Alfred

Alfred (849-899), King of Wessex (871-899), referred to as Alfred the Great by English historians from the 16th century onward. This epithet reflects his achievement in saving Wessex from conquest by Viking Danish armies, in preparing the way for the creation of the kingdom of England by his successors, and in directing a policy to revive Christian learning in Wessex.

Born in Wantage, Alfred was the youngest and apparently the favourite son of Ethelwulf, King of the West Saxons (839-854) by his first wife Osburh. As a very young boy, he accompanied his father to Rome in 853 and again in 854, and was accompanied by Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, on the return journey in 856. The successive deaths of his three elder brothers between 860 and 871 could hardly have been foreseen. Within a month of his accession, however, he faced a Viking army at Wilton in 871 and a further invasion took place between 875 and 877. On both occasions Alfred was in no position to decisively defeat the Danes and instead bought them off.

A Viking surprise attack in January 878 on Alfred at Chippenham probably had the aim of capturing the king and annexing Wessex. His escape and the desperate period during which he was a fugitive is the context for several famous stories. He raised an army and in May, at Edington, Wiltshire, he defeated and shortly afterwards obtained the submission of the invaders. This was sealed by the baptism of their king, and the Treaty of Wedmore which defined their territory in eastern England (the Danelaw). In 886 Alfred took control of London and has been credited with creating a network of defensive centres for his kingdom known as burhs (boroughs), many of which were developed as fortified towns. Some burhs, as in the cases of London and Winchester, were Roman towns whose stone walls still survived, but most were new foundations initially defended by timber palisades and ditches. Thirty of these burhs are listed in a document, the Burghal Hidage, and their existence helps to explain Alfred’s success in dealing with fresh Viking invasions in the 890s. His reorganization of military service, so that half of his home guard (the fyrd) was farming, when the other half was in the field against invaders, and his creation of a fleet to meet the Vikings on equal terms, were other elements of the same policy.

Alfred took the responsibilities of a Christian ruler seriously and the spiritual welfare of his subjects was as important to him as their protection from conquest by Scandinavian pagans. He persuaded scholars to join him from the neighbouring Mercian kingdom of the west Midlands (Werferth, Plegmund, and Æthelstan), from the Welsh (Asser from St David’s), and from France (Grimbald and John). He prepared a law code and with the aid of these scholars he translated a series of religious and philosophical texts from Latin into English to make them more widely available. His translation of Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory I is the most famous of these and he was still working at this self-imposed task when he died. An enlightened yet disciplined ruler, he had a clear vision that his kingdom needed a literate and educated clergy as well as warriors and well-maintained defences. As a result, more is known about Alfred than any other Anglo-Saxon king and the creation at Winchester of the historical record called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, together with Asser’s Life of King Alfred, explains why many later historians came to regard him as a great, even model, king.