Chapter III: Introduction (1)

In writing an Introduction to the chapters which follow, I shall not be expected to contribute any new facts to the life of the great king. As for any new facts, the time has long gone by when anything new could be discovered concerning the great king of whom I have to speak. The tale of Alfred is a twice-told tale: but it is a tale that should be always fresh and new, because at every point it concerns every successive generation of English-speaking people. Happily it is not the whole life of Alfred that we have to consider in this place: it is the example of that life: the things that Alfred invented and achieved during that short life for his own generation; things which have lasted to our own day, and still bear fruit and golden sheaves. I should like to proceed at once to those achievements, but it is absolutely necessary first that we should understand some of the conditions of the time: the troubles and the struggles: the overthrow and ruin with which Alfred’s reign began: the apparent hopelessness of the situation changed by the unexpected uprising of one man: and the rapid development of this man as Captain, Conqueror, Administrator, and Teacher. This done, we shall be in a position to receive the King as an example that should abide with the people still, and should still continue to shape the lives and inspire the minds of his race.

In order to prevent long explanations, and to illustrate at the outset some of the conditions of England when Alfred was born into the world, I have caused a small map to be drawn. You will see that the island is divided up into many nations. There is first the Kingdom of Kent, founded by the Jutes, who never extended themselves: then the Kingdom of Wessex or of the West Saxons, who by this time had absorbed the Kingdom of Essex or East Saxons, and of Sussex or South Saxons. The modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk form the Kingdom of East Anglia—founded by Angles, a people closely allied to Jutes and Saxons: the middle of England is Mercia, the Kingdom of the March or boundary—the Mercians were also Angles. On the north is the Kingdom of Northumbria, also founded by Angles. The West of England is wholly occupied by Strathclyde, Wales, and Cornwall, all kingdoms of the Britons or Welsh who remained still unconquered. In Scotland the Highlands were occupied by the Picts, and a part of the west was peopled by the Scots who crossed over from Ireland. The Angles therefore occupied the middle, the north, and the east; they gave their own name to the whole country—Angle-land or England: the Saxons occupied the south, with the exception of Kent: the Welsh still held nearly the whole of the west: but their territories were separated and cut into three parts. If we look backwards and forwards in history during these centuries we shall find the map of our island constantly changing. But still we may take this map fairly to represent the country as it was in the time of Alfred—eight distinct nations in it: three of them composed of Angles, who were not on that account allies: one containing Jutes: one of Saxons: three of Welsh. These so-called nations shifted their borders continually: they fought their neighbours: they split up and fought each other: there was no coherence or stability among them: some of them adopted Christianity and then relapsed: some of them remained pagans.

These were the tribes or nations in the land.

Let us next consider what manner of men it was over whom Alfred was called upon to rule. In order to get at this knowledge we must inquire of their religion, their laws, and their customs. As for their religion, before they became Christians, it was a fierce and cruel religion, although it was full of imagination, as was to be expected of a people in whose minds the noblest poetry was slumbering. There were Gods who created and invented: Gods who gave life and inspired love: Gods who sent the thunder and the storm: Gods who brought the spring and the sunshine, the fruit, and the harvest. There were evil Gods—the Gods of Death, who killed men: the Gods of Disease, who tortured men: the Gods of the Sea and the River, who drowned men: the Gods of Battle, who struck men with cowardice, and weighed down their hands so that they could not strike. There were humbler deities—spirits of the stream, the woods, and the hills—for the most part hostile to men and malignant, because in certain stages of civilisation the unknown forces of Nature present themselves as personal deities who are always hostile to man—according to the Greek legend, for instance, he who met the great God Pan face to face fell down dead. They believed in raising spirits and in spectres, much as some of us do now: they believed in witches and in witchcraft: in magic and in charms: in love philtres: in divination: in lucky days. In a word, the Anglo-Saxon was full of the superstitions which belonged to his age.

There was, however—I venture to read between the lines—one saving clause. The Anglo-Saxon was not only afraid of the unknown, which caused him to invent malignant deities, but in his mind the God of Creation was stronger than the God of Destruction. There is hope for a people while that belief survives. Long after he became a Christian the Saxon continued to retain his old beliefs under other names: he saw and conversed in imagination with the old deities whom he had forsaken: they spoke to him in the thunder: he saw their forms in the flying cloud, in the splendour of the sunset: he heard their whispers in the woods: they came to him in dreams. Religion, to the Anglo-Saxon, was a thing more real, more present, than it has ever been to any people except the Russian and the Jew. This is perhaps the most important point to be observed in the character of Alfred’s people. They were profoundly influenced by their religion. In the eighth century, when Christianity was spread over the south and the middle of the country, all classes began to long after the religious life as they understood it. Kings and Queens—there were ten Kings and eleven Queens—Princes and Princesses, nobles and freemen—all who could be received, crowded into the monasteries: they were eager for the life of meditation and of prayer: they made the cloisters rich: they filled the monastic houses with gold and silver plate and rich treasure. When the Danish invasion began, the Danes very soon found out that it was the monastery, and not the town, which they should sack: and at the same time the people found out that the full monastery meant the shrunken army. It has been said that the Anglo-Saxon never changes. In this respect at least he has never changed. Through all the changes and chances of a thousand years, wherever he has penetrated, wherever he has settled, he has carried with him the same earnestness and the same reality of religion.

