§ 13. Another general ground of suspicion is, if I may so say, psychological; and I may illustrate what I mean by a little personal reminiscence. Some few years ago I was dining in a college not my own, where one of the junior fellows told us a somewhat startling tale, prefacing it with the remark that the incident was unquestionably true, as it had happened to himself. ‘Ah,’ said the senior fellow, with the frankness which is one of the privileges of seniority, ‘whenever a man begins a story in that way, I always know that some bigger lie than usual is going to follow.’ Now it is at least curious that our author so constantly lays stress on the fact that he had himself witnessed some of the most striking of the things which he relates, or at least had heard them from those who had seen them. Thus he had frequently (‘saepissime’) witnessed Alfred’s skill in hunting[43]; he had himself seen the little book containing the daily offices and Psalms and prayers which Alfred always carried about with him[44]; he had with ‘his very own eyes’ often seen Alfred’s maternal grandmother, Eadburh[45]; ‘with his very own eyes’ again he had seen the solitary thorn which marked the site of the battle of Ashdown[46]; he had himself surveyed the site of the fort of Cynwit, and verified its capacities for defence[47]. He gives us to understand that he, with others, had witnessed Alfred’s mysterious attacks of illness[48]; that he had not only seen, but read the letters which Alfred received from the patriarch of Jerusalem[49]; that he had seen in Athelney Monastery the young Dane whom Alfred was educating there in the monastic life[50]. So he had heard from various persons different opinions as to the relative guilt of the parties in the alleged rebellion of Æthelbald[51]; he had conversed with many who had seen Offa’s daughter Eadburh, the Jezebel of Wessex history, in her dishonoured and mendicant old age at Pavia[52]; while the story of her crimes in Wessex, which deprived all her successors of the title of queen, he had heard from Alfred himself[53]. He had heard from eye-witnesses how Æthelred at Ashdown refused to engage till mass was finished[54], and of the military skill of Abbot John the Old Saxon from those who knew him[55]. Now in all these things there is nothing impossible, or even improbable. It is only the constant asseveration which excites suspicion.
§ 14. One general objection which has sometimes been brought against our author is, I am convinced, without foundation:—I mean the presence in him of a certain Frankish element. He uses certain Frankish words, vassallus, indiculus (a letter; both these words puzzled the scribes a good deal), comes (in the sense of ealdorman), senior (a lord, seigneur), and possibly others[56]. So too the story how Eadburh ‘put her foot in it,’ if I may use the phrase, with Charles the Great[57], and of her subsequent fate, evidently reflects the gossip of the Carolingian Courts. It is possible that the story of Æthelbald’s incestuous marriage[58] comes from the same source; as, with the exception of Asser, the only contemporary authorities in which it is found are Frankish[59]; so too, perhaps, the judgement on Arnulf’s conduct in deposing Charles the Fat[60], and the more correct form Carloman, as against the Carl of the Chronicle[61]. But when we consider that two at least of Alfred’s principal literary and educational coadjutors, Grimbald and John the Old Saxon, came from different parts of the Carolingian empire, that Æthelwulf married a Frankish wife, stayed some time at the Frankish Court[62], and had, as the epistles of Lupus of Ferrières show, a Frankish secretary[63], that some of these words occur in English charters[64], where likewise they probably bear witness to the influence of Frankish scribes, we shall see that there were plenty of channels through which these Frankish elements might find their way into the biography of an English king. Moreover, if we should come to the conclusion that the book is mediately or immediately the work of Asser, we may be inclined to connect this element in it with a statement quoted by Leland from a lost life of Grimbald[65], that Asser was one of the ambassadors deputed to bring Grimbald to England[66]. The description of Paris also looks as if it might rest on personal knowledge[67].
