Edward Augustus Freeman

“ The work of Asser, thus distinguished, bears every mark of genuineness. It seems quite impossible that any forger could have invented the small touches which bespeak the man writing from personal knowledge, and that man no Englishman but a Briton. The constant use of the word ‘Saxon’ where Ælfred himself would have used ‘English’ is of itself proof enough; a later forger might have thought of it, but hardly one so early as to have been mistaken by Florence for the genuine Asser. ”

“ ÆLFRED (849–901) , king of the West-Saxons, is the one great character of our early history whose name still lives in popular memory, and round whose well-known historical career a vast mass of legend has gathered. The name of Ælfred is familiar to many who perhaps do not know the name of any other king or other worthy before the Norman Conquest. And popular belief has made him into a kind of embodiment of the national being; he has become the model English king, indeed the model Englishman. As usual, popular belief has got hold of a half truth. ”

“ Any other king would have thought it enough to defend his people with courage, to rule them with justice, to legislate for them with wisdom. Ælfred did all this and more also. He made it his further business to be the spiritual and intellectual teacher of his people. For in all his writings Ælfred is emphatically the teacher. He writes from a sheer sense of duty, to profit his own folk. He undertakes the humble office of a translator, and turns into his native tongue such writings, religious, historical, and scientific, as he thinks will tend to the instruction of his people. ”

“ Asser, as a Welshman, naturally speaks of the tongue of Ælfred as Saxon, and his land as Saxony. But Ælfred himself, while with minute accuracy he uses the Saxon name in his title, always in his writings speaks of his people and their tongue as English.
As Ælfred extended the bounds of his kingdom, there can be little doubt that his reign greatly tended to the increase of the royal authority within his kingdom. This was the natural result both of his position and of his personal character. It is a mere legend which charges him with oppressive or even harsh rule at any time of his life. ”

“ Wessex and her king now stood forth as the only English power in Britain, the one which had lived through the Danish inroads and had come out stronger from them. From this time the recovery of the part of England held by the Danes, and the union of the whole into one kingdom, was only a question of time. The English people everywhere now learned to look to the West-Saxon king as their champion and deliverer. ”

“ We see the same thing in France under Saint Lewis, a king in whom the warlike side was less prominent than in Ælfred, and who never had to fight for the being of his kingdom. Under kings like Ælfred and Lewis the kingly power grows, simply because every man knows that the king is the power that can best be trusted. Asser emphatically says that Ælfred was the only man in his kingdom to whom the poor could look for help. The circumstances of Ælfred's reign did much also to quicken a change which was then going on both in England and in other parts of Europe. ”

“ The shire in which the king seems to have been at the time is overrun by a sudden inroad, and a short time passes before any military operations can be set on foot in this district. But fighting still goes on to the west. The only difficulty is that we hear nothing of anything that happened in any part of the West-Saxon kingdom besides Somerset and Devonshire. But so striking an event has naturally been seized on as material for legend. ”

“ There is in truth no need for it. Alexander, Charles, William, needed it to mark them off from many smaller bearers of their several names; Ælfred practically has his name to himself. It is a name which has always been in use without ever being very common, but it has never been borne by any one who could possibly be confounded with the West-Saxon king. In the West-Saxon kingly house it is never found before him and only once after him, nor has it been borne by any king of the enlarged English kingdom. ”

“ He is eminently a national writer; we read that, like Charles the Great, he loved the old Teutonic songs and traditions and taught them to his children, and their effect on himself is often seen in his writings. He grasped the fact, which perhaps it was easier to grasp in his day than it was somewhat later, that men can be really stirred and taught only through their own tongue. ”

“ While the king goes to defend Exeter, attacked by sea by the Danes from Northumberland and East-Anglia, Ealdorman Æthelred has to follow the other army along both the Thames and the Severn. Defeated at Buttington, they go back to Essex; then, with new forces from Northumberland and East-Anglia, they cross the island again, and winter in the Wirrall in Cheshire, within the forsaken walls of the city which had been Deva and which was before long to be Chester. The two next years there is fighting in nearly every part of England. ”

