A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons (34 page)

Arrived back in Wessex, Æthelwulf found himself faced by a general rebellion led by his eldest son Æthelbald. The cause is unknown. Maybe the heir was worried by the new queen’s consecration ceremony. He need hardly fear a second wife as such, but the nubile youngster now installed was a full queen, sanctified by the church. Any son of hers might take priority over him. Æthelwulf retired with his young spouse to Kent. A charter dated November 857 suggests the kind of problems Wessex had to fear from Æthelwulf’s Continental interests: it is a confirmation of a gift of lands at Rotherfield, Hastings, Pevensey and London to Saint Denis, the great monastery outside Paris; in other words the ‘export’ of substantial revenues.

When his father died the following year, Æthelbald neutralized any threat from Judith by marrying her (marriage with a stepmother, not unheard of in pagan practice, does not seem to have caused any technical problems for the church, though it scandalized Bishop
Asser). King Æthelwulf had maintained the domestic prestige of the monarchy left him by his illustrious father (a tenth-century archbishop of Trier who was proud to trace his descent from Ecgberht of Wessex). He also assured the ascendancy of his house in Kent so that minsters there turned to him for protection, rather than the archbishops of Canterbury. Indeed by the end of the century Alfred, his son, was able to appoint his own candidate to the see. He had a better than average record against the Vikings and he had promoted the standardization of the coinage carried forward by his sons. By his marriage into the Carolingian dynasty he had increased its standing abroad. Yet by his will he confirmed the division of the kingdom, leaving Kent and the eastern dependencies (Surrey, Sussex and Essex) to Æthelberht and Wessex, along with the former British territories of Dumnonia and Cornwall, to Æthelbald (who was to be followed by Æthelred and Alfred in the West).

On Æthelbald’s early and childless death in 860 the surviving brothers agreed that Æthelberht should succeed to the kingdom as a whole, with the prospect of Æthelred and Alfred to follow. Five years after this Æthelberht, too, died childless. Again Alfred ceded the entire succession to his brother Æthelred. When he too died in 871, Æthelred left a baby boy. It was out of the question to have an infant on the throne during these times of Danish raiding and Alfred succeeded as sole king. There would be problems when the baby, Æthelwold, grew to manhood (see
page 263
).

We must assume that the consular installation ceremony at Rome coloured Alfred’s entire life. He conducted a similar ceremony for his four-year-old grandson, Æthelstan, son of Edward. The child was invested ‘with a scarlet cloak, a belt set with gems and a Saxon sword with a gilded scabbard’. To some present it seemed like a secular consecration. For Alfred one imagines there were powerful associations with the duties of a Roman consul, which he translated in Anglo-Saxon as
heretoga
(i.e. ‘leader’). He saw himself as championing civilization against the forces of pagan barbarism.

He saw, too, comparisons between Wessex and himself facing the Danes and Rome under barbarian attack centuries before, then yielding to the impious rule of Theodoric the Ostrogoth (d. 520), the heretic Arian Christian. Theodoric’s chief minister was Boethius, a Roman Christian of ancient patrician family who for unknown reasons was arrested on treason charges. In prison awaiting trial (he was executed in 524) Boethius wrote
On the Consolation of Philosophy
, which Alfred was to translate lovingly. In his view of history Boethius had been a model champion of the moral way withstanding a violent and unrighteous usurper. Similarly he, under threat from the pagan Danes, was a just man, like Boethius, suffering for a righteous cause. He ascended the throne conscious that the aura of a Roman authority was about him and as consciously prepared to defend the Christian Roman legacy in his kingdom of Wessex against the pagan invaders. His new 870s coin types from the London mint show ‘design elements deliberately and carefully copied’ from Roman models.
⁴

Biography and history

The
Vita Alfredi Regis Angul Saxonum
is a Latin account of the ‘Life of Alfred King of the Anglo-Saxons’ from his birth, through his accession in 871 and up to the year 887 – that is twelve years before the death of its subject and almost twenty years before the death of its named author, the Welsh monk-bishop Asser (d. 908/9). About half the text is a Latin translation of texts of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
covering the years between 851 and 887. The single known manuscript of the
Vita
, made about the year 1000, was destroyed in 1731 by a fire in the Cotton Library in Westminster; various transcriptions and editions made before that time provide the basis of modern editions of the book. Alfred had called Asser to the West Saxon court to be his tutor in Latin, the lessons beginning on St Martin’s Day, 11 November 887. He became a valued royal
confidant and divided his time between the court and his monastery in St David’s. He rose in the West Saxon church to become bishop of the rich see of Sherborne and received rich gifts, such as a most valuable silken robe. So it was that the biography of the English king renowned for promoting the English language as a vehicle of history and scholarship came to be recorded by a Welshman writing in Latin. But then Asser was heir to the old British tradition of Latin scholarship reaching back to the time of Gildas. He depicts the king more as saint or pope. James Campbell observed that ‘Asser [wrote] with the zeal of the well rewarded’.

