References: [1] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and charters, which were documents which granted land to followers or to churchmen, and which were witnessed by the kings who had power to grant the land.
Illustration: Depiction of Egbert from the Genealogical Chronicle of English Kings, a late 13th century manuscript in the British Library
https://en.wikipedia. Egbert of Wessex: b. 771 or 775 d. 839. (age 68 or 70) Buried: Winchester. Historians do not agree on Egbert’s ancestry, and, his wife’s name is unknown. It is said that his father was Ealhmund of Kent. Little is known of the first 20 years of Egbert’s reign…
Beginnings: Offa of Mercia, who reigned from 757 to 796, was the dominant force in Anglo-Saxon England in the second half of the 8th century… Evidence of the relationship between kings can come from charters, which were documents which granted land to followers or to churchmen, and which were witnessed by the kings who had power to grant the land. Another Egbert, Egbert II of Kent, ruled in that kingdom throughout the 770s; he is last mentioned in 779, in a charter granting land at Rochester. In 784 a new king of Kent, Ealhmund, appears… according to a note in the margin, “this king Ealhmund was Egbert’s father (i.e. Egbert of Wessex), Egbert was Ethelwulf’s father.” Ealhmund does not appear to have long survived in power (no record of his activities after 784)... (probably) in 789, Egbert was exiled by Beorhtric and Offa (of Mercia) and spent 3 years in Francia; which was ruled by Charlemagne, who maintained Frankish influence in Northumbria and is known to have supported Offa’s enemies in the south… Beorhtric died in 802, and Egbert came to the throne of Wessex, probably with the support of Charlemagne and perhaps also the papacy.
Illustration: Ethelwulf in the early 14th century Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England. Æthelwulf (“Noble Wolf”) King of Wessex b. (825 sent with an army to Kent *subtract 19 years = b. 806) d. 1/13/858 https://en.wikipedia.
Birth of Ethelwulf: is unknown, what is known is that in 825 his father sent him with an army to Kent; assuming he was 19 years old, makes him born in 806 (Egbert about 31 years old). His mother’s name is unknown, and he had no recorded siblings. So far as in known, his wife Osburh was the mother of all of his children. She was the daughter of Oslac…
A charter dated 8/19/825 indicates that Egbert was campaigning in Dumnonia again… The 825 battle of Ellendun (now Wroughton): Egbert defeated Beornwulf of Mercia; marking the end of the Mercian domination of southern England. “Then he sent his son Ethelwulf with an army, and Ealhstan, his bishop, and Wulfheard, his ealdorman, to Kent in a great troop.” Ethelwulf drove Baldred, the king of Kent, north over the Thames… the men of Kent, Essex, Surrey and Sussex all submitted to Ethelwulf… The consequences of Ellendun went beyond the immediate loss of Mercian power in the southeast; the East Anglians asked for Egbert’s protection against the Mercians in the same year… Ethelwulf was sub-king of Kent, and of Surrey, Sussex and Essex, which were then included in the sub-kingdom, until he inherited the throne of Wessex in 839. His sub-kingship is recorded in charters, in some of which King Egbert acted with his son’s permission… Unlike their Mercian predecessors, who alienated the Kentish people by ruling from a distance, Ethelwulf and his father successfully cultivated local support by governing through Kentish earldormen and promoting their interests…
At the beginning of the 9th century, England was almost completely under the control of the Anglo-Saxons, with Mercia and Wessex the most important southern kingdoms. Mercia was dominant until the 820s, and it exercised overlordship over East Anglia and Kent, but Wessex was able to maintain its independence from its more powerful neighbor.
In 829 Egbert defeated Wiglaf of Mercia and drove him out of his kingdom, temporarily ruling Mercia directly. Later that year Egbert received the submission of the Northumbrian king at Dore. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle - from here-on referred to as [1] - subsequently described Egbert as a bretwalda, or “Ruler of Britain”. Egbert was unable to maintain this dominant position, and within a year (830) Wiglaf regained the throne of Mercia. However, Wessex did retain control of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey; these territories were given to Egbert’s son Ethelwulf to rule as a sub-king under Egbert. Despite the loss of dominance, Egbert’s military successes fundamentally changed the political landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. Wessex retained control of the south-eastern kingdoms, with the possible exceptions of Essex, and Mercia did not regain control of East Anglia. Egbert’s victories marked the end of the independent existence of the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex. Although Ethelwulf was a sub-king under Egbert, it is clear that he maintained his own royal household, with which he traveled around his kingdom. Charters issued in Kent described Egbert and Ethelwulf as “kings of the West Saxons and also of the people of Kent.
