could, their ruined edifices, and mourn-
fully resumed their functions as a religious com-
munity.

Many of the tales which the ancient chroni-
clers tell of those times are romantic and incredi-
ble ; they may have arisen, perhaps, in the first
instance, in exaggerations of incidents and
events which really occurred, and were then
handed down from generation to generation by
oral tradition, till they found historians to record
them. The story of the martyrdom of King
Edmund is of this character. Edmund was a
sort of king over one of the nations of Anglo-
Saxons called East Angles, who, as their name
imports, occupied a part of the eastern portion
of the island. Their particular hostility to Ed-
mund was awakened, according to the story, in
the following manner :

There was a certain bold and adventurous
Dane named Lothbroc, who one day took his
falcon on his arm and went out alone in a boat
on the Baltic Sea, or in the straits connecting
it with the German Ocean, intending to go to

. 860.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 105

fhe falcon. Lothbroc driven across the German Ocean.

a certain island and hunt. The falcon is a
species of hawk which they were accustomed
to train in those days, to attack and bring down
birds from the air, and falconry was, as might
have been expected, a very picturesque and ex-
citing species of hunting. The game which"
Lothbroc was going to seek consisted of the wild
fowl which frequents sometimes, in vast num-
bers, the cliffs and shores of the islands in those
seas. Before he reached his hunting ground,
however, he was overtaken by a storm, and his
boat was driven by it out to sea. Accustomed
to all sorts of adventures and dangers by sea
and by land, and skilled in every operation re-
quired in all possible emergencies, Lothbroc
contrived to keep his boat before the wind, and
to bail out the water as fast as it came in, until
at length, after being driven entirely across the
German Ocean, he was thrown upon the En-
glish shore, where, with his hawk still upon his
arm, he safely landed.

He knew that he was in the country of the
most deadly foes of his nation and race, and ac-
cordingly sought to conceal rather than to make
known his arrival. He was, however, found,
after a few days, wandering up and down in a
solitary wood, and was conducted, together with
his hawk, to King Edmund.

106 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 860.

Lothbroc taken into Edmund's service. He is murdered by Beorn.

Edmund was so much pleased with his air
and bearing, and so astonished at the remarkable
manner in which he had been brought to the
English shore, that he gave him his life ; and
soon discovering his great knowledge and skill
•as a huntsman, he received him into his own
service, and treated him with great distinction
and honor. In addition to his hawk, Lothbroc
had a greyhound, so that he could hunt with the
king in the fields as well as through the air.
The greyhound was very strongly attached to
his master.

The king's chief huntsman at this time was
Beorn, and Beorn soon became very envious and
jealous of Lothbroc, on account of his superior
power and skill, and of the honorable distinction
which they procured for him. One day, when
they two were hunting alone in the woods with
their dogs, Beorn killed his rival, and hid his
body in a thicket. Beorn went home, his own
dogs following him, while the greyhound re-
mained to watch mournfully over the body of
his master. They asked Beorn what was be-
come of Lothbroc, and he replied that he had
gone off into the wood the day before, and he did
not know what had become of him.

In the mean time, the greyhound remained

A.D. 860.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 107

Lothbroc's greyhound. Beorn's punishment

faithfully watching at the side of the body of
his master until hunger compelled him to leave
his post in search of food. He went home, and,
as soon as his wants were supplied, he returned
immediately to the wood again. This he did
several days; and at length his singular con-
duct attracting attention, he was followed by
some of the king's household, and the body of
his murdered master was found.

The guilt of the murder was with little diffi-
culty brought home to Beorn ; and, as an appro-
priate punishment for his cruelty to an unfor-
tunate and homeless stranger, the king con-
demned him to be put on board the same boat
in which the ill-fated Lothbroc had made his
perilous voyage, and pushed out to sea.

The winds and storms— entering, it seems,
into the plan, and influenced by the same prin-
ciples of poetical justice as had governed the
king — drove the boat, with its terrified mariner,
back again across to the mouth of the Baltic, as
they had brought Lothbroc to England. The
boat was thrown upon the beach, on Lothbroc's
family domain.

Now Lothbroc had been, in his own country,
a man of high rank and influence. He was of
royal descent, and had many friends. He had

108 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 860.

Lothbroc'g sons. Beorn's treachery.

two sons, men of enterprise and energy ; and it
so happened that the landing of Beorn took
place so near to them, that the tidings soon
came to their ears that their father's boat, in
the hands of a Saxon stranger, had arrived on
the coast. They immediately sought out the
stranger, and demanded what had become of
their father. Beorn, in order to hide his own
guilt, fabricated a tale of Lothbroc's having
been killed by Edmund, the king of the East
Angles. The sons of the murdered Lothbroc
were incensed at this news. They aroused their
countrymen by calling upon them every where
to aid them in revenging their father's deaih.
A large naval force was accordingly collected,
and a formidable descent made upon the English
coast.

Now Edmund, according to the story, was a
humane and gentle-minded man, much more
interested in deeds of benevolence and of piety
than in warlike undertakings and exploits, and
he was very far from being well prepared to
meet this formidable foe. In fact, he sought
refuge in a retired residence called Heglesdune.
The Danes, having taken some Saxons captive
in a city which they had sacked and destroyed,
compelled them to make known the place of

A.D.860.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 109

Edmund captured by the Danes. His martyrdom.

the king's retreat. Hinquar, the captain of the
Danes, sent him a summons to come and sur-
render both himself and all the treasures of his
kingdom. Edmund refused. Hinquar then
laid siege to the palace, and surrounded it ; and,
finally, his soldiers, breaking in, put Edmund's
attendants to death, and brought Edmund him-
self, bound, into Hinquar's presence.

Hinquar decided that the unfortunate captive
should die. He was, accordingly, first taken to
a tree and scourged. Then he was shot at with
arrows, until, as the account states, his body
was so full of the arrows that remained in the
flesh that there seemed to be no room for more.
During all this time Edmund continued to call
upon the name of Christ, as if finding spiritual
refuge and strength in the Redeemer in this his
hour of extremity ; and although these ejacula-
tions afforded, doubtless, great support and com-
fort to him, they only served to irritate to a per-
fect phrensy of exasperation his implacable pa-
gan foes. They continued to shoot arrows into
him until he was dead, and then they cut off
his head and went away, carrying the dissever-
ed head with them. Their object was to pre-
vent his friends from having the satisfaction of
interring it with the body. They carried it to

110 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 860.

Edmund's friends come from their hiding places. His head found.

what they supposed a sufficient distance, and
then threw it off into a wood by the way-side,
where they supposed it could not easily be
found.

As soon, however, as the Danes had left the
place, the affrighted friends and followers of Ed-
mund came out, by degrees, from their retreats
and hiding places. They readily found the
dead body of their sovereign, as it lay, of course,
where the cruel deed of his murder had been
performed. They sought with mournful and
anxious steps, here and there, all around, for the
head, until at length, when they came into the
wood where it was lying, they heard, as the
historian who records these events gravely tes-
tifies, a voice issuing from it, calling them, and
directing their steps by the sound. They fol-
lowed the voice, and, having recovered the head
by means of this miraculous guidance, they
buried it with the body.*

* A great many other tales are told of the miraculous phe-
nomena exhibited by the body of St. Edmund, which well
illustrate the superstitious credulity of those times. One writ-
er says seriously that, when the head was found, a wolf had
It, holding it carefully in his paws, with all the gentleness and
care that the most faithful dog would manifest in guarding a
trust committed to him by his master. This wolf followed
the funeral procession to the tomb where the body was de-

A.D.870.] STATE OF ENGLAND. Ill

Credulity of mankind. Commingling of piety and superstition.

It seems surprising to us that reasonable men
should so readily believe such tales as these;
but there are, in all ages of the world, certain
habits of belief, in conformity to which the
whole community go together. "We all believe
whatever is in harmony with, or analogous to,
the general type of faith prevailing in our own
generation. Nobody could be persuaded now
that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change
his nature to protect it; but thousands will
credit a fortune-teller, or believe that a mesmer-
ized patient can have a mental perception of
scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.

There was a great deal of superstition in the
days when Alfred was called to the throne, and
there was also, with it, a great deal of genuine
honest piety. The piety and the superstition,
too, were inextricably intermingled and com-
bined together. They were all Catholics then,
yielding an implicit obedience to the Church of
Rome, making regular contributions in money
to sustain the papal authority, and looking to
Rome as the great and central point of Christian
influence and power, and the object of supreme

posited, and then disappeared. The head joined itself to the
body again where it had been severed, leaving only a purple
line to mark the place of separation.

112 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 870.

Peter-pence. Veneration of the Catholic Church

veneration. We have already seen that the
Saxons had established a seminary at Rome,
which King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt
and re-endowed. One of the former Anglo-
Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one
penny from every house in the kingdom to the
successors of St. Peter at Rome, which tax,
though nominally small, produced a very con-
siderable sum in the aggregate, exceeding for
many years the royal revenues of the kings of
England. It continued to be paid down to the
time of Henry VIII., when the reformation
swept away that, and all the other national ob-
ligations of England to the Catholic Church
together.

In the age of Alfred, however, there were not
only these public acts of acknowledgment rec-
ognizing the papal supremacy, but there was
a strong tide of personal and private feeling
of veneration and attachment to the mother
Church, of which it is hard for us, in the pres-
ent divided state of Christendom, to conceive.
The religious thoughts and affections of every
pious heart throughout the realm centered in
Rome. Rome, too, was the scene of many
.miracles, by which the imaginations of the
superstitious and of the truly devout were ex»

A..D. 870.] STATE OF ENGLAND. 113

Kenelm. He is murdered by order of his sister.

cited, which impressed them with an idea of
power in which they felt a sort of confiding
sense of protection. This power was contin-
ually interposing, now in one way and now in
another, to protect virtue, to punish crime, and
to testify to the impious and to the devout, to
each in an appropriate way, that their respective
deeds were the objects, according to their char-
acter, of the displeasure or of the approbation
of Heaven.

On one occasion, the following incident is
said to have occurred. The narration of it will
illustrate the ideas of the time. A child of
about seven years old, named Kenelm, suc-
ceeded to the throne in the Anglo-Saxon line.
Being too young to act for himself, he was put
under the charge of a sister, who was to act as
regent until the boy became of age. The sister,
ambitious of making the power thus delegated
to her entirely her own, decided on destroying
her brother. She commissioned a hired mur-
derer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer
took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid
his body in a thicket, in a certain cow-pasture
at a place called Clent. The sister then as-
sumed the scepter in her own name, and sup-
pressed all inquiries in respect to the fate of her
H

114 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 870.

The dove and the writing. The body found.

brother ; and his murder might have remained
forever undiscovered, had it not been miracu-
lously revealed at Rome.

A white dove flew into a church there one
day, and let fall upon the altar of St. Peter a
paper, on which was written, in Anglo-Saxon
characters,

Jrit Clcut (Toto-batd), SEUnelmc fef 113 ficarnc, lictf) unticr
(Elwne, ftcnti fcercnbriJ.

For a time nobody could read the writing.
At length an Anglo-Saxon saw it, and trans-
lated it into Latin, so that the pope and all
others could understand it. The pope then
sent a letter to the authorities in England, who
made search and found the body.

But we must end these digressions, which we
have indulged thus far^ in order to give the
reader some distinct conception of the ideas and
habits of the times, and proceed, in the next
chapter, to relate the events immediately con-
nected with Alfred's accession to the throne.

A.D. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 115

The Danes at Reading. Situation at Reading,

CHAPTER VI.
ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE

A T the battle in which Alfred's brother,
-^*- Ethelred, whom Alfred succeeded on the
throne, was killed, as is briefly mentioned at the
close of chapter fourth, Alfred himself, then a
brave and energetic young man, fought by his
side. The party of Danes whom they were con-
tending against in this fatal fight was the same
one that came out in the expedition organized
by the sons of Lothbroc, and whose exploits in
destroying monasteries and convents were de-
scribed in the last chapter. Soon after the
events there narrated, this formidable body of
marauders moved westward, toward that part
of the kingdom where the dominions more par-
ticularly pertaining to the family of Alfred lay.
There was in those days a certain stronghold
or castle on the River Thames, about forty miles
west from London, which was not far from the
confines of Ethelred's dominions. The large
and populous town of Reading now stands upon
the spot. It is at the confluence of the RJTer

116 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871.

The Danish castle. Ethelred marches against the Danes.

Thames with the Kennet, a small branch of the
Thames, which here flows into it from the south.
The spot, having the waters of the rivers for a
defense upon two sides of it, was easily fortified.
A castle had been built there, and, as usual in
such cases, a town had sprung up about the
walls.

The Danes advanced to this stronghold and
took possession of it, and they made it for some
time their head-quarters. It was at once the
center from which they carried on their enter-
prises in all directions about the island, and the
refuge to which they could always retreat when
defeated and pursued. In the possession of such
a fastness, they, of course, became more formi-
dable than ever. King Ethelred determined to
dislodge them. He raised, accordingly, as large
a force as his kingdom would furnish, and, taking
his brother Alfred as his second in command, he
advanced toward Reading in a very resolute and
determined manner.

He first encountered a large body of the Danes
who were out on a marauding excursion. This
party consisted only of a small detachment, the
main body of the army of the Danes having been
left at Reading to strengthen and complete the
fortifications. They were digging a trench from

A.D. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 117

The Danes fortify their castle. They are defeated.

river to river, so as completely to insulate the
castle, and make it entirely inaccessible on ei-
ther side except by boats or a bridge. With the
earth thrown out of the trench they were mak-
ing an embankment on the inner side, so that
an enemy, after crossing the ditch, would have
a steep ascent to climb, defended too, as of
course it would be in such an emergency, by
long lines of desperate men upon the top, hurl-
ing at the assailants showers of javelins and ar-
rows.

While, therefore, a considerable portion of the
Danes were at work within and around their
castle, to make it as nearly as possible impreg-
nable as a place of defense, the detachment
above referred to had gone forth for plunder,
under the command of some of the bolder and
more adventurous spirits in the horde. This
party Ethelred overtook. A furious battle was
fought. The Danes were defeated, and driven
off the ground. They fled toward Reading.
Ethelred and Alfred pursued them. The vari-
ous parties of Danes that were outside of the
fortifications, employed in completing the out-
works, or encamped in the neighborhood, were
surprised and slaughtered ; or, at least, vast
numbers of them were killed, and the res* **-

118 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871,

Defeat of the Saxons. Preparations for another battle.

treated within the works — all maddened at their
defeat, and burning with desire for revenge.

The Saxons were not strong enough to dis-
possess them of their fastness. On the contra-
ry, in a few days, the Danes, having matured
their plans, made a desperate sally against the
Saxons, and, after a very determined and ob-
stinate conflict, they gained the victory, and
drove the Saxons off the ground. Some of the
leading Saxon chieftains were killed, and the
whole country was thrown into great alarm at
the danger which was impending, that the
Danes would soon gain the complete and un-
disputed possession of the whole land.

The Saxons, however, were not yet prepared
to give up the struggle. They rallied their
forces, gathered new recruits, reorganized theii
ranks, and made preparations for another strug-
gle. The Danes, too, feeling fresh strength
and energy in consequence of their successes,
formed themselves in battle array, and, leaving
their strong-hold, they marched out into the
open country in pursuit of their foe. The two
armies gradually approached each other and
prepared for battle. Every thing portended a
terrible conflict, which was to be, in fact, the
great final struggle.

AJD. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 119

.iEscesdune. The night before the battle.

The place where the armies met was called
in those times .^Escesdune, which means Ash-
down. It was, in fact, a hill-side covered with
ash trees. The name has become shortened
and softened in the course of the ten centuries
which have intervened since this celebrated bat-
tle, into Aston ; if, indeed, as is generally sup-
posed, the Aston of the present day is the local-
ity of the ancient battle.

The armies came into the vicinity of each
other toward the close of the day. They were
both eager for the contest, or, at least, they pre-
tended to be so, but they waited until the morn-
ing. The Danes divided their forces into two
bodies. Two kings commanded one division,
and certain chieftains, called earls, directed the
other. King Ethelred undertook to meet this
order of battle by a corresponding distribution
of his own troops, and he gave, accordingly, to
Alfred the command of one division, while he
himself was to lead the other. All things being
thus arranged, the hum and bustle of the two
great encampments subsided at last, at a late
hour, as the men sought repose under their rude
tents, in preparation for the fatigues and expo-
sures of the coming day. Some slept ; others
watched restlessly, and talked together, sleep-

120 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871

Alfred musters his men. Ethelred's religious services.

less under the influence of that strange excite-
ment, half exhilaration and half fear, which pre-
vails in a camp on the eve of a battle. The
camp fires burned brightly all the night, and
the sentinels kept vigilant watch, expecting ev-
ery moment some sudden alarm.

The night passed quietly away. Ethelred
and Alfred both arose early. Alfred went out
to arouse and muster the men in his division
of the encampment, and to prepare for battle.
Ethelred, on the other hand, sent for his priest,
and, assembling the officers in immediate at-
tendance upon him, commenced divine service
in his tent — the service of the mass, according
to the forms and usages which, even in that
early day, were prescribed by the Catholic
Church. Alfred was thus bent on immediate
and energetic action, while Ethelred thought
that the hour for putting forth the exertion of
human strength did not come until time had
been allowed for completing, in the most delib-
erate and solemn manner, the work of implor-
ing the protection of Heaven.

Ethelred seems by his conduct on this occa-
sion to have inherited from his father, even
more than Alfred, the spirit of religious devo-
tion, at least so far as the strict and faithful

A.D. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 121

Reason for divine service. The war a religious one.

observance of religious forms was concerned.
There was, it is true, a particular reason in this
case why the forms of divine service should be
faithfully observed, and that is, that the war
was considered in a great measure a religious
war. The Danes were pagans. The Saxons
were Christians. In making their attacks upon
the dominions of Ethelred, the ruthless invaders
were animated by a special hatred of the name
of Christ, and they evinced a special hostility
toward every edifice, or institution, or observ-
ance which bore the Christian name. The
Saxons, therefore, in resisting them, felt that
they were not only fighting for their own pos-
sessions and for their own lives, but that they
were defending the kingdom of God, and that
he, looking down from his throne in the heavens,
regarded them as the champions of his cause ;
and, consequently, that he would either protect
them in the struggle, or, if they fell, that he
would receive them to mansions of special glory
and happiness in heaven, as martyrs who had
shed their blood in his service and for his glory.
Taking this view of the subject, Ethelred,
instead of going out to battle at the early dawn,
collected his officers into his tent, and formed
them into a religious congregation. Alfred, on

122 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871.

Alfred's impetuosity. Hia great ability.

the other hand, full of impetuosity and ardor,
was arousing his men, animating them by his
words of encouragement and by the influence
of his example, and making, as energetically as
possible, all the preparations necessary for the
approaching conflict.

In fact, Alfred, though his brother was king,
and he himself only a lieutenant general under
him, had been accustomed to take the lead in
all the military operations of the army, on ac-
count of the superior energy, resolution, and
tact which he evinced, even in this early period
of his life. His brothers, though they retained
the scepter, as it fell successively into their
bands, relied mainly on his wisdom and cour-
age in all their efforts to defend it, and Ethelied
may have been somewhat more at his ease, in
listening to the priest's prayers in his tent, from
knowing that the arrangements for marshaling
and directing a large part of the force were in
such good hands.

The two encampments of Alfred and Ethel-
red seem to have been at some little distance
from each other. Alfred was impatient at Eth-
elred's delay. He asked the reason for it.
They told him that Ethelred was attending
mass, and that he had said he should on no ac-

A.D. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 123

Battle of .JEscesdiue. Flight of the Danes

count leave his tent until the service was con-
cluded. Alfred, in the mean time, took pos-
session of a gentle elevation of land, which now
would give him an advantage in the conflict.
A single thorn-tree, growing there alone, marked
the spot. The Danes advanced to attack him,
expecting that, as he was not sustained by Eth-
elred's division of the army, he would be easily
overpowered and driven from his post.

Alfred himself felt an extreme and feverish
anxiety at Ethelred's delay. He fought, how-
ever, with the greatest determination and brav-
ery. The thorn-tree continued to be the center
of the conflict for a long time, and, as the morn-
ing advanced, it became more and more doubt-
ful how it would end. At last, Ethelred, having
finished his devotional services, came forth from
his camp at the head of his division, and ad-
vanced vigorously to his faltering brother's aid.
This soon decided the contest. The Danes wero
overpowered and put to flight. They fled at
first in all directions, wherever each separate
band saw the readiest prospect of escape from
the immediate vengeance of their pursuers.
They soon, however, all began with one accord
to seek the roads which would conduct them to
their stronghold at Reading. They were madly

124 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871.

