Charles Plummer

“ But what it all comes to is often a total mystery. The reason (apart from my own shortcomings) is to be sought in the fact alluded to above, that a very small part of Anglo-Saxon life and institutions is to be found in the laws, which imply a whole body of unwritten custom, of which only the most salient changes are registered in the laws. And as this body of unwritten custom is, to a large extent, beyond our reach, it is not surprising that the written law, to which it was the key, should often be obscure.
Alfred’s laws probably passed late in his reign. ”

“ We come now to what is the greatest crux in our whole subject, viz. the so-called life of Alfred which bears the name of Asser. It is obvious that if this work is genuine, it is an historical authority of the highest interest and importance. On the other hand, it must be confessed that there are features in it which do excite suspicion. Apart from difficulties of detail, some of which will come up for subsequent consideration, the general form of the work is most extraordinary, and high authorities have pronounced that, in its present shape, it cannot possibly be original [40] . ”

“ And this passion led to a hungry relic-mongering, a system of pious thefts, and a wholesale manufacture of spurious relics, of which Rome was the head-quarters, which are among the least pleasant features of the mediaeval Church. We may be sure that there was nothing unworthy either in Alfred’s reverence for the relics, or in his belief in the wonder-working powers of the saints. And for the rest, I think one realises more and more how a really religious spirit assimilates the good and is immune from the evil of the particular system in which it is placed by Providence. ”

“ The first place in our list of authorities for the life of Alfred must be given to his own literary works. It is true that the evidence which they furnish is mostly indirect, but it is, for that very reason, all the more secure. It might be thought that the fact that these works consist almost entirely of translations would prevent them from throwing much light on the life and character of their author. In reality the contrary is the truth. ”

“ In one class of historical literature, which often very usefully supplements more formal histories, the reign of Alfred is singularly barren, I mean the lives of saints. We have nothing like the lives of Dunstan, Oswald, and Æthelwold, which give us so much help towards the end of the next century; or like the lives of Wilfrid and Cuthbert at an earlier period. The times, indeed, were not favourable to the development of saintship of the mediaeval pattern. The monasteries, the chief schools of that type of sanctity, suffered more than any other institutions at the hands of the Danes ”

“ Great writers are not always gifted with the faculty of self-criticism; otherwise we should not have Wordsworth taking apparently equal pleasure in the composition of Betty Foy and of Laodamia. Indeed, on my conscience, I believe that he liked Betty Foy the better of the two [896] . Thirdly, even if Alfred were conscious of his limitations as a poet, is it not possible that his conscientious spirit may have felt bound to give as true a representation of the original as possible, by reproducing one of its most salient features, the alternation of verse and prose? ”

“ For many books of which the authorship has never been doubted we cannot produce evidence anything like as early. I may note in passing that in speaking of the translation of Gregory’s Dialogues Ælfric makes no assertion as to the Alfredian authorship, merely saying ‘the book has been translated into English, and in it any one who will read it may learn profitably of these matters [785] .’ In another place he gives interesting evidence that, till he himself took pen in hand, Alfred’s translations were the only books accessible to those who did not know Latin [786] . ”

“ In the Introduction to the second volume of my Saxon Chronicle [721] I argued in favour of the priority of the Orosius, on the ground of the affinity in diction and expression between it and the Saxon Chronicle. That argument I need not repeat here; I still think that it has force, though I possibly laid too much stress upon it, as [158] one is apt to do when one gets hold of an idea which one fancies to be new [722] . It is however capable of being reinforced. The second chapter of Bede’s first book contains an account of Caesar’s invasions of Britain. ”

“ The question may not be of dividing the national militia into two parts, one to be at home and one out; but the problem still confronts us how to provide an army which shall both defend our shores at home, and also be adequate to the needs of the empire abroad. The question may not be whether our ships shall be built on Frisian or on Danish lines; but there are problems of naval construction on the right solution of which the safety of England may very largely depend. The knowledge of Latin is happily not extinct among us now, as it practically was in Alfred’s day ”