We must also note, next to the earnestness of his religious belief, the freedom of his institutions. The liberties of our race, which have become to us like the very air we breathe, so that we are not even conscious of them, were not wrested by the people from reluctant kings. These liberties had always been with them from the prehistoric times when the family was the unit, and when custom was the only kind of law. Among their primitive customs were the first rude forms of their free institutions. From the Forests of North Germany, from the mouth of the Elbe, not from any king, came the right of free meeting: the right of free speech: the right of free thought: the right of free work.

Next, as a people the Saxons were also fond of music, singing, poetry: the quicker witted Norman despised the Saxon as slow of understanding. Perhaps: but the Saxon proved himself in the long-run far more capable of enthusiasm, of loyalty, of patriotism, of sacrifice, of all those actions and emotions which spring from the imagination and produce forces united and irresistible. Remember that the whole of our literature is Anglo-Saxon; none of it is Norman. There is not one great Norman poet. No Norman literature was produced on this our Anglo-Saxon soil.

The next characteristic of this people is less picturesque. They were obstinate. Now obstinacy, if we think of it, is one of the most useful and valuable qualities that can be planted in the breast of man. It has many names: it is called by its friends firmness: under any name it is the tenacious man who wins in the long-run.

They were essentially an outdoor people: they loved all manner of outdoor sports: all classes were hunters, hawkers, fishers, trappers: the country was full of creatures to hunt: there were in the forests wolves, bears, wild bulls, and stags: they loved the free air of the open hillside: and they hated towns. It was many years after their settlement in this country before they ceased to feel the old terror of the magic which, they thought, could be practised within the walls of a city.

As regards the Anglo-Saxon women, it is pleasant to learn that the very same virtues which are now conspicuous in our own women of the present day were conspicuous in them. She was, as Thomas Wright says, “An attentive housewife: a tender companion: the comforter and consoler of her husband and her family: the virtuous and noble matron.” In all ranks, from the queen to the farmer’s wife, we find the lady of the household attending to her household duties. They were more learned than the men: they could recite and sing the poetry of their native bards: they were skilful in playing the harp: and in embroidery and needlework of all kinds the work of the Anglo-Saxon ladies was in demand all over Western Europe.

The Anglo-Saxon, therefore, had many virtues. He had also, we must confess, his faults, which were conspicuous as well as numerous. He was slothful of mind: he was always ready to sink back to the ancient seclusion of the village and the forest: he was conservative, and thought the old ways would last for ever: he was a great drinker—in drinking, except among the Danes, he had no equal: he would drink for days together almost without stopping: even the priests did not escape the universal vice: they were admonished by the bishops not to say mass unless they were sober: his hospitality consisted chiefly in making the guests drunk. The Saxons, again, have been charged with cruelty—certainly very terrible things were done, but we cannot expect a people to be before their age: it was a cruel age. Frenchman, Norman, Dane, Saxon: all alike were cruel in their punishments: but these things belong to the time. Let us acquit the people of Wessex of more than their share of the average cruelty. The stories told of the Danes, for example, are almost incredible, whether for the cruelty of the torture, or for the endurance of the victim.

When we say that the Anglo-Saxon was a free man, and governed by free laws, we must not imagine him to be a Republican of the nineteenth century. Nor must we conclude that the Anglo-Saxon was a democrat, as we understand democracy. He had his king over him, to begin with: and the king was not elected by the people from among themselves, as the President of a Republic; he succeeded because he belonged to the Royal blood. He was even allowed, long after they were Christians, to be descended from the Gods: the people consented to his succession, but they did not elect him. As king he had very large powers, and these were undefined: men had not yet begun to question the Royal Prerogative: above all, he was their captain: he led the army: he fought with the army.