§ 15. Of the objections in detail which have been brought against our author, the most important perhaps relates to his statement that Alfred gave him ‘Exeter with the diocese belonging to it both in Cornwall and Saxony,’ i.e. Wessex[68]. Mr. Wright[69] thought that this was conclusive evidence that the work was later than the transference of the united see of Cornwall and Devonshire to Exeter, under Edward the Confessor. I shall show presently that there is evidence, both external and internal, for the existence of our Asser about 975. Meanwhile, I would point out that under the year 875 the Welsh Annals record the drowning of Dumgarth, king of Cornwall[70], though it gives one a little start to realise that there were kings in Cornwall as late as the last quarter of the ninth century[71]; and we know from the Chronicle that in 877 Alfred recovered Exeter from the Danes. Now the state of affairs in South Wales which Asser represents[72] as determining him, at any rate in part, to accept Alfred’s invitation, in the hope of securing his protection for St. David’s, clearly refers to a period 877 × 885. Rotri Mawr is obviously dead, as his sons only are spoken of, and Rotri Mawr was slain in 877; while Howel, son of Rhys, king of Glewissig, is spoken of as alive; and he is probably the Howel who died at Rome in 885[73], having gone there, it is likely, in expiation of a crime, of which the record is preserved in the Book of Llandaff[74]. It seems to me not unlikely that in view of the events of 875 and 877, Alfred may have wished to place the districts round Exeter under episcopal supervision, without necessarily intending to create a definite diocese, and may have thought a Celtic-speaking prelate likely to be more effective than an Englishman[75]; for at this time the Bristol Channel was not either physically or linguistically a serious barrier between the Celts on either side of it.
Whether Asser was already a bishop when he first came to Alfred is difficult to determine. He is often spoken of as bishop of St. David’s. Novis, or Nobis, bishop, or, as Asser in the passage referred to above patriotically calls him, archbishop of St. David’s, died, according to the Welsh Annals, in 873, after a rule of thirty-three years[76]. His immediate successor was Llunwerth or Llwmbert[77]; but when the latter died I have not succeeded in satisfying myself[78].
Confirmation of the grant of Exeter to Asser is sometimes sought in the fact that Alfred, in the Preface to the Cura Pastoralis, speaks of Asser as ‘my bishop,’ at a time when Asser cannot have held his later diocese of Sherborne, as one of the copies of Alfred’s Cura Pastoralis was actually addressed to Wulfsige, Asser’s predecessor in that see. But if Asser was bishop of St. David’s when he came to Alfred, I should feel myself precluded from using this argument, for I could not regard it as impossible that Alfred should speak of Asser as ‘my bishop’ in respect of his Welsh bishopric, seeing that Asser expressly says that Hemeid, king of Dyfed, had commended himself to Alfred; or he might be called ‘my bishop’ in regard to the position which he held in Alfred’s service[79].
§ 16. Another objection has been based on the passage in which Asser relates how, at the close of his first visit to Alfred, he promised to return in six months’ time, and give a definite answer to the king’s proposals; but on his way home, he says, ‘I was seized in the city of Winchester by a troublesome fever, in which I lay for a year and a week’; until Alfred sent letters to inquire why he had not kept his promise[80]. Now it has been argued that it is quite impossible that Asser should have been for over a year at Winchester without Alfred knowing about it. On the other hand, my late friend, Mr. Park Harrison, who, in spite of his advanced age, kept up his interest in these matters to the very end, called on me only a few weeks before his death, and argued that this same passage showed that Alfred could have had but little to do with Winchester, and therefore it was an impertinence of Winchester to attempt to monopolise the millenary celebration. As a matter of fact both arguments are baseless, and rest on a mistranslation. For in the passage cited, the words ‘in which’ (in qua), refer not to the city of Winchester, but to the fever. It is quite evident, I think, from the context that though it may have been at Winchester that Asser was attacked by the fever, yet he managed somehow to reach St. David’s, and that it was there that Alfred’s letters reached him.
§ 17. But before we can judge fairly of the work before us, we must try to do something to rescue the text from the very parlous condition in which it has come down to us. Indeed, with the exception of Ethelwerd’s Chronicle, hardly any work connected with Early English history has been textually so unfortunate as Asser. The only known manuscript of any antiquity perished almost entirely in the great Cottonian fire of 1731; the two existing manuscripts are paper copies of the sixteenth century. For our knowledge of the ancient Cottonian MS. we are dependent mainly on Wise’s edition of 1722; an excellent work for the time at which it was produced, but that it is not scrupulously accurate, according to modern notions, is proved by the fact that, whereas the facsimile given by Wise himself of the beginning of the MS. writes the name of Alfred’s birthplace, Uuanating, the text prints it Wanading. Moreover, the work has been shamefully tampered with by editors. Apart from longer interpolations, of which I shall speak presently, numberless smaller additions have been introduced into the text from the so-called Annals of Asser or of St. Neot[81], a compilation of the eleventh or twelfth century[82], largely based it is true on Asser for the period 851-887, and therefore available, within proper limits, like the works of other authors who have made use of Asser, for purposes of textual criticism; but not to be used, as has been done, for the wholesale depravation of the text. Even the editors of the Monumenta Historica Britannica were content to place these additions in brackets, instead of removing them altogether. Consequently they are often quoted by modern writers as if they were part of the original Asser.