Results of the battle. Alfred and Ethelred.

pursued, and massacred as they fled, by Alfred's
and Ethelred's army. Vast numbers fell. The
remnant secured their retreat, shut themselves
up within their walls, and began to devote their
eager and earnest attention to the work of re-
pairing and making good their defenses.

This victory changed for the time being the
whole face of affairs, and led, in various ways,
to very important consequences, the most im-
portant of which was, as we shall presently see,
that it was the means indirectly of bringing
Alfred soon to the throne. As to the cause of
the victory, or, rather, the manner in which it
was accomplished, the writers of the times give
very different accounts, according as their re-
spective characters incline them to commend, in
man, a feeling of quiet trust and confidence in
God when placed in circumstances of difficulty
or danger, or a vigorous and resolute exertion
of his own powers. Alfred looked for deliver-
ance to the determined assaults and heavy blows
which he could bring to bear upon his pagan
enemies with weapons of steel around the thorn-
tree in the field. Ethelred trusted to his hope
of obtaining, by his prayers in his tent, the ef-
fectual protection of Heaven ; and they who have
written the story differ, as they who read it will,

A.D. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 125

The old chronicles. The locality of the battle,

on the question to whose instrumentality the
victory is to be ascribed. One says that Alfred
gained it by his sword. Another, that Alfred
exerted his strength and his valor in vain, and
was saved from defeat and destruction only by
the intervention of Ethelred, bringing with him
the blessing of Heaven.

In fact, the various narratives of these ancient
events, which are found at the present day in the
old chronicles that record them, differ always
very essentially, not only in respect to matters
of opinion, and to the point of view in which
they are to be regarded, but also in respect to
questions of fact. Even the place where this
battle was fought, notwithstanding what we
have said about the derivation of Aston from
^scesdune, is not absolutely certain. There
is in the same vicinity another town, callH ' fa-
bury, which claims the honor. One reason for
supposing that this last is the true locality is
that there are the ruins of an ancient monu-
ment here, which, tradition says, was a monu-
ment built to commemorate the death of a Dan-
ish chieftain slain here by Alfred. There is
also in the neighborhood another very singular
monument, called The White Horse, which also
has the reputation of having been fashioned to

126 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871.

The White Horse. Death of Ethelred.

commemorate Alfred's victories. The White
Horse is a rude representation of a horse, formed
by cutting away the turf from the steep slope
of a hill, so as to expose a portion of the white
surface of the chalky rock below of sucli a form
that the figure is called a horse, though they
who see it seem to think it might as well have
been called a dog. The name, however, of The
White Horse has come down with it from an-
cient times, and the hill on which it is cut is
known as The White Horse Hill. Some ingeni-
ous antiquarians think they find evidence that
this gigantic profile was made to commemorate
the victory obtained by Alfred and Ethelred over
the Danes at the ancient ^Escesdune.

However this may be, and whatever view we
may take of the comparative influence of Al-
fred's energetic action and Ethelred's religious
faith in the defeat of the Danes at this great
battle, it is certain that the results of it were
very momentous to all concerned. Ethelred
received a wound, either in this battle or in
some of the smaller contests and collisions
which followed it, under the effects of which he
pined and lingered for some months, and then
died. Alfred, by his decision and courage on
the day of the battle, and by the ardor and res-

A.D.871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 127

Alfred's popularity. He is selected to succeed Ethelred.

olution with which he pressed all the subse-
quent operations during the period of Ethel-
red's decline, made himself still more conspicu-
ous in the eyes of his countrymen than he had
ever been before. In looking forward to Ethel-
red's approaching death, the people, according-
ly, began to turn their eyes to Alfred as his
successor. There were children of some of his
older brothers living at that time, and they, ac-
cording to all received principles of hereditary
right, would naturally succeed to the throne ;
but the nation seems to have thought that the
crisis was too serious, and the dangers which
threatened their country were too imminent, to
justify putting any child upon the throne. The
accession of one of those children would have
been the signal for a terrible and protracted
struggle among powerful relatives and friends
for the regency during the minority of the
youthful sovereign, and this, while the Danes
remained in their strong-hold at Reading, in
daily expectation of new re-enforcements from
beyond the sea, would have plunged the coun-
try in hopeless ruin. They turned their eyes
toward Alfred, therefore, as the sovereign to
whom they were to bow so soon as Ethelred
should cease to breathe.

128 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.871.

The Danes strengthen themselves. Their successes.

In the mean time, the Danes, far from being
subdued by the adverse turn of fortune which
had befallen them, strengthened themselves in
their fortress, made desperate sallies from their
intrenchments, attacked their foes on every pos-
sible occasion, and kept the country in contin-
ual alarm. They at length so far recruited
their strength, and intimidated and discouraged
their foes, whose king and nominal leader, Eth-
elred, was now less able than ever to resist
them, as to take the field again. They fought
more pitched battles ; and, though the Saxon
chroniclers who narrate these events are very
reluctant to admit that the Saxons were really
vanquished in these struggles, they allow that
the Danes kept the ground which they success-
ively took post upon, and the discouraged and
disheartened inhabitants of the country were
forced to retire.

In the mean time, too, new parties of Danes
were continually arriving on the coast, and
spreading themselves in marauding and plun-
dering excursions over the country. The Danes
at Reading were re-enforced by these bands,
which made the conflict between them and Eth-
elred's forces more unequal still. Alfred did
his utmost to resist the tide of ill fortune, with
the limited and doubtful authority which he

A.D. 871.] ALFRED'S ACCESSION. 129

Death of Ethelred. His burial at Wimbome.

held ; but all was in vain. Ethelred, worn
down, probably, with the anxiety and depres-
sion which the situation of his kingdom brought
upon him, lingered for a time, and then died,
and Alfred was by general consent called to
the throne. This was in the year 871.

It was a matter of moment to find a safe and
secure place of deposit for the body of Ethelred,
who, as a Christian slain in contending with
pagans, was to be considered a martyr. His
memory was honored as that of one who had
sacrificed his life in defense of the Christian
faith. They knew very well that even his life-
less remains would not be safe from the venge-
ance of his foes unless they were placed effect-
ually beyond the reach of these desperate ma-
rauders. There was, far to the south, in Dor-
setshire, on the southern coast of England, a
monastery, at "Wimborne, a very sacred spot,
worthy to be selected as ja place of royal sepul-
ture. The spot has continued sacred to the
present day ; and it has now, upon the site, as
is supposed, of the ancient monastery, a grand
cathedral church or minster, full of monuments
of former days, and impressing all beholders
with its solemn architectural grandeur. Here
they conveyed the body of Ethelred and inter-
I

130 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871.

The inscription. Doubts in regard to Ethelred's death.

red it. It was a place of sacred seclusion, where
there reigned a solemn stillness and awe, which
no Christian hostility would ever have dared
to disturb. The sacrilegious paganism of the
Danes, however, would have respected it but
little, if they had ever found access to it ; but
they did not. The body of Ethelred remained
undisturbed; and, many centuries afterward,
some travelers who visited the spot recorded the
fact that there was a monument there with this
inscription :

"IN HOC LOCO QUIESOfT CORPUS ETHELRED1
REGIS WEST SAXONUM, MARTYRIS, QUI ANNO DOM-
INI DCCCLXXL, XXIII. APRILIS, PER MANUS DANO-
RUM PAGANORUM, OCCUBUIT."*

Such is the commonly received opinion of the
death of Ethelred. And yet some of the crit-
ical historians of modern times, who find cause
to doubt or disbelieve a very large portion of
what is stated in ancient records, attempt to
prove that Ethelred was not killed by the Danes
at all, but that he died of the plague, which
terrible disease was at that time prevailing in
that part of England. At all events, he died,
and Alfred, his brother, was called to reign in
his stead.

* " Here rests the body of Ethelred, king of West Saxony,
the Martyr, who died by the hands of the pagan Danes, on
the 23d of April, in the year of our Lord 871 "

A.D. 871.] REVERSES. 131

Alfred's reluctance to receive the crown. HU nephew.

CHAPTER VII.
REVERSES.

FI1HE historians say that Alfred was very un-
-*• willing to assume the crown when the
death of Ethelred presented it to him. If it
had been an object of ambition or desire, there
would probably have been a rival claimant,
whose right would perhaps have proved supe-
rior to his own, since it appears that one or
more of the brothers who reigned before him
left a son, whose claim to the inheritance, if
the inheritance had been worth claiming, would
have been stronger than that of their uncle
The son of the oldest son takes precedence al
ways of the 'brother, for hereditary rights, like
water, never move laterally so long as they can
continue to descend.

The nobles, however, and chieftains, and all
the leading powers of the kingdom of Wessex,
which was the particular kingdom which de-
scended from Alfred's ancestors, united to urge
Alfred to take the throne. His father had, in-
deed, designated him as the successor of his

ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871

Ethelred's funeral. Coronation of Alfred at Winchester.

brothers by his will, though how far a monarch
may properly control by his will the, disposal
of his realm, is a matter of great uncertainty.
Alfred yielded at length to these solicitations,
and determined on assuming the sovereign
power. He first went to Wimborne to attend
to the funeral solemnities which were to be ob-
served at his royal brother's burial. He then
went to Winchester, which, as well as Wim-
borne, is in the south of England, to be crowned
and anointed king. Winchester was, even in
those early days, a great ecclesiastical center.
It was for some time the capital of the West
Saxon realm. ' It was a very sacred place, and
the crown was there placed upon Alfred's head,
with the most imposing and solemn ceremonies.
It is a curious and remarkable fact, that the
spots which were consecrated in those early
days by the religious establishments of the times,
have preserved in almost every case their sacred-
ness to the present day. Winchester is now
famed all over England for its great Cathedral
church, and the vast religious establishment
which has its seat there — the annual revenues
and expenditures of which far exceed those of
many of the states of this Union. The income
of the bishop alone was for many years double

CORONATION CHAIE.

AD. 871.] REVERSES. 135

The Bishop of Winchester. Alfred takes the field against the Danes.

that of the salary of the President of the United
States. The Bishop of Winchester is widely
celebrated, therefore, all over England, for his
wealth, his ecclesiastical power, the architec-
tural grandeur of the Cathedral church, and the
wealth and importance of the college of eccle-
siastics over which he presides.

It was in Winchester that Alfred was crown-
ed. As soon as the ceremony was performed,
he took the field, collected his forces, and went
to meet the Danes again. He found the coun-
try in a most deplorable condition. The Danes
had extended and strengthened their positions.
They had got possession of many of the towns,
and, not content with plundering castles and
abbeys, they had seized lands, and were be-
ginning to settle upon them, as if they intended
to make Alfred's new kingdom their permanent
abode. The forces of the Saxons, on the other
hand, were scattered and discouraged. There
seemed no hope left to them of making head
against their pestiferous invaders. If they were
defeated, their cruel conquerors showed no mod-
eration and no mercy in their victory ; and if
they conquered, it was only to suppress for a
moment one horde, with a certainty of being
attacked immediately by another, more recently

136 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 871.

Battle at Wilton. Defeat of Alfred.

arrived, and more determined and relentless
than those before them.

Alfred succeeded, however, by means of the
influence of his personal character, and by the
very active and efficient exertions that he made,
in concentrating what forces remained, and in
preparing for a renewal of the contest. The
first great battle that was fought was at Wilt-
on. This was within a month of his accession
to the throne. The battle was very obstinately
fought ; at the first onset Alfred's troops carried
all before them, and there was every prospect
that he would win the day. In the end, how-
ever, the tide of victory turned in favor of the
Danes, and Alfred and his troops were driven
from the field. There was an immense loss on
both sides. In fact, both armies were, for the
time, pretty effectually disabled, and each seems
to have shrunk from a renewal of the contest.
Instead, therefore, of fighting again, the two
commanders entered into negotiations. Huttba
was the name of the Danish chieftain. In the
end, he made a treaty with Alfred, by which he
agreed to retire from Alfred's dominions, and
leave him in peace, provided that Alfred would
not interfere with him in his wars in any other
part of Eng.and. Alfred's kingdom was Wes-

A.D.872.] REVERSES. 137

Treaty with the Danes. They inarch into Mercia.

sex. Besides Wessex, there was Essex, Mercia,
and Northumberland. Hubba and his Danes,
finding that Alfred was likely to prove too formi-
dable an antagonist for them easily to subdue,
thought it would be most prudent to give up
one kingdom out of the four, on condition of not
having Alfred to contend against in their depre-
dations upon the other three. They according-
ly made the treaty, and the Danes withdrew.
They evacuated their posts and strong-holds in
"Wessex, and went down the Thames to Lon-
don, which was in Mercia, and there commenced
a new course of conquest and plunder, where
they had no such powerful foe to oppose them.
Buthred was the king of Mercia. He could
not resist Hubba and his Danes alone, and he
could not now have Alfred's assistance. Alfred
was censured very much at the time, and has
been condemned often since, for having thus
made a separate peace for himself and his own
immediate dominions, and abandoned his nat-
ural allies and friends, the people of the other
Saxon kingdoms. To make a peace with sav-
age and relentless pagans, on the express con-
dition of leaving his fellow-Christian neighbors
at their mercy, has been considered ungenerous,
at least, if it was not unjust. On the other

138 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AJX 874.

Buthred's misfortunes. He buys off the Danes.

hand, those who vindicate his conduct maintain
that it was his duty to secure the peace and
welfare of his own realm, leaving other sover-
eigns to take care of theirs ; and that he would
have done very wrong to sacrifice the property
and lives of his own immediate subjects to a
mere point of honor, when it was utterly out of
his power to protect them and his neighbors too.
However this may be, Buthred, finding that
he could not have Alfred's aid, and that he
could not protect his kingdom by any force
which he could himself bring into the field, tried
negotiations too, and he succeeded in buying
off the Danes with money. He paid them a
large sum, on condition of their leaving his do-
minions finally and forever, and not coming to
molest him any more. Such a measure as this
is always a very desperate and hopeless one.
Buying off robbers, or beggars, or false accus-
ers, or oppressors of any kind, is only to encour-
age them to come again, after a brief interval,
under some frivolous pretext, with fresh de-
nands or new oppressions, that they may be
Dought off again with higher pay. At least
Buthred found it so in this case. Hubba went
northward for a time, into the kingdom of Nor-
thumberland, and, after various conquests and

A.D.874.] REVERSES. 139

Buthred'a unhappy end. Ceolwulf.

plunderings there, he came back again into
Mercia, on the plea that there was a scarcity
of provisions in the northern kingdom, and he
was obliged to come back. Buthred bought
him off again with a larger sum of money.
Hubba scarcely left the kingdom this time, but
spent the money with his army, in carousings
and excesses, and then went to robbing and
plundering as before. Buthred, at last, reduced
to despair, and seeing -no hope of escape from
the terrible pest with which his kingdom was
infested, abandoned the country and escaped to
Rome. They received him as an exiled mon-
arch, in the Saxon school, where he soon after
died a prey to grief and despair.

The Danes overturned what remained of
Buthred's government. They destroyed a fa-
mous mausoleum, the ancient burial place of
the Mercian kings. This devastation of the
abodes of the dead was a sort of recreation — a
savage amusement, to vary the more serious and
dangerous excitements attending their contests
with the living. They found an officer of
Buthred's government named Ceolwulf, who,
though a Saxon, was willing, through his love
of place and power, to accept of the office of
king in subordination to the Danes, and hold

140 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 874.

Halfden arrives in England. Alfred's castle at Wareham.

it at their disposal, paying an annual tribute
to them. Ceolwulf was execrated by his coun-
trymen, who considered him a traitor. He, in
his turn, oppressed and tyrannized over them.

In the mean time, a new leader, with a fresh
horde of Danes, had landed in England. His
name was Halfden. Halfden came with a con-
siderable fleet of ships, and, after landing his
men, and performing various exploits and en.
countering various adventures in other parts of
England, he began to turn his thoughts toward
Alfred's dominions. Alfred did not pay par-
ticular attention to Halfden's movements at
first, as he supposed that his treaty with Hubba
had bound the whole nation of the Danes not
to encroach upon his realm, whatever they
might do in respect to the other Saxon king-
doms. Alfred had a famous castle at Ware-
ham, on the southern coast of the island. It
was situated on a bay which lies in what is now
Dorsetshire. This castle was the strongest
place in his dominions. It was garrisoned and
guarded, but not with any special vigilance, as
no one expected an attack upon it. Halfden
brought his fleet to the southern shore of the
island, and, organizing an expedition there, he
put to sea, and before any one suspected his de-

A.D. 874. J REVERSES. 141

Wareham Castle taken by Halfden, Contests and truces.

sign, he entered the bay, surprised and attacked
Wareham Castle, and took it. Alfred and the
people of his realm were not only astonished and
alarmed at the loss of the castle, but they were
filled with indignation at the treachery of the
Danes in violating their treaty by attacking it.
Halfden said, however, that he was an inde-
pendent chieftain, acting in his own name, and
was not bound at all by any obligations entered
into by Hubba !

There followed after this a series of contests
and truces, during which treacherous wars al-
ternated with still more treacherous and illu-
sive periods of peace, neither party, on the
whole, gaining any decided victory. The
Danes, at one time, after agreeing upon a ces-
sation of hostilities, suddenly fell upon a large
squadron of Alfred's horse, who, relying on the
truce, were moving across the country too much
off their guard. The Danes dismounted and
drove off the men, and seized the horses, and
thus provided themselves with cavalry, a spe-
cies of force which it is obvious they could not
easily, bring, in any ships which they could then
construct, across the German Ocean. Without
waiting for Alfred to recover from the surprise
and consternation which this unexpected treach-

142 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 874.

The town of Exeter. It ia taken by the Danes.

ery occasioned, the newly-mounted troop of
Danes rode rapidly along the southern coast of
England till they came to the town of Exeter.
Its name was in those days Exancester. It
was then, as it is now, a very important town.
It has since acquired a mournful celebrity as
the place of refuge, and the scene of suffering
of Queen Henrietta Maria, the mother of
Charles the Second.* The loss of this place was
a new and heavy cloud over Alfred's prospects.
It placed the whole southern coast of his realm
in the hands of his enemies, and seemed to por-
tend for the whole interior of the country a pe-
riod of hopeless and irremediable calamity.

It seems, too, from various unequivocal state-
ments and allusions contained in the narratives
of the times, that Alfred did not possess, during
' this period of his reign, the respect and affection
of his subjects. He is accused, or, rather, not
directly accused, but spoken of as generally
known to be guilty of many faults which alien-
ated the hearts of his countrymen from him, and
prepared them to consider his calamities as the
judgments of Heaven. He was young and ar-
dent, full of youthful impetuosity and fire, and

* For an account of Henrietta's adventures and sufferings
at Exeter, see the History of Charles II., chap. iii.

A.D. 874] REVERSES. 143

Serious charges against Alfred, Love of pleasure.

was elated at his elevation to the throne ; and,
during the period while the Danes left him in
peace, under the treaties he had made with
Hubba, he gave himself up to pleasure, and not
always to innocent pleasure. They charged
him, too, with being tyrannical and oppressive
in his government, being so devoted to gratify-
ing his own ambition and love of personal indul-
gence that he neglected his government, sac-
rificed the interests and the welfare of his sub-
jects, and exercised his regal powers in a very
despotic and arbitrary manner.

It is very difficult to decide, at this late day,
how far this disposition to find fault with Al-
fred's early administration of his government
arose from, or was aggravated by, the misfor-
tunes and calamities which befell him. On the
one hand, it would not be surprising if, young,
and arduous, and impetuous as he was at this
period of his life, he should have fallen into the
errors and faults which youthful monarchs are
very prone to commit on being suddenly raised
to power. But then, on the other hand, men
are prone, in all ages of the world, and most
especially in such rude and uncultivated times
as these were, to judge military and govern-
mental action by the sole criterion of success.

144 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 874.

Saint Neot. He reproaches Alfred with his misdeeds.

Thus, when they found that Alfred's measures,
one after another, failed in protecting his coun-
try, that the impending calamities burst suc-
cessively upon them, notwithstanding all Al-
fred's efforts to avert them, it was natural that
they should look at and exaggerate his faults,
and charge all their national misfortunes to the
influence of them.

There was a certain Saint Neot, a kinsman
and religious counselor of Alfred, the history
of whose life was afterward written by the
Abbot of Crowland, the monastery whose de-
struction by the Danes was described in a former
chapter. In this narrative it is said that Neot
often rebuked Alfred in the severest terms for
his sinful course of life, predicting the most fatal
consequences if he did not reform, and using
language which only a very culpable degree of
remissness and irregularity could justify. ' ' You
glory," said he, one day, when addressing the
king, " in your pride and power, and are de-
termined and obdurate in your iniquity. But
there is a terrible retribution in store for you.
I entreat you to listen to my counsels, amend
your life, and govern your people with modera-
tion and justice, instead of tyranny and oppres-
sion, and thus avert if you can, before it is too
Into, the impending judgments of Heaven."

