During the twenty years which followed the death of Ethelwulf four of his sons successively filled the West Saxon throne, namely, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred. As the last named is to us incomparably the most interesting figure, it will be well to insert here some particulars relating to his childhood which were purposely omitted from the preceding chapter. For these particulars, as for almost all that makes the great king a living reality to us, we are indebted to the little book De Rebus Gestis Aelfredi, written by the Welsh ecclesiastic, Asser.124

The question of the date of Alfred’s birth is beset with some difficulty, but on the whole it seems safest to assign it to the year 848. The place of his birth was undoubtedly Wantage in Berkshire, about twenty-five miles from Reading. Throughout his life his chief exploits had reference to the valley of the middle Thames, and if any one county more than another may claim an interest in his glory, it is that county which, as Asser says, “has its name from the wood of Berroc, where the boxtree grows most plentifully”. The mother of Alfred was Osburga, whom Asser describes as “a very religious woman, noble of intellect and noble by birth, daughter of Oslac, the renowned butler of King Ethelwulf, and descended from the old Jutish kings of the Isle of Wight”.

In 853, when Alfred was only four or five years old, he was sent by his father to Rome “with an honourable train of nobles and others”. The Chronicle says that Pope Leo “anointed him as king and adopted him as his godson”. The pope himself, in a still extant letter to Ethelwulf, tells the king that he has “invested his son with the girdle, insignia and robes of the consulate after the manner of Roman consuls”. It is difficult to suppose that Ethelwulf, who had four strong sons older than Alfred, can have wished the little five-year-old child, much as he loved him, to be anointed as king. It has been suggested as a possible explanation of the ceremony that some of the West Saxon retinue, who saw the child invested in the splendid trabea of the consul, and were told that these were the robes once worn by the men who wielded kingly power in Rome, attached to the ceremony a political importance greater than was its due. Two years later the boy again went to Rome, accompanying his father on the visit already described. He returned with him through France, and doubtless witnessed the marriage ceremony which gave him a step-mother six years older than himself.

It is probably to the interval between his first and second visits to Rome that we must refer the episode of the ballad-book prize, the best-known story of Alfred’s childhood. That story must be told in Asser’s own words:—

“His father and mother loved him greatly, more than all his brethren; and so, too, did all men in his father’s court, in which he was ever nourished. As infancy grew into boyhood, he appeared more comely than all his brethren and pleasanter in countenance, in speech and in manners. From his very cradle, notwithstanding the practical bent of his disposition, his intellect, noble as his birth, inspired him with an earnest desire for wisdom, but, sad to say, through the shameful neglect of his parents and guardians, he remained unlettered till the twelfth year of his age or even later. He was, however, both by night and day an earnest and frequent listener to the recitation of Saxon poems, and being an apt pupil he easily retained them in his memory....

“Now one day his mother showed to him and his brothers a certain Saxon book of poetry which she had in her hand, and said: ‘Whoever shall soonest learn this codex to him will I give it,’ at which word he, being urged by some Divine inspiration, and also attracted by the beauty of an initial letter in the book, anticipating his brothers (older than he in years but not in grace) answered his mother thus: ‘Will you really give that book to him who shall soonest understand and repeat it to you?’ ‘Yes, I will,’ said she with a happy smile. Hereupon he at once took the book from her hand, went to a master and read it,125 and having read it he took it back to his mother and recited it to her.” It is probable that Asser here intended only to describe the quickness of the child’s apprehension and the strength of his memory. The story has nothing really to do with Alfred’s learning to read, which, as we are told, did not take place till his twelfth year or even later. He took the book to his master, learned the contents from him and repeated them accurately to his mother. The words “and read it,” which are the sole stumbling-block to those who would thus understand the narrative, are possibly due to some slip of the copyist126 or to the confused way in which Asser tells his tale.

