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• Name:

Notes:

Edmund I (Old English: Eadmund) (922 - 26 May 946), called the Elder, the Deed-doer, the Just, or the Magnificent, was King of England from 939 until his death. He was a son of Edward the Elder and half-brother of Athelstan. Athelstan died on 27 October 939, and Edmund succeeded him as king.

Military threats

Shortly after his proclamation as king he had to face several military threats. King Olaf III Guthfrithson conquered Northumbria and invaded the Midlands. When Olaf died in 942 Edmund reconquered the Midlands. In 943 he became the god-father of King Olaf of York. In 944, Edmund was successful in reconquering Northumbria. In the same year his ally Olaf of York lost his throne and left for Dublin in Ireland. Olaf became the king of Dublin as Olaf Cuaran and continued to be allied to his god-father. In 945 Edmund conquered Strathclyde but ceded the territory to King Malcolm I of Scotland in exchange for a treaty of mutual military support. Edmund thus established a policy of safe borders and peaceful relationships with Scotland. During his reign, the revival of monasteries in England began.

Louis IV of France

One of Edmund's last political movements of which we have some knowledge is his role in the restoration of Louis IV of France to the throne. Louis, son of Charles the Simple and Edmund's half-sister Eadgifu, had resided at the West-Saxon court for some time until 936, when he returned to be crowned King of France. In the summer of 945, he was captured by the Norsemen of Rouen and subsequently released to Duke Hugh the Great, who however, held him in custody. The chronicler Richerus claims that Eadgifu wrote letters both to Edmund and to Otto I in which she requested support for her son; Edmund responded to her plea by sending angry threats to Hugh, who however, brushed them aside. Flodoard's Annales, one of Richerus' sources, report:

Edmund, king of the English, sent messengers to Duke Hugh about the restoration of King Louis, and the duke accordingly made a public agreement with his nephews and other leading men of his kingdom. [...] Hugh, duke of the Franks, allying himself with Hugh the Black, son of Richard, and the other leading men of the kingdom, restored to the kingdom King Louis.

Death and succession

On 26 May 946, Edmund was murdered by Leofa, an exiled thief, while celebrating St Augustine's Mass Day in Pucklechurch (South Gloucestershire). John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury add some lively detail by suggesting that Edmund had been feasting with his nobles, when he spotted Leofa in the crowd. He attacked the intruder in person, but in the event, Edmund and Leofa were both killed.

Edmund's sister Eadgyth, wife to Otto I, died (earlier) the same year, as Flodoard's Annales for 946 report.

Edmund was succeeded as king by his brother Edred, king from 946 until 955. Edmund's sons later ruled England as:

Eadwig of England, King from 955 until 957, king of only Wessex and Kingdom of Kent from 957 until his death on 1 October 959.
Edgar of England, king of only Mercia and Northumbria from 957 until his brother's death in 959, then king of England from 959 until 975.
He married, firstly, Ælfgifu circa 940. He married, secondly, Æthelflæd, daughter of Ælfgar, Ealdorman of the Wilsaetas, circa 946.

Eadmund I, King of England also went by the nick-name of Edmund 'the Elder'. He succeeded to the title of King Eadmund I of England on 27 October 939. He was crowned King of England on 29 November 939 at Kingston-upon-Thames, London, England.

Edmund was the half-brother of Athelstan and was only 18 years old on his accession. When Vikings from Ireland invaded, the Archbishop of Canterbury arranged a treaty between them and the English and this divided the country. Later Edmund defeated these Vikings and regained the lost territory. Edmund had allies in the Welsh princes and together they laid waste to Strathclyde. Edmund was warlike and an effective monarch. An interesting story about Edmund concerns Dunstan, who in later years became Archbishop of Canterbury. Edmund and Dunstan were good companions but treacherous courtiers wrongly discredited Dunstan and he was so upset that he contemplated leaving the country he loved so much. Just afterwards, the year was 943, he and Edmund were out riding at Cheddar when Edmund's horse reared up and bolted towards the cliffs of the Gorge. When all seemed lost, the thought struck Edmund of the evil done to Dunstan by the courtiers. He struggled and managed to regain control of his horse and thus avoid the cliffs. He called Dunstan and straightway rode with him to Glastonbury and immediately appointed his good friend as Abbot there.

Edmund — Saint Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury. Saint (daughter of Wynflæd) died 944, Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. [Group Sheet]

1. Edgar The Peaceful, King Of England was born Abt 07 Aug 943; died 08 Jul 975, Winchester, Hampshire, England; was buried Aft 08 Jul 975, Glastonbury, Somerset, England.

Edmund — Æthelflæd of Damerham. Æthelflæd died Aft 975; was buried Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. [Group Sheet]

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• Name: Eadweard King of Wessex I

Notes:

He married, firstly, Ecgwyn. He married, secondly, Ælflæd, daughter of Ethelhelm, Ealdorman and Elswitha, circa 901. He married, thirdly, Eadgifu, daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent, circa 920. He was also reported to have died on 7 July 924 at Farndon, Cheshire, England.

Eadweard I, King of Wessex also went by the nick-name of Edward 'the Elder'. He succeeded to the title of King Eadweard I of Wessex on 26 October 899. He succeeded to the title of King Eadweard I of Mercia on 26 October 899. He was crowned King of Wessex and Mercia on 31 May 900 at Kingston-upon-Thames, London, England.

Edward together with his sister Ethelfleda of Mercia, fought stoutly against the Danes. Ethelfleda built many forts notably at Chester, Hereford, Bridgenorth, Shrewsbury, Warwick, Gloucester and Tamworth. Known as The Lady of the Mercians, she died in 918 and Mercia was then united with Wessex. In 914, Edward secured the release of the Bishop of Llandaff (Cardiff) who had been captured by the Norsemen and following this, the princes of both North and South Wales pledged their perpetual allegiance to him. Edward doubled the size of the kingdom during his reign. It is now generally acknowledged that Edward died on the 7th July 924 but some historians give the date as 925.

Edward the Elder (Old English: Eadweard se Ieldra) (c. 874-877[1] - 17 July 924) was an English king. He became king in 899 upon the death of his father, Alfred the Great. His court was at Winchester, previously the capital of Wessex. He captured the eastern Midlands and East Anglia from the Danes in 917 and became ruler of Mercia in 918 upon the death of Æthelflæd, his sister.

All but two of his charters give his title as "king of the Anglo-Saxons" (Anglorum Saxonum rex). He was the second king of the Anglo-Saxons as this title was created by Alfred. Edward's coinage reads "EADVVEARD REX." The chroniclers record that all England "accepted Edward as lord" in 920. But the fact that York continued to produce its own coinage suggests that Edward's authority was not accepted in Viking-ruled Northumbria. Edward's eponym "the Elder" was first used in Wulfstan's Life of St Æthelwold (tenth century) to distinguish him from the later King Edward the Martyr.

Ætheling

Of the five children born to Alfred and Ealhswith who survived infancy, Edward was the second-born and the elder son. Edward's birth cannot be certainly dated. His parents married in 868 and his eldest sibling Æthelflæd was born soon afterwards as she was herself married in 883. Edward was probably born rather later, in the 870s, and probably between 874 and 877.

Asser's Life of King Alfred reports that Edward was educated at court together with his youngest sister Ælfthryth. His second sister, Æthelgifu, was intended for a life in religion from an early age, perhaps due to ill health, and was later abbess of Shaftesbury. The youngest sibling, Æthelweard, was educated at a court school where he learned Latin, which suggests that he too was intended for a religious life. Edward and Ælfthryth, however, while they learned the English of the day, received a courtly education, and Asser refers to their taking part in the "pursuits of this present life which are appropriate to the nobility".

The first appearance of Edward in the sources is in 892, in a charter granting land at North Newnton, near Pewsey in Wiltshire, to ealdorman Æthelhelm, where he is called filius regis, the king's son. Although he was the reigning king's elder son, Edward was not certain to succeed his father. Until the 890s, the obvious heirs to the throne were Edward's cousins Æthelwold and Æthelhelm, sons of Æthelred, Alfred's older brother and predecessor as king. Æthelwold and Æthelhelm were around ten years older than Edward. Æthelhelm disappears from view in the 890s, seemingly dead, but a charter probably from that decade shows Æthelwold witnessing before Edward, and the order of witnesses is generally believed to relate to their status As well as his greater age and experience, Æthelwold may have had another advantage over Edward where the succession was concerned. While Alfred's wife Ealhswith is never described as queen and was never crowned, Æthelwold and Æthelhelm's mother Wulfthryth was called queen.