In a word, the Anglo-Saxon of the ninth century was in essentials very much like his descendant of the present day. He was religious: he was a lover of order: he was a good fighting man: he was fond of outdoor sports and occupations: he was tenacious of his freedom: he was imaginative, poetical, and dreamy: he was fond of music: he was still full of the old traditions and superstitions which ruled his life, long after he had become a Christian. This is a general summary of his character. In one virtue he was as yet wanting. We must not expect in him what we call the national and patriotic sentiment. The man of Wessex was the enemy of the man of Mercia: the north stood aloof from the south: there was no England or Britain: there was only a large island divided among eight nations, or ten nations, or five nations, according to the year of the Lord: some of them spoke the same tongue: all the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons had similar institutions: nevertheless they were enemies. You remember, two hundred years later on, how London accepted the rule, first, of Cnut the Dane: and, next, of William the Norman. Both of them were what we should call foreigners. There was no such feeling then. To the Londoner it mattered little whether his king was Mercian, Northumbrian, Saxon, Jute, Dane, or Norman. London received kings from all these people. There was not yet any feeling existing for the country as a whole. It was part of the work of Alfred, unseen and unsuspected, to make it possible to weld the different nations into one: to create little by little the love of country in place of the old loyalty to the tribe.

Let us concede that Alfred fought, not for England, but for Wessex. In doing so, it is true, he fought for all England, but perhaps without his knowledge. In the same way David fought first for his own little country—for Judea—and made it possible for his successor to create one great country, of which Judea was the centre.

I have lingered a long time over the character of the people whom Alfred was called upon to rule. Without this knowledge it is impossible to understand what the king did and why he did it, and in what respects his work is so truly remarkable and wonderful. Let us now pass on to the history itself, and first, naturally, to the invasions of the Danes.

It was in the year 832—seventeen years before the birth of Alfred—that the Danes first made their appearance on these shores. Their incursions began and continued exactly in the same way as those of the Saxons themselves 400 years before. They came over in their ships: they found the north seas without defence: they found no fleets guarding the island from the pirates, as of old: the people, ready to believe that things would go on for ever unaltered, had actually abandoned their ships; had lost the art of ship-building; and were no longer accustomed to the sea. The Danish fleet swooped down upon the coast: harried the country: murdered the people: sacked the monasteries and the churches, and went away again. They found the coast, like the seas, defenceless: the monastic houses had drained the country of the fighting nobles: the warlike spirit of the people was wasting itself in petty tribal wars. The Danes, until the old spirit returned, were far more than a match for the Saxons. They appeared suddenly, without warning, now on the coast of Kent: now on that of Dorsetshire: now at the mouth of the Parret, in Somerset: now up the Thames: now at Southampton: they came in fleets of a hundred and fifty ships, carrying each sixty or seventy warriors: an army greater than anything that could be hastily got together against them: by the time that an army was collected the Danes had gone, leaving ruined churches: villages destroyed by fire: monasteries pillaged of their treasures: and murdered monks lying beside the scattered relics, which could not protect them. The Danes, their foray over, had gone off, bearing their treasures with them, to their own country. Next year they landed again: but on another part of the island.

This yearly invasion of the Danes lasted for twenty years. They always made straight for the nearest monasteries, which they sacked: there were not many towns in Saxon England; but there were some—Canterbury, London, Southampton, York—they attacked these, seized, plundered, and left them in ruins. For twenty years they came every year: sometimes we hear of a victory over them: but still they came again: there was never a victory so decisive as to keep them from returning in ever-increasing numbers. Then they began to stay in the country: they left off going home in the autumn: they established themselves in winter quarters, first on Sheppey Island, then on the Isle of Thanet: then in Norfolk. Then they went farther afield. In a word, they overran and conquered East Anglia: then the Kingdom of Northumbria: then that of Mercia: then the united Kingdoms of Wessex and Kent. It was at this crisis, when all the power of the Danes was brought to bear against Wessex and Kent, Alfred succeeded to the throne. His father and his four brothers, kings one after the other, had spent their lives in vainly beating back hordes of the Danes, who returned year after year. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes the best of occasional victories, but the fact remains that every year the invaders became stronger and the defenders became weaker. The King of Mercia at last gave up the struggle and went to Rome, to adopt the religious life, leaving his wife behind. Alfred might have done the same thing, and it would not have been imputed unto him for cowardice, but for godliness.

Happily for England he did not. The Danes had seized Chippenham, in Wiltshire, and made that place their stronghold and headquarters. From Chippenham they sent out their light troops, moving rapidly here and there, devastating and murdering. For nine long years, growing every year weaker, Alfred fought them: in one year he fought nine battles. At the end of that time he found himself deserted, save for a few faithful followers: his country prostrate: everything in the hands of the enemy: his cause lost, and apparently no loop-hole or glimmer of hope left of recovery. No darker or more gloomy time ever fell upon this country. Everywhere the churches and the monasteries were pillaged and destroyed. All those—bishops, priests, monks, and nuns—who could get away had fled, carrying with them such of their treasures as they could convey. The towns were in ruins: the farms were deserted: the people had lost hope and heart: they bowed their heads and entered into slavery: their religion was destroyed with the flight or the murder of their priests. Their arts, their learning, their civilisation, all that they had once possessed, were destroyed in those nine years’ warfare: destroyed and gone—it seemed for ever. And the king, with his wife and her sister, and his children, and the few who still remained with him, had taken refuge on a little hill rising out of a broad marsh, whither the enemy could not follow him.