From the story of Alfred’s childhood we return to the main stream of Anglo-Saxon history. As has been said, Ethelwulf died in the beginning of 858. His second son, Ethelbert, probably succeeded him in the eastern half of his kingdom, while Ethelbald, the eldest, and possibly the over-lord, reigned in the west. The only notable fact, and that a disgraceful one, in Ethelbald’s reign was his marriage to his father’s young widow, Judith of France. Though the first marriage was perhaps one only in name, the unlawful union excited the disapprobation of all Western Europe, and the premature death of Ethelbald in 860 was probably regarded as a Divine judgment on the sinner. Soon after her second husband’s death Judith returned to France, and having after two years eloped with her father’s handsome forester, Baldwin, obtained with difficulty the paternal forgiveness, and permission to contract lawful wedlock with her lover. Baldwin, who received a grant of the borderland of Flanders with the title of count or marquis, was the ancestor by Judith of a long line of Baldwins, who gave to their dominions the name of Baldwinsland, and one of whom in 1204 donned the imperial buskins and was crowned by his fellow-crusaders at Constantinople Emperor of Rome. From the same romantic union of Baldwin and Judith sprang also in the seventh generation Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror.

Ethelbert, the second son of Ethelwulf, who succeeded to the throne and reigned for six years (860–66), probably added the western half of the kingdom to the eastern, and thus ruled over the whole country south of the Thames. He held it, says the chronicler, “in good agreement and much peacefulness,” but already upon his reign was cast the shadow of coming calamity. “In his days,” says the Chronicle, “there came a great fleet to land and broke down Winchester.” It is true that the invaders were afterwards defeated and put to flight by the ealdormen of Hampshire and Berkshire, but it is alarming to see the facility with which they gained possession of the capital of Wessex. No doubt this was owing to the fact that the English had made no systematic attempt to keep up the great fortresses which they had inherited from the Romans and which they themselves in their earlier invasion had laid in ruins.127 All this was to be altered ere the end of the century by the fortifying hand of Alfred.

On the death of Ethelbert the third brother, Ethelred, mounted the menaced throne and reigned for five troublous years (866–71). He was assisted in the labour of governing and fighting by his brother Alfred, who bore the title, unique in Anglo-Saxon history, of Secundarius. Apparently he and Alfred were fonder of one another than any others of the royal brethren, and had it not been for his early death he had perhaps achieved renown as enduring as that of his successor. The West Saxon was indeed a menaced throne. Already a year before the death of Ethelbert the fiercest of all the Scandinavian storm-winds had begun to blow. The Danes were now bent upon settlement, not merely on pillage. In 865 “the heathen army encamped in Thanet and made peace with the men of Kent, who promised them money therefor, and under cover of the peace and the promised money, the army stole away by night up country and harried all Kent eastwards”. Thus was set the fatal precedent of the payment of ransom. We hear with no surprise that next year there came a mighty heathen army to England and took up their winter quarters in East Anglia. There the sailors supplied themselves with horses and made peace—such peace as it was—with the inhabitants.

Next year (867) the heathen host moved northwards, crossed the Humber and made for York. The affairs of Northumbria were in their usual confusion. Osbert, the lawful king, had been driven out, and another king of non-royal blood named Ella had grasped the reins of power. This is that Ella to whom, in sagas, is assigned the possession of the pit full of serpents into which was thrown the viking Ragnar Lodbrog. Late in the year the two rivals agreed to join their powers and march against “the army”. Having mustered a large force, they marched to York, already occupied by the Danes, and took the city by storm. Some of the Northumbrians, too confident of victory, entered the city. The walls which were still standing severed their army in twain. A terrible slaughter was made of them, “some within and some without”. Both the rival kings were slain and the miserable Northumbrian remnant made peace with “the army”. In the next year, 868, the Danes, who had now no thought of returning home, invaded Mercia and took up their winter quarters at Nottingham. Burhred, King of Mercia, by the advice of his witan called on his West Saxon brothers-in-law for help. They marched with the fyrd of Wessex to Nottingham, but finding the Danes strongly entrenched durst not attack them. “There was no serious fighting there”; the men of Mercia had to make their own peace, and the West Saxon fyrd returned inglorious to their homes.