Succession and early reign

Silver brooch imitating a coin of Edward the Elder, c. 920, found in Rome, Italy. British Museum.

When Alfred died, Edward's cousin Æthelwold, the son of King Æthelred of Wessex, rose up to claim the throne and began Æthelwold's Revolt. He seized Wimborne, in Dorset, where his father was buried, and Christchurch (then in Hampshire, now in Dorset). Edward marched to Badbury and offered battle, but Æthelwold refused to leave Wimborne. Just when it looked as if Edward was going to attack Wimborne, Æthelwold left in the night, and joined the Danes in Northumbria, where he was announced as King. In the meantime, Edward is alleged to have been crowned at Kingston upon Thames on 8 June 900

In 901, Æthelwold came with a fleet to Essex, and encouraged the Danes in East Anglia to rise up. In the following year he attacked English Mercia and northern Wessex. Edward retaliated by ravaging East Anglia, but when he retreated south the men of Kent disobeyed the order to retire, and were intercepted by the Danish army. The two sides met at the Battle of the Holme on 13 December 902. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Danes "kept the place of slaughter", but they suffered heavy losses, including Æthelwold and a King Eohric, possibly of the East Anglian Danes.

Relations with the North proved problematic for Edward for several more years. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions that he made peace with the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes "of necessity". There is also a mention of the regaining of Chester in 907, which may be an indication that the city was taken in battle.

In 909, Edward sent an army to harass Northumbria. In the following year, the Northumbrians retaliated by attacking Mercia, but they were met by the combined Mercian and West Saxon army at the Battle of Tettenhall, where the Northumbrian Danes were destroyed. From that point, they never raided south of the River Humber.

Edward then began the construction of a number of fortresses (burhs), at Hertford, Witham and Bridgnorth. He is also said to have built a fortress at Scergeat, but that location has not been identified. This series of fortresses kept the Danes at bay. Other forts were built at Tamworth, Stafford, Eddisbury and Warwick. These burhs were built to the same specifications (within centimetres) as those within the territory that his father had controlled; it has been suggested on this basis that Edward actually built them all.

Achievements

Edward extended the control of Wessex over the whole of Mercia, East Anglia and Essex, conquering lands occupied by the Danes and bringing the residual autonomy of Mercia to an end in 918, after the death of his sister, Æthelflæd. Ætheflæd's daughter, Ælfwynn, was named as her successor, but Edward deposed her, bringing Mercia under his direct control. He had already annexed the cities of London and Oxford and the surrounding lands of Oxfordshire and Middlesex in 911. By 918, all of the Danes south of the Humber had submitted to him. By the end of his reign, the Norse, the Scots and the Welsh had acknowledged him as "father and lord". This recognition of Edward's overlordship in Scotland led to his successors' claims of suzerainty over that Kingdom.

Edward reorganized the Church in Wessex, creating new bishoprics at Ramsbury and Sonning, Wells and Crediton. Despite this, there is little indication that Edward was particularly religious. In fact, the Pope delivered a reprimand to him to pay more attention to his religious responsibilities.

He died leading an army against a Welsh-Mercian rebellion, on 17 July 924 at Farndon-Upon-Dee and was buried in the New Minster in Winchester, Hampshire, which he himself had established in 901. After the Norman Conquest, the minster was replaced by Hyde Abbey to the north of the city and Edward's body was transferred there. His last resting place is currently marked by a cross-inscribed stone slab within the outline of the old abbey marked out in a public park.

The portrait included here is imaginary and was drawn together with portraits of other Anglo-Saxon era monarchs by an unknown artist in the 18th century. Edward's eponym the Elder was first used in the 10th century, in Wulfstan's Life of St Æthelwold, to distinguish him from the later King Edward the Martyr.

Family

Edward had four siblings, including Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Ælfthryth, Countess of Flanders.

King Edward had about fourteen children from three marriages (or according to some sources, an extramarital relationship and two marriages).

Edward first married Ecgwynn around 893. Conflicting information is given about her by different sources, none of which pre-date the Conquest. Their children were:

The future King Athelstan (c.893 - 939)
(perhaps, else by Ælfflæd) a daughter (named Eadgyth (St. Edith) by some chroniclers) who married Sihtric Cáech and later became a nun.

In 899, Edward married Ælfflæd, a daughter of Æthelhelm, the ealdorman of Wiltshire. Their children were

Eadgifu (902 - after 955), who married Charles the Simple
Ælfweard of Wessex (904 - 924)
Eadgyth (910 - 946), who married Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor
Eadhild, who married Hugh the Great, Duke of Paris
Ælfgifu who married "a prince near the Alps", sometimes identified with Conrad of Burgundy or Boleslaus II of Bohemia
Eadflæd, who became a nun
Eadhild, who also became a nun

Edward married for a third time, about 919, to Eadgifu, the daughter of Sigehelm, the ealdorman of Kent. Their children were
Edmund (922 - 946)
Eadred (died 955)
Saint Edburga of Winchester (died 960)
Eadgifu, married "Louis, Prince of Aquitaine", whose identity is disputed, as is the very existence if this daughter.

Edward also had a son, Edwin Ætheling (died 933), but it is unclear who his mother was.

Eadgifu outlived her husband and her sons, and was alive during the reign of her grandson, King Edgar. William of Malmsbury's history De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesiae claims that Edward's second wife, Ælfflæd, was also alive after Edward's death, but this is the only known source for that claim. [Wikipedia]

Edward married Eadgifu 919. Eadgifu (daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent) died 25 Aug 968. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Eadgifu of Kent (also Edgiva or Ediva) (died August 25, 968) was the third wife of Edward the Elder, King of England.

Eadgifu was the daughter of Sigehelm, Ealdorman of Kent (died 903). She became the mother of two sons, Edmund I of England, later King Edmund I, and Eadred of England, later King Eadred, and a daughter, Saint Eadburh of Winchester. Eadgifu survived Edward by many years, dying in the reign of her grandson Edgar. As queen dowager, her position seem to have been higher than that of her daughter-in-law; In a Kentish charter datable between 942 and 944, her daughter-in-law Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury subscribes herself as the king's concubine (concubina regis), with a place assigned to her between the bishops and ealdormen. By comparison, Eadgifu subscribes higher up in the witness list as mater regis, after her sons Edmund and Eadred but before the archbishops and bishops. [Wikipedia]

Other Events:

• Name: Ælfræd King of Wessex

Notes:

He married Eahlwið, Princess of Mercia, daughter of Æthelred 'Mucil', Ealdorman of the Gainas and Eadburga, Princess of Mercia, between 868 and 869. He died between 25 October 899 and 28 October 899. He was buried at Newminster Abbey, Winchester, Hampshire, England.

Ælfræd, King of Wessex also went by the nick-name of Alfred 'the Great'. He succeeded to the title of King Ælfræd of Wessex on 23 April 871. He succeeded to the title of King Ælfræd of Mercia on 23 April 871.

He helped his brother gain a great victory over the Danes at Ashdown in 871. Alfred organised the army and was the founder of the English Navy. By 877 the Danes had occupied London and reached Gloucester and Exeter, but they lost 120 supply ships in a fierce storm off Swanage. In 878 he was forced to hide in Somerset and it was there arose the legend of the burned cakes. He renewed the fight and won a famous victory at Edington in Wiltshire the same year. After, the Danes agreed that their king, Guthrum, should be baptised and Alfred was godfather. Afterwards Guthrum ruled Mercia but acknowledged Alfred as Overlord. The Mercian settlement developed over the next 100 years into the body known as Danelaw. Before that, in 879 at Fulham and also near Rochester in 884, other Norse armies landed. Alfred continued fighting until he was the acknowledged champion of the English against the Danes. Alfred was scholarly, a writer, law-maker, pious and also a valiant fighter. Additionally he had a good knowledge of geography. He was a most able administrator and also instituted educational programmes. He founded monasteries and gave a large part of his income to charities.

Alfred the Great (Old English: Ælfred, "elf counsel"; 848/849 - 26 October 899) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.

Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". Details of his life are described in a work by the 10th century Welsh scholar and bishop Asser. Alfred was a learned man who encouraged education and improved his kingdom's legal system and military structure. He is regarded as a saint by some Catholics, but has never been officially canonized. The Anglican Communion venerates him as a Christian hero, with a feast day of 26 October, and he may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches.

Childhood

Alfred was born in the village of Wanating, now Wantage, Oxfordshire. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, by his first wife, Osburga.

At the age of five years, Alfred is said to have been sent to Rome where, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV who "anointed him as king". Victorian writers interpreted this as an anticipatory coronation in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of Wessex. However, his succession could not have been foreseen at the time, as Alfred had three living elder brothers. A letter of Leo IV shows that Alfred was made a "consul"; a misinterpretation of this investiture, deliberate or accidental, could explain later confusion. It may also be based on Alfred's later having accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome where he spent some time at the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, around 854-855. On their return from Rome in 856, Æthelwulf was deposed by his son Æthelbald. With civil war looming, the magnates of the realm met in council to hammer out a compromise. Æthelbald would retain the western shires (i.e., traditional Wessex), and Æthelwulf would rule in the east. King Æthelwulf died in 858; meanwhile Wessex was ruled by three of Alfred's brothers in succession.

Bishop Asser tells the story of how as a child Alfred won a prize of a volume of poetry in English, offered by his mother to the first of her children able to memorize it. This story may be true, or it may be a myth intended to illustrate the young Alfred's love of learning. Legend also has it that the young Alfred spent time in Ireland seeking healing. Alfred was troubled by health problems throughout his life. It is thought that he may have suffered from Crohn's disease. Statues of Alfred in Winchester and Wantage portray him as a great warrior. Evidence suggests he was not physically strong, and though not lacking in courage, he was more noted for his intellect than a warlike character.

Under Æthelred

During the short reigns of the older two of his three elder brothers, Æthelbald of Wessex and Æthelbert of Wessex, Alfred is not mentioned. However, his public life began with the accession of his third brother, Æthelred of Wessex, in 866. It is during this period that Bishop Asser applied to him the unique title of "secundarius", which may indicate a position akin to that of the Celtic tanist, a recognised successor closely associated with the reigning monarch. It is possible that this arrangement was sanctioned by Alfred's father, or by the Witan, to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should Æthelred fall in battle. The arrangement of crowning a successor as royal prince and military commander is well known among other Germanic tribes, such as the Swedes and Franks, to whom the Anglo-Saxons were closely related.

In 868, Alfred is recorded as fighting beside Æthelred in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the invading Danes out of the adjoining Kingdom of Mercia. For nearly two years, Wessex was spared attacks because Alfred paid the Vikings to leave him alone. However, at the end of 870, the Danes arrived in his homeland. The year which followed has been called "Alfred's year of battles". Nine engagements were fought with varying outcomes, though the place and date of two of these battles have not been recorded. In Berkshire, a successful skirmish at the Battle of Englefield on 31 December 870 was followed by a severe defeat at the siege and Battle of Reading on 5 January 871; then, four days later, Alfred won a brilliant victory at the Battle of Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs, possibly near Compton or Aldworth. Alfred is particularly credited with the success of this latter battle. However, later that month, on 22 January, the English were defeated at the Battle of Basing and, on the 22 March at the Battle of Merton (perhaps Marden in Wiltshire or Martin in Dorset), in which Æthelred was killed. The two unidentified battles may have occurred in between.

Early struggles, defeat and flight

In April 871, King Æthelred died, and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex and the burden of its defence, despite the fact that Æthelred left two under-age sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold. This was in accordance with the agreement that Æthelred and Alfred had made earlier that year in an assembly at Swinbeorg. The brothers had agreed that whichever of them outlived the other would inherit the personal property that King Æthelwulf in his will had left jointly to his sons. The deceased's sons would receive only whatever property and riches their father had settled upon them and whatever additional lands their uncle had acquired. The unstated premise was that the surviving brother would be king. Given the ongoing Danish invasion and the youth of his nephews, Alfred's succession probably went uncontested. Tensions between Alfred and his nephews, however, would arise later in his reign.

While he was busy with the burial ceremonies for his brother, the Danes defeated the English in his absence at an unnamed spot, and then again in his presence at Wilton in May. The defeat at Wilton smashed any remaining hope that Alfred could drive the invaders from his kingdom. He was forced, instead, to ‘make peace’ with them. The sources do not tell what the terms of the peace were. Bishop Asser claimed that the 'pagans' agreed to vacate the realm and made good their promise; and, indeed, the Viking army did withdraw from Reading in the autumn of 871 to take up winter quarters in Mercian London. Although not mentioned by Asser or by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Alfred probably also paid the Vikings cash to leave, much as the Mercians were to do in the following year. Hoards dating to the Viking occupation of London in 871/2 have been excavated at Croydon, Gravesend, and Waterloo Bridge; these finds hint at the cost involved in making peace with the Vikings. For the next five years, the Danes occupied other parts of England. However, in 876 under their new leader, Guthrum, the Danes slipped past the English army and attacked and occupied Wareham in Dorset. Alfred blockaded them but was unable to take Wareham by assault. Accordingly, he negotiated a peace which involved an exchange of hostages and oaths, which the Danes swore on a "holy ring" associated with the worship of Thor. The Danes, however, broke their word and, after killing all the hostages, slipped away under cover of night to Exeter in Devon. There, Alfred blockaded them, and with a relief fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes were forced to submit. They withdrew to Mercia, but, in January 878, made a sudden attack on Chippenham, a royal stronghold in which Alfred had been staying over Christmas, "and most of the people they killed, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band made his way by wood and swamp, and after Easter he made a fort at Athelney in the marshes of Somerset, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe". From his fort at Athelney, an island in the marshes near North Petherton, Alfred was able to mount an effective resistance movement, rallying the local militias from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.

Alfred the Great is scolded by his subject, a neatherd's wife, for not turning the breads but readily eating them when they are baked in her cottage.

A popular legend, originating from 12th century chronicles, tells how when he first fled to the Somerset Levels, Alfred was given shelter by a peasant woman who, unaware of his identity, left him to watch some cakes she had left cooking on the fire. Preoccupied with the problems of his kingdom, Alfred accidentally let the cakes burn.

870 was the low-water mark in the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. With all the other kingdoms having fallen to the Vikings, Wessex alone was still resisting.

Counterattack and victory

King Alfred's Tower (1772) on the supposed site of Egbert's Stone the mustering place before the Battle of Ethandun.

In the seventh week after Easter [4-10 May 878], around Whitsuntide, Alfred rode to ‘Egbert's Stone’ east of Selwood, where he was met by "all the people of Somerset and of Wiltshire and of that part of Hampshire which is on this side of the sea [that is, west of Southampton Water], and they rejoiced to see him". Alfred’s emergence from his marshland stronghold was part of a carefully planned offensive that entailed raising the fyrds of three shires. This meant not only that the king had retained the loyalty of ealdormen, royal reeves and king’s thegns (who were charged with levying and leading these forces), but that they had maintained their positions of authority in these localities well enough to answer Alfred’s summons to war. Alfred’s actions also suggest a finely honed system of scouts and messengers. Alfred won a decisive victory in the ensuing Battle of Ethandun, which may have been fought near Westbury, Wiltshire. He then pursued the Danes to their stronghold at Chippenham and starved them into submission. One of the terms of the surrender was that Guthrum convert to Christianity; and three weeks later the Danish king and 29 of his chief men were baptised at Alfred's court at Aller, near Athelney, with Alfred receiving Guthrum as his spiritual son. The "unbinding of the chrism" took place with great ceremony eight days later at the royal estate at Wedmore in Somerset, after which Guthrum fulfilled his promise to leave Wessex. There is no contemporary evidence that Alfred and Guthrum agreed upon a formal treaty at this time; the so-called Treaty of Wedmore is an invention of modern historians. The Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, preserved in Old English in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Manuscript 383), and in a Latin compilation known as Quadripartitus, was negotiated later, perhaps in 879 or 880, when King Ceolwulf II of Mercia was deposed. That treaty divided up the kingdom of Mercia. By its terms the boundary between Alfred’s and Guthrum’s kingdoms was to run up the River Thames, to the River Lea; follow the Lea to its source (near Luton); from there extend in a straight line to Bedford; and from Bedford follow the River Ouse to Watling Street. In other words, Alfred succeeded to Ceolwulf’s kingdom, consisting of western Mercia; and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged kingdom of East Anglia (henceforward known as the Danelaw). By terms of the treaty, moreover, Alfred was to have control over the Mercian city of London and its mints - at least for the time being. The disposition of Essex, held by West Saxon kings since the days of Egbert, is unclear from the treaty, though, given Alfred’s political and military superiority, it would have been surprising if he had conceded any disputed territory to his new godson.

The quiet years; Restoration of London

With the signing of the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, an event most commonly held to have taken place around 880 when Guthrum’s people began settling East Anglia, Guthrum was neutralized as a threat. In conjunction with this agreement an army of Danish left the island and sailed to Ghent. Alfred however was still forced to contend with a number of Danish threats. A year later in 881 Alfred fought a small sea battle against four Danish ships “On the high seas”. Two of the ships were destroyed and the others surrendered to Alfred’s forces. Similar small skirmishes with independent Viking raiders would have occurred for much of the period as they had for decades.

In the year 883, though there is some debate over the year, King Alfred because of his support and his donation of alms to Rome received a number of gifts from the Pope Marinus. Among these gifts was reputed to be a piece of the true cross, a true treasure for the devout Saxon king. According to Asser because of Pope Marinus’ friendship with King Alfred the pope granted an exemption to any Anglo-Saxons residing within Rome from tax or tribute.

After the signing of the treaty with Guthrum, Alfred was spared any large scale conflicts for some time. Despite this relative peace the king was still forced to deal with a number of Danish raids and incursions. Among these was a raid taking place in Kent, an allied country in Southeast England during the year 885, quite possibly the largest raid since the battles with Guthrum. Asser’s account of the raid places the Danish raiders at the Saxon city of Rochester, where they built a temporary fortress in order to besiege the city. In response to incursion Alfred led an Anglo-Saxon force against the Danes who, instead of engaging the army of Wessex, fled to their beached ships and sailed to another part of Britain. The retreating Danish force supposedly left Britain the following summer.

Not long after the failed Danish raid in Kent Alfred dispatched his fleet to East Anglia. The purpose of this expedition is debated, though Asser claims that it was for the sake of plunder. After traveling up the River Stour, the fleet was met by Danish vessels that numbered 13 or 16 (sources vary on the number) and a battle ensued. The Anglo-Saxon Fleet emerged victorious and as Huntingdon accounts,“laden with spoils.” The victorious fleet was then caught unaware when attempting to leave the River Stour and was attacked by a Danish force at the mouth of the river. The Danish fleet was able to defeat Alfred's fleet which may have been weakened in the previous engagement.

A year later in 886 Alfred reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again. Alfred entrusted the city to the care of his son-in law Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia. The restoration of London progressed through the later half of the 880’s and is believed to have revolved around a new street plan, added fortifications in addition to the existing Roman walls, and some believe the construction of matching fortifications on the South bank of the River Thames. This is also the time period almost all chroniclers agree the Saxon people of pre-unification England submitted to Alfred. This was not, however, the point in which Alfred came to be known as King of England; in fact he would never adopt the title for himself. In truth the power which Alfred wielded over the English peoples at this time seemed to stem largely from the military might of the West Saxons, Alfred’s political connections having the ruler of Mercia as his son-in-law, and Alfred’s keen administration talents.

Between the restoration of London and the resumption of large scale Danish attacks in the early 890’s Alfred’s reign was rather uneventful. The relative peace of the late 880’s was marred by the death of Alfred's sister, Æthelswith, who died en route to Rome in 888. In the same year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelred also passed away. One year later Guthrum, or Athelstan by his baptized name, Alfred’s former enemy and king of East Anglia died and was buried in Hadleigh, Suffolk. Guthrum’s passing marked a change in the political sphere Alfred dealt with. Guthrum’s death created a power vacuum which would stir up other power-hungry warlords eager to take his place in the following years. The quiet years of Alfred’s life were coming to a close, and war was on the horizon.

Further Viking attacks repelled

After another lull, in the autumn of 892 or 893, the Danes attacked again. Finding their position in mainland Europe precarious, they crossed to England in 330 ships in two divisions. They entrenched themselves, the larger body at Appledore, Kent, and the lesser, under Hastein, at Milton, also in Kent. The invaders brought their wives and children with them, indicating a meaningful attempt at conquest and colonisation. Alfred, in 893 or 894, took up a position from which he could observe both forces. While he was in talks with Hastein, the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck northwestwards. They were overtaken by Alfred's oldest son, Edward, and were defeated in a general engagement at Farnham in Surrey. They took refuge on an island in the Hertfordshire Colne, where they were blockaded and were ultimately forced to submit. The force fell back on Essex and, after suffering another defeat at Benfleet, coalesced with Hastein's force at Shoebury.

Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed stronghold on the North Devon shore. Alfred at once hurried westward and raised the Siege of Exeter. The fate of the other place is not recorded. Meanwhile, the force under Hastein set out to march up the Thames Valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their friends in the west. But they were met by a large force under the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wiltshire and Somerset, and forced to head off to the northwest, being finally overtaken and blockaded at Buttington. Some identify this with Buttington Tump at the mouth of the River Wye, others with Buttington near Welshpool. An attempt to break through the English lines was defeated. Those who escaped retreated to Shoebury. Then, after collecting reinforcements, they made a sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade, but contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the neighbourhood. Early in 894 (or 895), want of food obliged the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of this year and early in 895 (or 896), the Danes drew their ships up the River Thames and River Lea and fortified themselves twenty miles (32 km) north of London. A direct attack on the Danish lines failed but, later in the year, Alfred saw a means of obstructing the river so as to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The Danes realised that they were outmanoeuvred. They struck off north-westwards and wintered at Cwatbridge near Bridgnorth. The next year, 896 (or 897), they gave up the struggle. Some retired to Northumbria, some to East Anglia. Those who had no connections in England withdrew back to the continent.

Military reorganisation

Alfred the Great silver offering penny, 871-899. Legend: AELFRED REX SAXONUM "Ælfred King of the Saxons".

Wessex's history of failures preceding his success in 878 emphasized to Alfred that the traditional system of battle he had inherited played to the Danes' advantage. While both the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes attacked settlements to seize wealth and other resources, they employed very different strategies. In their raids, the Anglo-Saxons traditionally preferred to attack head-on by assembling their forces in a shield wall, advancing against their target and overcoming the oncoming wall marshaled against them in defense. In contrast, the Danes preferred to choose easy targets, mapping cautious forays designed to avoid risking all their accumulated plunder with high-stake attacks for more. Alfred determined their strategy was to launch smaller scaled attacks from a secure and reinforced defensible base which they could retreat to should their raiders meet strong resistance. These bases were prepared in advance, often by capturing an estate and augmenting its defenses with surrounding ditches, ramparts and palisades. Once inside the fortification, Alfred realized, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter attack as the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned.

The means by which they marshaled the forces to defend against marauders also left the Anglo-Saxons vulnerable to the Vikings. It was only after the raids were underway that a call went out to landowners to gather men for battle, and large regions could be devastated before the newly assembled army arrived. And although the landowners were obliged to the king to supply these men when called, during the attacks in 878, many of them opportunistically abandoned their king and collaborated with Guthrum.

With these lessons in mind, Alfred capitalized on the relatively peaceful years immediately following his victory at Ethandrun by focusing on an ambitious restructuring of his kingdom's military defenses. When the Viking raids resumed in 892, Alfred was better prepared to confront them with a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons, and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries.

Burghal system

At the center of Alfred's reformed military defence system was a network of fortresses, or burhs, distributed at strategic points throughout the kingdom. There were thirty-three total spaced approximately 30 kilometres (20 mi) distant, enabling the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a single day. Alfred's burhs, (later termed boroughs), consisted mainly of massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades. The size of the burhs ranged from tiny outposts such as Pilton to large fortifications in established towns, the largest at Winchester. Many of the burhs were twin towns that straddled a river and connected by a fortified bridge, like those built by Charles the Bald a generation before. The double-burh blocked passage on the river, forcing Viking ships to navigate under a garrisoned bridge lined with men armed with stones, spears, or arrows. Other burhs were sited near fortified royal villas allowing the king better control over his strongholds.

This network of well-garrisoned burhs posed significant obstacles to Viking invaders, especially those laden with booty. The system threatened Viking routes and communications making it far more dangerous for the Viking raiders. However the Vikings lacked both the equipment necessary to undertake a siege against the burh and a developed doctrine of siegecraft, having tailored their methods of fighting to rapid strikes and unimpeded retreats to well defended fortifications. The only means left to them was to starve the burh into submission, but this allowed the king time to send assistance with his mobile field army or garrisons from neighbouring burhs. In such cases, the Vikings were extremely vulnerable to pursuit by the king's joint military forces. Alfred's burh system posed such a formidable challenge against Viking attack that when the Vikings returned in 892 and successfully stormed a half-made, poorly garrisoned fortress up the Lympne estuary in Kent, the Anglo-Saxons were able to limit their penetration to the outer frontiers of Wessex and Mercia.

Alfred's burghal system was revolutionary in its strategic conception and potentially expensive in its execution. His contemporary biographer Asser wrote that many nobles balked at the new demands placed upon them even though they were for "the common needs of the kingdom". The cost of building the burhs was great in itself, but this paled before the cost of upkeep for these fortresses and the maintenance of their standing garrisons. A remarkable early tenth-century document, known as the Burghal Hidage, provides a formula for determining how many men were needed to garrison a borough, based on one man for every 5.5 yards (5 meters) of wall. This calculates to a total of 27,071 soldiers needed system wide, or approximately one in four of all the free men in Wessex.

Reconstituted fyrd

Over the last two decades of his reign, Alfred undertook a radical reorganisation of the military institutions of his kingdom, strengthened the West Saxon economy through a policy of monetary reform and urban planning and strove to win divine favour by resurrecting the literary glories of earlier generations of Anglo-Saxons. Alfred pursued these ambitious programmes to fulfil, as he saw it, his responsibility as king. This justified the heavy demands he made upon his subjects' labour and finances. It even excused the expropriation of strategically located Church lands. Recreating the fyrd into a standing army, ringing Wessex with some thirty garrisoned fortified towns, and constructing new and larger ships for the royal fleet were costly endeavours that provoked resistance from noble and peasant alike. But they paid off. When the Vikings returned in force in 892 they found a kingdom defended by a standing, mobile field army and a network of garrisoned fortresses that commanded its navigable rivers and Roman roads.

Alfred analysed the defects of the military system that he had inherited and implemented changes to remedy them. Alfred's military reorganisation of Wessex consisted of three elements: the building of thirty fortified and garrisoned towns (burhs) along the rivers and Roman roads of Wessex; the creation of a mobile (horsed) field force, consisting of his nobles and their warrior retainers, which was divided into two contingents, one of which was always in the field; and the enhancement of Wessex's seapower through the addition of larger ships to the existing royal fleet. Each element of the system was meant to remedy defects in the West Saxon military establishment exposed by the Viking invasions. If under the existing system he could not assemble forces quickly enough to intercept mobile Viking raiders, the obvious answer was to have a standing field force. If this entailed transforming the West Saxon fyrd from a sporadic levy of king's men and their retinues into a mounted standing army, so be it. If his kingdom lacked strongpoints to impede the progress of an enemy army, he would build them. If the enemy struck from the sea, he would counter them with his own naval power. Characteristically, all of Alfred's innovations were firmly rooted in traditional West Saxon practice, drawing as they did upon the three so-called ‘common burdens' of bridge work, fortress repair and service on the king's campaigns that all holders of bookland and royal loanland owed the Crown. Where Alfred revealed his genius was in designing the field force and burhs to be parts of a coherent military system. Neither Alfred's reformed fyrd nor his burhs alone would have afforded a sufficient defence against the Vikings; together, however, they robbed the Vikings of their major strategic advantages: surprise and mobility.

Administration and taxation

To obtain the needed garrison troops and workers to build and maintain the burhs' defences, Alfred regularised and vastly expanded the existing (and, one might add, quite recent) obligation of landowners to provide ‘fortress work’ on the basis of the hidage assessed upon their lands. The allotments of the Burghal Hidage represent the creation of administrative districts for the support of the burhs. The landowners attached to Wallingford, for example, were responsible for producing and feeding 2,400 men, the number sufficient for maintaining 9,900 feet (3 km) of wall. Each of the larger burhs became the centre of a territorial district of considerable size, carved out of the neighbouring countryside in order to support the town. In one sense, Alfred conceived nothing truly new here. The shires of Wessex went back at least to the reign of King Ine, who probably also imposed a hidage assessment upon each for food rents and other services owed the Crown.

English navy

Alfred also tried his hand at naval design. In 896, he ordered the construction of a small fleet, perhaps a dozen or so longships, that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of Viking warships. This was not, as the Victorians asserted, the birth of the English Navy. Wessex possessed a royal fleet before this. King Athelstan of Kent and Ealdorman Ealhhere had defeated a Viking fleet in 851, capturing nine ships, and Alfred himself had conducted naval actions in 882. But, clearly, the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and probably Alfred himself regarded 897 as marking an important development in the naval power of Wessex. The chronicler flattered his royal patron by boasting that Alfred's ships were not only larger, but swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than either Danish or Frisian ships. (It is probable that, under the classical tutelage of Asser, Alfred utilised the design of Greek and Roman warships, with high sides, designed for fighting rather than for navigation.) Alfred had seapower in mind: if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from ravaging. Alfred's ships may have been superior in conception, however in practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which a 'naval' battle could occur. (The warships of the time were not designed to be ship killers but troop carriers. A naval battle entailed a ship's coming alongside an enemy vessel, at which point the crew would lash the two ships together and board the enemy. The result was effectively a land battle involving hand-to-hand fighting on board the two lashed vessels.)

In the one recorded naval engagement in the year 896, Alfred's new fleet of nine ships intercepted six Viking ships in the mouth of an unidentified river along the south of England. The Danes had beached half their ships, and gone inland, either to rest their rowers or to forage for food. Alfred's ships immediately moved to block their escape to the sea. The three Viking ships afloat attempted to break through the English lines. Only one made it, Alfred's ships intercepted the other two. Lashing the Viking boats to their own, the English crew boarded the enemy's vessels and proceeded to kill everyone on board. The one ship that escaped managed to do so only because all of Alfred's heavy ships became mired when the tide went out. What ensued was a land battle between the crews of the grounded ships. The Danes, heavily outnumbered, would have been wiped out if the tide had not risen. When that occurred, the Danes rushed back to their boats, which being lighter, with shallower drafts, were freed before Alfred's ships. Helplessly, the English watched as the Vikings rowed past them. But the pirates had suffered so many casualties (120 Danes dead against 62 Frisians and English), that they had difficulties putting out to sea. All were too damaged to row around Sussex and two were driven against the Sussex coast. The shipwrecked sailors were brought before Alfred at Winchester and hanged.

Legal reform

In the late 880s or early 890s, Alfred issued a long domboc or law code, consisting of his "own" laws followed by a code issued by his late seventh-century predecessor King Ine of Wessex. Together these laws are arranged into 120 chapters. In his introduction, Alfred explains that he gathered together the laws he found in many 'synod-books' and "ordered to be written many of the ones that our forefathers observed--those that pleased me; and many of the ones that did not please me, I rejected with the advice of my councillors, and commanded them to be observed in a different way." Alfred singled out in particular the laws that he "found in the days of Ine, my kinsman, or Offa, king of the Mercians, or King Æthelbert of Kent, who first among the English people received baptism." It is difficult to know exactly what Alfred meant by this. He appended rather than integrated the laws of Ine into his code, and although he included, as had Æthelbert, a scale of payments in compensation for injuries to various body parts, the two injury tariffs are not aligned. And, Offa is not known to have issued a law code, leading historian Patrick Wormald to speculate that Alfred had in mind the legatine capitulary of 786 that was presented to Offa by two papal legates.

About a fifth of the law code is taken up by Alfred's introduction, which includes translations into English of the Decalogue, a few chapters from the Book of Exodus, and the so-called 'Apostolic Letter' from Acts of the Apostles (15:23-29). The Introduction may best be understood as Alfred's meditation upon the meaning of Christian law. It traces the continuity between God's gift of Law to Moses to Alfred's own issuance of law to the West Saxon people. By doing so, it links the holy past to the historical present and represents Alfred's law-giving as a type of divine legislation. This is the reason that Alfred divided his code into precisely 120 chapters: 120 was the age at which Moses died and, in the number-symbolism of early medieval biblical exegetes, 120 stood for law. The link between the Mosaic Law and Alfred's code is the 'Apostolic Letter,' which explained that Christ "had come not to shatter or annul the commandments but to fulfill them; and he taught mercy and meekness" (Intro, 49.1). The mercy that Christ infused into Mosaic Law underlies the injury tariffs that figure so prominently in barbarian law codes, since Christian synods "established, through that mercy which Christ taught, that for almost every misdeed at the first offence secular lords might with their permission receive without sin the monetary compensation, which they then fixed." The only crime that could not be compensated with a payment of money is treachery to a lord, "since Almighty God adjudged none for those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any for the one who betrayed Him to death; and He commanded everyone to love his lord as Himself." Alfred's transformation of Christ's commandment from "Love your neighbour as yourself" (Matt. 22:39-40) to love your secular lord as you would love the Lord Christ himself underscores the importance that Alfred placed upon lordship, which he understood as a sacred bond instituted by God for the governance of man.

When one turns from the domboc's introduction to the laws themselves, it is difficult to uncover any logical arrangement. The impression one receives is of a hodgepodge of miscellaneous laws. The law code, as it has been preserved, is singularly unsuitable for use in lawsuits. In fact, several of Alfred's laws contradict the laws of Ine that form an integral part of the code. Patrick Wormald's explanation is that Alfred's law code should be understood not as a legal manual, but as an ideological manifesto of kingship, "designed more for symbolic impact than for practical direction." In practical terms, the most important law in the code may well be the very first: "We enjoin, what is most necessary, that each man keep carefully his oath and his pledge," which expresses a fundamental tenet of Anglo-Saxon law.

Alfred devoted considerable attention and thought to judicial matters. Asser underscores his concern for judicial fairness. Alfred, according to Asser, insisted upon reviewing contested judgments made by his ealdormen and reeves, and "would carefully look into nearly all the judgements which were passed [issued] in his absence anywhere in the realm, to see whether they were just or unjust." A charter from the reign of his son Edward the Elder depicts Alfred as hearing one such appeal in his chamber, while washing his hands. Asser represents Alfred as a Solomonic judge, painstaking in his own judicial investigations and critical of royal officials who rendered unjust or unwise judgments. Although Asser never mentions Alfred's law code, he does say that Alfred insisted that his judges be literate, so that they could apply themselves "to the pursuit of wisdom." The failure to comply with this royal order was to be punished by loss of office. It is uncertain how seriously this should be taken; Asser was more concerned to represent Alfred as a wise ruler than to report actual royal policy.

Foreign relations

Asser speaks grandiosely of Alfred's relations with foreign powers, but little definite information is available. His interest in foreign countries is shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of Orosius. He certainly corresponded with Elias III, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and possibly sent a mission to India in honour of Saint Thomas the Apostle, whose tomb was believed to lie in that country. Contact was also made with the Caliph in Baghdad. Embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the Pope were fairly frequent.Keynes & Lapidge 1983, p. 14 Around 890, Wulfstan of Haithabu undertook a journey from Haithabu on Jutland along the Baltic Sea to the Prussian trading town of Truso. Alfred personally collected details of this trip.

Alfred's relations with the Celtic princes in the western half of Britain are clearer. Comparatively early in his reign, according to Asser, the southern Welsh princes, owing to the pressure on them from North Wales and Mercia, commended themselves to Alfred. Later in the reign the North Welsh followed their example, and the latter cooperated with the English in the campaign of 893 (or 894). That Alfred sent alms to Irish and Continental monasteries may be taken on Asser's authority. The visit of the three pilgrim "Scots" (i.e. Irish) to Alfred in 891 is undoubtedly authentic. The story that he himself in his childhood was sent to Ireland to be healed by Saint Modwenna, though mythical, may show Alfred's interest in that island.

Religion and culture

Historical mixed media figure of Alfred the Great produced by artist/historian George S. Stuart and photographed by Peter d'Aprix. This image, from the George S. Stuart Gallery of Historical Figures

In the 880s, at the same time that he was "cajoling and threatening" his nobles to build and man the burhs, Alfred, perhaps inspired by the example of Charlemagne almost a century before, undertook an equally ambitious effort to revive learning. It entailed the recruitment of clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales and abroad to enhance the tenor of the court and of the episcopacy; the establishment of a court school to educate his own children, the sons of his nobles, and intellectually promising boys of lesser birth; an attempt to require literacy in those who held offices of authority; a series of translations into the vernacular of Latin works the king deemed "most necessary for all men to know"; the compilation of a chronicle detailing the rise of Alfred's kingdom and house; and the issuance of a law code that presented the West Saxons as a new people of Israel and their king as a just and divinely inspired law-giver.

Very little is known of the church under Alfred. The Danish attacks had been particularly damaging to the monasteries, and though Alfred founded monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury, the first new monastic houses in Wessex since the beginning of the eighth century, and enticed foreign monks to England, monasticism did not revive significantly during his reign. Alfred undertook no systematic reform of ecclesiastical institutions or religious practices in Wessex. For him the key to the kingdom's spiritual revival was to appoint pious, learned, and trustworthy bishops and abbots. As king he saw himself as responsible for both the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects. Secular and spiritual authority were not distinct categories for Alfred. He was equally comfortable distributing his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care to his bishops so that they might better train and supervise priests, and using those same bishops as royal officials and judges. Nor did his piety prevent him from expropriating strategically sited church lands, especially estates along the border with the Danelaw, and transferring them to royal thegns and officials who could better defend them against Viking attacks.

The Danish raids had also a devastating impact on learning in England. Alfred lamented in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care that "learning had declined so thoroughly in England that there were very few men on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English, or even translate a single letter from Latin into English: and I suppose that there were not many beyond the Humber either". Alfred undoubtedly exaggerated for dramatic effect the abysmal state of learning in England during his youth. That Latin learning had not been obliterated is evidenced by the presence in his court of learned Mercian and West Saxon clerics such as Plegmund, Wæferth, and Wulfsige, but Alfred's account should not be entirely discounted. Manuscript production in England dropped off precipitously around the 860s when the Viking invasions began in earnest, not to be revived until the end of the century. Numerous Anglo-Saxon manuscripts burnt up along with the churches that housed them. And a solemn diploma from Christ Church, Canterbury dated 873 is so poorly constructed and written that historian Nicholas Brooks posited a scribe who was either so blind he could not read what he wrote or who knew little or no Latin. "It is clear," Brooks concludes, "that the metropolitan church [of Canterbury] must have been quite unable to provide any effective training in the scriptures or in Christian worship."

Following the example of Charlemagne, Alfred established a court school for the education of his own children, those of the nobility, and "a good many of lesser birth". There they studied books in both English and Latin and "devoted themselves to writing, to such an extent .... they were seen to be devoted and intelligent students of the liberal arts." He recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction. Grimbald and John the Saxon came from Francia; Plegmund (whom Alfred appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 890), Bishop Werferth of Worcester, Æthelstan, and the royal chaplains Werwulf, from Mercia; and Asser, from St. David's in south-western Wales.

Alfred's educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war, Alfred aimed "to set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment) all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it." Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm, Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin. The problem, however, was that there were few "books of wisdom" written in English. Alfred sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know." It is unknown when Alfred launched this programme, but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks.

Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridion, which seems to have been a commonplace book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a book greatly popular in the Middle Ages. The translation was undertaken at Alfred's command by Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, with the king merely furnishing a preface. Remarkably, Alfred, undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars, translated four works himself: Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, St. Augustine's Soliloquies, and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter. One might add to this list Alfred's translation, in his law code, of excerpts from the Vulgate Book of Exodus. The Old English versions of Orosius's Histories against the Pagans and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People are no longer accepted by scholars as Alfred's own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences. Nonetheless, the consensus remains that they were part of the Alfredian programme of translation. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest this also for Bald's Leechbook and the anonymous Old English Martyrology.

Alfred's first translation was of Pope Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, which he prefaced with an introduction explaining why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this one from Latin into English. Although he described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense," Alfred's translation actually keeps very close to his original, although through his choice of language he blurred throughout the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. Alfred meant his translation to be used and circulated it to all his bishops.

Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages. Unlike his translation of the Pastoral Care, Alfred here deals very freely with his original and though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to Alfred himself, but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is solely Alfred's and highly characteristic of his style. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "My will was to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works." The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only. In one of these the writing is prose, in the other a combination of prose and alliterating verse. The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the authorship of the verse has been much disputed; but likely it also is by Alfred. In fact, he writes in the prelude that he first created a prose work and then used it as the basis for his poem Metres of Boethius, his crowning literary achievement. He spent a great deal of time working on these books, which he tells us he gradually wrote through the many stressful times of his reign to refresh his mind. Of the authenticity of the work as a whole there has never been any doubt.

The last of Alfred's works is one to which he gave the name Blostman, i.e., "Blooms" or Anthology. The first half is based mainly on the Soliloquies of St Augustine of Hippo, the remainder is drawn from various sources, and contains much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore he seems to me a very foolish man, and truly wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear."

Alfred appears as a character in the twelfth- or thirteenth-century poem The Owl and the Nightingale, where his wisdom and skill with proverbs is praised. The Proverbs of Alfred, a thirteenth-century work, contains sayings that are not likely to have originated with Alfred but attest to his posthumous medieval reputation for wisdom.

Icon of St. Alfred the Great, King and Confessor

The Alfred jewel, discovered in Somerset in 1693, has long been associated with King Alfred because of its Old English inscription "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN" (Alfred ordered me to be made). The jewel is about 2½ inches (6.1 cm) long, made of filigreed gold, enclosing a highly polished piece of quartz crystal beneath which is set a cloisonné enamel plaque, with an enamelled image of a man holding floriate sceptres, perhaps personifying Sight or the Wisdom of God. It was at one time attached to a thin rod or stick based on the hollow socket at its base. The jewel certainly dates from Alfred's reign. Although its function is unknown, it has been often suggested that the jewel was one of the æstels-pointers for reading-that Alfred ordered sent to every bishopric accompanying a copy of his translation of the Pastoral Care. Each æstel was worth the princely sum of 50 mancuses, which fits in well with the quality workmanship and expensive materials of the Alfred jewel.

Historian Richard Abels sees Alfred's educational and military reforms as complementary. Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to Alfred's mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs. As Alfred observed in the preface to his English translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, kings who fail to obey their divine duty to promote learning can expect earthly punishments to befall their people. The pursuit of wisdom, he assured his readers of the Boethius, was the surest path to power: "Study Wisdom, then, and, when you have learned it, condemn it not, for I tell you that by its means you may without fail attain to power, yea, even though not desiring it". The portrayal of the West-Saxon resistance to the Vikings by Asser and the chronicler as a Christian holy war was more than mere rhetoric or 'propaganda'. It reflected Alfred's own belief in a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments rooted in a vision of a hierarchical Christian world order in which God is the Lord to whom kings owe obedience and through whom they derive their authority over their followers. The need to persuade his nobles to undertake work for the 'common good' led Alfred and his court scholars to strengthen and deepen the conception of Christian kingship that he had inherited by building upon the legacy of earlier kings such as Offa as well as clerical writers such as Bede, Alcuin and the other luminaries of the Carolingian renaissance. This was not a cynical use of religion to manipulate his subjects into obedience, but an intrinsic element in Alfred's worldview. He believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people. If the Christian faith fell into ruin in his kingdom, if the clergy were too ignorant to understand the Latin words they butchered in their offices and liturgies, if the ancient monasteries and collegiate churches lay deserted out of indifference, he was answerable before God, as Josiah had been. Alfred's ultimate responsibility was the pastoral care of his people.

Family

In 868, Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini. The Gaini were probably one of the tribal groups of the Mercians. Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal family.

They had five or six children together, including Edward the Elder, who succeeded his father as king, Æthelflæd, who would become Queen of Mercia in her own right, and Ælfthryth who married Baldwin II the Count of Flanders. His mother was Osburga daughter of Oslac of the Isle of Wight, Chief Butler of England. Asser, in his Vita Ælfredi asserts that this shows his lineage from the Jutes of the Isle of Wight. This is unlikely as Bede tells us that they were all slaughtered by the Saxons under Cædwalla. In 2008 the skeleton of Queen Eadgyth, granddaughter of Alfred the Great was found in Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany. It was confirmed in 2010 that these remains belong to her - one of the earliest members of the English royal family.

Death, burial and legacy

Alfred died on 26 October. The actual year is not certain, but it was not necessarily 901 as stated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. How he died is unknown, although he suffered throughout his life with a painful and unpleasant illness - possibly Crohn's disease, which seems to have been inherited by his grandson King Edred. He was originally buried temporarily in the Old Minster in Winchester, then moved to the New Minster (perhaps built especially to receive his body). When the New Minster moved to Hyde, a little north of the city, in 1110, the monks transferred to Hyde Abbey along with Alfred's body and those of his wife and children. Soon after the dissolution of the abbey in 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII, the church was demolished, leaving the graves intact. The royal graves and many others were probably rediscovered by chance in 1788 when a prison was being constructed by convicts on the site. Coffins were stripped of lead, bones were scattered and lost, and no identifiable remains of Alfred have subsequently been found. Further excavations in 1866 and 1897 were inconclusive. [Wikipedia]

Alfred married Eahlwið, Princess of Mercia Between 868 and 869. Eahlwið (daughter of Aethelred Earl Of Mercia and Eadburga, Princess of Mercia) was born Abt 852, Mercia, England; died 05 Dec 905, Winchester, Hampshire, England; was buried Winchester, Hampshire, England. [Group Sheet]

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• Name: Ealhswith

Notes:

Eahlwið, Princess of Mercia was the daughter of Æthelred 'Mucil', Ealdorman of the Gainas and Eadburga, Princess of Mercia.

She gained the title of Princess of Mercia. She was a nun circa 901 at St. Mary's Abbey, Winchester, Hampshire, England.
Ealhswith or Ealswitha (born c. 852 in Mercia - died 905) was the daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini. She was married in 868 to Alfred the Great, before he became king of Wessex. In accordance with ninth century West Saxon custom, she was not given the title of queen.

Life

Ealswith was the daughter of Æthelred and his wife Eadburh. She was related to the royal house of Mercia through her mother.

After Alfred's death in 899, Ealhswith became a nun. She died on 5 December 905, and is buried in St. Mary's Abbey, Winchester, Hampshire.

Ealhswith or Ealswitha (born c. 852 in Mercia - died 905) was the daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini. She was married in 868 to Alfred the Great, before he became king of Wessex. In accordance with ninth century West Saxon custom, she was not given the title of queen.

Children

The children of Alfred and Ealhswith included:

Æthelflæd (ca 869-918), Lady of the Mercians. Married Æthelred, Ealdorman of western Mercia in 889
Eadmund, Asser mentions Eadmund as a son of Alfred
Edward the Elder (ca 872-924), King of Wessex
Elfreda, The book of Hydes mentions Elfreda as a daughter. She is not mentioned by Asser
Æthelgifu (?-896) Nun at Shaftesbury Abbey, Dorset, elected Abbess in 888
Ælfthryth (877-929) Married Baldwin II, Count of Flanders
Æthelweard (Ethelward the Atheling) (880-920)

Notes:

He gained the title of Lord of Lenham, Kent. He gained the title of Ealdorman of Kent. He gained the title of Lord of Cooling, Kent. He gained the title of Lord of Meopham, Kent. He died in 905, killed.

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• Name: Ethelwolf King Of England

Notes:

He was the son of Ecgbeorht, King of Wessex and Redburga. He married, firstly, Osburga, daughter of Oslac of Hampshire, circa 830.

He gained the title of Subregulus of Kent, Essex, Sussex and Surrey between 825 and 828. He succeeded to the title of King Æðelwulf of Wessex on 4 February 839. He was crowned King of Wessex in 839 at Kingston-upon-Thames, London, England. He abdicated as King of Wessex between 855 and 856.

Ethelwulf was the son of King Egbert and had previously ruled Kent and adjoining minor kingdoms. He continued wars against the Danes and had a victory at the mouth of the Parret in Somerset in 845 and again in 851 when he beat a force of 350 ships' companies who attacked Canterbury. Ethelwulf helped the Mercians against the Welsh and then married the Mercian king's daughter. He was a religious man and in 855 undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, leaving the country in charge of Ethelbald his eldest son. On his return, to avoid civil war, he allowed Ethelbald to retain Wessex while he ruled Kent and other parts of south eastern England.

Æthelwulf, also spelled Aethelwulf or Ethelwulf; Old English: Æþelwulf, meaning 'Noble Wolf', was King of Wessex from 839 until his death in 858. He is the only son who can indisputably be accredited to King Egbert of Wessex. He conquered the kingdom of Kent on behalf of his father in 825, and was sometime later made King of Kent as a sub-king to Egbert. He succeeded his father as King of Wessex on Egbert's death in 839, at which time his kingdom stretched from the county of Kent in the east to Devon in the west. At the same time his eldest son or younger brother Æthelstan became sub-king of Kent as a subordinate ruler.

Historians give conflicting assessments of Æthelwulf. According to Richard Humble, Æthelwulf had a worrying style of Kingship. He had come to the throne of Wessex by inheritance. He proved to be intensely religious, cursed with little political sense, and with too many able and ambitious sons. To Frank Stenton, "Æthelwulf seems to have been a religious and unambitious man, for whom engagement in war and politics was an unwelcome consequence of rank." However, Janet Nelson thought that his reign has been under-appreciated in modern scholarship, and that he laid the foundations for Alfred's success, finding new as well as traditional answers, and coping more effectively with Scandinavian attacks than most contemporary rulers. In Simon Keynes's view, "it was he, more than any other, who secured the political fortune of his people in the ninth century, and who opened up channels of communication which led through the Frankish realms and across the Alps to Rome."

Martial career

The most notable and commonly used primary source is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which refers to Æthelwulf's presence at some important battles. In 840 AD, he fought at Carhampton against thirty-five ship companies of Danes, whose raids had increased considerably. His most notable victory came in 851 at "Acleah", possibly Ockley in Surrey or Oakley in Berkshire. Here, Æthelwulf and his son Æthelbald fought against the heathen, and according to the chronicle it was "the greatest slaughter of heathen host ever made." Around 853 AD, Æthelwulf and his son-in-law, Burgred, King of Mercia, defeated Cyngen ap Cadell of Wales and made the Welsh subject to him. The chronicle depicts more battles throughout the years, mostly against invading pirates and Danes. This was an era in European history when nations were being invaded by many different groups; there were Saracens in the south, Magyars in the east, Moors in the west, and Vikings in the north. Before Æthelwulf's death, raiders had wintered over on the Isle of Sheppey, and pillaged at will in East Anglia. Over the course of the next twenty years the struggles of his sons were to be "ceaseless, heroic, and largely futile."

Family life

One of the first of Æthelwulf's acts as king was to split the kingdom. He gave the eastern half, including Kent, Essex, Surrey and Sussex, to his eldest son Æthelstan (not to be confused with the later Athelstan the Glorious). Æthelwulf kept the ancient, western side of Wessex (Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Devon) for himself.

Æthelwulf and his first wife, Osburh, had five sons and a daughter. After Æthelstan came Æthelbald, Æthelbert, Æthelred, and Alfred. Each of his sons, with the exception of Æthelstan, succeeded to the throne. Alfred, the youngest, has been praised as one of the greatest kings to ever reign in Britain. Æthelwulf's only daughter, Æthelswith, was married as a child to King Burgred of Mercia.

Pilgrimage to Rome, marriage, conspiracy of Æthelbald, death

Religion was always an important part of Æthelwulf's life. As early as the first year of his reign he planned a pilgrimage to Rome. Due to the ongoing and increasing raids he felt the need to appeal to the Christian God for help against an enemy "so agile, and numerous, and profane."

In 853, Æthelwulf sent his son Alfred, a child of about four years, to Rome. In 855, about a year after his wife Osburga's death, Æthelwulf followed Alfred to Rome. In Rome, he was generous with his wealth. He distributed gold to the clergy of St. Peter's and offered them chalices of the purest gold and silver-gilt candelabra of Saxon work. During the return journey in 856 he married Judith, a Frankish princess and a great-granddaughter of Charlemagne. She was about twelve years old, the daughter of Charles the Bald, King of the West Franks.

Upon their return to England in 856 Æthelwulf met with an acute crisis. His eldest surviving son Æthelbald (Athelstan had since died) had devised a conspiracy with the Ealdorman of Somerset and the Bishop of Sherborne to oppose Æthelwulf's resumption of the kingship on his return. While Æthelwulf was able to muster enough support to fight a civil war or to banish Æthelbald and his fellow conspirators, he instead chose to yield western Wessex to his son, while he himself retained central and eastern Wessex. The absence of coins in Æthelbald's name suggests that West Saxon coinage was in Æthelwulf's name until his death. He ruled there until his death on 13 January 858.

That the king should have consented to treat with his rebellious son, to refer the compromise to a meeting of Saxon nobles, to moderate the pugnacity of his own supporters, and to resign the rule over the more important half of his dominions - all this testifies to the fact that Æthelwulf’s Christian spirit did not exhaust itself in the giving of lavish charities to the Church, but availed to reconcile him to the sacrifice of prestige and power in the cause of national peace.

Æthelwulf's restoration included a special concession on behalf of Saxon queens. The West Saxons previously did not allow the queen to sit next to the king. In fact they were referred to not as a queen, but merely as the "wife of the king." This restriction was lifted for Queen Judith, probably because she was a high-ranking European princess.

He was buried first at Steyning and later re-interred in the Old Minster in Winchester. His bones now rest in one of several "mortuary chests" in Winchester Cathedral.

Æðelwulf married Osburh Abt 830. Osburh (daughter of Oslac Great Butler Of England) died Between 846 and 855. [Group Sheet]

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Notes:

Osburh or Osburga (died before 856) was the first wife of King Æthelwulf of Wessex and mother of Alfred the Great. Alfred's biographer, Asser, described her as "a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth".

Osburh's existence is known only from Asser's Life of King Alfred. She is not named as witness to any charters, nor is her death reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. So far as is known, she was the mother of all Æthelwulf's children, his five sons Æthelstan, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, Æthelred and Alfred the Great, and his daughter Æthelswith, wife of King Burgred of Mercia. Osburh presumably died before 856 when her husband married the Carolingian princess Judith.

She is best known for Asser's story about a book of Saxon songs which she showed to Alfred and his brothers, offering to give the book to whoever could first memorise it, a challenge which Alfred took up and won. This exhibits the interest of high status ninth-century women in books, and their role in educating their children.

Osburh was the daughter of Oslac (who is also only known from Asser's Life), King Æthelwulf's pincerna (butler), an important figure in the royal court and household. Oslac is described as a descendant of King Cerdic's Jutish nephews, Stuf and Wihtgar, who conquered the Isle of Wight. [Wikipedia]

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Aethelred — Eadburga, Princess of Mercia. [Group Sheet]

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