In the after years Alfred was fond of talking over this time of desolation: he would recall the visions that came to him, and not only to him but to his wife as well: they both saw visions of consolation and of promise. Saint Cuthbert himself stood beside his bed and comforted him with promise of victory and honour. We can very well believe the vision. To Alfred: to his wife: the aid of the Saints was a thing to be invoked and to be looked for. Did they not pray daily for the help of the Saints? And who should aid the Saxons in their trouble but their greatest Saint—Cuthbert himself? In the sleep or the waking of night, what more natural than that Alfred should imagine that he saw and spoke with the Saint himself? To those who drive or walk across the dreary level of Sedgemoor, now drained by its deep dykes, and dotted with its village churches, there rises on the right hand the low hill of Athelney. One can realise, looking upon this hill across the flat land, which was once covered with bogs and quagmires, and reeds bending before the wind, how complete was the defeat of the king: how complete the victory of the Danes; which should drive Alfred to seek such a refuge. The Danish Conquest, like the Norman Conquest two hundred years later, seemed an achievement accomplished. No further opposition: no one asked what had become of Alfred—he had run away to Rome: he had gone into a monastery, perhaps: everywhere the Danes all over the country reported submission and the acceptance of their rule. And the old gods had come back again, Woden, and Thor, and Friga, and the rest: and again the fires flamed upon the high places, and the children were passed through them, and all the Christian saints had fled.

Alfred remained inactive during the whole long winter. It was the rule of the old Kriegs Spiel, the war game of that time, that the armies should not go forth to fight in winter. The men would have refused to go out in the cold season. In fact, they could not. The country was covered with uncleared forests: the roads in winter were deep tracks of mud: it was impossible for the men to sleep on the cold, wet ground. The delay suited Alfred: he wanted time to organise a rising in force: he sent messengers to the Somersetshire people, among whom, in winter quarters, were lying few or none of the Danish conquerors: he bade them make ready for the spring: he ordered those of the thanes who were still left to come to him at Athelney: and in May, when the spring arrived, Alfred appeared once more as one risen from the dead: once more he raised the Wessex standard of the Golden Dragon: once more the people, taking renewed courage, flocked together: as he marched along they joined him, the fugitives from the woods and those who had been made slaves in their own farms, and swelled his force.

What follows is like a dream. Or it is like the uprising of the French under Joan of Arc. There had been nine years of continuous defeat. The people had lost heart: they had apparently given in. Yet, on the reappearance of their king, they sprang to arms once more: they followed him with one consent, and on the first encounter with the Danes they inflicted upon them a defeat so crushing that they never rallied again. In one battle, on one field, the country was recovered. In a single fortnight after this battle the Danes were turned out of Wessex. Alfred had recovered the whole of his own country, and acquired in addition a large part of Mercia.

It is significant to read that the Danish chieftain became a Christian, and was baptized. Do you suppose that he weighed the arguments and listened to the history and the doctrines of the new religion? Not at all. He perceived—this logical pagan—that King Alfred’s Gods had shown their superiority over his own in a manner so unexpected, so amazing, and so decisive, that he hesitated no longer. He acknowledged that superiority; he was baptized, and he never afterwards relapsed.

Alfred had got back his kingdom. It remained for him to recover it in a fuller and a larger sense: to restore its former prosperity and its ancient strength.

He began by recognising the separate rights of the Mercians. He would not call himself King of Mercia. He placed his son-in-law Ethelred as Earl of Mercia, and because London was at that time considered a Mercian city, Ethelred took up his residence there as soon as the Danes had gone out. The condition of London was as desolate and as ruinous as that of the whole country. The walls were falling down: there was no trade: there were no ships in the river: no merchandise on the wharves: there were no people in the streets, save the Danish soldiers and the slaves who worked for them. Alfred restored the walls: rebuilt the gates: brought back trade and merchants: repaired the Bridge, and made London once more the most important city of his kingdom: its strongest defence: its most valuable possession. This was, in fact, the third foundation of London. If Alfred had failed to understand the importance of London—that great port, happily placed, not on the coast open to attack, but a long way up a tidal river, in the very heart of the country—a place easy of access from every part of the kingdom—a port convenient for every kind of trade, whether from the Baltic or the Mediterranean—the whole of the commercial history of England would have been changed, the island might have remained what it had been for centuries before the Roman Conquest, a place which exported iron, tin, skins, wool, and slaves, and imported for the most part weapons to kill each other with.