AD. 875. J REVERSES. 145

Justice of Neot'a reproaches. Alfred's early sins atoned for.

Such language as this it is obvious that only
a very serious dereliction of duty on Alfred's
part could call for or justify ; but, whatever he
may have done to deserve it, his offenses were
so fully expiated by his subsequent 'sufferings,
and he atoned for them so nobly, too, by the
wisdom, the prudence, the faithful and devoted
patriotism of his later career, that mankind
have been disposed to pass by the faults of his
early years without attempting to scrutinize
them too closely. The noblest human spirits
are always, in some periods of their existence,
or in some aspects of their characters, strange-
ly weakened by infirmities and frailties, and
deformed by sin. This is human nature. We
like to imagine that we find exceptions, and to
see specimens of moral perfection in our friends
or in the historical characters whose general
course of action we admire ; but there are no
exceptions. To err and to sin, at some times
and in some ways, is the common, universal,
and inevitable lot of humanity.

At the time when Halfden and his followers
seized "Wareham Castle and Exeter, Alfred
had been several years upon the throne, during
which time these derelictions from duty tool?
place, so far as they existed at all. But now,
V

146 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 875.

Alfred arouses himself. Convenes an assembly of chiefs and nobles.

alarmed at the imminence of the impending
danger, which threatened not only the welfare
of his people, but his own kingdom and even his
life — for one Saxon monarch had been driven
from his dominions, as we have seen, and had
died a miserable exile at Rome — Alfred aroused
himself in earnest to the work of regaining his
lost influence among his people, and recovering
their alienated affections.

He accordingly, as his first step, convened a
great assembly of the leading chieftains and
noblemen of the realm, and made addresses to
them, in which he urged upon them the immi-
nence of the danger which threatened their com-
mon country, and pressed them to unite vigor-
ously and energetically with him to contend
against their common foe. They must make
great sacrifices, he said, both of their comfort
and ease, as well as of their wealth, to resist
successfully so imminent a danger. He sum-
moned them to arms, and urged them to con-
tribute the means necessary to pay the expense
of a vigorous prosecution of the war. These
harangues, and the ardor and determination
which Alfred manifested himself at the time of
making them, were successful. The nation
aroused itself to new exertions, and for a time

A.D. 875.] REVERSES. j.49

Alfred builds a fleet. Difficulty of pfT.urn>£ seamen.

there was a prospect that the country would be
saved.

Among the other measures to which Alfred
resorted in this emergency was the attempt to
encounter the Danes upon their own element,
by building and equipping a fleet of ships, with
which to proceed to sea, in order to meet and
attack upon the water certain new bodies of in-
vaders, who were on the way to join the Danes
already on the island — coming, as rumor said,
along the southern shore. In attempting to
build up a naval power, the greatest difficulty,
always, is to provide seamen. It is much eas-
ier to build ships than to train sailors. To
man his little fleet, Alfred had to enlist such
half-savage foreigners as could be found in the
ports, and even pirates, as was said, whom he
induced to enter his service, promising them
pay, and such plunder as they could take from
the enemy. These attempts of Alfred to build
and man a fleet are considered the first rude be-
ginnings from which the present vast edifice of
British naval power took its origin. When the
fleet was ready to put to sea, the people throng-
ed the shores, watching its movements with the
utmost curiosity and interest, earnestly hoping
that it might be successful in its contests with

150 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 875.

Success of Alfred's fleet Succession of battles and treaties.

the more tried and experienced armaments with
which it would have to contend.

Alfred was, in fact, successful in the first en-
terprises which he undertook with his ships.
He encountered a fleet of the Danish ships in
the Channel,- and defeated them. His fleet cap-
tured, moreover, one of the largest of the ves-
sels of the enemy; and, with what would be
thought in our day unpardonable cruelty, they
threw the sailors and soldiers whom they found
on board into the sea, and kept the vessel.

After all, however, Alfred gained no con-
clusive and decisive victory over his foes. They
were too numerous, too scattered, and too firmly*
seated in the various districts of the island, of
some of which they had been in possession for
many years. Time passed on, battles were
fought, treaties of peace were made, oaths were
taken, hostages were exchanged, and then, after
a very brief interval of repose, hostilities would
break out again, each party bitterly accusing
the other of treachery. Then the poor hosta-
ges would be slain, first by one party, and after-
ward, in retaliation, by the other.

In one of these temporary and illusive paci-
fications, Alfred attempted to bind the Banes
by Christian oaths. Their customary mode of

A.D. 875.] REVERSES. 151

The Danish oath. Christian relics.

binding themselves, in cases where they wished
to impose a solemn religious obligation, was to
swear by a certain ornament which they wore
upon their arms, which is called in the chroni-
cles of those times a bracelet. What its form
and fashion was we can not now precisely know ;
but it is plain that they attached some super-
stitious, and perhaps idolatrous associations of
sacredness to it. To swear by this bracelet was
to place themselves under the most solemn ob-
ligation that they could assume. Alfred, how-
ever, not satisfied with this pagan sanction,
made them, in confirming one treaty, swear by
the Christian relics, which were certain sup-
posed memorials of our Saviour's crucifixion, or
portions of the bodies of dead saints miracu-
lously preserved, and to which the credulous
Christians of that day attached an idea of sa-
credness and awe, scarcely less superstitious
than that which their pagan enemies felt for
the bracelets on their arms. Alfred could not
have supposed that these treacherous covenant-
ers, since they would readily violate the faith
plighted in the name of what they revered,
could be held by what they hated and despised.
Perhaps he thought that, though they would be
no more likely to keep the new oath than the

152 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 875

The story of Rollo. His famous exploits.

old, still, that their violation of it, when it oc-
curred, would be in itself a great crime — that
his cause would be subsequently strengthened
by their thus incurring the special and unmiti-
gated displeasure of Heaven.

Among the Danish chieftains with whom Al-
fred had thus continually to contend in this
early par', of his reign, there was one very fa-
mous hero, whose name was Rollo. He in-
vaded England with a wild horde which attend-
ed him for a short time, but he soon retired
and went to France, where he afterward greatly
distinguished himself by his prowess and his
exploits. The Saxon historians say that he re-
treated from England because Alfred gave him
such a reception that he saw that it would be
impossible for him to maintain his footing there.
His account of it was, that, one day, when he
was perplexed with doubt and uncertainty about
his plans, he fell asleep and dreamed that he
saw a swarm of bees flying southward. This
was an omen, as he regarded it, indicating the
course which he ought to pursue. He accord-
ingly embarked his men on board his ships
again, and crossed the Channel, and sought
successfully in Normandy, a province of France,
the kingdom and the home which, either on ao-

A.D. 875.] REVERSES. 153

The Danes generally successful. Alfred's distress.

count of Alfred or ,of the bees, he was not to en-
joy in England.

The cases, however, in which the Danish
chieftains were either entirely conquered or
finally expelled from the kingdom were very
few. As years passed on, Alfred found his army
diminishing, and the strength of his kingdom
wasting away. His resources were exhausted,
his friends had disappeared, his towns and cas-
tles were taken, and, at last, about eight years
after his coronation at Winchester as monarch
of the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms,
lie found himself reduced to the very last ex-
treme of destitution and distress.

154 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Alfred's perseverance. Another arrival of Danes.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SECLUSION.

IVrOTWITHSTANDING the tide of disas-
*• ^ ter and calamity which seemed to be grad-
ually overwhelming Alfred's kingdom, he was
not reduced to absolute despair, but continued
for a long time the almost hopeless struggle.
There is a certain desperation to which men
are often aroused in the last extremity, which
surpasses courage, and is even sometimes a very
effectual substitute for strength ; and Alfred
might, perhaps, have succeeded, after all, in sav-
ing his affairs from utter ruin, had not a new
circumstance intervened, which seemed at once
to extinguish all remaining hope and to seal
his doom.

This circumstance was the arrival of a new
band of Danes, who were, it seems, more nu-
4 merous, more ferocious, and more insatiable
than any who had come before them. The
other kingdoms of the Saxons had been already
pretty effectually plundered. Alfred's kingdom
of Wessex was now, therefore, the most invit-
ing field, and, after various excursions of co***

A.D.878.] THE SECLUSION. 155

Alfred's army disorganized. He is left alone.

quest and plunder in other parts of the island,
they came like an inundation over Alfred's
frontiers, and all hope of resisting them seems
to have been immediately abandoned. The
Saxon armies were broken up. Alfred had lost,
it appears, all influence and control over both
leaders and men. The chieftains and nobles
fled. Some left the country altogether ; others
hid themselves in the best retreats and fastness-
es that they could find. Alfred himself was
obliged to follow the general example. A few
attendants, either more faithful than the rest.
or else more distrustful of their own resources,
and inclined, accordingly, to seek their own per-
sonal safety by adhering closely to their sover-
eign, followed him. These, however, one after
another, gradually forsook him, and, finally, the
fallen and deserted monarch was left alone.

In fact, it was a relief to him at last to be
left alone ; for they who remained around him
became in the end a burden instead of afford-
ing him protection. They were too few to fight,
and too many to be easily concealed. Alfred
withdrew himself from them, thinking that, un-
der the circumstances in which he was now
placed, he was justified in seeking his own per-
sonal safety alone. He had a wife, whom he

156 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Alfred's wife. He retires to Athelney.

married when he was about twenty years old ;
but she was not with him now, though she aft-
erward joined him. She was in some other
place of retreat. She could, in fact, be much
more easily concealed than her husband ; for
the Danes, though they would undoubtedly
have valued her very highly as a captive, would
not search for her with the eager and persever-
ing vigilance with which it was to be expected
they would hunt for their most formidable, but
now discomfited and fugitive foe.

Alfred, therefore, after disentangling himself
from all but one or two trustworthy and faith-
ful friends, wandered on toward the west,
through forests, and solitudes, and wilds, to get
as far away as possible from the enemies who
were upon his track. He arrived at last on
the remote western frontiers of his kingdom, at
a place whose name has been immortalized by
its having been for some time the place of his
retreat. It was called Athelney.* Athelney
was, however, scarcely deserving of a name, for
it was nothing but a small spot of dry land in
the midst of a morass, which, as grass would

* The name is spelled variously, Ethelney, ^Ethelney,
^thelingay, &c. It was in Somersetshire, between the riv»
ers Thone and Parrot.

A.D.878.] THE 'SECLUSION. 157

The cow-herd. He gives Alfred an asylum.

grow upon it in the openings among the trees,
a simple cow-herd had taken possession of, and
built his hut thSre.

The solid land which the cow-herd called his
farm was only about two acres in extent. All
around it was a black morass, of great extent,
wooded with alders, among which green sedges
grew, and sluggish streams meandered, and
mossy tracts of verdure spread treacherously
over deep bogs and sloughs. In the driest sea-
son of the summer the goats and the sheep pen-
etrated into these recesses, but, excepting in
the devious^ and tortuous path' by which the
cow-herd found his way to his island, it was
almost impassable for man.

Alfred, however, attracted now by the imped-
iments and obstacles which would have repel-
led a wanderer under any other circumstances,
went on with the greater alacrity the more in-
tricate and entangled the thickets of the morass
were found, since these difficulties promised to
impede or deter pursuit. He found his way in
to the cow-herd's hut. He asked for shelter.
People who live in solitudes are always hospi-
table. The cow-herd took the wayworn fugi-
tive in, and gave him food and shelter. Alfred
remained his guest for a considerable time.

158 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Alfred's account of himself. The story of Alfred's seclusion.

The story is, that after a few days the cow-
herd asked him who he was, and how he came
to be wandering about in thaj; distressed and
destitute condition. Alfred told him that he
was one of the king's thanes. A thane was a
sort of chieftain in the Saxon state. He ac-
counted for his condition by saying that Alfred's
army nad been beaten by the Danes, and that
he, with the other generals, had been forced to
fly. He begged the cow-herd to conceal him,
and to keep the secret of his character until
times should change, so that he could take the
field again. ,

The story of Alfred's seclusion on the island,
as it might almost be called, of Ethelney, is told
very differently by the different narrators of
it. Some of these narrations are inconsistent
and contradictory. They all combine, however,
though they differ in respect to many other inci-
dents and details, in relating the far-famed story
of Alfred's leaving the cakes to burn. It seems
that, though the cow-herd himself was allowed
to regard Alfred as a man of rank in disguise —
though even he did not know that it was the
king — his wife was not admitted, even in this
partial way, into the secret. She was made to
consider the stranger as some common strolling

AD. 878.] THE SECLUSION. 159

Alfred's occupations at Ethelney. His gloomy thoughts.

countryman, and the better to sustain this idea,
he was taken into the cow-herd's service, and
employed in various ways, from time to time,
in labors about the house and farm. Alfred's
thoughts, however, were little interested in
these occupations. His mind dwelt incessant-
ly upon his misfortunes and the calamities
which had befallen his kingdom. He was har-
assed by continual suspense and anxiety, not
being able to gain any clear or certain intelli-
gence about the condition and movements of
either his friends or foes. He was revolving
continually vague and half-formed plans for re-
suming the command of his army and attempt-
ing to regain his kingdom, and wearying him-
self with fruitless attempts to devise means to
accomplish these ends. Whenever he engaged
voluntarily in any occupation, it would always
be something in harmony with these trains of
thought and these plans. He would repair and
put in order implements of hunting, or any
thing else which might be deemed to have some
relation to war. He would make bows and ar-
rows in the chimney corner — lost, all the time,
in melancholy reveries, or in wild and visionary
schemes of future exploits.

One evening, while he was thus at work, the

160 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

The story of the cakes. Its deep interest

cow-herd's wife left, for a few moments, some
cakes under his charge, which she was baking
upon the great stone hearth, in preparation for
their common supper. Alfred, as might have
been expected, let the cakes burn. The wom-
an, when she came back and found them smok-
ing, was very angry. She told him that he
could eat the cakes fast enough when they were
baked, though it seemed he was too lazy and
good for nothing to do the least thing in helping
to bake them. What wide-spread and lasting
effects result sometimes from the most trifling
and inadequate causes! The singularity of
such an adventure befalling a monarch in dis-
guise, and the terse antithesis of the reproaches
with which the woman rebuked him, invest
th'js incident with an interest which carries it
ev^ry where spontaneously among mankind.
Millions, within the last thousand years, have
heard the name of Alfred, who have known no
more of him than this story ; and millions more,
who never would have heard of him but for this
story, have been led by it to study the whole
history of his life ; so that the unconscious cow-
herd's wife, in scolding the disguised monarch
for forgetting her cakes, was perhaps doing

A.D.878.] THE SECLUSION. 163

Various accounts of the story of the cakes.

more than he ever did himself for the wide ex-
tension of his future fame.*

* As this incident has been so famous, it may amuse the
reader to peruse the different accounts which are given of it
in the most ancient records which now remain. They were
written in Latin and in Saxon, and, of course, as given here,
they are translations. The discrepancies which the reader
will observe in the details illustrate well the uncertainty
which pertains to all historical accounts that go back to so
early an age.

" He led an unquiet life there, at his cow-herd's. It hap-
pened that, on a certain day, the rustic wife of the man pre-
pared to bake her bread. The king, sitting then near the
hearth, was making ready his bow and arrows, and other war-
like implements, when the ill-tempered woman beheld the
loaves burning at the fire. She ran hastily and removed them,
scolding at the king, and exclaiming, ' You man ! you will not
turn the bread you see burning, but you will be very glad to
eat it when it is done !' This unlucky woman little thought
she was addressing the King Alfred."'

In a certain Saxon history the story is told thus :

" He took shelter in a swain's house, and also him and his
evil wife diligently served. It happened that, on one day,
the swain's wife heated her oven, and the king sat by it warm-
ing himself by the fire. She knew not then that he was the
king. Then the evil woman was excited, and spoke to the
king with an angry mind. ' Turn thou these loaves, that
they burn not, for I see daily that thou art a great eater !' He
soon obeyed this evil woman because she would scold. He
then, the good king, with great anxiety and sighing, called to
his Lord, imploring his pity."

The following account is from a Latin life of St. Neot, which
still exists in manuscript, and is of great antiquity :

164 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Various accounts of the story of the cakes.

Alfred was, for a time, extremely depressed
and disheartened by the sense of his misfortunes

" Alfred, a fugitive, and exiled from his people, came by
chance and entered the house of a poor herdsman, and there
remained some days concealed, poor and unknown.

" It happened that, on the Sabbath day, the herdsman, aa
usual, led his cattle to their accustomed pastures, and the king
remained alone in the cottage with the man's wife. She, as
necessity required, placed a few loaves, which some call
loudas, on a pan, with fire underneath, to be baked for her
husband's repast and her own, on his return.

" While she was necessarily busied, like peasants, on other
offices, she went anxious to the fire, and found the bread
burning on the other side. She immediately assailed the king
with reproaches. 'Why, man! do you sit thinking there, aud
are too proud to turn the bread ? Whatever be your family,
with your manners and sloth, what trust can be put in you
hereafter? If you were even a nobleman, you will be glad
to eat the bread which you neglect to attend to.' The king,
though stung by her upbraidings, yet heard her with patience
and mildness, and, roused by her scolding, took care to bake
her bread thereafter as she wished."

There is one remaining account, which is as follows :

" It happened that the herdsman one day, as usual, led his
swine to their accustomed pasture, and the king remained at
home alone with the •wife. She placed her bread under the
ashes of the fire to bake, and was employed in other business,
when she saw the loaves burning, and said to the king in her
rage, ' You will not turn the bread you see burning, though
you will be very glad to eat it when done !' The king, with
a submitting countenance, though vexed at her upbraidings,
not only turned the bread, but gave them to the woman well
baked aud unbroken."

It is obvious, from the character of these several accounts,

A.D. 878.] THE SECLUSION. 165

Effect of Alfred's seclusion on his heart and character.

and calamities ; but the monkish writers who
described his character and his life say that the
influence of his sufferings was extremely salu-
tary in softening his disposition and improving
his character. He had been proud, and haughty,
and domineering before. He became humble,
docile, and considerate now. Faults of charac-
ter that are superficial, resulting from the force
of circumstances and peculiarities of tempta-
tion, rather than from innate depravity of heart,
are easily and readily burned off in the fire of
affliction, while the same severe ordeal seems
only to indurate the more hopelessly those pro-
pensities which lie deeply seated in an inherent
and radical perversity.

that each writer, taking the substantial fact as the ground-
work of his story, has added such details and chosen such
expressions for the housewife's reproaches as suited his own
individual fancy. We find, unfortunately for the truth and
trustworthiness of history, that this is almost always the case,
when independent and original accounts of past transactions,
whether great or small, are compared. The gravest histo-
rians, as well as the lightest story tellers, frame their narra-
tions for effect, and the tendency in all ages to shape and
fashion the narrative with a view to the particular effect de-
signed by the individual narrator to be produced has been
found entirely irresistible. It is necessary to compare, with
great diligence and careful scrutiny, a great many different ac
counts, in order to learn how little there is to be exactly and
confidently believed.

166 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Alfred's patience and fortitude. He makes himself knqwn.

