A hunted king sheltering in the Somerset marshes at Athelney, and a legend about burnt loaves (878)
The cakes story comes from a later life of St Neot, not from Asser.
Monarchs · Anglo-Saxon & Danish
Alfred the Great
c. 848/849–899
House of Wessex — the burhs and the revival of learning
In office: 871–899
King of Wessex from 871, Alfred was the only English ruler ever to be called 'the Great'. After years of Viking defeat he won a decisive victory at Edington in 878 and forced the Danish leader Guthrum to accept baptism, then secured his kingdom with a network of fortified burhs, a reorganised army and a fleet. In his later years he styled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, issued a law code and led a programme of translating 'books most needful for all men to know' from Latin into English.
How to spot them
- ▸The burnt cakes, the marshes of Athelney, and the victory at Edington over Guthrum
- ▸Burhs and the Burghal Hidage; a reorganised fyrd; the beginnings of an English fleet
- ▸The translation programme and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Asser's Latin life of him
- ▸The Alfred Jewel in the Ashmolean; a statue at Winchester; father of Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd
In the reign
A victory at Edington followed by the baptism of a Danish leader, the king standing as his godfather (878)
Guthrum was baptised as Athelstan under the Treaty of Wedmore; the later treaty fixed a frontier along Watling Street.
A system of fortified towns across Wessex, none more than a day's march apart, listed with their hides in a surviving document (c. 880s)
The burhs, recorded in the Burghal Hidage.
A royal preface lamenting that learning had decayed so far that few south of the Humber could render Latin into English (c. 890)
His preface to the Old English version of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, sent to every bishopric with an aestel.
A Welsh bishop from St Davids writing a Latin biography of a king who was still alive (893)
Asser's Life of King Alfred.
A gold, rock-crystal and enamel ornament ploughed up in Somerset in 1693, inscribed with a king's order that it be made (1693)
The Alfred Jewel, inscribed AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
A set of annals begun in his reign and continued at Peterborough until 1154 (c. 890)
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Key ideas
- Kingship as a duty of wisdom: the ruler should share out learning as he shares out land, and rule by a written law code
- Defence in depth — fortified burhs, a rotating levy so half the army was always in the field, and ships built to his own design
Quick-fire facts
- •Youngest son of Æthelwulf of Wessex; he succeeded his brother Æthelred I in 871, the 'year of battles'
- •Married Ealhswith of the Gaini in 868; their children included Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians
- •From about 886, after taking London, he used the title King of the Anglo-Saxons rather than King of Wessex
- •His law code, the domboc, opens with the Ten Commandments and draws on the laws of Ine, Offa and Æthelberht
- •Works rendered into Old English in his circle include Gregory's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Augustine's Soliloquies and the first fifty Psalms
- •He died on 26 October 899 and was buried at Winchester; his remains were moved to the New Minster and then to Hyde Abbey, and are now lost
- •Asser reports that he suffered from a painful recurring illness, often identified as Crohn's disease or haemorrhoids
- •He is the only monarch of England conventionally given the epithet 'the Great'
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- The Royal Household — Alfred the Great (r. 871–899)
- Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (trans.) — Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources