ALFRED THE GREAT
[Illustration: KING ALFRED’S JEWEL]
[Illustration: BRITAIN IN TIME OF ALFRED]
Alfred the Great
CONTAINING
Chapters on his Life and Times
BY
MR. FREDERIC HARRISON, THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL
PROFESSOR CHARLES OMAN, SIR CLEMENTS MARKHAM
THE REV. PROFESSOR EARLE, SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK
AND THE REV. W. J. LOFTIE; ALSO CONTAINING
AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR WALTER BESANT
AND A POEM BY THE POET LAUREATE
EDITED, WITH PREFACE, BY
ALFRED BOWKER
MAYOR OF WINCHESTER
1897-98
‘_This will I say—that I have sought to live worthily the while I lived,
and after my life to leave to the men that come after me
a remembering of me in good works._’
LONDON
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1899
TO
Her Majesty the Queen
BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION
THIS VOLUME
IS
DEDICATED
THE SPOTLESS KING
I
Some lights there be within the Heavenly Spheres
Yet unrevealed, the interspace so vast:
So through the distance of a thousand years
Alfred’s full radiance shines on us at last.
II
Star of the spotless fame, from far-off skies
Teaching this truth, too long not understood,
That only they are worthy who are wise,
And none are truly great that are not good.
III
Of valour, virtue, letters, learning, law,
Pattern and prince, His name will now abide,
Long as of conscience Rulers live in awe,
And love of country is their only pride.
IV
But with His name four other names attune,
Which from oblivion guardian Song may save;
Lone Athelney, victorious Ethandune,
Wantage his cradle, Winchester his grave.
ALFRED AUSTIN.
PREFACE
Now that we are fast approaching the one thousandth anniversary of the
death of our greatest sovereign of the past—“King Alfred,” whom it is
the laudable desire of many of Her Majesty’s subjects and others to
commemorate fittingly—this book, which bears the king’s name, and is
written in honour of the king, and is intended to present what is known
of the king’s achievements and his claim on the gratitude and love of the
English-speaking race, would hardly seem to demand a preface.
To some minds, however, this small book, if it appeared without a
word of preface, might seem insufficiently comprehensive; it may be
well, therefore, to explain shortly the motive for its production. The
International Committee organising this Commemoration have considered
it very advisable that a publication should be issued with a view to
diffusing, as widely as possible, public knowledge of the king’s life
and work. This being the sole object, it became essential that the book
should not be costly, but within the reach of all. Therefore it was
also necessary to restrict its scope; numerous subjects and possible
illustrations of interest have been left for a full and complete
biography of the great king.
At the same time, it is hoped that the chapters which follow will enable
the general reader to create in his own mind a figure, a mind, a history,
worthy of the king and equal to the occasion. The general introduction
is, in substance, the address delivered in the Guildhall of Winchester by
Sir Walter Besant at the first public meeting held to lay the foundation
stone of this Commemoration. The names of those who have contributed
chapters are a guarantee that the reader is in good hands; the subjects
of these chapters show a fairly complete division of the various lines in
which Alfred achieved greatness.
Whilst taking this opportunity of placing on record my very cordial
thanks to the contributors for their gifts, especially to Sir Walter
Besant, and to the Lord Bishop of Winchester for kindly advice, I feel
that my thanks alone would indeed be a poor requite; but our readers, of
whatever station, whether high or low, by assisting to the best of their
ability in the forthcoming Commemoration, which is veritably that of
one thousand years of many of our institutions, of our government, and
our national existence, will be expressing gratitude and thanks more
acceptable than words of mine can convey.
It may seem strange to some readers that by chance no full account
is given of Asser’s anecdote of the scene between the king and the
herdswoman in the Isle of Athelney, where he took refuge, but as the
story is known to all, its omission may perhaps be pardoned; it is
certainly not due to any lack of interest in the story, which seems
so strikingly to show that at times, maybe when the king was resting
or sitting by the fire mending his bows and weapons, he would become
absorbed in the one thought foremost in his mind—that of the welfare of
his country and people, then sorely harassed and oppressed by the Danes,
and so neglected the homely duty that was present.
I have, further, to draw the reader’s attention to the circular at
the end of the book, but it is not necessary for me to point out the
advisability, or to detail the many praiseworthy reasons, for the
erection of memorials to illustrious dead, stimulating and encouraging as
they are to succeeding generations, engendering patriotic sentiments, and
recalling to us the history of the past by which knowledge is weighed and
gained, and that from the lesson we learn almost unwittingly to shape and
guide our future steps.
In conclusion, I would express a hope that the following chapters will be
read far and wide with as much pleasure and profit as they have been by
myself, and that through their agency, and out of public subscription, we
may soon see rising in the heart of the capital of Wessex, worthy not of
England alone, but of the English-speaking race, a memorial to one who
may rightly be regarded as one of the principal founders of the English
nation and its language, a pioneer of improvement, liberty, learning and
education, and who, though a thousand years have sped, still forms a
mighty beacon of all the highest aims and the noblest aspirations that
may dominate the hearts of men.
A. B.
_1st May 1899._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION, by Sir Walter Besant, F.S.A. 1
ALFRED AS KING, by Frederic Harrison, Hon. Fellow of Wadham
College, Oxford 39
ALFRED AS A RELIGIOUS MAN AND AN EDUCATIONALIST, by the Right
Rev. the Lord Bishop of Bristol 69
ALFRED AS A WARRIOR, by Charles Oman, M.A., F.S.A., Fellow of
All Souls, Oxford 115
ALFRED AS A GEOGRAPHER, by Sir Clements Markham, K.C.B., President
of the Royal Geographical Society 149
ALFRED AS A WRITER, by Rev. John Earle, Professor of Anglo-Saxon,
Oxford 169
ENGLISH LAW BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST, by Sir Frederick Pollock,
Bart., Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence 207
ALFRED AND THE ARTS, by Rev. W. J. Loftie, F.S.A. 241
INDEX 259
INTRODUCTION
In writing an Introduction to the chapters which follow, I shall not be
expected to contribute any new facts to the life of the great king. As
for any new facts, the time has long gone by when anything new could be
discovered concerning the great king of whom I have to speak. The tale of
Alfred is a twice-told tale: but it is a tale that should be always fresh
and new, because at every point it concerns every successive generation
of English-speaking people. Happily it is not the whole life of Alfred
that we have to consider in this place: it is the example of that life:
the things that Alfred invented and achieved during that short life for
his own generation; things which have lasted to our own day, and still
bear fruit and golden sheaves. I should like to proceed at once to
those achievements, but it is absolutely necessary first that we should
understand some of the conditions of the time: the troubles and the
struggles: the overthrow and ruin with which Alfred’s reign began: the
apparent hopelessness of the situation changed by the unexpected uprising
of one man: and the rapid development of this man as Captain, Conqueror,
Administrator, and Teacher. This done, we shall be in a position to
receive the King as an example that should abide with the people still,
and should still continue to shape the lives and inspire the minds of his
race.
In order to prevent long explanations, and to illustrate at the outset
some of the conditions of England when Alfred was born into the world,
I have caused a small map to be drawn. You will see that the island is
divided up into many nations. There is first the Kingdom of Kent, founded
by the Jutes, who never extended themselves: then the Kingdom of Wessex
or of the West Saxons, who by this time had absorbed the Kingdom of Essex
or East Saxons, and of Sussex or South Saxons. The modern counties of
Norfolk and Suffolk form the Kingdom of East Anglia—founded by Angles,
a people closely allied to Jutes and Saxons: the middle of England is
Mercia, the Kingdom of the March or boundary—the Mercians were also
Angles. On the north is the Kingdom of Northumbria, also founded by
Angles. The West of England is wholly occupied by Strathclyde, Wales,
and Cornwall, all kingdoms of the Britons or Welsh who remained still
unconquered. In Scotland the Highlands were occupied by the Picts, and a
part of the west was peopled by the Scots who crossed over from Ireland.
The Angles therefore occupied the middle, the north, and the east; they
gave their own name to the whole country—Angle-land or England: the
Saxons occupied the south, with the exception of Kent: the Welsh still
held nearly the whole of the west: but their territories were separated
and cut into three parts. If we look backwards and forwards in history
during these centuries we shall find the map of our island constantly
changing. But still we may take this map fairly to represent the country
as it was in the time of Alfred—eight distinct nations in it: three
of them composed of Angles, who were not on that account allies: one
containing Jutes: one of Saxons: three of Welsh. These so-called nations
shifted their borders continually: they fought their neighbours: they
split up and fought each other: there was no coherence or stability among
them: some of them adopted Christianity and then relapsed: some of them
remained pagans.
These were the tribes or nations in the land.
Let us next consider what manner of men it was over whom Alfred was
called upon to rule. In order to get at this knowledge we must inquire
of their religion, their laws, and their customs. As for their religion,
before they became Christians, it was a fierce and cruel religion,
although it was full of imagination, as was to be expected of a people
in whose minds the noblest poetry was slumbering. There were Gods who
created and invented: Gods who gave life and inspired love: Gods who sent
the thunder and the storm: Gods who brought the spring and the sunshine,
the fruit, and the harvest. There were evil Gods—the Gods of Death, who
killed men: the Gods of Disease, who tortured men: the Gods of the Sea
and the River, who drowned men: the Gods of Battle, who struck men with
cowardice, and weighed down their hands so that they could not strike.
There were humbler deities—spirits of the stream, the woods, and the
hills—for the most part hostile to men and malignant, because in certain
stages of civilisation the unknown forces of Nature present themselves
as personal deities who are always hostile to man—according to the Greek
legend, for instance, he who met the great God Pan face to face fell down
dead. They believed in raising spirits and in spectres, much as some of
us do now: they believed in witches and in witchcraft: in magic and in
charms: in love philtres: in divination: in lucky days. In a word, the
Anglo-Saxon was full of the superstitions which belonged to his age.
There was, however—I venture to read between the lines—one saving
clause. The Anglo-Saxon was not only afraid of the unknown, which caused
him to invent malignant deities, but in his mind the God of Creation
was stronger than the God of Destruction. There is hope for a people
while that belief survives. Long after he became a Christian the Saxon
continued to retain his old beliefs under other names: he saw and
conversed in imagination with the old deities whom he had forsaken: they
spoke to him in the thunder: he saw their forms in the flying cloud,
in the splendour of the sunset: he heard their whispers in the woods:
they came to him in dreams. Religion, to the Anglo-Saxon, was a thing
more real, more present, than it has ever been to any people except
the Russian and the Jew. This is perhaps the most important point to
be observed in the character of Alfred’s people. They were profoundly
influenced by their religion. In the eighth century, when Christianity
was spread over the south and the middle of the country, all classes
began to long after the religious life as they understood it. Kings and
Queens—there were ten Kings and eleven Queens—Princes and Princesses,
nobles and freemen—all who could be received, crowded into the
monasteries: they were eager for the life of meditation and of prayer:
they made the cloisters rich: they filled the monastic houses with gold
and silver plate and rich treasure. When the Danish invasion began, the
Danes very soon found out that it was the monastery, and not the town,
which they should sack: and at the same time the people found out that
the full monastery meant the shrunken army. It has been said that the
Anglo-Saxon never changes. In this respect at least he has never changed.
Through all the changes and chances of a thousand years, wherever he has
penetrated, wherever he has settled, he has carried with him the same
earnestness and the same reality of religion.
We must also note, next to the earnestness of his religious belief,
the freedom of his institutions. The liberties of our race, which have
become to us like the very air we breathe, so that we are not even
conscious of them, were not wrested by the people from reluctant kings.
These liberties had always been with them from the prehistoric times
when the family was the unit, and when custom was the only kind of law.
Among their primitive customs were the first rude forms of their free
institutions. From the Forests of North Germany, from the mouth of the
Elbe, not from any king, came the right of free meeting: the right of
free speech: the right of free thought: the right of free work.
Next, as a people the Saxons were also fond of music, singing, poetry:
the quicker witted Norman despised the Saxon as slow of understanding.
Perhaps: but the Saxon proved himself in the long-run far more capable
of enthusiasm, of loyalty, of patriotism, of sacrifice, of all those
actions and emotions which spring from the imagination and produce
forces united and irresistible. Remember that the whole of our literature
is Anglo-Saxon; none of it is Norman. There is not one great Norman poet.
No Norman literature was produced on this our Anglo-Saxon soil.
The next characteristic of this people is less picturesque. They were
obstinate. Now obstinacy, if we think of it, is one of the most useful
and valuable qualities that can be planted in the breast of man. It has
many names: it is called by its friends firmness: under any name it is
the tenacious man who wins in the long-run.
They were essentially an outdoor people: they loved all manner of outdoor
sports: all classes were hunters, hawkers, fishers, trappers: the country
was full of creatures to hunt: there were in the forests wolves, bears,
wild bulls, and stags: they loved the free air of the open hillside:
and they hated towns. It was many years after their settlement in this
country before they ceased to feel the old terror of the magic which,
they thought, could be practised within the walls of a city.
As regards the Anglo-Saxon women, it is pleasant to learn that the very
same virtues which are now conspicuous in our own women of the present
day were conspicuous in them. She was, as Thomas Wright says, “An
attentive housewife: a tender companion: the comforter and consoler of
her husband and her family: the virtuous and noble matron.” In all ranks,
from the queen to the farmer’s wife, we find the lady of the household
attending to her household duties. They were more learned than the men:
they could recite and sing the poetry of their native bards: they were
skilful in playing the harp: and in embroidery and needlework of all
kinds the work of the Anglo-Saxon ladies was in demand all over Western
Europe.
The Anglo-Saxon, therefore, had many virtues. He had also, we must
confess, his faults, which were conspicuous as well as numerous. He
was slothful of mind: he was always ready to sink back to the ancient
seclusion of the village and the forest: he was conservative, and thought
the old ways would last for ever: he was a great drinker—in drinking,
except among the Danes, he had no equal: he would drink for days together
almost without stopping: even the priests did not escape the universal
vice: they were admonished by the bishops not to say mass unless they
were sober: his hospitality consisted chiefly in making the guests drunk.
The Saxons, again, have been charged with cruelty—certainly very terrible
things were done, but we cannot expect a people to be before their age:
it was a cruel age. Frenchman, Norman, Dane, Saxon: all alike were cruel
in their punishments: but these things belong to the time. Let us acquit
the people of Wessex of more than their share of the average cruelty. The
stories told of the Danes, for example, are almost incredible, whether
for the cruelty of the torture, or for the endurance of the victim.
When we say that the Anglo-Saxon was a free man, and governed by free
laws, we must not imagine him to be a Republican of the nineteenth
century. Nor must we conclude that the Anglo-Saxon was a democrat, as
we understand democracy. He had his king over him, to begin with: and
the king was not elected by the people from among themselves, as the
President of a Republic; he succeeded because he belonged to the Royal
blood. He was even allowed, long after they were Christians, to be
descended from the Gods: the people consented to his succession, but
they did not elect him. As king he had very large powers, and these were
undefined: men had not yet begun to question the Royal Prerogative: above
all, he was their captain: he led the army: he fought with the army.
In a word, the Anglo-Saxon of the ninth century was in essentials very
much like his descendant of the present day. He was religious: he was a
lover of order: he was a good fighting man: he was fond of outdoor sports
and occupations: he was tenacious of his freedom: he was imaginative,
poetical, and dreamy: he was fond of music: he was still full of the old
traditions and superstitions which ruled his life, long after he had
become a Christian. This is a general summary of his character. In one
virtue he was as yet wanting. We must not expect in him what we call the
national and patriotic sentiment. The man of Wessex was the enemy of the
man of Mercia: the north stood aloof from the south: there was no England
or Britain: there was only a large island divided among eight nations,
or ten nations, or five nations, according to the year of the Lord: some
of them spoke the same tongue: all the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons had
similar institutions: nevertheless they were enemies. You remember, two
hundred years later on, how London accepted the rule, first, of Cnut the
Dane: and, next, of William the Norman. Both of them were what we should
call foreigners. There was no such feeling then. To the Londoner it
mattered little whether his king was Mercian, Northumbrian, Saxon, Jute,
Dane, or Norman. London received kings from all these people. There was
not yet any feeling existing for the country as a whole. It was part of
the work of Alfred, unseen and unsuspected, to make it possible to weld
the different nations into one: to create little by little the love of
country in place of the old loyalty to the tribe.
Let us concede that Alfred fought, not for England, but for Wessex. In
doing so, it is true, he fought for all England, but perhaps without
his knowledge. In the same way David fought first for his own little
country—for Judea—and made it possible for his successor to create one
great country, of which Judea was the centre.
I have lingered a long time over the character of the people whom Alfred
was called upon to rule. Without this knowledge it is impossible to
understand what the king did and why he did it, and in what respects his
work is so truly remarkable and wonderful. Let us now pass on to the
history itself, and first, naturally, to the invasions of the Danes.
It was in the year 832—seventeen years before the birth of Alfred—that
the Danes first made their appearance on these shores. Their incursions
began and continued exactly in the same way as those of the Saxons
themselves 400 years before. They came over in their ships: they found
the north seas without defence: they found no fleets guarding the
island from the pirates, as of old: the people, ready to believe that
things would go on for ever unaltered, had actually abandoned their
ships; had lost the art of ship-building; and were no longer accustomed
to the sea. The Danish fleet swooped down upon the coast: harried the
country: murdered the people: sacked the monasteries and the churches,
and went away again. They found the coast, like the seas, defenceless:
the monastic houses had drained the country of the fighting nobles: the
warlike spirit of the people was wasting itself in petty tribal wars.
The Danes, until the old spirit returned, were far more than a match for
the Saxons. They appeared suddenly, without warning, now on the coast
of Kent: now on that of Dorsetshire: now at the mouth of the Parret, in
Somerset: now up the Thames: now at Southampton: they came in fleets of
a hundred and fifty ships, carrying each sixty or seventy warriors: an
army greater than anything that could be hastily got together against
them: by the time that an army was collected the Danes had gone, leaving
ruined churches: villages destroyed by fire: monasteries pillaged of
their treasures: and murdered monks lying beside the scattered relics,
which could not protect them. The Danes, their foray over, had gone off,
bearing their treasures with them, to their own country. Next year they
landed again: but on another part of the island.
This yearly invasion of the Danes lasted for twenty years. They always
made straight for the nearest monasteries, which they sacked: there were
not many towns in Saxon England; but there were some—Canterbury, London,
Southampton, York—they attacked these, seized, plundered, and left them
in ruins. For twenty years they came every year: sometimes we hear of a
victory over them: but still they came again: there was never a victory
so decisive as to keep them from returning in ever-increasing numbers.
Then they began to stay in the country: they left off going home in the
autumn: they established themselves in winter quarters, first on Sheppey
Island, then on the Isle of Thanet: then in Norfolk. Then they went
farther afield. In a word, they overran and conquered East Anglia: then
the Kingdom of Northumbria: then that of Mercia: then the united Kingdoms
of Wessex and Kent. It was at this crisis, when all the power of the
Danes was brought to bear against Wessex and Kent, Alfred succeeded to
the throne. His father and his four brothers, kings one after the other,
had spent their lives in vainly beating back hordes of the Danes, who
returned year after year. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes the best of
occasional victories, but the fact remains that every year the invaders
became stronger and the defenders became weaker. The King of Mercia at
last gave up the struggle and went to Rome, to adopt the religious life,
leaving his wife behind. Alfred might have done the same thing, and it
would not have been imputed unto him for cowardice, but for godliness.
Happily for England he did not. The Danes had seized Chippenham, in
Wiltshire, and made that place their stronghold and headquarters. From
Chippenham they sent out their light troops, moving rapidly here and
there, devastating and murdering. For nine long years, growing every
year weaker, Alfred fought them: in one year he fought nine battles. At
the end of that time he found himself deserted, save for a few faithful
followers: his country prostrate: everything in the hands of the enemy:
his cause lost, and apparently no loop-hole or glimmer of hope left of
recovery. No darker or more gloomy time ever fell upon this country.
Everywhere the churches and the monasteries were pillaged and destroyed.
All those—bishops, priests, monks, and nuns—who could get away had
fled, carrying with them such of their treasures as they could convey.
The towns were in ruins: the farms were deserted: the people had lost
hope and heart: they bowed their heads and entered into slavery: their
religion was destroyed with the flight or the murder of their priests.
Their arts, their learning, their civilisation, all that they had once
possessed, were destroyed in those nine years’ warfare: destroyed and
gone—it seemed for ever. And the king, with his wife and her sister, and
his children, and the few who still remained with him, had taken refuge
on a little hill rising out of a broad marsh, whither the enemy could not
follow him.
In the after years Alfred was fond of talking over this time of
desolation: he would recall the visions that came to him, and not only
to him but to his wife as well: they both saw visions of consolation and
of promise. Saint Cuthbert himself stood beside his bed and comforted
him with promise of victory and honour. We can very well believe the
vision. To Alfred: to his wife: the aid of the Saints was a thing to be
invoked and to be looked for. Did they not pray daily for the help of
the Saints? And who should aid the Saxons in their trouble but their
greatest Saint—Cuthbert himself? In the sleep or the waking of night,
what more natural than that Alfred should imagine that he saw and spoke
with the Saint himself? To those who drive or walk across the dreary
level of Sedgemoor, now drained by its deep dykes, and dotted with its
village churches, there rises on the right hand the low hill of Athelney.
One can realise, looking upon this hill across the flat land, which was
once covered with bogs and quagmires, and reeds bending before the wind,
how complete was the defeat of the king: how complete the victory of
the Danes; which should drive Alfred to seek such a refuge. The Danish
Conquest, like the Norman Conquest two hundred years later, seemed an
achievement accomplished. No further opposition: no one asked what had
become of Alfred—he had run away to Rome: he had gone into a monastery,
perhaps: everywhere the Danes all over the country reported submission
and the acceptance of their rule. And the old gods had come back again,
Woden, and Thor, and Friga, and the rest: and again the fires flamed upon
the high places, and the children were passed through them, and all the
Christian saints had fled.
Alfred remained inactive during the whole long winter. It was the rule of
the old Kriegs Spiel, the war game of that time, that the armies should
not go forth to fight in winter. The men would have refused to go out in
the cold season. In fact, they could not. The country was covered with
uncleared forests: the roads in winter were deep tracks of mud: it was
impossible for the men to sleep on the cold, wet ground. The delay suited
Alfred: he wanted time to organise a rising in force: he sent messengers
to the Somersetshire people, among whom, in winter quarters, were lying
few or none of the Danish conquerors: he bade them make ready for the
spring: he ordered those of the thanes who were still left to come to him
at Athelney: and in May, when the spring arrived, Alfred appeared once
more as one risen from the dead: once more he raised the Wessex standard
of the Golden Dragon: once more the people, taking renewed courage,
flocked together: as he marched along they joined him, the fugitives
from the woods and those who had been made slaves in their own farms, and
swelled his force.
What follows is like a dream. Or it is like the uprising of the French
under Joan of Arc. There had been nine years of continuous defeat.
The people had lost heart: they had apparently given in. Yet, on the
reappearance of their king, they sprang to arms once more: they followed
him with one consent, and on the first encounter with the Danes they
inflicted upon them a defeat so crushing that they never rallied again.
In one battle, on one field, the country was recovered. In a single
fortnight after this battle the Danes were turned out of Wessex. Alfred
had recovered the whole of his own country, and acquired in addition a
large part of Mercia.
It is significant to read that the Danish chieftain became a Christian,
and was baptized. Do you suppose that he weighed the arguments and
listened to the history and the doctrines of the new religion? Not at
all. He perceived—this logical pagan—that King Alfred’s Gods had shown
their superiority over his own in a manner so unexpected, so amazing,
and so decisive, that he hesitated no longer. He acknowledged that
superiority; he was baptized, and he never afterwards relapsed.
Alfred had got back his kingdom. It remained for him to recover it in
a fuller and a larger sense: to restore its former prosperity and its
ancient strength.
He began by recognising the separate rights of the Mercians. He would
not call himself King of Mercia. He placed his son-in-law Ethelred as
Earl of Mercia, and because London was at that time considered a Mercian
city, Ethelred took up his residence there as soon as the Danes had gone
out. The condition of London was as desolate and as ruinous as that of
the whole country. The walls were falling down: there was no trade: there
were no ships in the river: no merchandise on the wharves: there were
no people in the streets, save the Danish soldiers and the slaves who
worked for them. Alfred restored the walls: rebuilt the gates: brought
back trade and merchants: repaired the Bridge, and made London once
more the most important city of his kingdom: its strongest defence: its
most valuable possession. This was, in fact, the third foundation of
London. If Alfred had failed to understand the importance of London—that
great port, happily placed, not on the coast open to attack, but a long
way up a tidal river, in the very heart of the country—a place easy of
access from every part of the kingdom—a port convenient for every kind
of trade, whether from the Baltic or the Mediterranean—the whole of the
commercial history of England would have been changed, the island might
have remained what it had been for centuries before the Roman Conquest, a
place which exported iron, tin, skins, wool, and slaves, and imported for
the most part weapons to kill each other with.
Alfred gave us London. The lesson of ten years’ fighting taught Alfred
what the Saxons had never before understood, the value of walled cities
in the case of invasion. He saw—he was the first to perceive—how superior
numbers may be rendered of no avail when they fling themselves against
strong walls. The next Danish invaders found themselves stopped on their
way up the Thames by a city fortified by a strong wall which the enemy
could neither knock down nor climb over: and manned by citizens made
doubly courageous by the safety and the strength of their ramparts.
Six separate sieges were endured by London during the second invasion
of the Danes: six separate times the enemy had to raise the siege and
to go elsewhere, leaving London unconquered. Other walled towns were
added—Winchester, York, Exeter, and Canterbury—but the first was London,
whose fallen Roman wall, of which only the hard core of cement remained,
Alfred rebuilt and faced again with stone.
Alfred, I repeat, gave us London. This was a great service which he
rendered to the safety of the country. But there was still a greater
service. The Saxon had quite forgotten the seamanship in which he had
formerly known no master and no equal. Alfred saw that for the sake of
safety there must be a first line of defence before the coast could be
reached. England could only be invaded in ships, and by those who had
the command of the seas. Therefore, he created a navy: he built ships
longer, heavier, swifter than those of the Danes, and he sent these ships
out to meet the Danes on what they supposed to be their own element.
They went out: they met the Danes: they defeated them: and before long
the Saxons had afloat a fleet of a hundred ships to hold the mastery of
the Channel. The history of the English navy is chequered: there have
been periods when its pretensions were low and its achievements humble:
but since the days of Alfred the conviction has never been lost that
the safety of England lies in her command of the sea. Fortresses and
walled cities are useful: it is a very great achievement to have given
them to the country: London alone, restored by Alfred, was the nation’s
stronghold, the nation’s treasure house, a city full of wealth, filled
with valiant citizens, unconquered and defiant: that was a very great
gift to the country: but it was a greater achievement still to have given
to the country a fleet which was ready to meet the enemy before they had
time to land, and to give them most excellent reasons why they should not
land: to make the people understand that above all things, and before
all, it was necessary for all time to keep the mastery of the seas.
Remember, therefore, that Alfred, thus, gave us the command of the seas.
As Rudyard Kipling, our patriot poet, says:
We have fed our seas for a thousand years,
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there’s never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead.
“Never a wave of all her waves”—and it was Alfred who first sent out the
English blood to redden those waves in defence of hearth and home.
Now, there can be no doubt that if he had advanced upon the great defeat
of the Danes he might have recovered the whole of the country and become
not only its overlord, as his grandfather Egbert had been before him,
but its king. No doubt he was tempted: to a successful commander more
successes always lie before him waiting to be snatched. This dream of
conquest he renounced. He sat down with what he had—the old kingdom of
his forefathers, strengthened by his new fleet: by the stronghold of
London: and by the restored courage and self-respect of his people. The
dream of conquest was a dream of personal ambition: he put it aside.
It was part of that renunciation of self which belongs to the whole of
his career. The historian Green has pointed out that Alfred “is the only
instance in the history of Christendom of a ruler who put aside every
personal aim or ambition in order to devote himself wholly to the welfare
of those whom he ruled.”
We have considered Alfred as a captain, a conqueror, and the founder
of our navy. We will now consider him in the capacity of king,
administrator, and law-giver.
I do not claim for Alfred that he was the creator of the English law.
His glory consists mainly in his adaptation of the old order to the
new: he took all that was left of the shattered past and moulded it
anew, with additions to suit the new situation, and for the most part
on the same lines. You will ask, perhaps, how much of the honour due
to Alfred’s achievements should be given to his ministers and how much
to himself? Assign to his officers all the credit possible, all that
belongs to the faithful discharge of duty: still the initiative, the
design of the whole of the past, is absolutely due to Alfred himself. He
must not be considered as a modern king—the modern king reigns while the
people rule: he was the king who ruled: his will ruled the land: he had
his Parliament: his Meeting of the Wise: but his will ruled them: he
appointed his earls or aldermen: his will ruled them: he had his bishops:
his will ruled them. From the time when he began to address himself to
the organisation of a strong nation—that is to say, from the time when
the Dane was baptized, his will ruled supreme. No law existed then to
limit the king’s prerogative. The king was imperator, commander of the
army, and every man in the country was his soldier.
Among the monuments of his reign there stands out pre-eminent his code
of laws. He did not, I say, originate or invent his code. He simply took
the old code and rewrote it, with additions and alterations to suit
the altered conditions of the time. He understood, in fact, the great
truth, which law-makers hardly ever grasp, that successful institutions
must be _the outcome of national character_. Now, the laws and customs
of these nations—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes—were similar, but there were
differences. They had grown with the people, and were the outcome of the
national character. Alfred took over as the foundation of his work for
Wessex the code compiled for the West Saxons by his ancestor, King Ina:
for Mercia, that compiled by Offa, King of Mercia: for the Jutes, that
compiled by Ethelbert, King of Kent. In his work two main principles
guided the law-giver: first, that justice should be provided for every
one, high and low, rich and poor: next, that the Christian religion
should be recognised as containing the Law of God: which must be the
basis of all laws. Both these principles were especially necessary to
be observed at this time. The devastation of the long wars had caused
justice to be neglected: and the destruction of the churches, and the
murder or flight of the clergy, had caused the people to relapse into
their old superstitions.
King Alfred then boldly began his code by reciting the Laws of God. His
opening words were: “Thus saith the Lord, ‘I am the Lord thy God.’”
That is his keynote. The laws of a people must conform with the Laws of
God. If they are contrary to the spirit of these laws they cannot be
righteous laws. In order that every one might himself compare his laws
with the Laws of God, he prefaced his laws first by the Ten Commandments;
after this he quoted at length certain chapters of the Mosaic Law. These
chapters he followed by the short epistle in the Acts of the Apostles
concerning what should be expected and demanded of Christians. Finally,
Alfred adds the precept from St. Matthew, “Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
[Illustration: THE SEASONS—JANUARY TO MARCH
(_Cottonian Library_)]
Some writers have assumed that Alfred required of his subjects by this
preamble that they should be governed in all the details of life by the
Mosaic Law. This view I cannot accept. Alfred set forth, I think, these
laws in order that his own might be compared with them where comparison
was possible, and in order to challenge comparison and to give the
greater weight to his own laws by showing that they were based in spirit
and, _mutatis mutandis_, on the Levitical Law and on the Law of the
Gospel.
Moreover, in order to connect the whole system of justice with religion,
in order to teach the people in the most efficacious manner possible that
the Church desires justice above all things, he added to the sentence of
the judge the penance of the Church. This subjection of the law to the
Church would seem intolerable to us. At that time it was necessary to
make a rude, ignorant, and violent people understand that religion must
be more than a creed: that it must have a practical and restraining side;
a man who was made to understand that an offence against the law was an
offence against the Church which would be punished by the latter as well
as by the secular judge, was made for the first time to feel the reality
of the Church.
This firm determination to link the Divine Law and the Human Law: this
firm reliance on the Divine Law as the foundation of all law: is to me
the most characteristic point in the whole of Alfred’s work. The view—the
intention—the purpose of King Alfred are summed up, without intention,
by the poet whom I have already quoted. The following words of Rudyard
Kipling might be the very words of Alfred: they breathe his very
spirit—they might be, I say, the very words spoken by Alfred:
Keep ye the law: be swift in all obedience—
Clear the land of evil: drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap where he hath sown:
By the Peace among our Peoples let men know we serve the Lord!
Alfred endeavoured to rebuild the monasteries. He then made the discovery
that the old passion for the monastic life was gone: he could get no one
to go into them. Forty years of a life and death struggle had killed the
desire for the cloister: the people had learned to love action better
than seclusion—their ideal was now the soldier, not the monk. A great
gain for the people, which never afterwards returned to its ancient love
of the Rule and the Hood.
His chief design in rebuilding the monasteries was to restore the
schools. The country had fallen so low in learning that there was hardly
a single priest who could translate the Church Service into Saxon, or
could understand the words he sang. Alfred sent abroad for scholars:
he made his Religious House not only a place for the retreat of pious
men and women, but also the home—the only possible home—of learning,
and the seat of schools. It is long since we have regarded a monastery
as a seat of learning, or the proper place for a school. Go back to
Alfred’s time and consider what a monastery meant in a land still full
of violence: in which morals had been lost: justice trampled down:
learning destroyed: no schools or teachers left: the monastery stood as
an example and a reminder of self-restraint: peace: and order: a life of
industry and such works as the most ignorant must acknowledge to be good:
where the poor and the sick were received and cared for: the young were
taught: and the old sheltered. It was the Life which the monastery Rule
professed; the aim rather than any lower standards accepted by the monks:
which made a monastery in that age like a beacon steadily and brightly
burning, so that the people had always before their eyes a reminder of
the self-governed life. Most of us would be very unwilling to see the
monastery again become a necessity of the national life: yet we must
admit that in the ninth century Alfred had no more powerful weapon for
the maintenance of a religious standard than the monastery.