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| Southern England in the middle of the 9th century: Wessex, Mercia |
Succession: At a council at Kingston upon Thames in 838, Egbert and Ethelwulf granted land to the sees of Winchester and Canterbury in return for the promise of support for Ethelwulf’s claim to the throne. The archbishop of Canterbury, Ceolnoth, also accepted Egbert and Ethelwulf as the lords and protectors of the monasteries under Ceolnoth’s control… Churchmen consecrated the king at coronation ceremonies, helped to write the will which specified the king's’ heir; their support had real value in establishing West Saxon control and a smooth succession for Egbert’s line. The record of the Council of Kingston (a condition of the grant is that) “we ourselves and our heirs shall always hereafter have firm and unshakable friendships from Archbishop Ceolnoth and his congregation at Christ Church.” Egbert’s wealth, acquired through conquest, was no doubt one reason for his ability to purchase the support of the southeastern church establishment… The kingship of Wessex had been frequently contested among different branches of the royal line, and it is a noteworthy achievement of Egbert’s that he was able to ensure Ethelwulf’s untroubled succession.
Egbert died in 839 and was buried in Winchester, as were his son, Ethelwulf, his grandson, Alfred the Great, and his great-grandson, Edward the Elder. During the 9th century, Winchester began to show signs of urbanization, and it is likely that the sequence of burials indicates that Winchester was held in high regard by the West Saxon royal line. Note (Jody Gray): his burial location is questionable, refer to Alfred the Great burial information.
Reign of Ethelwulf: [1] Æthelwulf, on his accession "he gave to his son Æthelstan the kingdom of the people of Kent, and the kingdom of the East Saxons and of the people of Surrey and of the South Saxons"... Æthelwulf governed Wessex and Kent as separate spheres, and assemblies in each kingdom were only attended by the nobility of that country. - Æthelwulf ran a Carolingian-style family firm of plural realms, held together by his own authority as father-king, and by the consent of distinct élites." He maintained his father's policy of governing Kent through ealdormen appointed from the local nobility and advancing their interests… Archbishops of Canterbury were firmly in the West Saxon king's sphere… His reign is the first for which there is evidence of royal priests...
The Vikings were not a major threat to Wessex during Ethelwulf’s reign. In 843 he was defeated in a battle against the Vikings at Carhampton in Somerset, but achieved a major victory at the Battle of Aclea in 851. In 853 he joined a successful Mercian expedition to Wales to restore the traditional Mercian hegemony, and in the same year his daughter Ethelswith married King Burgred of Mercia. In 853 Ethelwulf sent his younger sons to Rome; Pope Leo IV made Alfred his spiritual son [godson], thus created a spiritual link between the two “fathers” (some historians think the pilgrimage shows that Alfred was intended for the church); in 855 Ethelwulf himself went on a pilgrimage to Rome (accompanied by Alfred).
In preparation for the journey he gave a “decimation” charter (none of the charters are original and some historians have dismissed all to them as fraudulent):"King Æthelwulf conveyed by charter the tenth part of his land throughout all his kingdom to the praise of God and to his own eternal salvation"; and donating a tenth of his personal property to his subjects; he appointed his eldest surviving son Ethelbald to act as King of Wessex in his absence, and his next son Ethelberht to rule Kent and the south-east.
Gifts to St Peter: included a gold crown weighing four pounds (1.8 kilograms), two gold goblets, a sword bound with gold, four silver-gilt bowls, two silk tunics and two gold-interwoven veils. He also gave gold to the clergy and leading men and silver to the people of Rome. According to the historian Joanna Story, his gifts rivaled those of Carolingian donors and the Byzantine emperor and "were clearly chosen to reflect the personal generosity and spiritual wealth of the West Saxon king; here was no Germanic 'hillbilly' from the backwoods of the Christian world but, rather, a sophisticated, wealthy and utterly contemporary monarch".