Alfred, though restless and wretched in his
apparently hopeless seclusion, bore his pjiva-
tions with a great degree of patience and forti-
tude, planning, all the time, the best means of
reorganizing his scattered forces, and of rescu-
ing his country from the ruin into which it had
fallen. Some of his former friends, roaming as
he himself had done, as fugitives about the
country, happened at length to come into the
neighborhood of his retreat. He heard of them,
and cautiously made himself known. They
were rejoiced to find their old commander once
more, and, as there was no force of the Danes
in that neighborhood at the time, they lingered,
timidly and fearlessly at first, in the vicinity,
until, at length, growing more bold as they
found themselves unmolested in their retreat,
they began to make it their gathering place
and head-quarters. Alfred threw off his dis-
guise, and assumed his true character. Tidings
of his having been thus discovered spread con-
fidentially among the most tried and faithful of
his Saxon followers, who had themselves been
seeking safety in other places of refuge. They
began, at first cautiously and by stealth, but
afterward more openly, to repair to the spot.
Alfred's family, too, from which he had now

A.D. 878.] THE SECLUSION. 167

Scarcity of provisions. Services of the herdsman.

been for many months entirely separated, con-
trived to rejoin him. The herdsman, who proved
to be a man of intelligence and character su-
perior to his station, entered heartily into all
these movements. He kept the secret faith-
fully. He did all in his power to provide for
the wants and to promote the comfort of his
warlike guests, and, by his fidelity and devo-
tion, laid Alfred under obligations of gratitude
to him, which the king, when he was afterward
restored to the throne, did not forget to repay.
Notwithstanding, however, all the efforts
which the herdsman made to obtain supplies,
the company now assembled at Ethelney were
sometimes reduced to great straits. There were
not only the wants of Alfred and his immediate
family and attendants to be provided for, but
many persons were continually coming and
going, arriving often at unexpected times, and
acting, as roving and disorganized bodies of sol-
diers are very apt to do at such times, in a very
inconsiderate manner. The herdsman's farm
produced very little food, and the inaccessible-
ness of its situation made it difficult to bring in
supplies from without. In fact, it was neces-
sary, in one part of the approach to it, to use a
boat, so that the place is generally called, in his-

1CS ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Fishing excursions. The story of the beggar.

tory, an island, though it was insulated mainly
by swamps and morasses rather than by nav-
igable waters. There were, however, sluggish
streams all around it, where Alfred's men, when
their stores were exhausted, went to fish, under
the herdsman's guidance, returning sometimes
with a moderate fare, and sometimes with none.
The monks who describe this portion of Al-
fred's life have recorded an incident as having
occurred on the occasion of one of these fishing
excursions, which, however, is certainly, in part,
a fabrication, and may be wholly so. It was in
the winter. The waters about the grounds were
frozen up. The provisions in the house were
nearly exhausted, there being scarcely any thing
remaining. The men went away with their
fishing apparatus, and with their bows and ar-
rows, in hopes of procuring some fish or fowl to
replenish their stores. Alfred was left alone,
with only a single lady of his family, who is
called in the account "Mother," though it could
not have been Alfred's own mother, as she had
been dead many years. Alfred was sitting in
the hut reading. A beggar, who had by some
means or other found his way in over the frozen
morasses, came to the door, and asked for food.
Alfred, looking up from his book, asked the

A.D. 878.] THE SECLUSION. 169

Alfred's charity. His dream.

mother, whoever she was, to go and see what
there was to give him. She went to make ex-
amination, and presently returned, saying that
there was nothing to give him. There was
only a single loaf of bread remaining, and that
would not be half enough for their own wants
that very night when the hunting party should
return, if they should come back unsuccessful
from their expedition. Alfred hesitated a mo-
ment, and then ordered half the loaf to be given
to the beggar. He said, in justification of the
act, that his trust was now in God, and that
the power which once, with five loaves and two
small fishes, fed abundantly three thousand
men, could easily make half a loaf suffice for
them.

The loaf was accordingly divided, the beggar
was supplied, and, delighted with this unex-
pected relief, he went away. Alfred turned his
attention again to his reading. After a time
the book dropped from his hand. He had fall-
en asleep. He dreamed that a certain saint
appeared to him, and made a revelation to him
from 'heaven. God, he said, had heard his
prayers, was satisfied with his penitence, and
pitied his sorrows ; and that his act of charity
in relieving the poor beggar, even at the risk of

170 ALFRED THK GREAT. [A.D. 878

Return of the hunting party. Revival of Alfred's hopes.

leaving himself and his friends in utter destitu-
tion, was extremely acceptable in the sight of
Heaven. The faith and trust which he thus
manifested were about to be rewarded. The
time for a change had come. He was to be
restored to his kingdom, and raised to a new
and higher state of prosperity and power than
before. As a token that this prediction was
true, and would be all fulfilled, the hunting
party would return that night with an ample
and abundant supply.

Alfred awoke from his sleep with his mind
filled with new hopes and anticipations. The
hunting party returned loaded with supplies,
and in a state of the greatest exhilaration at
their success. They had fish and game enough
to have supplied a little army. The incident
of relieving the beggar, the dream, and their
unwonted success confirming it, inspired them
all with confidence and hope. They began to
form plans for commencing offensive operations.
They would build fortifications to strengthen
their position on the island. They would col-
lect a force. They would make sallies to at-
tack the smaller parties of the Danes. They
would send agents and emissaries about the
kingdom to arouse, and encourage, and assem-

AD. 878.] THE SECLUSION. 171

Plans of Alfred and his Mends to recover the kingdom.

ble such Saxon forces as were yet to be found.
In a word, they would commence a series of
measures for recovering the country from the
possession of its pestilent enemy, and for restor-
ing the rightful sovereign to the throne. The
development of these projects and plans, and
the measures for carrying them into effect, were
very much hastened by an event which sudden-
ly occurred in the neighborhood of Ethelney,
the account of which, however, must be post-
poned to the next chapter.

172 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Supposed situation of Ethelney. The jewel of gold

CHAPTER IX.
REASSEMBLING OF THE ARMY.

T71THELNEY, though its precise locality
-•— ^ can not now be certainly ascertained, was
in the southwestern part of England, in Som-
ersetshire, which county lies on the southern
shore of the Bristol Channel. There is a region
of marshes in that vicinity, which tradition as-
signs as the place of Alfred's retreat ; and there
was, about the middle of this century, a farm-
house there, which bore the name of Ethelney,
though this name may have been given to it in
modern times by those who imagined it to be
the ancient locality. A jewel of gold, engraved
as an amulet to be worn about the neck, and
inscribed with the Saxon words which mean
" Alfred had me made," was found in the vicin-
ity, and is still carefully preserved in a museum
in England. Some curious antiquarians pro-
less to find the very hillock, rising out of the
low grounds around, where the herdsman that
entertained Alfred so long lived ; but this, of
course, is all uncertain. The peculiarities of

A.D.S78.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 173

Changes produced by time. Alfred fortifies Ethelney.

the spot derived their character from the mo-
rasses, and the woods, and the courses of the
sluggish streams in the neighborhood, and theso
are elements of landscape scenery which ten
centuries of time and of cultivation would en-
tirely change.

Whatever may have been the precise situa-
tion of the spot, instead of being, as at first, a
mere hiding-place and retreat, it became, before
many months, as was intimated in the last
chapter, a military camp, secluded and conceal-
ed, it is true, but still possessing, in a consid-'
erable degree, the characteristics of a fastness
and place of defense. Alfred's company erect-
ed something which might be called a wall.
They built a bridge across the water where the
herdsman's boat had been accustomed to ply.
They raised two towers to watch and guard
the bridge. All these defenses were indeed of
a very rude and simple construction ; still, they
answered the purpose intended. They afforded
a real protection ; and, more than all, they pro-
duced a certain moral effect upon the minds of
those whom they shielded, by enabling them to
consider themselves as no longer lurking fugi-
tives, dependent for safety on simple conceal-
ment, but as a garrison, weak, it is true, but

174 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

tlubba in Wales. Castle Kenwith.

still gathering strength, and advancing gradu-
ally toward a condition which would enable
them to make positive aggressions upon the
enemy.

The circumstance which occurred to hasten
the development of Alfred's plans, and which
was briefly alluded to at the close of the last
chapter, was the following : It seems that quite
a large party of Danes, under the command of
a leader named Hubba, had been making a tour
of conquest and plunder in Wales, which coun-
.try was on the other side of the Bristol Chan-
nel, directly north of Ethelney, where Alfred
was beginning to concentrate a force. He
would be immediately exposed to an attack
from this quarter as soon as it should be known
that he was at Ethelney, as the distance across
the Channel was not great, and the Danes were
provided with shipping.

Ethelney was in the county called Somerset-
shire. To the southwest of Somersetshire, a
little below it, on the shores of the Bristol Chan-
nel, was a castle, called Castle Kenwith, in
Devonshire. The Duke of Devonshire, who
held this castle, encouraged by Alfred's prepa-
rations for action, had assembled a considerable
force here, to be ready to co-operate with Al-

A..D. 878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 175

Ilubba crosses the Channel He besieges Odun.

fred in the active measures which he was about
to adopt. Things being in this state, Hubba
brought down his force^to the northern shores
of the Channel, collected together all the boats
and shipping that he could command, crossed
the Channel, and landed on the Devonshire
shore. Odun, the duke, not being strong enough
to resist, fled, and shut himself up, with all his
men, in the castle. Hubba advanced to the cas-
tle walls, and, sitting down before them, began
to consider what to do.

Hubba was the last surviving son of Ragner
Lodbrog, whose deeds and adventures were re-
lated in a former chapter. He was, like all
other chieftains among the Danes, a man of
great determination and energy, and he had
made himself very celebrated all over the land
by his exploits and conquests. His particular
horde of marauders, too, was specially celebrated
among all the others, on account of a mysteri-
ous and magical banner which they bore. The
name of this banner was the Reafan, that is,
the Raven. There was the figure of a raven
woven or embroidered on the banner. Hubba's
three sisters had woven it for their brothers,
when they went forth across the German Ocean
iff avenge their father's death. It possessed, as

176 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

The magical banner. How regarded by the Saxons and Danes.

both the Danes and Saxons believed, supernat-
ural and magical powers. The raven on the
banner could foresee thj result of any battle into
which it was borne. It remained lifeless and
at rest whenever the result was to be adverse ;
and, on the other hand, it fluttered its wings
with a mysterious and magical vitality when
they who bore it were destined to victory. The
Danes consequently looked up to this banner
with a feeling of profound veneration and awe,
and the Saxons feared and dreaded its mysteri-
ous power. The explanation of this pretended
miracle is easy. The imagination of supersti-
tious men, in such a state of society as that of
these half-savage Danes, is capable of much
greater triumphs over the reason and the senses
than is implied in making them believe that the
wings of a bird are either in motion or at rest,
whichever it fancies, when the banner on which
the image is embroidered is advancing to the
field and fluttering in the breeze.

The Castle of Kenwith was situated on a
rocky promontory, and was defended by a Saxon
wall. Hubba saw that it would be difficult to
carry it by a direct assault. On the other hand,
it was not well supplied with water or provis-
ions, and the numerous multitude which h ,»a

A.D. 878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 177

{lubba's plan of operations. Preparations of Odun.

crowded into it, would, as Hubba thought, be
speedily compelled to surrender by thirst and
famine, if he were simply to wait a short time,
till their scanty stock of food was consumed.
Perhaps the raven did not flutter her wings
when Hubba approached the castle, but by her
apparent lifelessness portended calamity if an
attack were to be made. At all events, Hubba
decided not to attack the castle, but to invest
it closely on all sides, with his army on the land
and with his vessels on the side of the sea, and
thus reduce it by famine. He accordingly
stationed his troops and his galleys at their posts,
and established himself in his tent, quietly to
await the result.

He did not have to wait so long as he antici-
pated. Odun, finding that his danger was so
imminent, nay, that his destruction was inevi-
table if he remained in his castle, thus shut in,
determined, in the desperation to which the
emergency reduced him, to make a sally. Ac-
cordingly, one night, as soon as it was dark, so
that the indications of any movement within the
castle might not be perceived by the sentinels
and watchmen in Hubba's lines, he began to
marshal and organize his army for a sudden and
furious onset upon the camp of the Danes.
M

178 ALFRED THE GREAT. (A.D. 878-

Sally of the Saxons. Death of Hubba

They waited, when all was ready, till the first
break of day. To make the surprise most ef-
fectual, it was necessary that it should take
place in the night ; but then, on the other hand,
the success, if they should be successful, would
require, in order to be followed up with ad-
vantage, the light of day. Odun chose, there-
fore, the earliest dawn as the time for his at-
tempt, as this was the only period which would
give him at first darkness for his surprise, and
afterward light for his victory. The time was
well chosen, the arrangements were all well
made, and the result corresponded with the
character of the preparations. The sally was
triumphantly successful.

The Danes, who were all, except their sen-
tinels, sleeping quietly and secure, were sud-
denly aroused by the unearthly and terrific yells
with which the Saxons burst into the lines of
their encampment. They flew to arms, but
the shock of the onset produced a panic and
confusion which soon made their cause hopeless.
Odun and his immediate followers pressed di-
rectly forward into Hubba's tent, where they
surprised the commander, and massacred him
on the spot. They seized, too, to their inex-
pressible joy, the sacred banner, which was in

A.D. 878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 179

Capture of the banner. Slaughter of the Danes.

Hubba's tent, and bore it forth, rejoicing in it,
not merely as a splendid trophy of their victory,
but as a loss to their enemies which fixed and
sealed their doom.

The Danes fled before their enemies in ter-
ror, and the consternation which they felt, when
they learned that their banner had been cap-
tured and their leader slain, was soon changed
into absolute despair. The Saxons slew them
without mercy, cutting down some as they were
running before them in their headlong flight,
and transfixing others with their spears and ar-
rows as they lay upon the ground, trampled
down by the crowds and the confusion. There
was no place of refuge to which they could fly
except to their ships. Those, therefore, that
escaped the weapons of their pursuers, fled in
the direction of the water, where the strong and
the fortunate gained the boats and the galleys,
while the exhausted and the wounded were
drowned. The fleet sailed away from the coast,
and the Saxons, on surveying the scene of the
terrible contest, estimated that there were
twelve hundred dead bodies lying in the field.

This victory, and especially the capture of
the Raven, produced vast effects on the minds
both of the Saxons and of the Danes, animat-

180 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.878.

Alfred's prospects brighten. Alarm of the Danes.

ing and encouraging the one, and depressing
the other with superstitious as well as natural
and proper fears. The influence of the battle
was sufficient, in fact, wholly to change Al-
fred's position and prospects. The news of the
discovery of the place of his retreat, and of the
measures which he was maturing for taking
the field again to meet his enemies, spread
throughout the country. The people were ev-
ery where ready to take up arms and join him.
There were large bodies of Danes in several
parts of his dominions still, and they, alarmed
somewhat at these indications of new efforts of
resistance on the part of their enemies, began
to concentrate their strength and prepare for
another struggle.

The main body of the Danes were encamped
at a place called Edendune, in "Wiltshire. There
is a hill near, which the army made their main
position, and the marks of their fortifications
have been traced there, either in imagination or
reality, in modern times. Alfred wished tc
gain more precise and accurate information
than he yet possessed of the numbers and situ-
ation of his foes ; and, in order to do this, in-
stead of employing a spy, he conceived the de-
sign of going himself in disguise to explore the

A.D. 878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 181

Alfred resolves to explore the Danish camp. His disguise.

camp of the Danes. The undertaking was full
of danger, but yet not quite so desperate as at
first it might seem. Alfred had had abundant
opportunities during the months of his seclusion
to become familiar with the modes of speech
and the manners of peasant life. He had also,
in his early years, stored his memory with Sax-
on poetry, as has already been stated. He was
fond of music, too, and well skilled in it; so
that he had every qualification for assuming the
character of one of those roving harpers, who,
in those days, followed armies, to sing songs
and make amusement for the soldiers. He de-
termined, consequently, to assume the disguise
of a harper, and to wander into the camp of the
Danes, that he might make his own observa-
tions on the nature and magnitude of the force
with which he was about to contend.

He accordingly clothed himself in the garb
of the character which he was to assume, and,
taking his harp upon his shoulder, wandered
away in the direction of the Northmen's camp.
Such a strolling countryman, half musician,
half beggar, would enter without suspicion or
hindrance into the camp, even though he be-
longed to the nation of the enemy. Alfred was
readily admitted, and he wandered at will about

182 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AD. 878.

Alfred in the Danish camp. He plays for the king.

the lines, to play and sing to the soldiers wher-
ever he found groups to listen — intent, appar-
ently, on nothing but his scanty pittance of pay,
while he was really studying, with the utmost
attention and care, the number, and disposition,
and discipline of the troops, and all the arrange-
ments of the army. He came very near dis-
covering himself, however, by overacting his
part. His music was so well executed and his
ballads were so fine, that reports of the excel-
lence of his performance reached the command-
er's ears. He ordered the pretended harper to
be sent into his tent, that he might hear him
play and sing. Alfred went, and thus he had
the opportunity of completing his observations
in the tent, and in the presence of the Danish
king.

Alfred found that the Danish camp was in a
very unguarded and careless condition. The
name of the commander, or king, was Guth-
rum.* Alfred, while playing in his presence,
studied his character, and it is improbable that
the very extraordinary course which he after-
ward pursued in respect to Guthrum may have
been caused, in a great degree, by the opportu-

* Spelled sometimes Godrun, Gutrum, Gythram, and in
various other ways.

A..D.878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 183

Guthrum's reception of Alfred. His attendant and companion.

nity he now enjoyed of domestic access to him
and of obtaining a near and intimate view of
his social and personal character. Guthrum
treated the supposed harper with great kind-
ness. He was much pleased both with his sing-
ing and his songs, being attracted, too, proba-
bly, in some degree, by a certain mysterious
interest which the humble stranger must have
inspired ; for Alfred possessed personal and in-
tellectual traits of character which could not
but have given to his conversation and his man-
ners a certain charm, notwithstanding all his
efforts to disguise or conceal them.

However this may be, Guthrum gave Alfred
a very friendly reception, and the hour of social
intercourse and enjoyment which the general
and the ballad-singer spent together was only
a precursor of the more solid and honest friend-
ship which afterward subsisted between them
as allied sovereigns.

Alfred had one person with him, whom he
had brought from Ethelney — a sort of attend-
ant— to help him carry his harp, and to be a
companion for him on the way. He would have
needed such a companion even if he had been
only what he seemed ; but for a spy, going in
disguise into the camp of such ferocious ene-

184 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Alfred returns to Ethelney. His plans.

mies as the Danes, it would seem absolutely
indispensable that he should have the support
and sympathy of a friend.

Alfred, after finishing his examination of the
camp of Guthrum, and forming secretly, in his
own mind, his plans for attacking it, moved
leisurely away, taking his harp and his attend-
ant with him, as if going on in search of some
new place to practice his profession. As soon
as he was out of the reach of observation, he
made a circuit and returned in safety to Ethel-
ney. The season was now spring, and every
thing favored the commencement of his enter-
prise.

His first measure was to send out some trusty
messengers into all the neighboring counties,
to visit and confer with his friends at their va-
rious castles and strong-holds. These messen-
gers were to announce to such Saxon leaders as
they should find that Alfred was still alive, and
that he was preparing to take the field against
the Danes again ; and were to invite them to
assemble at a certain place appointed, in a for-
est, with as many followers as they could bring,
that the king might there complete the organ-
ization of an army, and hold consultation with
them to mature their plans.

A.D. 878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 185

Selwood Forest Stone of Egbert.

The wood on the borders of which they were
to meet was an extensive forest of willows, fif-
teen miles long and six broad. It was known
by the name of Selwood Forest. There was a
celebrated place called the Stone of Egbert,
where the meeting was to be held. Each chief-
tain whom the messengers should visit was to
be invited to come to the Stone of Egbert at
the appointed day, with as many armed men,
and yet in as secret and noiseless a manner as
possible, so as thus, while concentrating all
their forces in preparation for their intended at-
tack, to avoid every thing which would tend to
put Guthrum on his guard.

The messengers found the Saxon chieftains
very ready to enter into Alfred's plans. They
were rejoiced to hear, as some of them did now
for the first time hear, that he was alive, and
that the spirit and energy of his former charac-
ter were about to be exhibited again. Every
thing, in fact, conspired to favor the enterprise.
The long and gloomy months of winter were
past, and the opening spring brought with it,
as usual, excitement and readiness for action.
The tidings of Odun's victory over Hubba, and
the capture of the sacred raven, which had
spread every where, had awakened a general

186 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AD. 878.

The great meeting in Selwood Forest Rejoicings.

enthusiasm, and a desire on the part of all
the Saxon chieftains and soldiers to try their
strength once more with their ancient enemies.

Accordingly, those to whom the secret was
intrusted eagerly accepted the invitation, or,
perhaps, as it should rather be expressed, obeyed
the summons which Alfred sent them. They
marshaled their forces without any delay, and
repaired to the appointed place in Selwood For-
est. Alfred was ready to meet them there.
Two days were occupied with the arrivals of
the different parties, and in the mutual con-
gratulations and rejoicings. Growing more
bold as their sense of strength increased with
their increasing numbers, and with the ardor
and enthusiasm which their mutual influence
on each other inspired, they spent the intervals
of their consultations in festivities and rejoic-
ings, celebrating the occasion with games and
martial music. The forest resounded with the
blasts of horns, the sound of the trumpets, the
clash of arms, and the shouts of joy and con-
gratulation, which all the efforts of the more
prudent and cautious could not repress.

In the mean time, Guthrum remained in his
encampment at Edendune. This seems to have
been the principal concentration of the forces

A.D.878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 187

Guthrum in his camp. His sense of security.

of the Danes which were marshaled for military
service ; and yet there were large numbers of
the people, disbanded soldiers, or non-combat-
ants, who had come over in the train of the ar-
mies, that had taken possession of the lands
which they had conquered, and had settled upon
them for cultivation, as if to make them their
permanent home. These intruders were scat-
tered in larger or smaller bodies in various parts
of the kingdom, the Saxon inhabitants being
prevented from driving them away by the in-
fluence and power of the armies, which still
kept possession of the field, and preserved their
military organization complete, ready for action
at any time whenever any organized Saxon
force should appear.