Of writers who have made use of Asser the most valuable, for our purposes, is Florence of Worcester. Very often he furnishes us with what is evidently the true reading[83], in one case at least a passage of some length can be recovered from his pages, which has been dropped out of our present text of Asser merely owing to homoioteleuton[84]. But even Florence must be used with caution for textual purposes. For just as his greater skill in composition led him (as we have seen[85]) to rearrange the materials with which Asser furnished him, so his better taste and greater command of Latin led him to revise and prune the language of his author. Moreover, in certain cases, Florence has corrected and supplemented Asser by the direct use of the Saxon Chronicle[86]. It must not therefore always be assumed that because Florence’s reading is better than Asser’s, it is therefore more original. Conversely, though rarely, Asser enables us to correct the text of Florence[87].
It is very curious that though Florence shows, by substituting the name Asser for the pronoun of the first person wherever it occurs, that he accepted Asser’s authorship of the work, he should place Asser’s death in 883, while continuing to use his narrative for four years longer.
Of the use of Asser by Simeon of Durham I shall have something to say presently[88].
§ 18. Of the longer interpolations alluded to above, the first that must go is, of course, the famous passage about the University of Oxford[89]. This passage is a fine illustration of the remark, made in this place by my brilliant predecessor, Professor Maitland, that the earliest form of inter-university sports seems to have been a competition in lying. The different phases of that competition have been traced by Mr. James Parker in the first two chapters of his Early History of Oxford[90], and need not detain us here. This passage made its first appearance in the text of Asser under Camden’s auspices in 1603. It is much to be regretted that so worthy a name should be connected with so questionable a transaction[91]. I will only add that the use of the one word ‘Diuus’ instead of ‘Sanctus’ stamps the passage as a post-renaissance forgery.
§ 19. The next passage which must go is what I must be pardoned for once more[92] calling the silly story about the cakes, and the yet more silly story of the tyranny and callousness of Alfred in the early days of his reign[93]. I hope to show later[94] how utterly inconsistent both these stories are with the genuine history of the reign. Here I need only say that the passage was introduced into our text by Archbishop Parker from the so-called Annals of Asser. It comes ultimately, as stated in the passage itself, from some life of St. Neot which I have not yet succeeded in identifying.
§ 20. I have pointed out in another place[95] that the printed text of Asser contains two accounts of the events of the year 877[96]. With the exception of a few words relating to the division of Mercia by the Danes, neither of these versions, according to Wise, existed in the oldest MS. That they were not in Florence’s MS. of Asser seems indicated by the fact, that this is one of the annals in which he resorts directly to the Saxon Chronicle. They therefore must also be expunged. I still, however, retain the conviction that the former of the two versions, though not traceable higher than Roger of Wendover in the thirteenth century, is yet perfectly genuine as history, and furnishes a valuable supplement to the account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
§ 21. So far our task has been comparatively simple. We have only had to remove what are obviously later accretions. But the question must now be faced whether the text, as we can prove it to have existed about the year 974, had not already suffered from the hand of the interpolator. From this point of view the most suspicious passage is that which describes the mysterious illness with which Alfred is said to have been attacked at his wedding-feast[97]. This passage has already been severely criticised by Pauli[98], though he has not exhausted all the arguments which can be brought against it.
In the first place it is entirely out of position. Though it refers to Alfred’s wedding, which has already been given, probably correctly, under 868, when Alfred was about twenty years old, it is inserted between the events of the year 884[99] and those of 886. The substance of the story is as follows:—During the marriage festivities Alfred was suddenly attacked by an intolerable pain, from which he has suffered, as those who daily see it know, without intermission, from his twentieth to his fortieth year, or longer. No one could trace its origin. Some thought it was ‘fascination,’ that is, the evil eye, due to the applause of the multitude; others, that it was the envy of the devil; others, some strange kind of fever; others, the disease called ‘ficus,’ from which he had suffered from his infancy. Once, when he was hunting in Cornwall, he turned aside to pray in a church, where St. Guerier reposes, and now also St. Neot rests, and entreated that some lighter affliction might be substituted for that from which he was suffering; such, however, as would not be externally apparent, like blindness or leprosy, so as to make him contemptible and incapable of discharging his functions. Shortly afterwards he was divinely healed of the ‘ficus.’ Though, indeed, this very ‘ficus’ had been given him in answer to prayer; for, in the first flower of his youth, before his marriage, feeling the assaults of carnal desire, he would often rise secretly and visit churches and relics of the saints, praying that God would strengthen him by sending him some infirmity, such, however, as would not make him unworthy or incapable in worldly matters. In answer to this prayer he shortly after received the ‘ficus,’ from which he suffered for many years, until it was removed by prayer. But alas, on its removal a worse affliction came upon him at his marriage which lasted from his twentieth to his forty-fifth year without intermission; and even if it leaves him for a single hour, the fear and horror of it never quit him, but render him, as he deems, almost useless in things divine and human.