Ethelwulf spent a year in Rome, and on his way back he married Judith (10/1/856), daughter of Charles the Bald, King of West Francia and his wife Ermentrude (she was 12 or 13 years old); she was crowned queen and anointed by Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims; this was the first anointing of a Carolingian queen (it was unknown for Carolingian princesses to marry foreigners, infact, they rarely married and were usually sent to nunneries). Also, in West Saxon custom the wife of a king of Wessex could not be called queen or sit on the throne with her husband - she was just the king’s wife. There were were no children from this marriage, and after his death she married his eldest surviving son and successor, Ethelbald. When he returned to England, Ethelbald refused to surrender the West Saxon throne, and Ethelwulf agreed to divide the kingdom, taking the east and leaving the west in Ethelbald’s hands.
Ethelwulf died in 1/13/858 in his will he left Wessex to Ethelbald and Kent to Ethelberht, but Ethelbald’s death only two years (860) later led to the re-unification of the kingdom. After his father's death, Ethelbald married his step-mother Judith; after his death (860) Judith sold her possessions and returned to her father, but two years later she eloped with Baldwin, Count of Flanders. In the 890s their son, also called Baldwin, married Æthelwulf's granddaughter Ælfthryth.
According to the Annals of St Neots, he was buried at Steyning in Sussex, but his body was later transferred to Winchester, probably by Alfred. (Jody Gray): his burial location is questionable, refer to Alfred the Great burial information.
Legacy of Ethelwulf: In the 20th century Ethelwulf’s reputation among historians was poor: he was seen as excessively pious and impractical, and his pilgrimage was viewed as a desertion of his duties. Historians of the 21st century see him very differently, as a king who consolidated and extended the power of his dynasty, commanded respect on the continent, and dealt more effectively than most of his contemporaries with Viking attacks. He is regarded as one of the most successful West Saxon kings, who laid the foundations for the success of his son, Alfred the Great.
Alfred the Great, King of Wessex b. 849, Wantage (then in Berkshire, now Oxfordshire) d. 10/26/899, Winchester. A devout Christian, Alfred had a reputation as a learned and merciful man of a gracious and level-headed nature who encouraged education and improved his kingdom’s legal system, military structures and his people’s quality of life.
Alfred was troubled by health problems throughout his life; it is thought that he may have suffered from Crohn’s disease. Evidence suggests he was not physically strong, he was noted more for his intellect than as a warlike character.
In 868, Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Ethelred Mucil, Ealdorman of the Gaini and Eadburh. They had five or six children, Elfthryth who married Baldwin II the Count of Flanders is the next in our lineage and she is covered in the Blog Post: Noble Family, House of Flanders. Counts of Flanders and Counts of Boulogne.
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| A map of the route taken by the Viking Great Heathen Army that arrived in England from Denmark, Norway and southern Sweden in 865. |
When Alfred’s father died his older brothers succeeded him; Alfred is not mentioned until 865 during in invasion of the Great Heathen Army; Bishop Asser applied to Alfred the unique title of secundarius, which may indicate a position akin to that of the Celtic tanist, a recognised successor closely associated with the reigning monarch (to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should Ethelred fall in battle). In 868, Alfred is recorded as fighting beside Ethelred in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the Great Heathen Army, led by Ivar the Boneless, out of the adjoining Kingdom of Mercia. At the end of 870, the Danes arrived in his homeland. The year which followed has been called “Alfred’s year of battles”; nine engagements were fought, with varying outcomes… In Berkshire, a successful skirmish at the Battle of Englefield on 12/31/870 was followed by a severe defeat at the siege and Battle of Reading by Ivar’s brother Halfdan Ragnarsson on 1/5/871. Four days later, the Anglo-Saxons won a brilliant victory at the Battle of Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs, possibly near Compton or Aldworth. Later that month, on 1/22/871, the Saxons were defeated at the Battle of Basing. They were defeated again on 3/22/871 at the Battle of Merton. Ethelred died shortly afterwards on 4/23/871 and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex. While he was busy with the burial ceremonies for his brother, the Danes defeated the Saxon army in his absence at an unnamed spot, and then again in his presence at Wilton in May (871). That defeat smashed any remaining hope the Alfred could drive the invaders from his kingdom. He was forced instead to make peace with them, according to sources that do not tell what the terms of peace were.