Guthrum, as we have said, headed the larg-
est of these armies. He was aware of the in-
creasing excitement that was spreading among
the Saxon population, and he even heard ru-
mors of the movements which the bodies of
Saxons made, in going under their several chief-
tains to Selwood Forest. ' He expected that
some important movement was about to occur,
but he had no idea that preparations so extend-
ed, and for so decisive a demonstration, were
so far advanced. He remained, therefore, at

188 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AD. 878.

Alfred marches toward Guthrum's camp. He encamps at ^Ecglea.

his camp at Edendune, gradually completing
his arrangements for his summer campaign, but
making no preparations for resisting any sud-
den or violent attack.

When all was ready, Alfred put himself at
the head of the forces which had collected at
the Egbert Stone, or, as it is quaintly spelled
in some of the old accounts, Ecgbyrth-stan.
There is a place called Brixstan in that vicinity
now, which may possibly be the same name
modified and abridged by the lapse of time.
Alfred moved forward toward Guthrum's camp.
He went only a part of the way the first day,
intending to finish the march by getting into
the immediate vicinity of the enemy on the
morrow. He succeeded in accomplishing this
object, and encamped the next night at a place
called ^Ecglea,* on an eminence from which he
could reconnoiter, from a great distance, the
position of the army.

That night, as he was sleeping in his tent,
he had a remarkable dream. He dreamed that
his relative, St. Neot, who has been already

mentioned as the chaplain or priest who reprov-

*

* Some think that this place is the modern Leigh ; others,
that it was Highley ; either of 'which names might have been
deduced from ^Ecglea.

A.D. 878.] ARMY REASSEMBLED. 189

Alfred's remarkable dream. Enthusiasm of the army.

ed him so severely for his sins in the early part
of his reign, appeared to him. The apparition
bid him not fear the immense army of pagans
whom he was going to encounter on the mor-
row. God, he said, had accepted his penitence,
and was now about to take him under his spe-
cial protection. The calamities which had be-
fallen him were sent in judgment to punish the
pride and arrogance which he had manifested
in the early part of his reign ; but his faults
had been expiated by the sufferings he had en-
dured, and by the penitence and the piety
which they had been the means of awakening
in his heart ; and now he might go forward into
the battle without fear, as God was about to
give him the victory over all his enemies.

The king related his dream the next morn-
ing to his army. The enthusiasm and ardor
which the chieftains and the men had felt be-
fore were very much increased by this assur-
ance of success. They broke up their encamp-
ment, therefore, and commenced the march,
which was to bring them, before many hours,
into the presence of the enemy, with great alac-
rity and qager expectations of success.

ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Alfred puts his army in motion. Position of Gu thrum,

CHAPTER X.
THE VICTORY OVER THE DANES.

ENCOURAGED by his dream, and anima
ted by the number and the elation of hij
followers, Alfred led his army onward toward
the part of the country where the camp of the
enemy lay. He intended to surprise them ;
and, although Guthrum had heard vague ru-
mors that some great Saxon movement was in
train, he viewed the sudden appearance of this
large and well-organized army with amaze-
ment.

He had possession of the hill near Edendune,
which has been already described. He had es-
tablished his head-quarters here, and made his
strongest fortifications on the summit of the
eminence. The main body of his forces were,
however, encamped upon the plain, over which
they extended, in vast numbers, far and wide.
Alfred halted his men to change the order of
march into the order of battle. Here he made
an address to his men. As no time was to be
lost, he spoke but a few words. He reminded

A.D.878.] SAXON VICTORY. 191

The battle. Defeat of the Danes.

them that they were to contend, that day, to
rescue themselves and their country from the
intolerable oppression of a horde of pagan idol-
aters ; that God was on their side, and had
promised them the victory ; and he urged them
to act like men, so as to deserve the success
and happiness which was in store for them.

The army then advanced to the attack, the
Danes having been drawn out hastily, but with
as much order as the suddenness of the call
would allow, to meet them. When near enough
for their arrows to take effect, the long line of
Alfred's troops discharged their arrows. They
then advanced to the attack with lances ; but
soon these and all other weapons which kept
the combatants at a distance were thrown aside,
and it became a terrible conflict with swords,
man to man.

It was not long before the Danes began to
yield. They were not sustained by the strong
assurance of victory, nor by the desperate de-
termination which animated the Saxons. The
flight soon became general. They could not
gain the fortification on the hill, for Alfred had
forced his way in between the encampment on
the plains and the approaches to the hill. The
Danes, consequently, not being able to find ref-

192 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Flight of the Danes. Pursuit of the Saxons.

uge in either part of the position they had tak-
en, fled altogether from the field, pursued by
Alfred's victorious columns as fast as they could
follow,

Guthrum succeeded, by great and vigorous
exertions, in rallying his men, or, at least, in
so far collecting and concentrating the separate
bodies of the fugitives as to change the flight
into a retreat, having some semblance of mili-
tary order. Vast numbers had been left dead
upon the field. Others had been taken prison-
ers. Others still had become hopelessly dispers-
ed, having fled from the field of battle in di-
verse directions, and wandered so far, in their
terror, that they had not been able to rejoin
their leader in his retreat. Then, great num-
bers of those who pressed on under Guthrum's
command, exhausted by fatigue, or spent and
fainting from their wounds, sank down by the
way-side to die, while their comrades, intent
only upon their own safety, pressed incessantly
on. The retreating army was thus, in a short
time, reduced to a small fraction of its original
force. This remaining body, with Guthrum at
their head, continued their retreat until they
reached a castle which promised them protec-
tion. They poured in over the drawbridges

A.D.878.J SAXON VICTORY. 193

."he Danes shut themselves up in a castle. Elation of the Saxons.

jnd through the gates of this fortress in extreme
confusion; and feeling suddenly, and for the
'iioment, entirely relieved at their escape from
the imminence of the immediate danger, they
shut themselves in.

The finding of such a retreat would have
been great good fortune for these wretched fu-
gitives if there had been any large force in the
country to come soon to their deliverance ; but,
as they were without provisions and without
,vater, they soon began to perceive that, unless
they obtained some speedy help from without,
...ey had only escaped the Saxon lances and
swords to die a ten times more bitter death of
thirst and famine ; and there was no force to
relieve them. The army which had been thus
defeated was the great central force of the
Danes upon the island. The other detachments
and independent bands which were scattered
about the land were thunderstruck at the news
of this terrible defeat. The Saxons, too, were
every where aroused to the highest pitch of en-
thusiasm at the reappearance of their king and
^"he tidings of his victory. The whole country
w'as in arms. Guthrum, however, shut up in
his castle, and closely invested with Alfred's
forces, had no means of knowing what was
N

194 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Hopeless condition of the Danes. Surrender of Guthrum.

passing without. His numbers were so small
in comparison with those besieging him that it
would have been madness for him to have at-
tempted a sally ; and he would not surrender.
He waited day after day, hoping against hope
that some succor would come. His half-fam-
ished sentinels gazed from the watch-towers of
the castle all around, looking for some cloud of
distant dust, or weapon glancing in the sun,
which might denote the approach of friends
coming to their rescue. This lasted fourteen
days. At the end of that time, the number
within this wretched prison who were raving in
the delirium of famine and thirst, or dying in
agony, became too great for Guthrum to per-
sist any longer. He surrendered. Alfred was
once more in possession of his kingdom.

During the fourteen days that elapsed be-
tween the victory on the field of battle and the
final surrender of Guthrum, Alfred, feeling that
the power was now in his hands, had had am-
ple time to reflect on the course which he should
pursue with his subjugated enemies ; and the
result to which he came, and the measure which
he adopted, evince, as much as any act of his
life, the greatness, and originality, and noble-
ness of his character. Here were two distinct

AD. 878.] SAXON VICTORY. 195

The Saxons and Danes equally aggressors. Their relations.

and independent races on* the same island, that
had been engaged for many years in a most
fierce and sanguinary struggle, each gaining at
times a temporary and partial victory, but nei-
ther able entirely to subdue or exterminate the
other. The Danes, it is true, might be consid-
ered as the aggressors in this contest, and, as
such, wholly in the wrong ; but then, on the
other hand, it was to be remembered that the
ancestors of the Saxons had been guilty of pre-
cisely the same aggressions upon the Britons,
who held the island before them ; so that the
Danes were, after all, only intruding upon in-
truders. It was, besides, the general maxim of
the age, that the territories of the world were
prizes open for competition, and that the right
to possess and to govern vested naturally and
justly in those who could show themselves the
strongest. Then, moreover, the Danes had been
now for many years in Britain. Vast numbers
had quietly settled on agricultural lands. They
had become peaceful inhabitants. They had
established, in many cases, friendly relations
with the Saxons. They had intermarried with
them ; and the two races, instead of appearing,
as at first, simply as two hostile armies of com-
batants contending on the field, had been, for

196 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Impossibility of expelling the Danes. Wise policy.

some years, acquiring the character of a mixed
population, established and settled, though het-
erogeneous, and, in some sense, antagonistic
still. To root out all these people, intruders
though they were, and send them back again
across the German Ocean, to regions where
they no longer had friends or home, would have
been a desperate — in fact, an impossible under-
taking.

Alfred saw all these things. He took, in fact,
a general, and comprehensive, and impartial
view of the whole subject, instead of regarding
it, as most conquerors in his situation would'
have done, in a, partisan, that is, an exclusively
Saxon point of view. He saw how impossible
it was to undo what had been done, and wisely
determined to take things as they were, and
make the best of the present situation of affairs,
leaving the past, and aiming only at accom-
plishing the best that was now attainable for
the future. It would be well if all men who
are engaged in quarrels which they vainly en-
deavor to settle by discussing and disputing
about what is past and gone, and can now nev-
er be recalled, would follow his example. In
all such cases we should say, let the past be for-
gotten, and, taking things as they now are, let

A.D.878.] SAXON VICTORY. 197

' Alfred's generosity. Terms offered Guthrum.

us see what we can do to secure peace and hap-
piness in future.

The policy which Alfred determined to adopt
was, not to attempt the utter extirpation of the
Danes from England, but only to expel the arm-
ed forces from his own dominions, allowing
those peaceably disposed to remain in quiet pos-
session of such lands in other parts of the isl-
and as they already occupied. Instead, there-
fore, of treating Guthrum with harshness and
severity as a captive enemy, he told him that
he was willing not only to give him his liberty,
but to regard him, on certain conditions, as a
friend and an ally, and allow him to reign as a
king over that part of England which his coun-
trymen possessed, and which was beyond Al-
fred's own frontiers. These conditions were,
that Guthrum was to go away with all his
forces and followers out of Alfred's kingdom,
under solemn oaths never to return ; that he
was to confine himself thenceforth to the south-
eastern part of England, a territory from which
the Saxon government had long disappeared ;
that he was to give hostages for the faithful ful-
fillment of these stipulations, without, however,
receiving on his part any hostages from Alfred.
There was one other stipulation, more extraor-

198 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Guthrum agrees to become a Christian. Sudden change in his affairs

dinary than all the rest, viz., that Guthrum
should become a convert to Christianity, and
publicly avow his adhesion to the Saxon faith
by being baptized in the presence of the leaders
of both armies, in the most open and solemn
manner. In this proposed baptism, Alfred him-
self would stand his godfather.

This idea of winning over a pagan soldier to
the Christian Church as the price of his ransom
from famine and death in the castle to which
his direst enemy had driven him — this enemy
himself, the instrument thus of so rude a mode
of conversion, to be the sponsor of the new com-
municant's religious profession — was one in
keeping, it is true, with the spirit of the times,
but still it is one which, under the circumstan-
ces of this case, only a mind of great original-
ity and power would have conceived of or at-
tempted to carry into effect. Guthrum might
well be astonished at this unexpected turn in
his affairs. A few days before, he saw himself
on the brink of utter and absolute destruction.
Shut up with his famished soldiers in a gloomy
castle, with the enemy, bitter and implacable,
as he supposed, thundering at the gates, the
only alternatives before him seemed to be to
die of starvation and phrensy within the walla

A.D.878.] SAXON VICTORY. 199

The terms accepted. The Danes liberated.

which covered him, or by a cruel military exe-
cution in the event of surrender. He surren-
dered at last, as it would seem, only because
the utmost that human cruelty can inflict is
more tolerable than the horrid agonies of thirst
and hunger.

We can not but hope that Alfred was led, in
some degree, by a generous principle of Chris-
tian forgiveness in proposing the terms which he
did to his fallen enemy, and also that Guthrum,
in accepting them, was influenced, in part at
least, by emotions of gratitude and by admiration
of the high example of Christian virtue which
Alfred thus exhibited. At any rate, he did ac-
cept them. The army of the Danes were liber-
ated from their confinement, and commenced
their march to the eastward; Guthrum him-
self, attended by thirty of his chiefs and many
other followers, became Alfred's guest for some
weeks, until the most pressing measures for the
organization of Alfred's government could be at-
tended to, and the necessary preparations for
the baptism could be made. At length, some
weeks after the surrender, the parties all re-
paired together, now firm friends and allies, to
a place near Ethelney, where the ceremony of
baptism was to be performed.

200 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Probable effects of Guthrum's baptism. The ceremonies.

The admission of this pagan chieftain into
the Christian Church did not probably mark
any real change in his opinions on the question
of paganism and Christianity, but it was not the
less important in its consequences on that ac-
count. The moral effect of it upon the minds of
his followers was of great value. It opened the
way for their reception of the Christian faith,
if any of them should be disposed to receive
it. Then it changed wholly the feeling which
prevailed among the Saxon soldiery, and also
the Saxon chieftains, in respect to these ene-
mies. A great deal of the bitterness of exas-
peration with which they had regarded them
arose from the fact that they were pagans, the
haters and despisers of the rites and institutions
of religion. Guthrum's approaching baptism
was to change all this ; and Alfred, in leading
him to the baptismal font, was achieving, in
the estimation not only of all England, but of
France and of Rome, a far greater and nobler
victory than when he conquered his armies on
the field of Edendune.

The various ceremonies connected with the
baptism were protracted through several days.
They were commenced at a place called Aulre,
near Ethelney, where there was a religious es-

AD. 878.] SAXON VICTORY. 201

Guthrum's new name. Public festivities.

tablishment and priests to perform the necessary
rites. The new convert was clothed in white
garments — the symbol of purity, then custom-
arily worn by candidates for baptism — and was
covered with a mystic veil. They gave Guth-
rum a new name — a Christian, that is, a Saxon
name. Converted pagans received always a
new name, in those days, when baptized ; and
our common phrase, the Christian name, has
arisen from the circumstance. Guthrum's
Christian name was Ethelstan. Alfred was
his godfather. After the baptism the whole
party proceeded to a town a few miles distant,
which Alfred had decided to make a royal res-
idence, and there other ceremonies connected
with the new convert's admission to the Church
were performed, the whole ending with a series
of great public festivities and rejoicings.

A very full and formal treaty of peace and
amity was now concluded between the two sov-
ereigns ; for Guthrum was styled in the treaty
a king, and was to hold, in the dominions as-
signed him to the eastward of Alfred's realm,
an independent jurisdiction. He agreed, how-
ever, by this treaty, to confine himself, from that
time forward, to the limits thus assigned. If
the reader wishes to see what part of England

202 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AD. 878

Treaty between Alfred and Guthrum. Kingdom of the latter.

it was which Guthrum was thus to hold, he can
easily identify it by finding upon the map the
following counties, which now occupy the same
territory, viz., Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge-
shire, Essex, and part of Herefordshire. The
population of all this region consisted already,
in a great measure, of Danes. It was the part
most easily accessible from the German Ocean,
by means of the Thames and the Medway, and
it had, accordingly, become the chief seat of the
Northmen's power.

Guthrum not only agreed to confine himself
to the limits thus marked out, but also to con-
sider himself henceforth as Alfred's friend and
ally in the event of any new bands of adven-
turers arriving on the coast, and to join Alfred
in his endeavors to resist them. In hoping that
he would fulfill this obligation, Alfred did not
rely altogether on Guthrum's oaths or prom-
ises, or even on the hostages that he held. He
had made it for his interest to fulfill them. By
giving him peaceable possession of this terri-
tory, after having, by his victories, impressed
him with a very high idea of his own great mil-
itary resources and power, he had placed his
conquered enemy under very strong induce-
ments to be satisfied with what he now pos-

A..D.878.J SAXON VICTORY. 203

Guthrum faithful to his covenant Fundamental laws settled.

sessed, and to make common cause with Alfred
in resisting the encroachments of any new ma-
rauders.

Guthrum was therefore honestly resolved on
keeping his faith with his new ally ; and when
all these stipulations were made, and the treat-
ies were signed, and the ceremonies of the bap-
tism all performed, Alfred dismissed his guest,
with many presents and high honors.

There is some uncertainty whether Alfred
did not, in addition to the other stipulations un-
der which he bound Guthrum, reserve to him-
self the superior sovereignty over Guthrum's
dominions, in such a manner that Guthrum,
though complimented in the treaty with the
title of king, was, after all, only a sort of vice-
roy, holding his throne under Alfred as his liege
lord. One thing is certain, that Alfred took
care, in his treaty with Guthrum, to settle all
the fundamental laws of both kingdoms, mak-
ing them the same for both, as if he foresaw
the complete and entire union which was ulti-
mately to take place, and wished to facilitate
the accomplishment of this end by having the
poli tical and social constitution of the two states
brought at once into harmony with each other.

It proved, in the end, that Guthrum was

ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878

Guthrum's services. Alfred organizes his government

faithful to his obligations and promises. He
settled himself quietly in the dominions which
the treaty assigned to him, and made no more
attempts to encroach upon Alfred's realm.
Whenever other parties of Danes came upon
the coast, as they sometimes did, they found no
favor or countenance from him. They came,
in some cases, expecting his co-operation and
aid ; but he always refused it, and by this dis-
couragement, as well as by open resistance, he
drove many bands away, turning the tide of
invasion southward into France, and other re-
gions on the Continent. Alfred, in the mean
time, gave his whole time and attention to or-
ganizing the various departments of his govern-
ment, to planning and building towns, repair-
ing and fortifying castles, opening roads, estab-
lishing courts of justice, and arranging and set-
ting in operation the complicated machinery
necessary in the working of a well-conducted
social state. The nature and operation of some
of his plans will be described more fully in the
next chapter.

In concluding this chapter, we will add, that
notwithstanding his victory over Guthrum, and
Guthrum's subsequent good faith, Alfred never
enjoyed an absolute peace, but during the whole

A.D.878.] SAXON VICTORY. 205

Continued trouble from the Danes. Alfred's character.

remainder of his reign was more or less molest-
ed with parties of Northmen, who came, from
time to time, to land on English shores, and
who met sometimes with partial and temporary
success in their depredations. The most se-
rious of these attempts occurred near the close
of Alfred's life, and will be hereafter described.

The generosity and the nobleness of mind
which Alfred manifested in his treatment of
Guthrum made a great impression upon man-
kind at the time, and have done a great deal to
elevate the character of our hero in every sub-
sequent age. All admire such generosity in
others, however slow they may be to practice it
themselves. It seems a very easy virtue when
we look upon an exhibition of it like this, where
we feel no special resentments ourselves against
the person thus nobly forgiven. We find it,
however, a very hard virtue to practice, when
a case occurs requiring the exercise of it to-
ward a person who has done us an injury. Let
those who think that in Alfred's situation they
should have acted as he did, look around upon
the circle of their acquaintance, and see whether
it is easy for them to pursue a similar course
toward their personal enemies — those who have

206 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 878.

Alfred's kindness of heart The child in the eagle's nest.

thwarted and circumvented them in their plans,
or slandered them, or treated them with insult
and injury. By observing how hard it is to
change our own resentments to feelings of for-
giveness and good will, we can the better ap-
preciate Alfred's treatment of Guthrum.

Alfred was famed during all his life for the
kindness of his heart, and a thousand stories
were told in his day of his interpositions to right
the wronged, to relieve the distressed, to com-
fort the afflicted, and to befriend the unhappy.
On one occasion, as it is said, when he was
hunting in a wood, he heard the piteous cries
of a child, which seemed to come from the air
above his head. It was found, after much look-
ing and listening, that the sounds proceeded
from an eagle's nest upon the top of a lofty tree.
On climbing to the nest, they found the child
within, screaming with pain and terror. The
eagle had carried it there in its talons for a prey.
Alfred brought down the boy, and, after making
fruitless inquiries to find its father and mother,
adopted him for his own son, gave him a good
education, and provided for him well in his fu-
ture life. The story was all, very probably, a
fabrication ; but the characters of men are some-
times very strikingly indicated by the kind of
stories that are invented concerning them.

A. D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 209

Alfred's humanity and benevolence. His lore of peace.

CHAPTER XL
CHARACTER OF ALFRED'S REIGN.