Alfred gave us London. The lesson of ten years’ fighting taught Alfred what the Saxons had never before understood, the value of walled cities in the case of invasion. He saw—he was the first to perceive—how superior numbers may be rendered of no avail when they fling themselves against strong walls. The next Danish invaders found themselves stopped on their way up the Thames by a city fortified by a strong wall which the enemy could neither knock down nor climb over: and manned by citizens made doubly courageous by the safety and the strength of their ramparts. Six separate sieges were endured by London during the second invasion of the Danes: six separate times the enemy had to raise the siege and to go elsewhere, leaving London unconquered. Other walled towns were added—Winchester, York, Exeter, and Canterbury—but the first was London, whose fallen Roman wall, of which only the hard core of cement remained, Alfred rebuilt and faced again with stone.

Alfred, I repeat, gave us London. This was a great service which he rendered to the safety of the country. But there was still a greater service. The Saxon had quite forgotten the seamanship in which he had formerly known no master and no equal. Alfred saw that for the sake of safety there must be a first line of defence before the coast could be reached. England could only be invaded in ships, and by those who had the command of the seas. Therefore, he created a navy: he built ships longer, heavier, swifter than those of the Danes, and he sent these ships out to meet the Danes on what they supposed to be their own element. They went out: they met the Danes: they defeated them: and before long the Saxons had afloat a fleet of a hundred ships to hold the mastery of the Channel. The history of the English navy is chequered: there have been periods when its pretensions were low and its achievements humble: but since the days of Alfred the conviction has never been lost that the safety of England lies in her command of the sea. Fortresses and walled cities are useful: it is a very great achievement to have given them to the country: London alone, restored by Alfred, was the nation’s stronghold, the nation’s treasure house, a city full of wealth, filled with valiant citizens, unconquered and defiant: that was a very great gift to the country: but it was a greater achievement still to have given to the country a fleet which was ready to meet the enemy before they had time to land, and to give them most excellent reasons why they should not land: to make the people understand that above all things, and before all, it was necessary for all time to keep the mastery of the seas.

Remember, therefore, that Alfred, thus, gave us the command of the seas.

As Rudyard Kipling, our patriot poet, says:

We have fed our seas for a thousand years,
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there’s never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead.

“Never a wave of all her waves”—and it was Alfred who first sent out the English blood to redden those waves in defence of hearth and home.

Now, there can be no doubt that if he had advanced upon the great defeat of the Danes he might have recovered the whole of the country and become not only its overlord, as his grandfather Egbert had been before him, but its king. No doubt he was tempted: to a successful commander more successes always lie before him waiting to be snatched. This dream of conquest he renounced. He sat down with what he had—the old kingdom of his forefathers, strengthened by his new fleet: by the stronghold of London: and by the restored courage and self-respect of his people. The dream of conquest was a dream of personal ambition: he put it aside. It was part of that renunciation of self which belongs to the whole of his career. The historian Green has pointed out that Alfred “is the only instance in the history of Christendom of a ruler who put aside every personal aim or ambition in order to devote himself wholly to the welfare of those whom he ruled.”

We have considered Alfred as a captain, a conqueror, and the founder of our navy. We will now consider him in the capacity of king, administrator, and law-giver.

I do not claim for Alfred that he was the creator of the English law. His glory consists mainly in his adaptation of the old order to the new: he took all that was left of the shattered past and moulded it anew, with additions to suit the new situation, and for the most part on the same lines. You will ask, perhaps, how much of the honour due to Alfred’s achievements should be given to his ministers and how much to himself? Assign to his officers all the credit possible, all that belongs to the faithful discharge of duty: still the initiative, the design of the whole of the past, is absolutely due to Alfred himself. He must not be considered as a modern king—the modern king reigns while the people rule: he was the king who ruled: his will ruled the land: he had his Parliament: his Meeting of the Wise: but his will ruled them: he appointed his earls or aldermen: his will ruled them: he had his bishops: his will ruled them. From the time when he began to address himself to the organisation of a strong nation—that is to say, from the time when the Dane was baptized, his will ruled supreme. No law existed then to limit the king’s prerogative. The king was imperator, commander of the army, and every man in the country was his soldier.

Among the monuments of his reign there stands out pre-eminent his code of laws. He did not, I say, originate or invent his code. He simply took the old code and rewrote it, with additions and alterations to suit the altered conditions of the time. He understood, in fact, the great truth, which law-makers hardly ever grasp, that successful institutions must be _the outcome of national character_. Now, the laws and customs of these nations—Saxons, Angles, and Jutes—were similar, but there were differences. They had grown with the people, and were the outcome of the national character. Alfred took over as the foundation of his work for Wessex the code compiled for the West Saxons by his ancestor, King Ina: for Mercia, that compiled by Offa, King of Mercia: for the Jutes, that compiled by Ethelbert, King of Kent. In his work two main principles guided the law-giver: first, that justice should be provided for every one, high and low, rich and poor: next, that the Christian religion should be recognised as containing the Law of God: which must be the basis of all laws. Both these principles were especially necessary to be observed at this time. The devastation of the long wars had caused justice to be neglected: and the destruction of the churches, and the murder or flight of the clergy, had caused the people to relapse into their old superstitions.

King Alfred then boldly began his code by reciting the Laws of God. His opening words were: “Thus saith the Lord, ‘I am the Lord thy God.’” That is his keynote. The laws of a people must conform with the Laws of God. If they are contrary to the spirit of these laws they cannot be righteous laws. In order that every one might himself compare his laws with the Laws of God, he prefaced his laws first by the Ten Commandments; after this he quoted at length certain chapters of the Mosaic Law. These chapters he followed by the short epistle in the Acts of the Apostles concerning what should be expected and demanded of Christians. Finally, Alfred adds the precept from St. Matthew, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”

(_Cottonian Library_)]

Some writers have assumed that Alfred required of his subjects by this preamble that they should be governed in all the details of life by the Mosaic Law. This view I cannot accept. Alfred set forth, I think, these laws in order that his own might be compared with them where comparison was possible, and in order to challenge comparison and to give the greater weight to his own laws by showing that they were based in spirit and, _mutatis mutandis_, on the Levitical Law and on the Law of the Gospel.

Moreover, in order to connect the whole system of justice with religion, in order to teach the people in the most efficacious manner possible that the Church desires justice above all things, he added to the sentence of the judge the penance of the Church. This subjection of the law to the Church would seem intolerable to us. At that time it was necessary to make a rude, ignorant, and violent people understand that religion must be more than a creed: that it must have a practical and restraining side; a man who was made to understand that an offence against the law was an offence against the Church which would be punished by the latter as well as by the secular judge, was made for the first time to feel the reality of the Church.

This firm determination to link the Divine Law and the Human Law: this firm reliance on the Divine Law as the foundation of all law: is to me the most characteristic point in the whole of Alfred’s work. The view—the intention—the purpose of King Alfred are summed up, without intention, by the poet whom I have already quoted. The following words of Rudyard Kipling might be the very words of Alfred: they breathe his very spirit—they might be, I say, the very words spoken by Alfred:

Keep ye the law: be swift in all obedience—
Clear the land of evil: drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap where he hath sown:
By the Peace among our Peoples let men know we serve the Lord!

Alfred endeavoured to rebuild the monasteries. He then made the discovery that the old passion for the monastic life was gone: he could get no one to go into them. Forty years of a life and death struggle had killed the desire for the cloister: the people had learned to love action better than seclusion—their ideal was now the soldier, not the monk. A great gain for the people, which never afterwards returned to its ancient love of the Rule and the Hood.

His chief design in rebuilding the monasteries was to restore the schools. The country had fallen so low in learning that there was hardly a single priest who could translate the Church Service into Saxon, or could understand the words he sang. Alfred sent abroad for scholars: he made his Religious House not only a place for the retreat of pious men and women, but also the home—the only possible home—of learning, and the seat of schools. It is long since we have regarded a monastery as a seat of learning, or the proper place for a school. Go back to Alfred’s time and consider what a monastery meant in a land still full of violence: in which morals had been lost: justice trampled down: learning destroyed: no schools or teachers left: the monastery stood as an example and a reminder of self-restraint: peace: and order: a life of industry and such works as the most ignorant must acknowledge to be good: where the poor and the sick were received and cared for: the young were taught: and the old sheltered. It was the Life which the monastery Rule professed; the aim rather than any lower standards accepted by the monks: which made a monastery in that age like a beacon steadily and brightly burning, so that the people had always before their eyes a reminder of the self-governed life. Most of us would be very unwilling to see the monastery again become a necessity of the national life: yet we must admit that in the ninth century Alfred had no more powerful weapon for the maintenance of a religious standard than the monastery.

In the cause of education, indeed, Alfred was before his age, and even before our age. He desired universal education. At his Court he provided instructors for his children and the children of the nobles. They learned to read and write, they studied their own language and its poetry: they learned Latin: and they learned what were called the “liberal sciences,” among them the art of music. But he thought also of the poorer class. “My desire,” he says, “is that all the freeborn youths of my people may persevere in learning until they can perfectly read the English Scriptures.” Unhappily he was unable to carry out this wish. Only in our own days has been at last attempted the dream of the Saxon King—the extension of education to the whole people.

One more aspect of Alfred’s foresight. He endeavoured to remove the separation of his island from the rest of the world: he connected his people with the civilisation of Western Europe by encouraging scholars and men of learning, workers in gold, and craftsmen of all kinds, to come over: he created commercial relations with foreign countries: a merchant who made three voyages to the Mediterranean he ennobled: he sent an embassy every year to Rome: he sent an embassy as far as India: he brought to bear upon the somewhat sluggish minds of his people the imagination and the curiosity which would hereafter engender a spirit of enterprise to which no other nation can offer a parallel.