The Viking army withdrew from Reading in the autumn of 871 to take up winter quarters in Mercian London; Alfred probably also paid the Vikings cash to leave, much as the Mercians were to do in the following year. Hoards [“wealth deposit” a collection of valuable objects or artifacts] dating to the Viking occupation of London in 871/2 have been excavated at Croydon, Gravesend, and Waterloo Bridge. These finds hint at the cost involved in making peace with the Vikings. For the next five years, the Danes occupied other parts of England.
In 876 under their new leader, Guthrum, the Danes slipped past the Saxon army and attacked and occupied Wareham in Dorset. Alfred blockaded them but was unable to take Wareham by assault. Accordingly, he negotiated a peace which involved an exchange of hostages and oaths, which the Danes swore on a “holy ring” associated with the worship of Thor. The Danes, however, broke their word and, after killing all the hostages, slipped away under cover of night to Exeter in Devon.
Alfred blockaded the Viking ships in Devon, and with a relief fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes were forced to submit; they withdrew to Mercia. In 1/878, the Danes made a sudden attack on Chippenham, a royal stronghold in which Alfred had been staying over Christmas “and most of the people they killed, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band made his way by wood and swamp, and after Easter he made a fort at Athelney in the marshes of Somerset, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe… he was able to mount an effective resistance movement, rallying the local militias from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. 878 was the low-water mark in the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, with all the other kingdoms having fallen to the Vikings, Wessex alone was still resisting.
In the seventh week after Easter (May 4-10, 878), around Whitsuntide, Alfred rode to ‘Egbert’s Stone’ east of Selwood, where he was met by “all the people of Somerset and of Wiltshire and of that part of Hampshire which is on this side of the sea, and they rejoiced to see him”. Alfred won a decisive victory in the ensuing Battle of Edington… He then pursued the Danes to their stronghold at Chippenham and starved them into submission. Three weeks later the Danish king and 29 of his chief men were baptised at Alfred’s court at Aller, near Athelney, with Alfred receiving Guthrum as his spiritual son [godson]. Under the terms of the so-called Treaty of Wedmore, the converted Guthrum was required to leave Wessex and return to East Anglia. Consequently, in 879 the Viking army left Chippenham and made its way to Cirencester. The formal Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, preserved in Old English in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and in a Latin compilation known as Quadripartitus, was negotiated later, perhaps in 879 or 880, when King Ceolwulf I of Mercia was deposed. That treaty divided up the kingdom of Mercia. By its terms the boundary between Alfred’s and Guthrum’s kingdoms was to run up the River Thames, to the River Lea; follow the Lea to its source; from there extend in a straight line to Bedford; and from Bedford follow the River Ouse to Watling Street. In other words, Alfred succeeded to Ceolwulf’s kingdom, consisting of western Mercia; and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged kingdom of East Anglia. By terms of the treaty, moreover, Alfred was to have control over Mercian city of London and its mints - at least for the time being. The disposition of Essex, held by West Saxon kings since the days of Egbert, is unclear from the treaty, though, given Alfred’s political and military superiority, it would have been surprising if he had conceded any disputed territory to his new godson[Guthrum].
With the signing of the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, an event most commonly held to have take place around 880 when Guthrum’s people began settling East Anglia, Guthrum was neutralised as a threat. The Viking army, that had stayed at Fulham during the Winter of 878-879, sailed for Ghent and was active on the continent from 879-892.