In the cause of education, indeed, Alfred was before his age, and even
before our age. He desired universal education. At his Court he provided
instructors for his children and the children of the nobles. They learned
to read and write, they studied their own language and its poetry: they
learned Latin: and they learned what were called the “liberal sciences,”
among them the art of music. But he thought also of the poorer class.
“My desire,” he says, “is that all the freeborn youths of my people
may persevere in learning until they can perfectly read the English
Scriptures.” Unhappily he was unable to carry out this wish. Only in
our own days has been at last attempted the dream of the Saxon King—the
extension of education to the whole people.
One more aspect of Alfred’s foresight. He endeavoured to remove the
separation of his island from the rest of the world: he connected his
people with the civilisation of Western Europe by encouraging scholars
and men of learning, workers in gold, and craftsmen of all kinds, to
come over: he created commercial relations with foreign countries: a
merchant who made three voyages to the Mediterranean he ennobled: he
sent an embassy every year to Rome: he sent an embassy as far as India:
he brought to bear upon the somewhat sluggish minds of his people the
imagination and the curiosity which would hereafter engender a spirit of
enterprise to which no other nation can offer a parallel.
It was partly with this view that he strongly enforced the connection
with Rome. One bond of union the nations of the West should have—a common
Faith: and that defined and interpreted for them by the same authority.
Had it not been for that central authority the nations would have been
divided, rather than drawn towards each other, by a Christianity split up
into at least as many sects as there were languages. Imagine the evil, in
an ignorant time, of fifty nations, each swearing by its own creed, and
every creed different. From this danger Alfred kept his country free.
The last, not the least, of his achievements is that to Alfred we owe
the foundations of our literature: the most noble literature that the
world has ever seen. He collected and preserved the poetry based on
the traditions and legends brought from the German Forests. He himself
delighted to hear and to repeat these legends and traditions: the deeds
of the mighty warriors who fought with monsters, dragons, wild boars,
and huge serpents. He made his children learn their songs: he had them
sung in his Court. The tradition goes that he could himself sing them to
the music of his own harp. This wild and spontaneous poetry which Alfred
preserved is the beginning of our own noble choir of poets. In other
words, the foundation of that stately Palace of Literature, built up by
our poets and writers for the admiration and instruction and consolation
of mankind, was laid by Alfred. Well, but he did more than collect the
poetry, he began the prose. Before Alfred there was no Anglo-Saxon prose.
I have already quoted Green’s remark that in everything that Alfred
designed or accomplished he put aside every personal aim or ambition
in order to devote himself wholly to the welfare of those over whom he
ruled. In his capacity as author this remark is specially illustrated.
You all know that it is the leading characteristic—or the infirmity—of
the poet, author, writer, to consider himself as part of his message.
Alfred put himself aside: he presented his works in translations:
they were, indeed, translations: but embellished, altered, enriched
by his own work thus modestly presented. There is one book, now quite
neglected, which for a thousand years profoundly moved the world of
Western Europe. It is a book, written in prison by a noble Roman named
Boethius, a philosopher, soldier, poet, and mathematician. It is entitled
the _Consolation of Philosophy_. Fortunately the author, who wrote it
from a prison, had time to finish it before they executed him. This
book Alfred translated or imitated. For he filled his translations with
his own thoughts and his own judgments. He gives his own theories of
government: of the duties of a king: of maintaining the population, and
especially the proper proportion of the different classes required to
keep the nation in a state of efficiency. Every man in the country is a
weapon which may be—and should be—used for the advancement of the general
welfare. It is the king’s duty to select the best instruments, and to
use them to the best advantage. We even find brief notes of his own
thoughts. “This,” says the king, among these notes, “I can now truly say,
that so long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily, and after
my death to leave my memory to my descendants in good works.”
It is not the part of this Introduction to dwell upon the whole of
Alfred’s literary work. It is enough if we recognise that he introduced
education and restored learning. In the course of time, innumerable books
were attributed to him: it is said that he translated the Psalms. A book
of proverbs and sayings is attributed to him—each one begins with the
words “Thus said Alfred.” The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and contemporary
record of events is said to have been commenced by him. And since it
is certain from the life of the king by one of his own Court that he
was regarded by all classes of his people with the utmost reverence and
respect, I think it is extremely likely that some of his people listened
and took down in writing the sayings of the king, so that the book of
Alfred’s sayings may be as authentic as the sayings of Dr. Johnson,
recorded by his admirer Boswell.