“ The most needful of the works of peace is, as men have often learnt by bitter experience, to be prepared for war. Not only the works of peace, but peace itself, are impossible except under the guarantee of an adequate military and naval force. We have said enough already of Alfred’s efforts to reorganise his kingdom on this side.
Civil reorganisation. The shire system. Legislation not very important in early times.
Much too would be needed in the way of civil reorganisation, especially in the non-West-Saxon districts which had been won from the Danes. ”

“ This account of Asser [618] agrees well with the wish expressed by Alfred in the Preface to the Pastoral Care, ‘That all the freeborn youth of England who have sufficient means to devote themselves thereto, be set to learning so long as they are not strong enough for any other occupation, until such time as they can well read English writing. Let those be taught Latin whom it is proposed to educate further, and promote to higher office.’ This passage is most interesting; but we must not, on the strength of it, bring Alfred into court as an advocate either for or against classical education. ”

“ On the whole, then, Asser is an authority to be used with criticism and caution; partly because we have always to be alive to the possibility of interpolation, partly because the writer’s Celtic imagination is apt to run away with him. But that there is a nucleus which is the genuine work of a single writer, a South Walian contemporary of Alfred, I feel tolerably sure, and I know no reason why that South Walian contemporary should not be Asser of Menevia. ”

“ We have seen what Odda did in Devonshire; and Ethelwerd lays stress on the co-operation of Æthelnoth, the ealdorman of Somerset, in the dark days of Athelney [500] . There is nothing like work in common for a great cause, in face of great difficulties, for cementing friendship [501] , and perhaps it is to these days that Werferth of Worcester looks back when in one of his charters he speaks of Æthelnoth as ‘the friend of us all [502] .’
Mobility of the Danes. ”

“ William of Malmesbury uses both Asser and the Chronicle, though he declines ‘to unravel separately the inextricable labyrinths of Alfred’s labours.’ He adds not only the legend of St. Cuthbert, but also the stories of the golden bracelets, and of Alfred visiting the Danish camp disguised as a minstrel [291] ; wandering folk-tales which get attached to more than one historical character. There is no reason to believe that Malmesbury had for Alfred’s reign any historical authority not open to ourselves, as he unquestionably had for that of Athelstan ”

“ Alfred realises, as indeed does Boethius, the arduous nature of the inquiry; and his conclusion is, as we should expect, much more than is the case with Boethius, the conclusion of Christian faith and practical Christian piety: ‘I say, as do all Christian men, that it is the divine purpose that rules, and not Fate [871] .’ He sees, as all moralists have seen, that morality is only possible on a basis of freedom, that fatalism reduces vice and virtue, punishment and reward to unmeaning terms [872] . ”

“ The gain outweighs the loss.
‘The long night has rolled away.’—‘Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh, so shalt Thou make their image to vanish.’—Every historian is agreed that this is the turning-point in the history, not only of England, but of Western Europe. ‘Wessex was saved; and in saving Wessex, Alfred saved England; and in saving England, he saved Western Europe from becoming a heathen Scandinavian power [499] .’ In recognising the Danish occupation of East Anglia, Eastern Mercia, and Northumbria, Alfred was hardly making a cession, for they had never been his to cede ”

“ It is not unnatural therefore that the laws and homilies of Æthelred’s reign should look back to the reign of Edgar as a golden age [324] ; that here in Oxford, in 1018, Canute and his conquered subjects should be reconciled on the basis of Edgar’s law [325] . The one exception is the Anglo-Saxon homily on St. Neot, in which the later years of Alfred are regarded as the golden age [326] . The motive of this is too obvious to be dwelt on. ”

“ If we consider that Latin was at this time the universal vehicle of culture in Western Europe, that ‘legere’ [82] is constantly used, and notably in Asser [400] , of reading Latin; that all through the Middle Ages the decision ‘legit ut clericus,’ which entitled an accused person to benefit of clergy, meant that he could read Latin, this interpretation will seem quite natural. Nor does the contrasted statement that Alfred had picked up many Saxon poems by heart oblige us to believe that he could not read his own language in his thirteenth year. ”