PERHAPS the chief aspect in which King
Alfred's character has attracted the atten-
tion of mankind, is in the spirit of humanity
and benevolence which he manifested, and in
the efforts which he made to cultivate the arts
of peace, and to "promote the intellectual and
social welfare of his people, notwithstanding
the warlike ha^'ts to which he was accustomed
in his early years, and the warlike influences
which surrounded him during all his life. Ev-
ery thing in the outward circumstances in
which he was placed tended to make him a
mere military hero. He saw, however, the su-
perior greatness and glory of the work of laying
the foundations of an extended and permanent
power, by arranging in the best possible man-
ner the internal organization of the social state.
He saw that intelligence, order, justice, and
system, prevailing in and governing the institu-
tions of a country, constitute the true elements
of its greatness, and he acted accordingly.
O

I

210 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A. D. 880-890.

Character of the materials upon which Alfred operated.

It is true, he had good materials to work with.
He had the Anglo-Saxon race to act upon at
the time, a race capable of appreciating and
entering into his plans; and he has had the
same race to carry them on, for the ten centu-
ries which have elapsed since he laid his foun-
dations. As no other race of men but Anglo-
Saxons could have produced an Alfred, so, prob
ably, no other race could have carried out such
plans as Alfred formed. It is a race which has
always been distinguished, like Alfred their
great prototype and model, for a certain cool
and intrepid energy in war, combined with and
surpassed by the industry, the ~vstem, the effi
ciency, and the perseverance with which they
pursue and perfect all the arts of peace. They
systematize every thing. They arrange — they
organize. Every thing in their hands takes
form, and advances to continual improvement.
Even while the rest of the world remain inert,
they are active. When the arts and improve-
ments of life are stationary among other na-
tions, they are always advancing with them.
It is a people that is always making new dis-
coveries, pressing forward to new enterprises,
framing new laws, constituting new combina-
tions, and developing new powers ; until now.

A.D. 880-890.] ALFREDS REIGN. 211

The difficulties with which Alfred had to contend.

after the lapse of a thousand years, the little
island feeds and clothes, directly or indirectly,
a very large portion of the human race, and di-
rects, in a great measure, the politics of the
world.

Whether Alfred reasoned upon the capaci-
ties of the people whom he ruled, and foresaw
their future power, or whether he only followed
the simple impulses of his own nature in the
plans which he formed and the measures which
he adopted, we can not know ; but we know
that, in fact, he devoted his chief attention, dur-
ing all the years of his reign, to perfecting in
the highest degree the internal organization of
his realm, considered as a great social commu-
nity. His people were in a very rude, and, in
fact, almost half-savage state when he com-
menced his career. He had every thing to do,
and yet he seems to have had no favorable op-
portunities for doing any thing.

In the first place, his time and attention were
distracted, during his whole reign, by continued
difficulties and contentions with various hordes
of Danes, even after his peace with Guthrum.
These troubles, and the military preparations
and movements to which they would naturally
give rise, would seem to have been sufficient to

212 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890.

Alfred's sufferings from disease. His patience.

have occupied fully all the powers of his mind,
and to have prevented him from doing any
thing effectual for the internal improvement of
his kingdom.

Then, besides, there was another difficulty
with which Alfred had to contend, which one
might have supposed would have paralyzed all
his energies. He suffered all his life from some
mysterious and painful internal disease, the na-
ture of which, precisely, is not known, as the
allusions to it, though very frequent through-
out his life, are very general, and the physi-
cians of the day, who probably were not very
skillful, could not determine what it was, or do
any thing effectual to relieve it. The disease,
whatever it may have been, was a source of
continual uneasiness, and sometimes of extreme
and terrible suffering. Alfred bore all the pain
which it caused him with exemplary patience ;
and, though he could not always resist the ten-
dency to discouragement and depression with
which the perpetual presence of such a torment
wears upon the soul, he did not allow it to di-
minish his exertions, or suspend, at any time,
the ceaseless activity with which he labored for
the welfare of the people of his realm.

Alfred attached great importance to the edu-

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 213

Alfred's interest in learning. Asser, the Welsh bishop

cation of his people. It was not possible, in
those days, to educate the mass, for there were
no books, and no means of producing them in
sufficient numbers to supply any general de-
mand. Books, in those days, were extremely
costly, as they had all to be written laboriously
by hand. The great mass of the population,
therefore, who were engaged in the daily toil of
cultivating the land, were necessarily left in
ignorance ; but Alfred made every effort in his
power to awaken a love for learning and the
arts among the higher classes. He set them,
in fact, an efficient example in his own case, by
pressing forward diligently in his own studies,
even in the busiest periods of his reign. The
spirit and manner in which he did this are well
illustrated by the plan he pursued in studying
Latin. It was this :

He had a friend in his court, a man of great
literary attainments and great piety, whose
name was Asser. Asser was a bishop in Wales
when Alfred first heard of his fame as a man
of learning and abilities, and Alfred sent for
him to come to his court and make him a visit.
Alfred was very much pleased with what he
saw of Asser at this interview, and proposed to
him to leave his preferments in Wales, which

214 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890

Alfred's proposals to Asser. Asser's acceptance.

were numerous and important, and come into
his kingdom, and he would give him greater
preferments there. Asser hesitated. Alfred
then proposed to him to spend six months every
year in England, and the remaining six in
Wales. Asser said that he could not give an
answer even to this proposal till he had return-
ed home and consulted with the monks and
other clergy under his charge there. He would,
however, he said, at least come back and see
Alfred again within the next six months, and
give him his final answer. Then, after having
spent four days in Alfred's court, he went away.
The six months passed away and he did not
return. Alfred sent a messenger into Wales
to ascertain the reason. The messenger found
that Asser was sick. His friends, however, had
advised that he should accede to Alfred's pro-
posal to spend six months of the year in En-
gland, as they thought that by that means,
through his influence with Alfred, he would be
the better able to protect and advance the in-
terests of their monasteries and establishments
in Wales. So Asser went to England, and be-
came during six months in the year Alfred's
constant friend and teacher. In the course of
time, Alfred placed him at the head of some of

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 215

Alfred and Asser. Alfred's Latin book.

the most important establishments and ecclesi-
astical charges in England.

One day — it was eight or nine years after
Alfred's victory over Guthrum and settlement
of the kingdom — the king and Asser were en-
gaged in conversation in the royal apartments,
and Asser quoted some Latin phrase with which,
on its being explained, Alfred was very much
pleased, and he asked Asser to write it down
for him in his book. So saying, he took from
his pocket a little book of prayers and other
pieces of devotion, which he was accustomed to
carry with him for daily use. It was, of course,
in manuscript. Asser looked over it to find a
space where he could write the Latin quotation,
but there was no convenient vacancy. He then
proposed to Alfred that he should make for him
another small book, expressly for Latin quota-
tions, with explanations of their meaning, if
Alfred chose to make them, in the Anglo-Saxon
tongue. Alfred highly approved of this sugges-
tion. The bishop prepared the little parchment
volume, and it became gradually filled with
passages of Scripture, in Latin, and striking
sentiments, briefly and tersely expressed, ex-
tracted from the writings of the Roman poets
or of the fathers of the Church. Alfred wrote

216 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890.

Alfred becomes an author. Printing and circulation of books.

opposite to each quotation its meaning, express-
ed in his own language ; and as he made the
book his constant companion, and studied it
continually, taking great interest in adding to
its stores, it was the means of communicating
to him soon a very considerable knowledge of
the language, and was the foundation of that
extensive acquaintance with it which he subse-
quently acquired.

Alfred made great efforts to promote in every
way the intellectual progress and improvement
of his people. He wrote and translated books,
which were published so far as it was possible
to publish books in those days, that is, by hav-
ing a moderate number of copies transcribed
and circulated among those who could read
them. Such copies were generally deposited at
monasteries, and abbeys, and other such places,
where learned men were accustomed to assem
ble. These writings of Alfred exerted a wide
influence during his day. They remained in
manuscript until the art of printing was invent-
ed, when many of them were printed ; others
remain in manuscript in the various museums
of England, where visitors look at them as cu-
riosities, all worn and corroded as they are, and
almost illegible by time. These books, though

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 217

.influence of Alfred's writings. Founding of the University of Oxford.

they exerted great influence at the time when
they were written, are of little interest or value
now. They express ideas in morals and philos-
ophy, some of which have become so universal-
ly diffused as to be commonplace at the pres-
ent day, while others would now be discarded,
as not in harmony with the ideas or the philos-
ophy of the times.

One of the greatest and most important of
the measures which Alfred adopted for the in-
tellectual improvement of his people was the
founding of the great University of Oxford.
Oxford was Alfred's residence and capital dur-
ing a considerable part of his reign. It is situ-
ated on the Thames, in the bosom of a delight-
ful valley, where it calmly reposes in the midst
of fields and meadows as verdant and beautiful
as the imagination can conceive. There was a
monastery at Oxford before Alfred's day, and
for many centuries after his time acts of endow-
ment were passed and charters granted, some
of which were perhaps of greater importance
than those which emanated from Alfred him-
self. Thus some carry back the history of
this famous university beyond Alfred's time;
others consider that the true origin of the pres-
ent establishment should be assigned to a later

218 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890

Situation of Oxford. Measures of Alfred

date than his day. Alfred certainly adopted
very important measures at Oxford for organ-
izing and establishing schools of instruction and
assembling learned men there from various
parts of the world, so that he soon made it a
great center and seat of learning, and mankind
have been consequently inclined to award to
him the honor of having laid the foundations of
the vast superstructure which has since grown
up on that consecrated spot. Oxford is now a
city of ancient and venerable colleges. Its si-
lent streets ; its grand quadrangles ; its church-
es, and chapels, and libraries ; its secluded
walks ; its magnificent, though old and crum-
bling architecture, make it, even to the pass-
ing traveler, one of the wonders of England ;
and by the influence which it has exerted for
the past ten centuries on the intellectual ad-
vancement of the human race, it is really one
of the wonders of the world.

Alfred repaired the castles which had become
dilapidated in the wars ; he rebuilt the ruined
cities, organized municipal governments for
them, restored the monasteries, and took great
pains to place men of learning and piety in
charge of them. He revised the laws of the
kingdom, and arranged and systematized them

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 219

Alfred's personal character. Reforms and improvements.

in the most perfect manner which was possible
in times so rude

Alfred's personal character gave him great
influence among his people, and disposed them
to acquiesce readily in the vast innovations and
improvements which he introduced — changes
which were so radical and affected so extensive-
ly the whole structure of society, and all the
customs of social life, that any ordinary sover-
eign would have met with great opposition in
his attempt to introduce them ; but Alfred pos-
sessed such a character, and proceeded in such
a way in introducing his improvements and re-
forms, that he seems to have awakened no jeal-
ousy and to have aroused no resistance.

He was of a very calm, quiet, and placid
temper of mind. The crosses and vexations
which disturb and irritate ordinary men seemed
never to disturb his equanimity. He was pa-
tient and forbearing, never expecting too much
of those whom he employed, or resenting angri-
ly the occasional neglects or failures in duty on
their part, which he well knew must frequently
occur. He was never elated by prosperity, nor
made moody and morose by the turning of the
tide against him. In a word, he was a philos-
opher, of a calm, and quiet, and happy temper-

220 ALFREI THE GREAT. [AD. 8SO-890.

Alfred's equanimity. His high and noble aims.

ament. He knew well that every man in going
through life, whatever his rank and station,
must encounter the usual alternations of sun-
shine and storm. He determined that these
alternations should not mar his happiness, nor
disturb the repose of his soul ; that he would,
on the other hand, keeping all quiet within,
press calmly and steadily forward in the ac-
complishment of the vast objects to which he
felt that his life was to be given. He was, ac-
cordingly, never anxious or restless, never im-
patient or fretful, never excited or wild; but
always calm, considerate, s'teady, and persever-
ing, he infused his own spirit into all around
him. They saw him governed by fixed and per-
manent principles of justice and of duty in all
that he planned, and in every measure that he
resorted to in the execution of his plans. It
was plain that his great ruling motive was a
true and honest desire to promote the welfare
and prosperity of his people, and the internal
peace, and order, and happiness of his realm,
without any selfish or sinister aims of his own.
In fact, it seemed as if there were no selfish
or sinister ends that possessed any charms for
Alfred's mind. He had no fondness or taste
for luxury or pleasure, or for aggrandizing him-

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 221

Alfred's solicitude for his country. His diligence.

self in the eyes of others by pomp and parade.
It is true that, as was stated in a former chap-
ter, he was charged in early life with a tenden-
cy to some kinds of wrong indulgence ; but
these charges, obscure and doubtful as they
were, pertained only to the earliest periods of
his career, before the time of his seclusion.
Through all the middle and latter portions of
his life, the sole motive of his conduct seems to
have been a desire to lay broad, and deep, and
lasting foundations for the permanent welfare
and prosperity of his realm.

It resulted from the nature of the measures
which Alfred undertook to effect, that they
brought upon him daily a vast amount of labor,
as such measures always involve a great deal
of minute detail. Alfred could only accomplish
this great mass of duty by means of the most
unremitting industry, and the most systematic
and exact division of time. There Ysere no
clocks or watches in those days, and yet it was
very necessary to have some plan for keeping
the time, in order that his business might go on
regularly, and also that the movements and op-
erations of his large household might proceed
without confusion. Alfred invented a plan. It
was as follows :

222 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890.

Plan for dividing time. The wax candles.

He observed that the wax candles which were
used in his palace and in the churches burned
very regularly, and with greater or less rapidity,
according to their size. He ordered some ex-
periments to be made, and finally, by means of
them, he determined on the size of a candle
which should burn three inches in an hour. It
is said that the weight of wax which he used
for each candle was twelve pennyweights, that
is, but little more than half an ounce, which
would make, one would suppose, a taper rather
than a candle. There is, however, great doubt
about the value of the various denominations of
weight and measure, and also of money used in
those days. However this may be, the candles
were each a foot long, and of such size that each
would burn four hours. They were divided into
inches, and marked, so that each inch corre-
sponded with a third of an hour, or twenty min-
utes. vA large quantity of these candles were
prepared, and a person in one of the chapels was
appointed to keep a succession of them burning,
and to ring the bells, or give the other signals,
whatever they might be, by which the house-
hold was regulated, at the successive periods
of time denoted by their burning.

As each of these candles was one foot long,

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 223

Working of the system. Introduction of glass.

and burned three inches in an hour, it follows
that it would last four hours ; when this time
was expired, the attendant who had the appa-
ratus in charge lighted another. There were,
of course, six required for the whole twenty-
four hours. The system worked very well,
though there was one difficulty that occasioned
some trouble in the outset, which, however, was
not much to be regretted after all, since the
remedying of it awakened the royal ingenuity
anew, and led, in the end, to adding to Alfred's
other glories the honor of being the inventor of
lanterns !

The difficulty was, that the wind, which
came in very freely in those days, even in royal
residences, through the open windows, blew the
flames of these horological candles about, so as
to interfere quite seriously with the regularity
of their burning. There was no glass for win-
dows in those days, or, at least, very little. It
had been introduced, it is said, in one instance,
and that was in a monastery in the north of
England. The abbot, whose name was Bene-
dict, brought over some workmen from the Con-
tinent, where the art of making glass windows
had been invented, and caused them to glaze
some windows in his monastery. It was many

224 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890.

Ancient windows. Invention of Ian terns.

years after this before glass came into general
use even in churches, and palaces, and other
costly buildings of that kind. In the mean
time, windows were mere openings in stone
walls, which could be closed only by shutters ;
and inasmuch as when closed they excluded
the light as well as the air, they could ordina-
rily be shut only on one side of the apartment
at a time — the side most exposed to the winds
and storms.

Alfred accordingly found that the flame of
his candles was blown by the wind, which made
the wax burn irregularly ; and, to remedy the
evil, he contrived the plan of protecting them
by thin plates of horn. Horn, when softened by
hot water, can easily be cut and fashioned into
any shape, and, when very thin, is almost trans-
parent. Alfred had these thin plates of horn
prepared, and set into the sides of a box made
open to receive them, thus forming a rude sort
of lantern, within which the time-keeping can-
dles could burn in peace. Mankind have con-
sequently given to King Alfred the credit of
having invented lanterns.

Having thus completed his apparatus for the
correct measurement of time, Alfred was en
abled to be more and more systematic in the

A.D. 880-890.] ALFRED'S REIGN. 225

Alfred's division of his time. IU wisdom.

division and employment of it. One of the his-
torians of the day relates that his plan was to
give one third of the twenty-four hours to sleep
and refreshment, one third to business, and the
remaining third to the duties of religion. Under
this last head was probably included all those
duties and pursuits which, by the customs of
the day, were considered as pertaining to the
Church, such as study, writing, and the con-
sideration and management of ecclesiastical
affairs. These duties were performed, in those
days, almost always by clerical men, and in the
retirement and seclusion of monasteries, and
were thus regarded as in some sense religious
duties. We must conclude that Alfred classed
them thus,. as he was a great student and writer
all his days, and there is no other place than
this third head to which the duties of this nature
can be assigned. Thus understood, it was a
very wise and sensible division ; though eight
hours daily for any long period of time, appro-
priated to services strictly devotional, would
not seem to be a wise arrangement, especially
for a man in the prime of life, and in a position
demanding the constant exercise of his powers
in the discharge of active duties.

Thus the years of Alfred's life passed away,
P

226 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 880-890

Alfred's prosperity. Troubles from the Danes

his kingdom advancing steadily all the time in
good government, wealth, and prosperity. The
country was not, however, yet freed entirely
from the calamities and troubles arising from
the hostility of the Danes. Disorders con-
tinually broke out among those who had settled
in the land, and, in some instances, new hordes
of invaders came in. These were, however, in
most instances, easily subdued, and Alfred went
on with comparatively little interruption for
many years, in prosecuting the arts and im-
provements of peace. At last, however, toward
the close of his life, a famous Northman leader,
named Hastings, landed in England at the head
of a large force, and made, before he was ex-
pelled, a great deal of trouble. An account of
this invasion will be given in the next chapter.

A..D. 893.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 227

nvasion of Hastings. His exploits on the Continent,

CHAPTER XII.
THE CLOSE OF LIFE.

I~T was twelve or fifteen years after Alfred's
•*• restoration to his kingdom, by means of the
victory at Edendune, that the great invasion
of Hastings occurred. That victory took place
in the year 878. It was in the years 893-897
that Hastings and his horde of followers infested
the island, and in 900 Alfred died, so that his
reign ended, as it had commenced, with pro-
tracted and desperate conflicts with the Danes.
Hastings was an old and successful soldier
before he came to England. He had led a wild
life for many years as a sea king on the Ger-
man Ocean, performing deeds which in our day
entail upon the perpetrator of them the infamy
of piracy and murder, but which then entitled
the hero of them to a very wide-spread and hon-
orable fame. Afterward Hastings landed upon
the Continent, and pursued, for a long time, a
glorious career of victory and plunder in France.
Ln these enterprises, the tide, indeed, sometimes
turned against him. On one occasion, for in-

228 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D.893.

Hastings besieged in a church. The place of landing.

stance, he found himself obliged to give way
before his enemies, and he retreated to a church,
which he seized and fortified, making it his cas-
tle until a more favorable aspect of his affairs
enabled him to issue forth from this retreat and
take the field again. Still he was generally
very successful in his enterprises ; his terrible
ferocity, and that of his savage followers, were
dreaded in every part of the civilized world.

Hastings had made one previous invasion of
England; but Guthrum, faithful to his cove-
nants with Alfred, repulsed him. But Guth-
rum was now dead, and Alfred had to contend
against his formidable enemy alone.

Hastings selected a point on the southern
coast of England for his landing. Guthrum's
Danes still continued to occupy the eastern part
of England, and Hastings went round on the
southern coast until he got beyond their bound-
aries, as if he wished to avoid doing any thing
directly to awaken their hostility. Guthrum
himself, while he lived, had evinced a determi-
nation to oppose Hastings's plans of invasion.
Hastings did not know, now that Guthrum
was dead, whether his successors would oppose
him or not. He determined, at all events, to
respect their territory, and so he passed along

AD. 893.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 231

Forces of the Danes. Romney Marshes.

on the southern shore of England till he was
beyond their limits, and then prepared to land.

He had assembled a large force of his own,
and he was joined, in addition to them, by many
adventurers who came out to attach themselves
to his expedition from the bays, and islands, and
harbors which he passed on his way. His fleet
amounted at least to two hundred and fifty
vessels. They arrived, at length, at a part of
the coast where there extends a vast tract of
low and swampy land, which was then a wild
and dismal morass. This tract, which is known
in modern times by the name of the Romney
Marshes, is of enormous extent, containing, as
it does, fifty thousand acres. It is now re-
claimed, and is defended by a broad and well-
constructed dike from the inroads of the sea.
In Hastings's time it was a vast waste of bogs
and mire, utterly impassable except by means
of a river, which, meandering sluggishly through
the tangled wilderness of weeds and bushes in
a doep, black stream, found an outlet at last into
the sea.

