Alfred (849–99), king of Wessex (871–99). A popular image of Alfred is of national superman; destined by his father's (
Æthelwulf) will to be king, despite having three surviving older brothers ( Æthelbald, Æthelbert, and
Æthelred I); saviour of the English from the Vikings; architect of a united England; founder of the navy, reformer of the army, town‐planner; patron of the church; promoter of universal education and father of English prose; saintly, and easy to know. Revisionists emphasize his skill as propagandist, downgrading his achievements.
Perception of Alfred's personality, policies, and methods depends largely upon his seemingly intimate hagiographical biography by
Asser. But there was probably a different side to Alfred's character. And if the denial of the text's authenticity, powerfully reasserted in 1995, should carry the day, significant elements of the traditional account of Alfred's career will disappear.
Asser says Alfred was born in 849 in Wantage and married a Mercian lady in 868. The quality of his own writings suggests that he had a sound education in Latin. He assisted Æthelred against the ‘great army’ which invaded in 865, and his accession in 871 was most likely not a certainty. The 870s saw continuing war against the Danes, who were numerous, skilled, treacherous, well led, wanting conquest and settlement. In 878, surprised by
Guthrum at
Chippenham, Alfred fled to Athelney (Somerset), but defeated the Danes in a desperate last‐stand battle at
Edington. The results were the treaty of
Wedmore, Guthrum's baptism and retirement to be king of East Anglia.
The West Saxon dynasty was the only one to survive the Viking threat and Alfred gained authority over all the English outside Danish control. Mercia (under Burgred) had been an ally, and was handled tactfully. Alfred married his daughter
Æthelfleda to Ealdorman
Æthelred, probably of Mercian royal stock, allowed him to operate as subking, and ceded London after its recapture from the Danes (886).
Alfred's success depended on his own abilities and on the excellence of his administration. Earlier dynastic stability contributed to royal control over local government, though Alfred's rota for
thegns' attendance at court and the system of division of his revenues are recorded by Asser alone. His new 60–oared design for ‘long ships’ was not immediately successful, his division of the
fyrd into two (home and away) was perhaps to safeguard agriculture. His most effective reform was the development of burhs. Various sites, chosen so that nowhere in Wessex was further than 20 miles from one, were fortified and their defence and maintenance imposed on the people. Some 27,000 men were required in all.
Alfred's government was expensive. It is probable that he bought peace with heavy payments to the Danes, for example in 896. Wealth was necessary to ensure aristocratic support, for building, against Vikings, and also against dynastic rivals. Alfred's nephews Æthelhelm and Æthelwold challenged his disposition of Æthelred's property before the witan and could be expected to challenge his son
Edward for the kingship. Asser asserts that Alfred spent lavishly on art, architecture, alms, and gifts to the church. His coinage shows he was not short of silver, and his will that he was hugely wealthy in 899.
Alfred's relationship with the church seems superficially harmonious. Ninth‐cent. West Saxon kings seem not to have pressured the church economically: the
Anglo‐Saxon Chronicle records Alfred sending alms to Rome, and receiving gifts from Pope Marinus, and Asser recounts his foundation of monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury (for women). Yet evidence from Abingdon suggests Alfred was resented there as a despoiler, other evidence that he appropriated monastic properties right across Wessex, and it is as a threat to the church that he appears in a papal letter in 878.
The support Alfred needed was not automatic, so he attempted to teach his subjects about their duties, his authority, and their collective destiny. The authorship and dates of texts produced in his reign have been much discussed, and depend in part on the degree of credence given to Asser's account of Alfred's intellectual development. Alfred's law code referred to the laws of
Æthelbert of Kent and
Offa of Mercia, and included
Ine's, perhaps to appeal to Kentish and Mercian sentiment. The code's purpose was to promote the king as lawgiver, rather than to serve as a handbook, and Alfred's preface offers a history of law beginning with the Ten Commandments, suggesting that his people were a new people of God. The
Chronicle was perhaps composed in 896–7 under Alfred's direction, its content and structure suggesting that it was commissioned to tie Alfred into West Saxon history and Wessex into world history, to emphasize Alfred's fitness to rule, to represent the West Saxon kings as struggling for Christianity against paganism, to set Alfred's cause and people in a context of contemporary world powers and events, and to celebrate his achievement.
Alfred proposed, in his prose preface to his translation of Pope Gregory I's
Pastoral Rule, a programme of translation of books ‘most necessary for all men to know’. He complained that clerical knowledge of Latin and educational standards generally had greatly declined. But his own and his team's activities betray this to be an exaggeration. Alfred himself refers to Asser, Plegmund, Wærferth, Grimbald, and John. For their attendance on and education of Alfred, the plans for mass education, and for reading tests for ealdormen and reeves, we depend on Asser. Alfred's
Pastoral Rule was sent to his bishops, to educate them and to urge them to teach. Alfred also translated two contemplative works, Boethius'
Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine's
Soliloquies, and a number of psalms.
The West Saxon take‐over of England, 10th‐cent. economic development, the burhs as sites of mints and centres of administration, can all be traced back to Alfred. Though vernacular literature failed to take off, the education of bishops may have contributed to the 10th‐cent. reform movement since its leaders were bishops. Alfred's legal innovations may have laid a foundation for the English common law of Henry II's time.
Asser exaggerated Alfred's contemplative quality. The reality was a ruthless, shrewd ruler with a keen historical sense, a sensitivity to public opinion, and a genuine sense of duty.