§ 22. It would be difficult to cram more inconsistencies into so short a space. First of all, though the whole point of the story is to show that the wedding-feast disease was different from, and in substitution for, the ‘ficus,’ the writer ineptly says, that some people thought it was the ‘ficus.’ This is inserted in order to introduce the statement that Alfred had suffered from the latter disease ‘from infancy.’ Then, after telling how it was removed by prayer at the Cornish shrine, he adds that this same disease was sent in answer to prayer, when Alfred was ‘in the flower of his youth.’ We can hardly place this period earlier than (say) the seventeenth year (a very different thing from infancy); yet he suffered from it ‘for many years,’ though it had certainly ceased before his marriage in his twentieth year. Again, the condition that the visitation sent should not be disfiguring or incapacitating, is in one place attached to the substituted disease, lower down it is attached to the original trouble. It may be noted that the original disease does fulfil this condition, the substituted one certainly did not, seeing that it rendered Alfred ‘almost useless in things divine and human.’ And yet a main point of the passage is to illustrate the efficacy of Alfred’s prayers. Once more, at the beginning of the passage the substituted disease lasts from Alfred’s twentieth year to rather over his fortieth; towards the close it extends from the same date to his forty-fifth year—a very rapid growth. After all this it seems somewhat tame to remark that leprosy and blindness hardly come under one’s idea of ‘lighter infirmities.’
§ 23. In this triumph of ineptitude we may, I think, detect a conflation of two separate traditions; one of which represented Alfred as suffering from infancy from a disease for which in answer to prayer another was substituted; while, according to the other version, the original disease was granted in answer to prayer, and though removed by the same means, only departed to make way for a heavier visitation. But the whole passage is a concoction in the worst hagiological manner, to the source of which we are guided by the mention of St. Neot; for if the legendary Alfred was reformed by the legendary St. Neot, there is no doubt that the historical Alfred has been deformed in an extraordinary degree by the same agency. And in the present instance we may be glad, I think, to free the historical Alfred from the atmosphere of morbid religiosity which taints this whole passage. It may be noted that Florence, with his usual good sense, has entirely recast the incident, so as to remove most of the absurdities above enumerated. Whether the other two passages, which refer to Alfred’s illness[100], are also to be rejected is less easy to say. In one of them the language is very nearly akin to that of the present passage; but that might be due to the compiler having made use of it for his own bad purposes. Personally, I should not be sorry to let all these passages go; for it seems to me quite inconceivable that Alfred could have accomplished what he did under the hourly pressure of incapacitating disease[101]. Still we must distinguish between what is historically doubtful and what is textually suspicious. There are several things in Asser which, as we shall see, come under the former category, though I could not bring them under the latter.
§ 24. One source of the corruption of the text of Asser is, I think, to be found in the fact that words and phrases, which were originally interlinear glosses, have become, as often happens, incorporated with the text[102]. In one case the text of Florence seems to show that the gloss has entirely expelled the original reading, at least in the printed copies[103].
In another instance a marginal note by a later scribe has got into the text. As this case is of some importance as bearing on the date of the composition, I must ask your particular attention to it. In the description of Alfred’s visit to the Cornish shrine, already alluded to, the following sentence occurs:—‘Cum … ad quandam ecclesiam … diuertisset, in qua S. Gueryr requiescit, et nunc etiam S. Neotus ibidem pausat, subleuatus est (erat enim sedulus sanctorum locorum uisitator, …) diu in oratione prostratus … Domini misericordiam deprecabatur[104],’ &c. Here the words ‘subleuatus est’ can by no possibility be construed, either with what goes before, or with what follows. Some time before I saw the meaning of them, I had underlined these words in my copy of the Monumenta, and noted on the margin ‘this seems to make nonsense.’ The explanation, I believe, is this:—The original scribe had stated the repose of St. Neot’s remains in his Cornish home as a present fact, ‘ibidem pausat.’ A later scribe notes on the margin ‘subleuatus est,’ ‘he has been taken up’; a word very fitly used of the taking up a saint’s body from the grave in order to place it in some elevated shrine, or translate it to some other abode. A subsequent copyist incorporated the note with the text, which is again a frequent phenomenon[105]. Now the translation of St. Neot to the site which bears his name in Huntingdonshire took place about the year 974[106]. The original text of this passage must therefore be anterior to that date; the marginal note, and a fortiori the MS. on which our present text of Asser rests, must be subsequent to it. If, as I think, the passage in which these words occur is itself an interpolation, the evidence for the genuine text of Asser is thrown yet further back. However, the argument for a text of Asser earlier than 974, derived from the use of the present tense ‘pausat,’ is quite independent both of my explanation of the words ‘subleuatus est,’ and of my views as to the spurious character of the passage in which they occur.
§ 25. We saw in the last lecture that there was good evidence for the existence of our text of Asser, apart from the interpolations made by sixteenth and seventeenth century editors, about the year 975. Another argument pointing the same way is derived from the text of Simeon of Durham.
In that writer’s Historia Regum there exists a double recension of the Annals 848-951, both of which are, for the years 848-888, largely derived, mediately or immediately, from Asser. The explanation of this curious fact given by Mr. Thomas Arnold in his interesting and able introduction to the edition of Simeon in the Rolls Series, is as follows[107]. The earlier recension is the work of a Cuthbertine monk, writing at Chester-le-Street in the second half of the tenth century, who drew largely on Asser for the reign of Alfred, farcing the text however (to use a liturgical term) with many rhetorical flourishes of his own. When Simeon, at the beginning of the twelfth century, embodied the Cuthbertine’s work in his Historia Regum, his better taste was revolted by these florid insertions, and he rewrote these annals, not wholly discarding his predecessor’s work, but using in addition both the original text of Asser, and also the recent work of Florence of Worcester. (The fact, which can be demonstrated, that Simeon used (1) the original text of Asser; (2) Asser as farced by the Cuthbertine; (3) Asser as revised by Florence, is one which I commend to the notice of students of the synoptic problem[108].) Had Simeon lived to give his work the final revision, he would no doubt have cancelled the earlier version of these annals. As it is, his literary executors embodied both versions; and we may be thankful that they did so, as they have thereby preserved some interesting evidence both literary and historical.
If then Mr. Arnold’s theory is correct, as I believe it to be, we have once more evidence of the existence of a text of Asser before the end of the tenth century. This however, though probable, is only a theory. But, even if it be rejected, the argument of the preceding section remains unaffected.
§ 26. Seeing then that we can trace our Asser text back at least as far as the year 974, the palaeographical question as to the date of Wise’s MS. becomes comparatively unimportant. And it is well that it is so; for the doctors differ to an extraordinary degree. One morning in Bodley I submitted Wise’s facsimile of the beginning of his MS. to three eminent palaeographers of this University. The first was too wary to be caught by my chaff, and refused to give a definite opinion; the second said, ‘Not much later than 950’; the third said, ‘Well, it isn’t later than the twelfth century, but it isn’t very much earlier.’ I believe the general opinion would place it early in the eleventh century, and this fits in well enough with what I have tried to prove above, that it is copied, mediately or immediately, from a MS. which cannot be later than 974.
§ 27. Something may be done for the text of Asser by cautious conjectural emendation. There are a certain number of obvious blunders in it due to the carelessness of scribes, the ignorance of editors, possibly even to the mistakes of compositors[109]. Most of these are concerned with minor details. There is one correction however, with which I will trouble you, as it relates to a point of some historical interest; and, moreover, converts into a proof of Asser’s accuracy, what might have been used as an argument against him, though I am not aware that it has actually been so used. In the somewhat magniloquent passage in which are described the extensive relations which Alfred cultivated with foreign parts, the following sentence occurs[110]: ‘nam etiam de Hiersolyma Abel patriarcha [v. l. patriarchae] epistolas … illi directas uidimus et legimus.’ The passage as it stands is open to two objections, one historical, the other grammatical. The historical objection is that no one of the name of Abel held the patriarchate of Jerusalem during Alfred’s reign; though our historians go on copying and recopying the name without ever dreaming of verifying the point. The grammatical objection is that the passive participle ‘directas’ cries aloud for a preposition of agency. By the addition of two vowels and the subtraction (if necessary) of another the passage can be brought into harmony both with history and grammar, thus: ‘ab Elia patriarcha.’ Elias III was patriarch of Jerusalem from 879 to 907[111]. In the earlier of the two versions which occur in Simeon of Durham the word ‘Abel’ is printed ‘a Bel[112].’ This does justice to the grammar, but not to the history. In the later version, Simeon himself, following Florence, omits the passage altogether. One would be glad to know whether Florence omitted it because he saw the objections to which it was open.
I was first put on the track of this correction by the curious passage of the Leechbook printed by Mr. Cockayne in the second volume of his interesting Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms, where the writer, after giving certain medical recipes, says at the end: ‘all this my Lord Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem, bade thus say to King Alfred[113].’ As the MS. from which this is taken is, according to Mr. Cockayne, of the early part of the tenth century[114], we are brought very near indeed to Alfred’s time. Moreover in the Anglo-Saxon Martyrology printed by the same editor in his work called ‘The Shrine; a collection of occasional papers on dry subjects,’ two Eastern saints, martyred in Persia in 341, SS. Milus and Senneus, are commemorated at November 15[115]. These are found in no Western Calendar, and Mr. Cockayne thinks that the knowledge of them must have come to England through Alfred’s intercourse with Elias of Jerusalem. The martyrology, which is unfortunately incomplete, was not improbably drawn up by Alfred’s directions, and cannot be later than his reign, as it mentions St. Oswald’s body as resting at Bardney[116], whence it was translated to Gloucester by Æthelflæd, lady of the Mercians, and her husband Æthelred, not long after Alfred’s death[117].
In one instance, I may remark in passing, the editors have altered Asser’s text for the worse, what the Germans call ‘Verschlimmbesserung.’ It is the passage where Athelney monastery is said to be unapproachable ‘nisi cauticis, aut etiam per unum pontem[118].’ Here ‘cauticis’ has been altered to ‘nauticis.’ But ‘cautica’ is a perfectly good word, and means causeway, chaussée[119], a much better sense than any that can be got out of ‘nauticis[120].’
§ 28. But even when all has been done that criticism can do for the restoration and purification of the text, the work still remains a puzzle almost insoluble. What can we make out as to the author? It is clear that he was a Celt from South Wales. This is proved partly by his language and terminology, partly by his knowledge of South Welsh affairs. As to the former point, he has the special Celtic use of the terms ‘right-hand’ and ‘left-hand,’ to express the ideas of south and north. The Celt always faced the east, and named the quarters of the heaven from that point of view. Thus Chippenham is in the left-hand part of Wiltshire[121]. The author’s own home was to the left and west of Severn[122]. The Danes throw up earthworks on the right-hand side of Reading[123]; Sussex is the region of the right-hand Saxons[124]; and, lastly, all the regions of the right-hand part of Britannia belonged to Alfred[125]. This does not, however, exclude the use of the more ordinary words ‘meridianus’ and ‘aquilonaris’ for south and north[126].
§ 29. The example last cited brings me to another characteristic of the author’s terminology; viz. his ambiguous use of the word Britannia, which sometimes means Britain in the ordinary sense[127], but more often means Wales. Historians have gone wrong through ignoring this distinction. Thus Dr. Pauli[128], in the passage just quoted, takes Britannia in what is to us the ordinary sense. But that all the southern parts of Britain belonged to Alfred is so obvious as not to be worth saying. That all the southern districts of Wales had submitted to Alfred is a new and most interesting fact. And this clearly is the meaning; for the statement is introductory to that sketch of the troubles in South Wales which explains both why the South Welsh princes commended themselves to Alfred, and why the author consented to enter his service. Moreover this use is paralleled again and again in the Book of Llandaff, a primary South Welsh authority. We find there Asser’s very phrase ‘dextralis pars Britanniae’ several times repeated[129]. We have the clergy and people, the inhabitants, the churches, the archbishop, the kings and princes, the kingdom, the islands, ‘Dextralis Britanniae[130].’ To return to Asser:—Æthelwulf reduces ‘Britannia’ under Burgred of Mercia[131]; Offa’s dyke divides Mercia from ‘Britannia[132],’ and finally Asser himself agrees to spend half his time ‘in Britannia’ and half with Alfred ‘in Saxonia[133].’