It was partly with this view that he strongly enforced the connection with Rome. One bond of union the nations of the West should have—a common Faith: and that defined and interpreted for them by the same authority. Had it not been for that central authority the nations would have been divided, rather than drawn towards each other, by a Christianity split up into at least as many sects as there were languages. Imagine the evil, in an ignorant time, of fifty nations, each swearing by its own creed, and every creed different. From this danger Alfred kept his country free.

The last, not the least, of his achievements is that to Alfred we owe the foundations of our literature: the most noble literature that the world has ever seen. He collected and preserved the poetry based on the traditions and legends brought from the German Forests. He himself delighted to hear and to repeat these legends and traditions: the deeds of the mighty warriors who fought with monsters, dragons, wild boars, and huge serpents. He made his children learn their songs: he had them sung in his Court. The tradition goes that he could himself sing them to the music of his own harp. This wild and spontaneous poetry which Alfred preserved is the beginning of our own noble choir of poets. In other words, the foundation of that stately Palace of Literature, built up by our poets and writers for the admiration and instruction and consolation of mankind, was laid by Alfred. Well, but he did more than collect the poetry, he began the prose. Before Alfred there was no Anglo-Saxon prose.

I have already quoted Green’s remark that in everything that Alfred designed or accomplished he put aside every personal aim or ambition in order to devote himself wholly to the welfare of those over whom he ruled. In his capacity as author this remark is specially illustrated. You all know that it is the leading characteristic—or the infirmity—of the poet, author, writer, to consider himself as part of his message. Alfred put himself aside: he presented his works in translations: they were, indeed, translations: but embellished, altered, enriched by his own work thus modestly presented. There is one book, now quite neglected, which for a thousand years profoundly moved the world of Western Europe. It is a book, written in prison by a noble Roman named Boethius, a philosopher, soldier, poet, and mathematician. It is entitled the _Consolation of Philosophy_. Fortunately the author, who wrote it from a prison, had time to finish it before they executed him. This book Alfred translated or imitated. For he filled his translations with his own thoughts and his own judgments. He gives his own theories of government: of the duties of a king: of maintaining the population, and especially the proper proportion of the different classes required to keep the nation in a state of efficiency. Every man in the country is a weapon which may be—and should be—used for the advancement of the general welfare. It is the king’s duty to select the best instruments, and to use them to the best advantage. We even find brief notes of his own thoughts. “This,” says the king, among these notes, “I can now truly say, that so long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily, and after my death to leave my memory to my descendants in good works.”

It is not the part of this Introduction to dwell upon the whole of Alfred’s literary work. It is enough if we recognise that he introduced education and restored learning. In the course of time, innumerable books were attributed to him: it is said that he translated the Psalms. A book of proverbs and sayings is attributed to him—each one begins with the words “Thus said Alfred.” The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and contemporary record of events is said to have been commenced by him. And since it is certain from the life of the king by one of his own Court that he was regarded by all classes of his people with the utmost reverence and respect, I think it is extremely likely that some of his people listened and took down in writing the sayings of the king, so that the book of Alfred’s sayings may be as authentic as the sayings of Dr. Johnson, recorded by his admirer Boswell.

There is next to be observed the permanence of Alfred’s institutions. They do not perish, but remain. His Witenagemot—Meeting of the Wise—is our Parliament—it has developed into our many Parliaments. His order of King, Thane, and Freeman is our order of King, Lords, and Commons. His theory of education was carried out in some of the towns, and in all the monasteries and cathedrals: there are schools still existing which owe their origin to a period before the Norman Conquest. His foundation of all law upon the Laws of God remains our own: his liberties are our liberties: his navy is the ancestor of our navy: the literature which he planted has grown into a goodly tree—the Monarch of the Forest: the foreign trade that he began is the forerunner of our foreign trade: it would seem as if there was hardly any point in which we have reason to be grateful or proud which was not foreseen by this wise king.

To look for the secret of his wisdom is like looking for the secret of making a great poem or writing a great play: it may be arrived at and described, but it is not therefore the easier of imitation. Alfred’s secret is quite simple. _His work was permanent because it was established on the national character._ It was in order to make this point clear that I dwelt at length on the character of the people over whom Alfred ruled. He knew their character, and by instinct, which we call genius, he gave his people the laws and the education, and the power of development for which they were fitted. No other laws, no other kind of government, will enable a people to prosper except those laws to which they have grown and are adapted. Only those institutions, I repeat, are permanent which are based on the national character. That was the secret of King Alfred the law-giver.

