It was in the midst of incessant warfare that Alfred ascended the throne of Wessex. Ethelred, his brother, died a few months after the battle of Ashdune, and in the same year, that in which Alfred came to the throne, no less than nine general battles were fought between Wessex and the Danes. Both armies were exhausted, and a peace was patched up between them, the Danish army withdrawing to the east and north, and leaving Wessex for a short time in peace. But they drove King Burhred out of Mercia, and overseas to Rome, where he soon afterwards died. He was buried in the church belonging to an English school which had been founded in the city by the Saxon pilgrims and students who had taken refuge in Rome from the troubles in England.

It would seem that Alfred’s chief troubles during the years following were caused by the fierce sons of Ragnar Lodbrog, brothers of Ivar the Boneless of Northumbria. These three brothers, Halfdene, Ivar, and Ubba, overran the whole country, appearing with great rapidity at different points, so that, as one historian says, they were no sooner pushed from one district than they reappeared in another. Alfred tried by every means to disperse the Danish army. He made them swear over holy relics to depart, but their promise was hardly given before it was broken again; he raised a fleet after their own pattern and attacked them at sea; and he laid siege to Exeter, where they had entrenched themselves, cutting off their provisions and means of retreat. It was like fighting a swarm of flies; however many were killed, more came overseas to take their place. “For nine successive years,” writes William of Malmesbury, “he was battling with his enemies, sometimes deceived by false treaties, and sometimes wreaking his vengeance on the deceivers, till he was at last reduced to such extreme distress that scarcely three counties, that is to say, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, stood fast by their allegiance.” He was compelled to retreat to the Isle of Athelney, where, supporting himself by fishing and forage, he, with a few faithful followers, led an unquiet life amid the marshes, awaiting the time when a better fortune should enable them to recover the lost kingdom. One hard-won treasure they had with them in their island fortress. This was the famous Raven Banner, the war-flag which the three sisters of Ivar and Ubba, Lodbrog’s daughters, had woven in one day for their brothers. It was believed by them that in every battle which they undertook the banner would spread like a flying raven if they were to gain the victory; but if they were fated to be defeated it would hang down motionless. This flag was taken from the brothers in Devon at the battle in which Ubba was slain, and much booty with it. No doubt it was cherished as an omen of future victory by the followers of the unfortunate Alfred in their retreat.

But Alfred was not idle. Slowly but surely he gathered around him a devoted band, and his public reappearance in Wiltshire some months afterwards, in the spring or summer of 878, was the signal for the joyous return to him of a great body of his subjects. With a large army he struck camp, meeting the foe at Eddington or Ethandun, and there defeated the pagans in so decisive a battle that after fourteen days of misery, “driven by famine, cold, fear, and last of all by despair, they prayed for peace, promising to give the King as many hostages as he desired, but asking for none in return.” “Never before,” writes Asser, “had they concluded such an ignominious treaty with any enemy,” and the king, taking pity on them, received such hostages as they chose to give, and what was more important, a promise from them that they would leave the kingdom immediately. Such promises had been given by the Danes before, and had not been kept. But the Danish chief or prince with whom Alfred was now dealing was of a different type from the sons of Ragnar. He was a man of high position and character; not a viking in the usual sense, for he had been born in England, where his father had settled and been baptized, and Alfred knew that in Gorm, or Guthrum, he had a foe whom he could both respect for his courage and depend on for his fidelity.

This Gorm is called in the Northern chronicles, “Gorm the Englishman,” on account of his birth and long sojourn in this country. Though a prince of Denmark, he had spent a great part of his life in England, and he had held the Danes together, and been their leader in many of their victories against Alfred. It was during his absence from England, when he had been forced to go back to Denmark to bring things into order in his own kingdom, that the English had gathered courage, under Alfred’s leadership, to revolt against him. His absence was short, but he was unable on his return to recover his former power, and the result was the great defeat of the Danes of which we have just spoken. It had been one of Alfred’s stipulations that Gorm, or Guthrum (as he was called in England), should become a Christian; this he consented to do, the more inclined, perhaps, because his father had been baptized before him; accordingly, three weeks after the battle, King Gorm, with about thirty of his most distinguished followers, repaired to Alfred at a place near Athelney, where he was baptized, Alfred himself acting as his godfather. After his baptism, he remained for twelve days with the King at the royal seat of Wedmore; and Alfred gave him and his followers many gifts, and they parted as old friends. His baptismal name was Athelstan. For a time he seems to have remained in East Anglia, and settled that country; but soon afterwards he returned to his own kingdom, where the attachment of his people seems to have been all the greater on account of his ill-luck in England. Though he irretrievably lost his hold on this country, he remained firmly seated on the throne of Denmark. He was the ancestor of Canute the Great, joint King of Denmark and of England, who regained all, and more than all, that his great-grandfather had lost in this country, for Canute ruled, not over a portion of England, but over an undivided kingdom. Gorm died in 890.

The latter part of Alfred’s reign was devoted to the affairs of his country. He gave his people good laws; dividing the kingdom into divisions called “hundreds” and “tythings,” which exercised a sort of internal jurisdiction over their own affairs. He rebuilt London, and over the whole of his kingdom he caused houses to be built, good and dignified beyond any that had hitherto been known in the land. He encouraged industries of all kinds, and had the artificers taught new and better methods of work in metals and gold. He encouraged religion and learning, inviting good and learned men from abroad or wherever he could hear of them, and richly rewarding their efforts. He devoted much time to prayer; but his wise and sane mind prevented him from becoming a bigot, as his activity in practical affairs prevented him from becoming a mere pedant. One of his most lasting works was the establishment of England’s first navy, to guard her shores against the attacks of foreigners. All these great reforms were carried out amid much personal suffering, for from his youth he had been afflicted with an internal complaint, beyond the surgical knowledge of his day to cure, and he was in constant pain of a kind so excruciating that Asser tells us the dread of its return tortured his mind even when his body was in comparative rest. There is in English history no character which combines so many great qualities as that of Alfred. Within and without he found his kingdom in peril and misery, crushed down, ignorant and without religion; he left it a flourishing and peaceful country, united and at rest. When his son, Edward the Elder, succeeded him on the throne, not only Wessex but the whole North of England, with the Scots, took him “for father and lord”; that is, they accepted him, for the first time in history, as king of a united England. This great change was the outcome of the many years of patient building up of his country which Alfred had brought about through wise rule. He was open-handed and liberal to all, dividing his revenue into two parts, one half of which he kept for his own necessities and the uses of the kingdom and for building noble edifices; the other for the poor, the encouragement of learning, and the support and foundation of monasteries. He took a keen interest in a school for the young nobles which he founded and endowed, determining that others should not, in their desire for learning, meet with the same difficulties that he had himself experienced. In his childhood it had not been thought necessary that even princes and men of rank should be taught to read; and the story is familiar to all that he was enticed to a longing for knowledge by the promise of his stepmother Judith, daughter of the King of the Franks, who had been educated abroad, that she would give a book of Saxon poetry which she had shown to him and his brother to whichever of them could first learn to read it and repeat the poetry by heart. Alfred seems to have learned Latin from Asser, for he translated several famous books into Saxon, so that his people might attain a knowledge of their contents without the labour through which he himself had gone. When we consider that he was also, as William of Malmesbury tells us, “present in every action against the enemy even up to the end of his life, ever daunting the invaders, and inspiring his subjects with the signal display of his courage,” we may well admire the indomitable energy of this man. In his old age he caused candles to be made with twenty-four divisions, to keep him aware of the lapse of time and help him to allot it to special duties. One of his attendants was always at hand to warn him how his candle was burning, and to remind him of the special duty he was accustomed to perform at any particular hour of the day or night.

The latter years of Alfred were comparatively free from incursions by the Danes or Norsemen; this was the period during which the attention of the Norse was attracted in other directions. The conquests of Rollo or Rolf the Ganger or “the Walker” in the North of France were attracting a large body of the more turbulent spirits to those shores which in after-times they were to call Normandy, or the land of the Northmen. After Gorm the Englishman’s submission to Alfred many of the Danes from England seem to have joined these fresh bands of marauders, advancing up the Seine to Paris, and devastating the country as far as the Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Marne on the east and Brittany on the west. In time to come, under Rollo’s descendant, William the Conqueror, these people were once more to pour down upon English shores and reconquer the land that their forefathers had lost through Alfred’s bravery and statesmanship. Rollo overran Normandy for the first time in the year 876,11 and William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey in 1066, nearly two hundred years later. William’s genealogy was as follows:—He was son of Robert the Magnificent, second son of Richard the Good, son of Richard the Fearless, son of William Longsword, son of Rollo or Rolf the Walker—six generations. The direct connexion between the Anglo-Norman houses was through Emma, daughter of Richard the Fearless, who married first Ethelred the Unready, King of England, and afterwards his enemy and successor, Canute the Great. It was on account of this connexion that William the Conqueror laid claim to the Crown of England.