Hastings took his vessels into this river, and,
following its turnings for some miles, he con-
ducted them at last to a place where he found
more solid ground to land upon. But this

232 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 893

Landing of Hastings. Alfred marches to attack him.

ground, though solid, was almost as wild and
solitary as the morass. It was a forest of vast
extent, which showed no signs of human occu-
pancy, except that the peasants who lived in
the surrounding regions had come down to the
lowest point accessible, and were building a rude
fortification there. Hastings attacked them
and drove them away. Then, advancing a lit-
tle further, until he found an advantageous po-
sition, he built a strong fortress himself and es-
tablished his army within its lines.

His next measure was to land another force
near the mouth of the Thames, and bring them
into the country, until he found a strong posi-
tion where he could intrench and fortify the
second division as he had done the first. These
two positions were but a short distance from
each other. He made them the combined cen-
ter of his operations, going from them in all di-
rections in plundering excursions. Alfred soon
raised an army and advanced to attack him ;
and these operations were the commencement
of a long and tedious war.

A detailed description of the events of this
war, the marches and countermarches, the bat-
tles and sieges, the various success, first of one
party and then of the other, given historically

A.D.893.] THE CLOSE OP LIFE. 233

Cautious policy of Alfred. Negotiations.

in the order of time, would be as tedious to
read as the war itself was to endure. Alfred
was very cautious in all his operations, prefer-
ring rather to trust to the plan of wearing out
the enemy by cutting off their resources and
hemming them constantly in, than to incur the
risk of great decisive battles. In fact, watch-
fulness, caution, and delay are generally the
policy of the invaded when a powerful force has
succeeded in establishing itself among them ;
while, on the other hand, the hope of invaders
lies ordinarily in prompt and decided action.
Alfred was well aware of this, and made all his
arrangements with a view to cutting off Hast-
ings's supplies, shutting him up into as narrow
a compass as possible, heading him off in all
his predatory excursions, intercepting all de-
tachments, and thus reducing him at length to
the necessity of surrender.

At one time, soon after the war began, Hast-
ings, true to the character of his nation for
treachery and stratagem, pretended that he was
ready to surrender, and opened a negotiation
for this purpose. He agreed to leave the king-
dom if Alfred would allow him to depart peace-
ably, and also, which was a point of great im-
portance in Alfred's estimation, to have his two

234 ALFRED THE G.REAT. [AJD. 893

Treachery. Capture of Hastings's wife and children

sons baptized. While, however, these negotia-
tions were going on between the two camps,
Alfred suddenly found that the main body of
Hastings's army had stolen away in the rear,
and were marching off by stealth to another
part of the country. The negotiations were, of
course, immediately abandoned, and Alfred set
off with all "his forces in full pursuit. All hopes
of peace were given up, and the usual series of
sieges, maneuverings, battles, and retreats was
resumed again.

On one occasion Alfred succeeded in taking
possession of Hastings's camp, when he had left
it in security, as he supposed, to go off for a
time by sea on an expedition. Alfred's soldiers
found Hastings's wife and children in the camp,
and took them prisoners. They sent the terri-
fied captives to Alfred, to suffer, as they sup-
posed, the long and cruel confinement or the
violent death to which the usages of those days
consigned such unhappy prisoners. Alfred bap-
tized the children, and then sent them, with
their mother, loaded with presents and proofs
of kindness, back to Hastings again.

This generosity made no impression upon
the heart of Hastings, or, at least, it produced
no effect upon his conduct. He continued the

A.D.893.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 235

Successes of Hastings. A turn of fortune .

war as energetically as ever. Months passed
away and new re-enforcements arrived, until at
length he felt strong enough to undertake an
excursion into the very heart of the country.
He moved on for a time with triumphant suc-
cess ; but this very success was soon the means
of turning the current against him again. It
aroused the whole country through which he
was passing. The inhabitants flocked to arms.
They assembled at every rallying point, and,
drawing up on all sides nearer and nearer to
Hastings's army, they finally stopped his march,
and forced him to call all his forces in, and in-
trench himself in the first place of retreat that
he could find. Thus his very success was the
means of turning his good fortune into disaster.
And then, in the same way, the success of
Alfred and the Saxons soon brought disaster
upon them too, in their turn ; for, after suc-
ceeding in shutting Hastings closely in, and
cutting off his supplies of food, they maintained
their watch and ward over their imprisoned en-
emies so closely as to reduce them to extreme
distress — a distress and suffering which they
thought would end in their complete and abso-
lute submission. Instead of ending thus, how-
ever, it aroused them to desperation. Under

236 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 890

Desperate sally of the Danes. They sail up the Thames

the influence of the phrensy which such hope-
less sufferings produce in characters like theirs,
they burst out one day from the place of their
confinement, and, after a terrible conflict, which
choked up a river which they had to pass with
dead bodies and dyed its waters with blood, the
great body of the starving desperadoes made
their escape, and, in a wild and furious excite-
ment, half a triumph and half a retreat, they
went back to the eastern coast of the island,
where they found secure places of refuge to re-
ceive them.

In the course of the subsequent campaigns,
a party of the Danes came up the River Thames?
with a fleet of their vessels, and an account is
given by some of the ancient historians of a
measure which Alfred resorted to to entrap
them, which would seem to be scarcely credible.
The account is, that he altered the course of
the river by digging new channels for it, so as
to leave the vessels all aground, when, of course,
they became helpless, and fell an easy prey to
the attacks of their enemies. This is, at least,
a very improbable statement, for a river like the
Thames occupies always the lowest channel of
the land through which it passes to the sea.
Besides, such a river, in order that it should be

A..D. 896.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 237

Story of the diversion of the Thames. The Danes lose ground.

possible for vessels to ascend it from the ocean,
must have the surface of its water very near
the level of the surface of the ocean. There
can, therefore, be no place tc which such waters
could be drawn off, unless into a valley below
the level of the sea. All such valleys, when-
ever they exist in the interior of a country,
necessarily get filled with water from brooks
and rains, and so become lakes or inland seas
It is probable, therefore, that it was some other
operation which Alfred performed to imprison
the hostile vessels in the river, more possible ill
its own nature than the drawing off of the wa-
ters of the Thames from their ancient bed.

Year after year passed on, and, though neither
the Saxons nor the Danes gained any very per-
manent and decisive victories, the invaders were
gradually losing ground, being driven from one
intrenchment and one stronghold to another,
until, at last, their only places of refuge were
their ships, and the harbors along the margin
of the sea. Alfred followed on and occupied the
country as fast as the enemy was driven away ;
and when, at last, they began to seek refuge in
their ships, he advanced to the shore, and began
to form plans for building ships, and manning
and equipping a fleet, to pursue his return** en-

238 ALFREI THE G HEAT. [A.D. 896.

Alfred biulds a fleet It sails for the Isle of Wight

emies upon their own element. In this under-
taking, he proceeded in the same calm, deliber-
ate, and effectual manner, as in all his preceding
measures. He built his vessels with great care.
He made them twice as long as those of the
Danes, and planned them so as to make them
more steady, more safe, and capable of carrying
a crew of rowers so numerous as to be more
active and swift than the vessels of the enemy.

When these naval preparations were made,
Alfred began to look out for an object of attack
on which he could put their efficiency to the
test. He soon heard of a fleet of the North-
men's vessels on the coast of the Isle of Wight,
and he sent a fleet of his own ships to attack
them. He charged the commander of this fleet
to be sparing of life, but to capture the ships and
take the men, bringing as many as possible to
him unharmed.

There were nine of the English vessels, and
when they reached the Isle of Wight they
found six vessels of the Danes in a harbor there.
Three of these Danish vessels were afloat, and
came out boldly to attack Alfred's armament.
The other three were upon the shore, where
they had been left by the tide, and were, of
course, disabled and defenseless until the water

A.D. 896.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 239

Naval battle. Discomfiture of the Saxons

should rise and float them again. Under these
circumstances, it would seem that the victory
for Alfred's fleet would have been easy and sure ;
and at first the result was, in fact, in Alfred's
favor. Of the three ships that came out to
meet him, two were captured, and one escaped,
with only five men left on board of it alive.
The Saxon ships, after thus disposing of the
three living and moving enemies, pushed boldly
into the harbor to attack those which were lying
lifeless on the sands. They found, however,
that, though successful in the encounter with
the active and the powerful, they were destined
to disaster and defeat in approaching the de-
fenseless and weak. They got aground them-
selves in approaching the shoals on which the
vessels of their enemies were lying. The tide
receded and left three of the vessels on the sands,
and kept the rest so separated and so embar-
rassed by the difficulties and dangers of their
situation as to expose the whole force to the
most imminent danger. There was a fierce
contest in boats and on the shore. Both parties
suffered very severely ; and, finally, the Danes,
getting first released, made their escape and
put to sea.

Notwithstanding this partial discomfiture,

240 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 897.

Hastings expelled. Alfred devotes himself to peaceful avocations.

Alfred soon succeeded in driving the ships of
the Danes off his coast, and in thus completing
the deliverance of his country. Hastings him-
self went to France, where he spent the re-
mainder of his days in some territories which
he had previously conquered, enjoying, while he
continued to live, and for many ages afterward,
a very extended and very honorable fame. Such
exploits as those which he had performed con-
ferred, in those days, upon the hero who per-
formed them, a very high distinction, the luster
of which seems not to have been at all tarnished
in the opinions of mankind by any ideas of the
violence and wrong which the commission of
such deeds involved.

Alfred's dominions were now left once more
in peace, and he himself resumed again his
former avocations. But a very short period of
his life, however, now remained. Hastings was
finally expelled from England about 897. In
900 or 901 Alfred died. The interval was
spent in the same earnest and devoted efforts
to promote the welfare and prosperity of hia
kingdom that his life had exhibited before the
war. He was engaged diligently and industri-
ously in repairing injuries, redressing grievan-
ces, and rectifying every thing that was wrong

A.D. 900.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 241

Administration of justice. Alfred's children.

He exacted rigid impartiality in all the courts
of justice ; he held public servants of every rank
and station to a strict accountability ; and in all
the colleges, and monasteries, and ecclesiastical
establishments of every kind, he corrected all
abuses, and enforced a rigid discipline, faithfully
extirpating from every lurking place all sem-
blance of immorality or vice. He did these
things, too, with so much kindness and consid-
eration for all concerned, and was actuated in
all he did so unquestionably by an honest and
sincere desire to fulfill his duty to his people
and to God, that nobody opposed him. The good
considered him their champion, the indifferent
readily caught a portion of his spirit and wished
him success, while the wicked were silenced if
they were not changed.

Alfred's children had grown up to maturity,
and seemed to inherit, in some degree, their
father's character. He had a daughter, named
^Ethelfleda, who was married to a prince of
Mercia, and who was famed all over England
for the superiority of her mental powers, her
accomplishments, and her moral worth. The
name of his oldest son was Edward; he was to
succeed Alfred on the throne, and it was a
source now of great satisfaction to the king to
Q

242 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 900

Alfred's last days. His parting advice to his son.

find this son emulating his virtues, and prepar-
ing for an honorable and prosperous reign. Al-
fred had warning, in the progress of his disease,
of the approach of his end. When he found
that 'the time was near at hand, he called his
son Edward to his side, and gave him these his
farewell counsels, which express in few words
the principles and motives by which his own
life had been so fully governed.

" Thou, my dear son, set thee now beside
me, and I will deliver thee true instructions.
I feel that my hour is coming. My strength is
gone ; my countenance is wasted and pale. My
days are almost ended. We must now part.
I go to another world, and thou art to be left
alone in the possession of all that I have thus
far held. I pray thee, my dear child, to be a
father to thy people. Be the children's father
and the widow's friend. Comfort the poor, pro-
tect and shelter the weak, and, with all thy
might, right that which is wrong. And, my
son, govern thyself by law. Then shall the
Lord love thee, and God himself shall be thy
reward. Call thou upon him to advise thee in
all thy need, and he shall help thee to compass
all thy desires."

A.D. 900.] THE CLOSE OF LIFE. 24-3

Alfred's death and burial. Lasting honor to his memory.

Alfred was fifty-two years of age when he
died. His death was universally lamented.
The body was interred in the great cathedral
at Winchester. The kingdom passed peace-
fully and prosperously to his son, and the ar-
rangements which Alfred had spent his life in
framing and carrying into effect, soon began to
work out their happy results. The construc-
tions which he founded stand to the present day,
strengthened and extended rather than impair-
ed by the hand of time ; and his memory, as
their founder, will be honored as long as any
remembrance of the past shall endure among
the minds of men.

244 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1013

The story of Godwin. Contentions between the Saxons and Dane*.

T

CHAPTER XIII.
THE SEQUEL.

HE romantic story of Godwin forms the
sequel to the history of Alfred, leading us
onward, as it does, toward the next great era in
English history, that of William the Conqueror.
Although, as we have seen in the last chap-
ter, the immediate effects of Alfred's measures
was to re-establish peace and order in his king-
dom, and although the institutions which he
founded have continued to expand and develop
themselves down to the present day, still it must
not be supposed that the power and prosperity
of his kingdom and of the Saxon dynasty con-
tinued wholly uninterrupted after his death.
Contentions and struggles between the two great
races of Saxons and Danes continued for some
centuries to agitate the island. The particular
details of these contentions have in these days,
in a great measure, lost their interest for all but
professed historical scholars. It is only the his-
tory of great leading events and the lives of
really extraordinary men, in the annals of early

A.D. 1013.] THE SEQUEL. 245

William the Conqueror. Godwin's parentage.

ages, which can now attract the general atten-
tion even of cultivated minds. The vast move-
ments which have occurred and are occurring
in the history of mankind in the present cen-
tury, throw every thing except what is really
striking and important in early history into the
shade.

The era which comes next in the order of
time to that of Alfred in the course of English
history, as worthy to arrest general attention,
is, as we have already said, that of William the
Conqueror. The life of this sovereign forms the
subject of a separate volume of this series. He
lived two centuries after Alfred's day ; and al-
though, for the reasons above given, a full chron-
ological narration of the contentions between the
Saxon and Danish lines of kings which took
place during this interval would be of little in-
terest or value, some general knowledge of the
state of the kingdom at this time is important,
and may best be communicated in connection
with the story of Godwin.

Godwin was by birth* a Saxon peasant, of
Warwickshire. At the time when he arrived
at manhood, and was tending his father's flocks
and herds like other peasants' sons, the Saxons
and the Danes were at war. It seems that one

246 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1013.

Ethelred. His marriage. Canute the Dane.

of Alfred's descendants, named Ethelred, dis-
pleased his people by his misgovernment, and
was obliged to retire from England. He went
across the Channel, and married there the sister
of a Norman chief named Richard. Her name
was Emma. Ethelred hoped by this alliance to
pbtain Richard's assistance in enabling him to
recover his kingdom. The Danish population,
however, took advantage of his absence to put
one of their own princes upon the throne. His
name was Canute. He figures in English histo-
ry, accordingly, among the other English kings,
as Canute the Dane, that appellation being giv-
en him to mark the distinction of his origin in
respect to the kings who preceded and followed
him, as they were generally of the Saxon line.

It was this Canute of whom the famous story
is told that, in order to rebuke his flatterers,
who, in extolling his grandeur and power, had
represented to him that -even the elements were
subservient to his will, he took his stand upon
the sea-shore when the tide was coming in, with
his flatterers by his side, and commanded the
rising waves not to approach his royal feet. He
kept his sycophantic courtiers in this ridiculous
position until the encroaching waters drove them
away, and then dismissed them overwhelmed

A.D. 1013.J THE SEQUEL. 247

War between Ethelred and Canute. Death of Ethelred.

with confusion. The story is told in a thousand
different ways, and with a great variety of dif-
ferent embellishments, according to the fancy
of the several narrators ; all that there is now
any positive evidence for believing, however, is,
that probably some simple incident of the kind
occurred, out of which the stories have grown.
Canute did not hold his kingdom in peace.
Ethelred sent his son across the Channel into
England to negotiate with the Anglo-Saxon
powers for his own restoration to the throne.
An arrangement was accordingly made with
them, and Ethelred returned, and a violent civil
war immediately ensued between Ethelred and
the Anglo-Saxons on the one hand, and Canute
and the Danes on the other. At length Ethel-
red fell, and his son Edmund, who was at the
time of his death one of his generals, succeeded
him. Emma and his two other sons had been
left in Normandy. Edmund carried on the war
against Canute with great energy. One of his
battles was fought in the county of Warwick,
in the heart of England, where the peasant God-
win lived. In this battle the Danes were de-
feated, and the discomfited generals fled in all
directions from the field wherever they saw the
readiest hope of concealment or safety. One of

248 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1013.

Ulf in the wood. His bewilderment

them, named Ulf,* took a by-way, which led
him in the direction of Godwin's father's farm.

Night came on, and he lost his way in a wood.
Men, when flying under such circumstances
from a field of battle, avoid always the public
roads, and seek concealment in unfrequented
paths, where they easily get bewildered and lost.
Ulf wandered about all night in the forest, and
when the morning came he found himself ex-
hausted with fatigue, anxiety, and hunger, cer-
tain to perish unless he could find some succor,
and yet dreading the danger of being recognized
as a Danish fugitive if he were to be discovered
by any of the Saxon inhabitants of the land.
At length he heard the shouts of a peasant who
was coming along a solitary pathway through
the wood, driving a herd to their pasture. Ulf
would gladly have avoided him if he could have
gone on without succor or help. His plan was
to find his way to the Severn, where some Dan-
ish ships were lying, in hopes of a refuge on
board of them. But he was exhausted with
hunger and fatigue, and utterly bewildered and
lost; so he was compelled to go forward, and
take the risk of accosting the Saxon stranger.

He accordingly went up to him, and asked

* Pronounced Oolf.

AD. 1013.] THE SEQUEL. 249

Ulf rescued by Godwin. His offers to Godwin.

him his name. Godwin told him his name, and
the name of his father, who lived, he said, at a
little distance in the wood. While he was an-
swering the question, he gazed very earnestly
at the stranger, and then told him that he per-
ceived that he was a Dane — a fugitive, he sup-
posed, from the battle. Ulf, thus finding that
he could not be concealed, begged Godwin not to
betray him. He acknowledged that he was a
Dane, and that he had made his escape from
the battle, and he wished, he said, to find his
way to the Danish ships in the Severn. He
begged Godwin to conduct him there. God-
win replied by saying that it was unreasonable
and absurd for a Dane to expect guidance and
protection from a Saxon.

Ulf offered Godwin all sorts of rewards if he
would leave his herd and conduct him to a place
of safety. Godwin said that the attempt, were
he to make it, would endanger his own life
without saving that of the fugitive. The coun-
try, he said, was all in arms. The peasantry,
emboldened by the late victory obtained by the
Saxon army, were every where rising ; and al-
though it was not far to the Severn, yet to at-
tempt to reach the river while the country was
in such a state of excitement would be a des-

250 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A,D. 1013.

The gold ring. Concealment in the herdsman's hut

perate undertaking. They would almost cer-
tainly be intercepted ; and, if intercepted, their
exasperated captors would show no mercy, God-
win said, either to him or to his guide.

Among the other inducements which Ulf
offered to Godwin was a valuable gold ring,
which he took from his finger, and which, he
said, should be his if he would consent to be
his guide. Godwin took the ring into his hand,
examined it with much apparent curiosity, and
seemed to hesitate. At length he yielded ;
though he seems to have been induced to yield,
not by the value of the offered gift, but by com~
passion for the urgency of the distress which
the offer of it indicated, for he put the ring back
into Ulf 's hand, saying that he would not take
any thing from him, but he would try to save
him.

Instead, however, of undertaking the appar-
ently hopeless enterprise of conducting Ulf to
the Severn, he took him to his father's cottage
and concealed him there. During the day they
formed plans for journeying together, not to the
ships in the Severn, but to the Danish camp.
They were to set forth as soon as it was dark.
When the evening came and all was ready, and
they were about to commence their dangerous

A.D. 1013.] THE SEQUEL. 251

Godwin's father's charge to Ul£ Ulf s fidelity.

journey, the old peasant, Godwin's father, with
an anxious countenance and manner, gave Ulf
this solemn charge :

" This is my only son. In going forth to
guide you under these circumstances, he puts
his life at stake, trusting to your honor. He
can not return to me again, as there will be no
more safety for him among his own countrymen
after having once been a guide for you. When,
therefore, you reach the camp, present my son
to your king, and ask him to receive him into
his service. He can not come again to me."
Ulf promised very earnestly to do all this and
much more for his protector ; and then bidding
the father farewell, and leaving him in his soli-
tude, the two adventurers sallied forth into the
dark forest and went their way.

After various adventures, they reached the
camp of the Danes in safety. Ulf faithfully
fulfilled the promises that he had made. He
introduced Godwin to the king, and the king
was so much pleased with the story of his gen-
eral's escape, and so impressed with the marks
of capacity and talent which the young Saxon
manifested, that he gave Godwin immediately
a military command in his army. In fact, a
young man who could leave his home and his

252 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1013.

Godwin's rise to power. His daughter Edith.

father, and abandon the cause of his country-
men forever under such circumstances, must
have had something besides generosity toward
a fugitive enemy to impel him. Godwin was
soon found to possess a large portion of that pe-
culiar spirit which constitutes a soldier. He
was ambitious, stern, energetic, and always
successful. He rose rapidly in influence and
rank, and in the course of a few years, during
which King Canute triumphed wholly over his
Saxon enemies, and established his dominion
over almost the whole realm, he was promoted
to the rank of a king, and ruled, second only to
Canute himself, over the kingdom of Wessex,
one of the most important divisions of Canute's
empire. Here he lived and reigned in peace and
prosperity for many years. He was married,
and he had a daughter named Edith, who was
as gentle and lovely as her father was terrible
and stern. They said that Edith sprung from
Godwin like a rose from its stem of thorns.

A writer who lived in those days, and record
ed the occurrences of the times, says that, when
he was a boy, his father was employed in some
way in Godwin's palace, and that in going to
and from school he was often met by Edith,
who was walking, attended by her maid. On

AD. 1013.] THE SEQUEL. 253

Edith's gentleness and kindness. Conquests of Canute.

such occasions Edith would stop him, he said,
and question him about his studies, his gram-
mar, his logic, and his verses ; and she would
often draw him into an argument on those sub-
tle points of disputation which attracted so
much attention in those days. Then she would
commend him for his attention and progress,
and order her woman to make him a present
of some money. In a word, Edith was so gen-
tle and kind, and took so cordial an interest in
whatever concerned the welfare and happiness
of those around her, that she was universally
beloved. She became in the end, as we shall
see in due time, the English queen.

In the mean time, while Godwin was govern-
ing, as vicegerent, the province which Canute
had assigned him, Canute himself extended his
own dominion far and wide, reducing first all
England under his sway, and then extending
his conquests to the Continent. Edmund, the
Saxon king, was dead. His brothers Edward
and Alfred, the two remaining sons of Ethelred,
were with their mother in Normandy. They,
of course, represented the Saxon line. The Sax-
on portion of Canute's kingdom would of course
look to them as their future leaders. Under
these circumstances, Canute conceived the idea

254 ALFRED THK (JREAT. [A.D. 1013.

Canute marries Emma. Policy of this act

of propitiating the Saxon portion of the popula-
tion, and combining, so far as was possible, the
claims of the two lines, by making the widow
Emma his own wife. He made the proposal to
her, and she accepted it, pleased with the idea
of being once more a queen. She came to En-
gland, and they were married. In process of
time they had a son, who was named Hardi-
canute, which means Canute the strong.

Canute now felt that his kingdom was se-
cure ; and he hoped, by making Hardicanute his
heir, to perpetuate the dominion in his own fam-
ily. It is true that he had older children, whom
the Danes might look upon as more properly his
heirs ; and Emma had also two older children,
the sons of Ethelred, hi Normandy. These the
Saxons would be likely to consider as the right-
ful heirs to the throne. There was danger, there-
fore, that at his death parties would again be
formed, and the civil wars break out anew.
Canute and Emma therefore seem to have act-
ed wisely, and to have done all that the nature
of the case admitted to prevent a renewal of
these dreadful struggles, by concentrating their
combined influence in favor of Hardicanute,
who, though not absolutely the heir to either
line, still combined, in some degree, the claims

A.D. 1031.] THE SEQUEL. 255

Canute's government. His death.

of both of them. Canute also did all in his pow-
er to propitiate his Anglo-Saxon subjects. He
devoted himself to promoting the welfare of ths
kingdom in every way. He built towns, he
constructed roads, he repaired and endowed the
churches. He became a very zealous Chris-
tian, evincing the ardor of his piety, whether
real or pretended, by all the forms and indica-
tions common in those days. Finally, to crown
all, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome. He set
out on this journey with great pomp and pa-
rade, and attended by a large retinue, and yet
still strictly like a pilgrim. He walked, and
carried a wallet on his back, and a long pilgrim's
staff in his hand. This pilgrimage, at the time
when it occurred, filled the world with its fame.
At length King Canute died, and then, un-
fortunately, it proved that all his seemingly
wise precautions against the recurrence of civil
wars were taken in vain. It happened that
Hardicanute, whom he had intended should suc-
ceed him, was in Denmark at the time of his
father's death. Godwin, however, proclaimed
him king, and attempted to establish his author-
ity, and to make Emma a sort of regent, to
govern in his name until he could be brought
home. The Danish chieftains, on the other

256 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1031.

Harold's accession. The panic.

hand, elected and proclaimed one of Canute's
older sons, whose name was Harold ;* and they
succeeded in carrying a large part of the coun-
try in his favor. Godwin then summoned Em-
ma to join him in the west with such forces as
she could command, and both parties prepared
for war.

Then ensued one of those scenes of terror and
suffering which war, and sometimes the mere
fear of war, brings often in its train. It was
expected that the first outbreak of hostilities
would be in the interior of England, near the
banks of the Thames, and the inhabitants of
the whole region were seized with apprehen-
sions and fears, which spread rapidly, increased
by the influence of sympathy, and excited more
and more every day by a thousand groundless
rumors, until the whole region was thrown into
a state of uncontrollable panic and confusion.
The inhabitants abandoned their dwellings, and
fled in dismay into the eastern part of the isl-
and, to seek refuge among the fens and marshes
of Lincolnshire, and of the other counties around.
Here, as has been already stated in a previous
chapter when describing the Abbey of Croyland,
were a great many monasteries, and convents,

* Spelled sometimes Herald.

A.D. 1037.] THE SEQUEL. 257

The fugitives in the Lincolnshire fens. Alarm of the monks.

and hermitages, and other religious establish-
ments, filled with monks and nuns. The wretch-
ed fugitives from the expected scene of war
crowded into this region, besieging the doors of
the abbess and monasteries to beg for shelter,
or food, or protection. Some built huts among
the willow woods which grew in the fens ; oth-
ers encamped at the road-sides, or under the
monastery walls, wherever they could find the
semblance of shelter. They presented , of course,
a piteous spectacle — men infirm with sickness
or age, or exhausted with anxiety and fatigue ;
children harassed and way-worn ; and helpless
mothers, with still more helpless babes at their
breasts. The monks, instead of being moved
to compassion by the sight of these unhappy
sufferers, were only alarmed on their own ac-
count at such an inundation of misery. They
feared that they should be overwhelmed them-
selves. Those whose establishments were large
and strong, barred their doors against the sup-
pliants, and the hermits, who lived alone in de-
tached and separate solitudes, abandoned their
osier huts, and fled themselves to seek some
place more safe from such intrusions.

And yet, after all, the whole scene was only

a fake alarm. Men acting in a panic are al-
R

258 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1037.

The country settled. Submission of Godwin and Emma

most always running into the ills which they
think they shun. The war did not break out on
the banks of the Thames at all. Hardioanute,
deterred, perhaps, by the extent of the sup-
port which the claims of Harold were receiving,
did not venture to come to England, and Emma
and Godwin, and those who would have taken
their side, having no royal head to lead them,
gave up their opposition, and acquiesced in
Harold's reign. The fugitives in the marshes
and fens returned to their homes ; the country
became tranquil ; Godwin held his province as
a sort of lieutenant general of Harold's king-
dom, and Emma herself joined his court in
London, where she lived with him ostensibly
on very friendly terms.

Still, her mind was ill at ease. Harold,
though the son of her husband, was not her
own son, and the ambitious spirit which led her
to marry for her second husband her first hus-
band's rival and enemy, that she might be a sec-
ond time a queen, naturally made her desire
that one of her own offspring, either on the
Danish or the Saxon side, should inherit the
kingdom ; for the reader must not forget that
Emma, besides being the mother of Hardica-
nute by her second husband Canute, the Danish

AJX 1037.] THE SEQUEL. 259

Emma's family. Her plans.

sovereign, was also the mother of Edward and
Alfred by her first husband Ethelred, of the
Anglo-Saxon line, and that these two sons were
in Normandy now. The family connection will
be more apparent to the eye by the following
scheme :

Ethelred the Saxon. Emma. Canute the Dane.

Edward. Hardicanute.

Alfred.

Harold was the son of Canute by a former
marriage. Emma, of course, felt no maternal
interest in him, and though compelled by cir-
cumstances to acquiesce for a time in his pos-
session of the kingdom, her thoughts were con-
tinually with her own sons ; and since the at-
tempt to bring Hardicanute to the throne had
failed, she began to turn her attention toward
her Norman children.

After scheming for a time, she wrote letters
to them, proposing that they should come to
England. She represented to them that the
Anglo-Saxon portion of the people were ill at
ease under Harold's dominion, and would glad-
ly embrace any opportunity of having a Saxon
king. She had no doubt, she said, that if one
of them were to appear in England and claim
the throne, the people would rise in mass to

260 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1037.

Alfred's expedition. Godwin goes to meet him.

support him, and he would easily get possession
of the realm. She invited them, therefore, to
repair secretly to England, to confer with her
on the subject; charging them, however, to
bring very few, if any, Norman attendants with
them, as the English people were inclined to
be very jealous of the influence of foreigners.

The brothers were very much elated at re-
ceiving these tidings ; so much so that in their
zeal they were disposed to push the enterprise
much faster than their mother had intended.
Instead of going, themselves, quietly and se-
cretly to confer with her in London, they organ-
ized an armed expedition of Norman soldiers
The youngest, Alfred, with an enthusiasm char-
acteristic of his years, took the lead in these
measures. He undertook to conduct the expe-
dition. The eldest consented to his making
the attempt. He landed at Dover, and began
his march through the southern part of the
country. Godwin went forth to meet him.
Whether he would join his standard or meet
him as a foe, no one could tell. Emma consid-
ered that Godwin was on her side, though even
she had not recommended an armed invasion
of the country.

It is very probable that Godwin himself was

A.D 1037.] THE SEQUEL. 261

Godwin's designs. Hia address to the Saxon chiefs.

uncertain, at first, what course to pursue, and
that he intended to have espoused Prince Alfred's
cause if he had found that it presented any rea-
sonable prospect of success. Or he may have
felt bound to serve Harold faithfully, now that
he had once given in his adhesion to him. Of
course, he kept his thoughts and plans to him-
self, leaving the world to see only his deeds.
But if he had ever entertained any design of
espousing Alfred's cause, he abandoned it be-
fore the time arrived for action. As he advanc-
ed into the southern part of the island, he call-
ed together the leading Saxon chiefs to hold a
council, and he made an address to them when
they were convened, which had a powerful in-
fluence on their minds in preventing their de-
ciding in favor of Alfred. However much they
might desire a monarch of their own line, this,
he said, was not the proper occasion for effect-
ing their end. Alfred was, it was true, an An-
glo-Saxon by descent, but he was a Norman by
birth and education. All his friends and sup-
porters were Normans. He had come now into
the realm of England with a retinue of Nor-
man followers, who would, if he were success-
ful, monopolize the honors and offices which he
would have to bestow. He advised the Anglo-

262 ALFRED THE GREAT. [AD. 1037.

Defeat of Alfred. Execution of his companions

Saxon chieftains, therefore, to remain inactive,
to take no part in the contest, but to wait for
some other opportunity to re-establish the Sax-
on line of kings.

The Anglo-Saxon chieftains seem to have
considered this good advice. At any rate, they
made no movement to sustain young Alfred's
cause. Alfred had advanced to the town of
Guilford. Here he was surrounded by a force
which Harold had sent against him. There
was no hope or possibility of resistance. In
fact, his enemies seem to have arrived at a time
when he did not expect an attack, for they en-
tered the gates by a sudden onset, when Al-
fred's followers were scattered about the town,
at the various houses to which they had been
distributed. They made no attempt to defend
themselves, but were taken prisoners one by
one, wherever they were found. They were
bound with cords, and carried away like ordi-
nary criminals.

Of Alfred's ten principal Norman companions,
nine were beheaded. For some reason or other
the life of one was spared. Alfred himself was
charged with having violated the peace of his
country, and was condemned to lose his eyes.
The torture of this operation, and the inflam-

AD. 1037.] THE SEQUEL. 263

Alfred's cruel fate. Banishment of Emma.

mation which followed, destroyed the unhappy
prince's life. Neither Emma nor Godwin did
any thing to save him. It was wise policy, no
doubt, in Emma to disavow all connection with
her son's unfortunate attempt, now that it had
failed; and ambitious queens have to follow
the dictates of policy, instead of obeying such
impulses as maternal love. She was, however,
secretly indignant at the cruel fate which her
son had endured, and she considered Godwin
as having betrayed him.

After this dreadful disappointment, Emma
was not likely to make any farther attempts to
place either of her sons upon the throne ; but
Harold seems to have distrusted her, for he ban-
ished her from the realm. She had still her
Saxon son in Normandy, Alfred's brother Ed-
ward, and her Danish son in Denmark. She
went to Flanders, and there sent to Hardica-
nute, urging him by the most earnest impor-
tunities to come to England and assert his
claims to the crown. He was doubly bound to
do it now, she said, as the blood of his murder-
ed brother called for retribution, and he could
have no honorable rest or peace until he had
avenged it.

There was no occasion, however, for Hardi-

264 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D, 1040.

Accession of Hardicanute. Hia indignities to Harold's remains.

Canute to attempt force for the recovery of his
kingdom, for not many months after these
transactions Harold died, and then the country
seemed generally to acquiesce in Hardicanute's
accession. The Anglo-Saxons, discouraged per-
haps by the discomfiture of their cause in the
person of Alfred, made no attempt to rise.
Hardicanuto came accordingly and assumed
the throne. But, though he had not courage
and energy enough to encounter his rival Harold
during his lifetime, he made what amends he
could by offering base indignities to his body
after he was laid in the grave. His first public
act after his accession was to have the body
disinterred, and, after cutting off the head, he
threw the mangled remains into the Thames.
The Danish fishermen in the river found them,
and buried them again in a private sepulcher in
London, with such concealed marks of respect
and honor as it was in their power to bestow.

Hardicanute also instituted legal proceedings
to inquire into the death of Alfred. He charged
the Saxons with having betrayed him, especial-
ly those who were rich enough to pay the fines,
by which, in those days, it was very customary
for criminals to atone for their crimes. Godwin
himself was brought before the tribunal, and

A.D. 1040.] THE SEQUEL. 265

Godwin's trial. His costly presents to Hardicanuta.

charged with being accessory to Alfred's death.
Godwin positively asserted his innocence, and
brought witnesses to prove that he was entire-
ly free from all participation in the affair. He
took also a much more effectual method to se-
cure an acquittal, by making to King Hardica-
nute some most magnificent presents. One of
these was a small ship, profusely enriched and
ornamented with gold. It contained eighty sol-
diers, armed in the Danish style, with weapons
of the most highly-finished and costly construc-
tion. They each carried a Danish axe on the
left shoulder, and a javelin in the right hand,
both richly gilt, and they had each of them a
bracelet on his arm, containing six ounces of
solid gold. Such at least is the story. The
presents might be considered in the light either
of a bribe to corrupt justice, or in that of a fine
to satisfy it. In fact, the line, in those days,
between bribes to purchase acquittal and fines
atoning for the offense seems not to have been
very accurately drawn.

Hardicanute, when fairly established on his
throne, governed his realm like a tyrant. He op-
pressed the Saxons especially without any mer-
cy. The effect of his cruelties, and those of the
Danes who acted under him, was, however, not

266 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1041.

Hardicanute's tyranny. Hia death. Final expulsion of the Danes.

to humble and subdue the Saxon spirit, but to
awaken and arouse it. Plots and conspiracies
began to be formed against him, and against
the whole Danish party. Godwin himself be-
gan to meditate some decisive measures, when,
suddenly, Hardicanute died. Godwin immedi-
ately took the field at the head of all his forces,
and organized a general movement throughout
the kingdom for calling Edward, Alfred's broth-
er, to the throne. This insurrection was tri-
umphantly successful. The Danish forces that
undertook to resist it were driven to the north-
ward. The leaders were slain or put to flight.
A remnant of them escaped to the sea-shore,
where they embarked on board such vessels as
they could find, and left England forever ; and
this was the final termination of the political
authority of the Danes over the realm of En-
gland— the consummation and end of Alfred's
military labors and schemes, coming surely at
last, though deferred for two centuries after his
decease.

What follows belongs rather to the history
of William the Conqueror than to that of Al-
fred, for Godwin invited Edward, Emma's
Norman son, to come and assume the crown ;
and his coming, together with that of the many

A.D. 1041.J THE SEQUEL. 267

Edward invited to the throne. Hia coronation

Norman attendants that accompanied or follow-
ed him, led, in the end, to the Norman invasion
and conquest. Godwin might probably have
made himself king if he had chosen to do so.
His authority over the whole island was para-
mount and supreme. But, either from a natu-
ral sense of justice toward the rightful heir, or
from a dread of the danger which always at-
tends the usurping of the royal name by one
who is not of royal descent, he made no attempt
to take the crown. He convened a great as-
sembly of all the estates of the realm, and there
it was solemnly decided that Edward should be
invited to come to England and ascend the
throne. A national messenger was dispatched
to Normandy to announce the invitation.

It was stipulated in this invitation that Ed-
ward should bring very few Normans with him.
He came, accordingly, in the first instance, al-
most unattended. He was received with great
joy, and crowned king with splendid ceremo-
nies and great show, in the ancient cathedral
at Winchester. He felt under great obliga-
tions to Godwin, to whose instrumentality he
was wholly indebted for this sudden and most
brilliant change in his fortunes ; and partly im-
pelled by this feeling of gratitude, and partly

ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1041.

Edward marries Edith. Godwin's difficulties.

allured by Edith's extraordinary charms, he pro-
posed to make Edith his wife. Godwin made
no objection. In fact, his enemies say that he
made a positive stipulation for this match be-
fore allowing the measures for Edward's eleva-
tion to the throne to proceed too far. However
this may be, Godwin found himself, after Ed-
ward's accession, raised to the highest pitch of
honor and power. From being a young herds-
man's son, driving the cows to pasture in a
wood, he had become the prime minister, as it
were, of the whole realm, his four sons being
great commanding generals in the army, and
his daughter the queen.

The current of life did not flow smoothly with
him, after all. We can not here describe the
various difficulties in which he became involved
with the king on account of the Normans, who
were continually coming over from the Conti-
nent to join Edward's court, and whose coming
and growing influence strongly awakened the
jealousy of the English people. Some narra-
tion of these events will more properly precede
the history of Willi am the Conqueror. We ac-
cordingly close this story of Godwin here by
giving the circumstances of his death, as related
by the historians of the time. The readers of

A.D. 1041.] THE SEQUEL. 269

Story of Godwin's death. His protestations of innocence.

this narrative will, of course, exercise severally
„ their own discretion in determining how far
they will believe the story to be true.

The story is, that one day he was seated at
Edward's table, at some sort of entertainment,
when one of his attendants, who was bringing
in a goblet of wine, tripped one of his feet, but
contrived to save himself by dexterously bringing
up the other in such a manner as to cause some
amusement to the guests ; Godwin said, refer-
ring to the man's feet, that one brother saved
the other. " Yes," said the king, " brothers
have need of brothers' aid. Would to God that
mine were still alive." In saying this he di-
rected a meaning glance toward Godwin, which
seemed to insinuate, as, in fact, the king had
sometimes done before, that Godwin had had
some agency in young Alfred's death. Godwin
was displeased. He reproached the king with
the unreasonableness of his surmises, and sol-
emnly declared that he was wholly innocent of
all participation in that crime. He imprecated
the curse of God upon his head if this declara-
tion was not true, wishing that the next mouth-
ful of bread that he should eat might choke him
if he had contributed in any way, directly or
indirectly, to Alfred's unhappy end. So saying,

270 ALFRED THE GREAT. [A.D. 1041.

Godwin's death. TT'« sons.

he put the bread into his mouth, and in the act
of swallowing it he was seized with a paroxysm ,
of coughing and suffocation. The attendants
hastened to his relief, the guests rose in terror
and confusion. Godwin was borne away by
two of his sons, and laid on his bed in convul-
sions. He survived the immediate injury, but
after lingering five days he died.

Edward continued to reign in prosperity long
after this event, and he employed the sons of
Godwin as long as he lived in the most honor-
able stations of public service. In fact, when
he died, he named one of them as his successor
to the throne

THE END.

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