“ The taste for the monastic life had almost been extinguished among men in England; and of the two contradictory causes which Asser suggests [593] for this fact, viz. the Danish ravages, and the too great riches of the English, which caused them to despise the monastic life, there can be no doubt that the former is nearer the truth. Alfred had accordingly to fill his monasteries with foreign monks. The result was not always satisfactory, if there is any truth in Asser’s story [594] how two of these foreign monks at Athelney tried to murder their abbot, John the Old Saxon. ”

“ Roger of Wendover says that Alfred sent alms to Jerusalem [314] . The thing in itself is not impossible. But the context in which the statement occurs shows that it rests simply on a false reading in two MSS. of the Saxon Chronicle ‘Iudea’ for ‘Indea [315] .’
Liber de Hyda.
Lastly the Liber de Hyda gives Alfred a pedigree which seems to make him a descendant of Offa of Mercia [316] . If this pedigree was the only one which we possessed, we might rack our brains to discover what the connexion was. ”

“ In 519, according to the traditional account, Certic and Cynric assumed the kingship of the West Saxons; [210] and the reflexion of the compiler of the Saxon Chronicle, writing probably under Alfred, that ‘the royal house of the West Saxons has ruled ever since that day,’ has, with the exception of the Norman period, remained almost literally true down to the present time. For it was Wessex which grew into England; and the first idea of union, loosely and imperfectly realised under Egbert, was gradually wrought out in many years of suffering. ”

“ In every quarter of the globe, millions upon millions of her subjects, who knew little or nothing of the nature of Parliaments, of the theory of constitutional government, of the responsibility of ministers, of the rise and fall of parties, looked up to the Queen as the bond of union between them, the mother and head of a vast family dispersed throughout the whole world ”

“ In 868 the Danes invaded Mercia and wintered at Nottingham. Burgred, who with his Witan had in 853 invoked Æthelwulf’s help against the Welsh, and who that same year had married Æthelwulf’s only daughter Ealhswith, now once more with his Witan invoked the aid of Æthelred and Alfred against this newer and much more dangerous foe. The brothers obeyed the call, and marched to Nottingham, but they did not venture to attack the Danish lines, and the Mercians made peace with the invaders. ”

“ Another coincidence with Alfred’s preface to the Cura Pastoralis is to be found in the phrase ‘aliquando sensum ex sensu ponens,’ which Asser uses in reference to the translation of Gregory’s Dialogues [227] . Anyhow, as I have shown [228] , the work which bears Asser’s name cannot be later than 974, and the attempt to treat it as a forgery of the eleventh or twelfth century must be regarded as having broken down. I may add that I started with a strong prejudice against the authenticity of Asser, so that my conclusions have at any rate been impartially arrived at. ”

“ Charles the Fat, before he gained the western kingdom, is king of the Alamanni [173] . I believe that Germania here means Norway, a meaning which, strange as it may seem, it unquestionably has in the Welsh Annals. Thus at 1036 the Brut y Tywysogion calls Canute king of England, Denmark, and Germania, while at 1056 the title king of Germania is given to Harold Hardrada. In other words, the invaders of Saxony, according to Asser, came from Norway, and not from Denmark, which he calls Danubium [174] . ”

“ And so Alfred puts the precept in a general form: ‘Judge thou very equally, judge not one judgement for the rich, and [125] another for the poor [567] .’ And it would seem from Asser’s account that he kept a control on the local administration of justice, not only by constantly hearing appeals himself, but also by a system of special envoys analogous to the Carolingian ‘missi dominici,’ and to the later ‘justices in eyre [568] .’
Alfred’s accessibility to suitors. ”

“ But a child would need help in mastering a new work, even if he could read to some extent before.
Again, the suggestion of Pauli [404] and others that even in this case Alfred was merely taught to say the poems by heart, and then repeated them to his mother, is based simply on a piece of bad scholarship. Because in the modern languages recitation means repeating by heart, it does not follow that that is the meaning of the Latin word. ‘Recitare’ means ‘to read aloud’; it occurs no less than seven times in Asser, and that is the meaning of the word in every case [405] . ”