It may be asked, what manner of man to look at was this great king? His biographer, Asser, who knew him well, has not thought fit to tell us. He only says in words of flattery that Alfred was more comely and gracious of aspect than his brothers. These brothers, four in number, were all kings before him, and all died young. Alfred himself was afflicted by a disease which never left him. It is therefore presumable that there was some congenital weakness in them all. This was not physical weakness: whatever the disease, it did not interfere with Alfred’s courage or his prowess in battle. This is proved by the fact that the Saxon kings actually fought in person in the forefront of the battle, and on foot. Alfred, for instance, fought in a dozen battles at least, and always with the valour that belongs to a strong man. I take him to have been a man of good stature and of strong build: a man whose appearance was kingly: who impressed his followers with the gallant and confident carriage of a brave soldier. But as to his face, or the colour of his hair or eyes, I can tell nothing. Fair hair he had, I think, and blue eyes: or the more common type of brown hair and gray eyes. When a king resigns all personal ambitions and seeks nothing for himself, it seems natural and fitting that, while his works live after him, he himself should vanish without leaving so much as a tradition of his face or figure.

From time to time in history—generally in some time of great doubt and trouble: or in some time when the old ideals are in danger of being forgotten: or in some time when the nation seems losing the sense of duty and of responsibility: there appears one, man or woman, who restores the better spirit of the people by his example: by his preaching: by his self-sacrifice: by his martyrdom. He is the prophet as priest: the prophet as king: the prophet as law-giver. There passes in imagination before us a splendid procession of men and women who have thus restored a nation or raised the fallen ideals. Among them we recognise many faces: there are Savonarola: Francis of Assisi: Joan of Arc: our own Queen Elizabeth, greatest and strongest of all women: the Czar Peter. But the greatest figure of them all—the most noble—the most god-like—is that of the ninth-century Alfred, king of that little country which you have upon your map. There is none like Alfred in the whole page of history: none with a record altogether so blameless: none so wise: none so human. We have allowed the memory of him to be too much forgotten: only here and there a historian—such as Freeman or Green—lifts up his voice and proclaims aloud that he has no words with which to speak adequately of this great Englishman. Perhaps the noble lines of Tennyson, written for another prince whose memory is dear to us all, may be referred to Alfred:

Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen’d to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her—
We know him now: we see him as he moved:
How modest, kindly, all-accomplish’d, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself;
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing’d ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but thro’ all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.

It is the purpose—the wise and patriotic purpose—of certain persons to erect, for these and other reasons, a monument, visible to all, to the memory of King Alfred.

Some of the points which I have recalled in this paper may help to show why such a monument would have been fitting at any time during the last thousand years. There is, however, a special reason which makes the erection of such a monument very necessary—I use the word necessary advisedly—at the present time. In the year 1897—on that memorable day when we were all drunk with the visible glory and the greatness of the Empire—there arose in the minds of many a feeling that we ought to teach the people the meaning of what we saw set forth in that procession—the meaning of our Empire—not only what it is, but how it came—through whose creation—by whose foundation. Now so much is Alfred the Founder that every ship in our Navy might have his name—every school his bust: every Guildhall his statue. He is everywhere. But he is invisible. And the people do not know him. The boys do not learn about him. There is nothing to show him. We want a monument to Alfred, if only to make the people learn and remember the origin of our Empire—if only that his noble example may be kept before us, to stimulate and to inspire and to encourage.

It seems unnecessary to urge that a monument to Alfred must be set up in Winchester, and not in London or in Westminster, or anywhere else. Here lies the dust of the kings his ancestors, and of the kings his successors. Thirty-five of his line made Winchester their capital: twenty were buried in the Cathedral. In this city Alfred received instruction from St. Swithin: the city was already old and venerable when Alfred was a boy. He was buried first in the Cathedral, and afterwards in the Abbey, which he himself founded, hard by. The name of Alfred’s country, well-nigh forgotten, except by scholars, has been revived of late years by a Wessex man—Thomas Hardy. But the name of Alfred’s capital continues in the venerable and historic city of Winchester, which yields to none in England for the monuments and the memories of the past.

I venture, lastly, to express my own personal hope that great as were the achievements of Alfred—the keynote to be struck and to be maintained will be that Alfred is, and will always remain, the typical man of our race—call him Anglo-Saxon, call him American, call him Englishman, call him Australian—the typical man of our race at his best and noblest. I like to think that the face of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the face of Alfred. I am quite sure and certain that the mind of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest is the mind of Alfred: that the aspirations, the hopes, the standards of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest are the aspirations, the hopes, the standards of Alfred. He is truly our Leader, our Founder, our King. When our monument takes shape and form let it somehow recognise this great, this cardinal fact. Let it show somehow by the example of Alfred the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest—here within the circle of the narrow seas, or across the ocean; wherever King Alfred’s language is spoken; wherever King Alfred’s laws prevail; into whatever fair lands of the wide world King Alfred’s descendants have penetrated.

WALTER BESANT.

ALFRED AS KING

BY FREDERIC HARRISON

ALFRED AS KING