In 869 “the army” remained quartered in York, doubtless strengthening their hold on Deira, which was rapidly becoming a mere Danish province. But next year (870) witnessed an event, one of the most memorable in the whole story of Scandinavian invasion, an event which led to the canonisation of an English prince, and called into existence the stateliest but one of English monasteries. The king of East Anglia at this time was a young man named Edmund, of pure and noble character. The legends of later centuries have been busy with the story of his boyhood, representing him as a native of Nuremberg, chosen as his heir by an East Anglian king as he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, sent to England, and after many romantic adventures, obtaining the kingdom of his patron. Though this traditional history be set aside as altogether untrustworthy, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that there was some strain of foreign blood in King Edmund’s ancestry, regal though it seems to have been.128 However this may be, all the authorities agree in fixing his accession to the throne at a very early period of his life, and it is probable that, though he had already reigned for about sixteen years, he was not much past the thirtieth year of his age when in 870 the Danes, under the command of two brothers named Inguar and Ubba, leaving Mercia, invaded East Anglia and took up their winter quarters at Thetford. Battle was joined on November 20, and the invaders won a decisive victory, of which they made use to spread themselves over the country and destroy all the monasteries which abounded in that pious land.

Both the Chronicle and Asser seem to imply that King Edmund, “fighting fiercely,” was slain on the field of battle; but it is hardly possible altogether to reject another widely credited version of the story, according to which the young king was taken prisoner on the battle-field; was offered his life by Inguar on condition of renouncing his faith and accepting the heathens as his over-lords; steadfastly refused in any way to compromise his profession of Christianity; was tied to a tree and made a target for the Northmen’s arrows; till at last the Danish leaders took pity on his sufferings and ordered the executioner to strike off his head. This story, which is said to have been often told by Dunstan, who had it from Edmund’s armour-bearer, was universally believed two generations after his death, and procured for the East Anglian king the title of saint and the crown of martyrdom.

The battle in which St. Edmund was defeated was fought at Hoxne, about twenty miles east of Thetford. The martyr’s body, according to the legend, was found miraculously guarded by a wolf, and after an interval of thirty-three years was transferred to the town of Beadoricesworth, about ten miles south of Thetford, where, in the course of time, the magnificent abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s rose above the relics of the saint. Strange to say, the Danish King Canute was the most enthusiastic of the earlier benefactors of this monastery and ever professed an especial reverence for the memory of the martyred king. St. Edmund soon became one of the most popular of English saints, a popularity sufficiently attested by the ancient churches, between fifty and sixty in number, distributed throughout more than half the counties of England from Durham to Devonshire, which are still dedicated to his memory.129

In the course of the same campaign, Inguar and Ubba came to Peterborough, then called Medeshamstede; and, as a monk of that abbey pathetically relates, “they burned and brake, slew abbot and monks, and so dealt with what they found there, which was erewhile full rich that they brought it to nothing”. And thus ended the year 870.

The year 871, a famous date in English history, “the year of battles,” the date of Alfred’s accession, now dawned upon the distracted land.130 Berkshire was the great battle-ground which was invaded in January by a Danish host fresh from the slaughter of St. Edmund and his East Anglians. They came to “the royal town which is called Reading,” situated on the southern bank of the Thames, took it and entrenched a camp on its southward side between Thames and Kennet. A party of plunderers headed by two jarls131 rode westwards as far as the little village of Englefield, about six miles from Reading, where they were stopped by Ethelwulf, ealdorman of Berkshire, who had taken up a position on a hill overlooking the valley of the Pang. In the encounter which followed, the Danes were defeated, one of the jarls named Sidroc was slain, and the scanty remnant of his troops crept back to the Danish camp at Reading. Four days after this engagement, the royal brothers Ethelred and Alfred, having mustered the troops of Wessex, came to Reading, cut off many of the straggling plunderers, and tried to storm the Danish camp. But the heathen made a fierce sally; the Christians were repulsed; the brave ealdorman Ethelwulf was slain, and the enemy held the field of slaughter.

Emboldened by this victory the Danes again sped westward, possibly intending to harry Somerset and Wiltshire, and occupied Aescesdune, which Asser translates “the hill of the ash,”132 and which has been generally identified with what are now known as the Downs or as Ashdown Hills. These are a chalk ridge some 600 or 700 feet in height, which runs for about ten miles east and west through the northern part of Berkshire and divides the valley of the Thames from that of the Kennet. The Saxons marched after the enemy in haste and both nations arrayed themselves for battle. The Danes held the higher ground: the centre of their army being commanded by their two kings, Halfdene, brother of Inguar, and Bagseg; while the wings were under the command of the numerous jarls who followed their standard. On the Saxon side it was arranged that Ethelred should encounter the kings and Alfred the jarls. But when the heathens began to march down the hill, and the Saxons should have received the word to spring forward to meet them, that signal was not given from the royal tent. There knelt Ethelred, listening to Mass, and refusing to stir till the rite was ended. “He would not,” he said, “abandon the service of God for that of men.” On Alfred, therefore, rested the responsibility of assuming the chief command and leading the whole army to battle. It is probable, though not distinctly so stated by Asser, that Ethelred, against whose personal courage no imputation is made, soon emerged from his tent and hastened after his fighting “fyrd” men. A single stunted thorn-tree, still standing apparently when Asser wrote, marked the spot where the clash of the opposing armies was deadliest and where the battle-shouts were heard the loudest. Long and desperate was the encounter, but at last, near night-fall, the Saxons prevailed and the heathens fled in utter confusion, leaving dead on the field Bagseg, the king, five jarls and many thousands of the rank and file, whose bodies covered the whole broad ridge of Ashdown.

It was a great victory, certainly, but like so many other battles in this strange campaign it was utterly indecisive. The Danes who had succeeded in reaching their stronghold, now marched southward, apparently threatening Winchester: Ethelred and Alfred followed them, and after another tough fight were defeated at Basing, near to the site of that far-famed “Loyalty House” which eight centuries later was held so gallantly and so long by the Marquis of Winchester for Charles I. against the army of the Parliament. The Danish victory at Basing, however, was, as we are expressly told, “a victory without spoils”. The invaders seem to have renounced their intended attack on Winchester and turned back to their entrenched camp at Reading. Two months pass, during which some of the nameless battles that bring the tale of this year’s conflicts up to nine, may have been fought. When the veil again lifts we find the Danes apparently attempting to turn the English left, marching the whole length of Berkshire to Hungerford, and seeking to penetrate into Wiltshire. The next battle was fought on the edge of Savernake Forest; Ethelred and Alfred each put their enemies to flight, “and far into the day they had the victory,” but after many had fallen on either side, the Danes held the field of slaughter. The chronicler’s entry is extremely enigmatical, and we are perhaps allowed to conjecture that in the moment of victory Ethelred received a mortal wound which changed the fortunes of the day, for our next entry is as follows: “And the Easter after King Ethelred died, having reigned five years, and his body lieth at Wimborne”. As we are told at the same time that “a mickle summer army came to Reading,” we may consider that two events stand out clearly in these April days of 871, the arrival from over-seas of a great fresh body of troops, who had not wintered in England, to reinforce their countrymen at Reading; and the death of King Ethelred, whose body was not taken to be buried in his own city of Winchester, but, probably owing to the disturbed state of the country, had to be interred in the nearer minster of Wimborne in Dorsetshire. There his epitaph (not contemporary) records that he died “by the hands of the pagans”.

The accession of Alfred to the throne, in 871, on his brother’s death, seems to have passed almost unnoticed in the deadly earnestness of the great encounter. There were battles at Reading and at Wilton, in which, as usual, the Saxons seemed to be on the point of winning when the Danes, turning at the right moment on their disorderly pursuers, changed defeat into victory, and kept possession of the battle-field. They were, however, by this time as much wearied and wasted by the events of this awful year as the Saxons themselves, with whom they now made peace, a peace which, as the historian remarks with surprise, they kept for four years unbroken.

During these years, however, from 872 to 875, they were greatly strengthening their hold on the northern kingdoms. After besieging London and putting it to a heavy ransom, they marched through Mercia, occupied successively Torksey on the Trent and Repton in Derbyshire, dethroned Alfred’s brother-in-law, Burhred (874), and set up in his stead “a foolish thegn named Ceolwulf,” who bound himself by oaths and hostages to hand Mercia back to his new lords whenever they should demand it. Burhred, heart-weary of the strife and the toil of his twenty-two years of reigning, went to the paradise of Anglo-Saxons, Rome, died there and was buried in the new church of St. Mary which Pope Leo IV. had built in the precincts of the Saxon school.

In the next year, 875, while part of the Danish force went to Cambridge and took up their quarters there, a vigorous detachment, headed by the fierce Halfdene, crossed the Tyne and invaded Bernicia, whose inhabitants had driven out a puppet-king named Egbert, reigning there as vassal of the Danes. This spasmodic stroke for liberty was cruelly avenged by the ravage of the till then unharried province. It was probably at this time that the Christian civilisation of Northumbria, such as we find it in the pages of Bede, received its death-stroke. Under the leadership of Halfdene, as Symeon of Durham informs us, the Danish army indulged in a wild revel of cruelty, first mocking and then slaying the servants and handmaidens of God, and in short spreading murder and conflagration from the eastern to the western sea. The devastation was not confined to the Anglian kingdom; the Picts on the north and the Britons of Strathclyde on the north-west shared in the general ruin.

This invasion of Halfdene’s set in motion a pilgrimage which was full of significance for the ecclesiastical history of Northumbria, the memorable migration of the body of Saint Cuthbert. Now, at last, under the terror of the pagan hosts, the little isle of Lindisfarne, which for 240 years had been the spiritual capital of Bernicia, relapsed into its pristine loneliness. Seeing the widespread ravage wrought by the heathen men, bishop Eardulf resolved on flight, but could not bear to leave behind the uncorrupted body of the patron saint. He called into council Edred, abbot of St. Cuthbert’s monastery at Carlisle, who reminded him of the saint’s own words: “Dig ye up my bones and find a home elsewhere as God may direct you, rather than consent to the iniquity of the schismatics”. St. Cuthbert’s forebodings perhaps pointed to a recrudescence of the Easter controversy, but the churchmen rightly held that they were applicable to the far more terrible invasion of the Danes. Accordingly they took up the body of the saint (still incorrupt, according to the legend): they took also its companion relics, the head of St. Oswald, some bones of St. Aidan and of the three bishops who followed him; and provided with these precious talismans they set forth on their first great pilgrimage. For eight years they wandered: at first like sheep over the moors of Northumbria; then they came down to the western coast at Workington, and were on the point of setting sail for Ireland when a wind which sprang up, as if by miracle, drove them back upon the shore. In the hurry of the abortive embarkation they dropped into the sea the precious and beautifully illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels, but miraculously recovered the treasure after many days. This manuscript is still preserved in the British Museum, showing stains as if of sea-water on its pages.

At last, in 883, five years after the peace which will mark the conclusion of this chapter, the uncorrupted body and its weary guardians found rest at the old Roman station of Chester-le-Street, eight miles south of Newcastle, under the shelter of the rule of a converted Dane, Guthred, son of Harthacnut. “He gave them,” says the chronicler, “all the land between Wear and Tyne for a perpetual possession, and ordained that the church which they were about to build should be constituted a sanctuary, that whosoever for any cause should flee to the saint’s body should have respite for thirty-seven days from his pursuers.” Such were the magnificent possessions and privileges bestowed on the minster which now rose at Chester-le-Street by the old Roman highway, and which, after a little more than a century, were to be transferred in 995 to the more famous sanctuary at Durham.

The year 876 marked the end of the truce and the renewal of the Danish attacks on Wessex. Three Danish kings, one of whom was the famous Guthrum, after wintering in Cambridge, stole past the West Saxon fyrd, and apparently by a series of night marches succeeded in reaching Wareham. Here, surrounded by the rivers Piddle and Frome, they could feel themselves as secure as in the islands of Thanet or Sheppey. Worsted, however, by blockade rather than by battle, the Danish kings came to terms with Alfred. They gave hostages once more of their most honourable men and swore upon a certain sacred armlet—an oath, says the chronicler, which they had never given to any other people—that they would truly depart out of the kingdom. Not all of “the army,” however, kept this solemn compact. Hostages and oath notwithstanding, the mounted men rode off to Exeter and entrenched themselves there. King Alfred’s pursuit with the infantry of the fyrd was vain. Fortunately, however, the fleet which should have co-operated with the Danes was overtaken by a fierce storm, and 120 ships filled with warriors were dashed to pieces on the rocks of Purbeck. Disheartened by this calamity, the Northmen at Exeter once more swore great oaths, gave hostages and marched forth from Wessex to their own now vassal kingdom of Mercia.

This happened in the autumn of 877. Soon after Twelfth night, at the beginning of 878, another gang of plunderers came suddenly to the “royal villa” of Chippenham, probably hoping to capture the king himself. With a small band of followers Alfred escaped to the woods and morasses of Athelney in Somerset; but though they thus missed their chief prize, this invasion of Wessex, for some reason unknown to us, came nearer to success than any which had preceded it. From Chippenham as a centre the Danes harried the country far and wide; they drove many of the inhabitants across the sea; those who remained had to accept them as their lords; it seemed as if Wessex would have to follow the example of Mercia and Northumbria, and bow its neck to the Danish yoke. Meanwhile Alfred, in the little island of Athelney—an island then, because surrounded on all sides by marshes, but an island now no longer—was gathering his faithful followers round him and quietly preparing for the recovery of his throne.133 The little band of his followers wrought at the construction of a rude fortress, which was finished by Easter, and which proved impregnable by the heathen assailants. Behind this earthwork the West Saxon king “greatly stood at bay,” and from hence he and the men of the Somerset fyrd, who gathered round him under their ealdorman Ethelnoth, made several successful sallies against the enemy.

Ere long there came to cheer them the tidings of a great victory gained by the men of Devon, near Bideford Bay, over a Danish army which seems to have been commanded by Ubba, the murderer of St. Edmund. After wintering in South Wales, Ubba had crossed the Bristol Channel, landed in Devonshire and besieged the soldiers of the fyrd in a poorly fortified stronghold which they had constructed and which was called Cynuit.134 The fort had no spring of water near it, and the victory of the invaders seemed assured, but despair gave courage to the besieged, who sallied forth at dawn, took the besiegers by surprise, and slew of them eight hundred. Only a scanty remnant escaped to their ships; the great raven standard, the flapping of whose wings betokened victory, was taken, and Ubba himself was among the slain. The death of the royal martyr of East Anglia was thus at length avenged.

At last, close upon Whitsuntide, Alfred emerged from the forest of Selwood, which seems to have hitherto served him as cover, collected round him at “Egbert’s Stone” the men of three counties, Somerset, Wilts and Hants (who, as the chronicler beautifully says, “were fain of their recovered king”), and by two days’ marches came up with the Danish army at Ethandune.135 Here he won a crushing victory. The Danes fled to their fortified camp, probably at Chippenham; Alfred pursued them, shut them up in their stronghold and besieged it for a fortnight. Then came offers of submission, and a promise to withdraw from Wessex. Hostages and oaths were again offered to the conqueror, and—what was more significant—“the army promised that their king, Guthrum, should receive the rite of baptism”.

Alfred returned to the neighbourhood of Athelney, and there waited for the pagan chief’s fulfilment of his promise. He was not disappointed; Guthrum came with thirty of his chiefs to Aller, near Athelney, was baptised and received in rising from the font the Saxon name of Athelstan. It is probable, though not expressly stated, that his thirty warriors were baptised with him. The two kings then went together to Wedmore, a royal vill under the Mendips, where Alfred for twelve nights gave the new convert hospitable entertainment. Guthrum-Athelstan laid aside the white robes of the catechumen at the end of a week, and departed laden with gifts by his spiritual father. “The army” cleared out of Wessex and marched to Cirencester. The most dangerous of Alfred’s wars with the Danes was ended, and the land had rest for fourteen years.