Alfred was still forced to contend with a number of Danish threats… small skirmishes with independent Viking raiders would have occurred for much of the period as they had for decades…
In 886, Alfred reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again; he entrusted the city to the care of his son-in-law Ethelred ealdorman of Mercia. The restoration progressed through the later half of the 880s: a new street plan; added fortifications… This is also the period in which almost all chroniclers agree that the Saxon people of pre-unification England submitted to Alfred. This was not, however, the point at which Alfred came to be known as King of England; in fact he would never adopt the title for himself. In truth, the power which Alfred wielded over the English peoples at this time seemed to stem largely from the military might of the West Saxons, Alfred’s political connections from having the ruler of Mercia as his son-in-law, and Alfred’s keen administrative talents.
889, Guthrum (Athelstan by his baptismal name) died and was buried in Hadleigh, Suffolk; the resulting power vacuum stirred up other power-hungry warlords eager to take his place and war was on the horizon.
In the autumn of 892 or 893, the Danes attacked again, they crossed to England in 330 ships in two divisions and entrenched themselves, the larger body at Appledore, Kent, and the lesser, under Hastein, at Milton, also in Kent. They brought their wives and children with them, indicating a meaningful attempt at conquest and colonisation. Alfred, in 893 or 894, took up a position from which he could observe both forces. While he was in talks with Hastien, the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck northwestwards; they were overtaken and defeated… they took refuge on an island at Thorney… where they were blockaded and forced to give hostages and promise to leave Wessex. They then went to Essex and, after suffering another defeat, joined with Hastein’s force at Shoebury…. and so it goes… the English contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the district and early in 894 or 895, lack of food obliged the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of the year, the Danes to retire once more to Essex.... The Danes realised that they were outmanoeuvred. They struck off north-westwards… the next year, 896 or 897, they gave up the struggle; some retired to Northumbria, some to East Anglia…
Military reorganisation: Wessex's history of failures preceding his success in 878 emphasised to Alfred that the traditional system of battle he had inherited played to the Danes' advantage. While both the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes attacked settlements to seize wealth and other resources, they employed very different strategies. In their raids, the Anglo-Saxons traditionally preferred to attack head-on by assembling their forces in a shield wall, advancing against their target and overcoming the oncoming wall marshaled against them in defence. In contrast, the Danes preferred to choose easy targets, mapping cautious forays designed to avoid risking all their accumulated plunder with high-stake attacks for more. Alfred determined their strategy was to launch smaller scaled attacks from a secure and reinforced defensible base to which they could retreat should their raiders meet strong resistance. These bases were prepared in advance, often by capturing an estate and augmenting its defences with surrounding ditches, ramparts and palisades. Once inside the fortification, Alfred realised, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter-attack as the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned… With these lessons in mind, Alfred capitalized on the peaceful years by focusing on an ambitious restructuring of his kingdom’s military defences… So when the Viking raids resumed in 892, Alfred was better prepared to confront them with a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons, and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries.
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| Map of (10th century) burhs named in the Burghal Hidage. |
Burghal system: At the center of Alfred’s reformed military defence system was the network of burhs (later termed boroughs), distributed at strategic points throughout the kingdom. There were thirty-three in total, spaced approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) apart, enabling the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a single day.
English navy: In 896, Alfred ordered the construction of a small fleet, perhaps a dozen or so longships, that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of the Viking warships. Alfred had seapower in mind - if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from ravaging. In practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which naval battle could occur.
Legal reform: In the late 880s or early 890s, Alfred issued a long domboc or law code, consisting of his “own” laws followed by a code issued by his late 7th century predecessor King Ine of Wessex. About a fifth of the law code is taken up by Alfred’s introduction, which includes translations into English of the Decalogue, a few chapters from the Book of Exodus, and the “Apostolic Letter” from Acts of the Apostles. The Introduction may best be understood as Alfred’s meditation upon the meaning of Christian law. It traces the continuity between God’s gift of Law to Moses to Alfred’s own issuance of law to the West Saxon people. By doing so, it links the holy past to the historical present and represents Alfred’s law-giving as a type of divine legislation. Similarly, Alfred divided his code into 120 chapters because 120 was the age at which Moses died and, in the number-symbolism of early medieval biblical exegetes, 120 stood for law. The link between the Mosaic Law and Alfred’s code is the “Apostolic Letter,” which explained that Christ “had come not to shatter or annul the commandments but to fulfill them; and he taught mercy and meekness”. The mercy that Christ infused into Mosaic Law underlies the injury tariffs that figure so prominently in barbarian law codes, since Christian synods “established, through that mercy which Christ taught, that for almost every misdeed at the first offence secular lords might with their permission receive without sin the monetary compensation, which they then fixed”.