“ But when a king has won the position, both legendary and historical, of Ælfred, even the most suspicious witness against him becomes of importance. Unless we assume sheer invention for contradiction's sake, it must be an exaggeration or distortion of something. ”

“ He brought Archbishop Plegmund and Bishop Werfrith from Mercia; he brought Grimbold and John the Old-Saxon from other Teutonic lands; from the land of the Briton came Asser, while John the Scot, John Scotus Erigena, might be said to come from both Celtic and Teutonic lands at once. But it was not only men of book-learning that he brought from other lands. Strangers from all parts flocked to become his men, and he gladly received all who brought with them any knowledge or any useful art, the seafaring Othhere no less than Grimbold or Asser. ”

“ His careful economy of time, by which he found means to carry on his studies without interfering with the cares of government, his deep devotion, his constant thought for his people, the various expedients and inventions of a simple age, all stand out in his life as recorded by the admiring stranger. ”

“ The king, the men of London, and the South-Saxons, show themselves vigorous in resistance, and the war goes on as far north as York. In 897 the invaders seem to have been tired out. Some withdrew to the continent, some to East-Anglia and Northumberland. Warfare by land comes to an end; and, by improvements in the build of his ships, Ælfred is able to put down the small parties of wikings which still infest the channel. We do not read of any renewed peace, of any more oaths or hostages ”

“ And when Æthelwulf tried to fix the succession beforehand, by a will confirmed by the Witan, Ælfred was put in the line of succession after those of his brothers who were put in the line of succession at all. We hear nothing of him directly during the reigns of his brothers Æthelbald and Æthelberht; but on the accession of Æthelred in 866 he at once comes into prominence. During Æthelred's reign Asser gives Ælfred the title of secundarius—possibly equivalent to subregulus—but he seems rather to look on him as a general helper to his brother than as the local under-king of any particular land. ”

“ That is to say, the West-Saxon king kept the whole of his own kingdom and added to it all south-western Mercia, establishing also an overlordship, however nominal, over the land which was yielded to the Danes. By this arrangement, Ælfred, as compared with his predecessors before the Danish invasions, lost as an overlord, but gained as an immediate sovereign. Ecgberht and Æthelwulf had been kings only of the later Wessex and its eastern dependencies, the land south of the Thames, with such supremacy as they might be able to enforce over the other English kingdoms. ”

“ In 893 the Northmen who had been defeated by King Arnulf of Germany crossed to England, and landed on the borders of Kent and Sussex, while the famous wiking Hasting sailed up the Thames. Ælfred now exacted fresh oaths and hostages from the Danes in England, both in East-Anglia and in Northumberland; but they presently broke their oaths, and joined the invaders. The campaigns which followed in 894 and following years to 897 are told with great detail in the Chronicles. They are remarkable for the great extent of country which they cover. ”

“ The Orosius was edited in 1851 by Dr. Bosworth, who in his preface describes the manuscripts and earlier editions. The translation of Bæda is printed in Smith's great edition of Bæda, 1722. The Boetius was edited in 1864 by Mr. Samuel Fox for Bohn's ‘Antiquarian Library.’ Strange to say, in this edition the Old-English text is printed in the so-called ‘Saxon’ characters, though Dr. Bosworth had, thirteen years before, had the sense to print in ordinary type. A uniform critical edition of all the great king's writings would be no small gain to Old-English learning. ”

“ As a teacher, he does not bind himself to a servile reproduction of his author; as men do still in writings designed solely for edification, he altered and added to his original, whenever he thought that by so doing he could better profit his readers. ”

“ This is the change from the old immemorial nobility of birth to the new nobility of personal service, that is in England the change from eorlas to þegnas. Rank and power become attached to service due to the king as a personal lord, a process which, in the beginning at least, does much to strengthen the authority of that personal lord. ”

“ This was seemingly by failing to renew their hostages, and by giving help to a Scandinavian host which, after much ravaging on the continent, landed in Kent and attacked Rochester. Ælfred drove them back to their ships, and then sent a fleet against East Anglia which came in for both a victory and a defeat (see the Chronicles, sub an. 884, 885, and Æthelward as explained by Lappenberg) . ”