The only crime that could not be compensated with a payment of money is treachery to a lord, “since Almighty God adjudged none for those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any for the one who betrayed Him to death; and He commanded everyone to love his lord as Himself”. Alfred’s transformation of Christ’s commandment from “Love your neighbor as yourself” to love your secular lord as you would love the Lord Christ himself underscores the importance that Alfred placed upon lordship, which he understood as a sacred bond instituted by God for the governance of man.
When one turns from the introduction to the laws themselves, it is difficult to uncover any logical arrangement… (the) explanation is that Alfred’s law code should be understood not as a legal manual, but as an ideological manifesto of kingship, “designed more for symbolic impact than for practical direction”. In practical terms, the most important law in the code may well be the very first: “We enjoin, what is most necessary, that each man keep carefully his oath and his pledge,” which expresses a fundamental tenet of Anglo-Saxon law.
Religion and culture: Alfred undertook no systematic reform of ecclesiastical institutions or religious practices in Wessex. For him the key to the kingdom’s spiritual revival was to appoint pious, learned, and trustworthy bishops and abbots. As king he saw himself as responsible for both the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects. Secular and spiritual authority were not distinct categories for Alfred.
Advocacy of education in the English language: Alfred’s educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war. Alfred aimed “to set to learning all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it.” Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm, Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin.
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| a page from King Alred’s will |
Illustration: a page from King Alred’s will (abt 898) -Æthelwulf's will has not survived, but Alfred's has and it provides some information about his father's intentions. The kingdom was to be divided between the two oldest surviving sons, with Æthelbald getting Wessex and Æthelberht Kent and the south-east… Æthelwulf's moveable wealth, such as gold and silver, was to be divided between "children, nobles and the needs of the king's soul". For the latter, he left one tenth of his hereditary land to be set aside to feed the poor, and he ordered that three hundred mancuses be sent to Rome each year, one hundred to be spent on lighting the lamps in St Peter's at Easter, one hundred for the lights of St Paul's, and one hundred for the pope.
Death, burial and fate of remains. Alfred died on 10/26/899; how is unknown. He was originally buried temporarily in the Old Minster in Winchester; then, four years after his death, he was moved to the New Minster. When the New Minster moved to Hyde, a little north of the city, in 1110, the monks were transferred to Hyde Abbey, along with Alfred’s body and those of his wife and children, Soon after the dissolution of the abbey in 1539, during the reign of Henry VIII, the church was demolished, leaving the graves intact.... Note (Jody Gray): there is a lengthy discussion of what happened to Alfred’s remains, you can refer to the wikipedia link to read more (excavations in 1886, 1999, 2013 -in 2014 a fragment of pelvis was radiocarbon dated to the correct period...
Legacy: Alfred is venerated as a saint by some Christian traditions, however an attempt by Henry VI of England in 1441 to have him canonized by the pope was unsuccessful. The Anglican Communion venerates him as a Christian hero, with a feast day of October 26, and he may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches.
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| Winchester, England |
Alfred commissioned Bishop Asser to write his biography, which inevitably emphasised Alfred’s positive aspects. Later medieval historians, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth also reinforced Alfred’s favorable image. By the time of the Reformation Alfred was seen as being a pious Christian ruler, who promoted the use of English rather than Latin, and so the translations that he commissioned were viewed as untainted by the later Roman Catholic influences of the Normans. Consequently, it was writers of the sixteenth century who gave Alfred his epithet as ‘the Great’, rather than any of Alfred’s contemporaries. The epithet was retained by succeeding generations of Parliamentarians and empire-builders who saw Alfred’s patriotism, success against barbarism, promotion of education and establishment of the rule of law as supporting their own ideals. In 2002, Alfred the Great was ranked number 14 in the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.
Related Sources:
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