The idea for the project may have been inspired by the ‘Life of Emperor Charles the Great’ (
Vita Caroli
) written by the German churchman Einhard, who in turn had studied under Alcuin. But there are differences. Asser, writing in England, uses many
AD
dates, Einhard only one; Asser has anecdotes from his subject’s childhood, Einhard none; Asser lays stress on the importance of the
carmina Saxonica
(‘Saxon songs’) in Alfred’s upbringing. No such vernacular frivolities feature in Einhard.

Inevitably the Bible (particularly the Jewish Old Testament) provided themes for Christian monarchy. The inauguration of Saul as king of Israel, the example of Solomon as judge and law-maker, the decrees of God himself in the Ten Commandments were all seen as models. But even in military matters the ‘Good Book’ could seem relevant. When he read that ‘King Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem and built cities for defence in Judah’ (II Chronicles 11:5) Alfred would surely have found confirmation for his ‘burh’ building programme. Asser himself had an excellent command of the detailed Latin military terminology for defensive war and battlefield manoeuvres. Possibly he had read
De rei militaris
, the military treatise by the late fourth-century Roman patrician Vegetius and ‘the most heavily used of all classical texts in Western Europe from the 5th to the 15th century’
⁵
that according to David Hill, was known in England. Even the Venerable Bede seems to have based his
description of the rampart raised by the Romans against the Picts on it.
⁶
Perhaps Alfred too was familiar with it: Vegetius had much to say on the need for good intelligence gathering, the decisive importance of terrain and the correct use of reserves, all aspects of warfare in which Alfred was expert.

We do not know why Asser, who seems to have begun work in 893, ended the biography when he did, and there are factors that have led people to question whether he in fact was the author. The most extended argument for this thesis in
King Alfred the Great
(1995) by Professor Alfred P. Smyth. At the moment, though, the balance seems to be in Asser’s favour. For just one example, Asser’s book draws on texts that would have come naturally to a Welsh scholar, such as the ‘Old Latin’ version of the Bible, which was displaced in England by St Jerome’s ‘Vulgate’ text a good fifty years before Alfred came to the throne but was still in use in Wales.
⁷

The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(or, better,
Chronicles
), is a series of annals purporting to record events from the year 494 to 1154. It has been said that ‘Anglo-Saxon history would be virtually impossible to write without it.’
⁸
Being Europe’s only vernacular chronicle of such detail over such a long stretch of time, it has been and is still subject to intense and critical scrutiny (see
chapter 9
). Probably inaugurated under the aegis of King Alfred, its origins are in fact unclear. The hand of the first scribe has been dated to the very end of the reign. Up to that point, together with the regnal list and genealogy as preface, it is a panegyric to the dynasty’s conquest of southwest Britain followed by its triumph over the Danes. Whoever the compiler was, he could probably rely on ‘back-up knowledge’ of the oral traditions among his audience. If we add Alfred’s law book, which records also the laws of King Ine, we have the testament of a dynasty as notable in the arts of peace as successful in the arts of war.

The value of the
Chronicles
to the royal house of Cerdic becomes obvious if we look at the other powerful kings and dynasties mentioned in its annals. None of them, not even the kings of Mercia,
present us with the same sense of root or of destiny. Moreover, by its coverage, albeit selective, of other kingdoms in the land of the English ‘Angelcynn’ the
Chronicle
does have the aspect of a ‘national’ chronicle. While there is no direct evidence of Alfred’s personal involvement, it is hard to believe that he was not associated with the enterprise. At the very least, Alfred’s encouragement of learning and his deep sense of history support the supposition. After all, he did make additions to Orosius’ Old English translation of world history. What is more, the first part of the
Chronicle
manuscript, which runs from 494 to 891, was written in the kingdom of Wessex, very possibly in Winchester, Alfred’s favourite town. This record of the Anglo-Saxons and their success against the Danish ‘Great Army’ may well have been intended as morale-boosting ‘propaganda’, as we are told it was placed in Winchester, presumably in the Old Minster, attached by a chain to a reading desk. Moreover, it appears that copies were being sent out to the large churches of Wessex about the year 892 at the time of renewed Viking raids.
⁹

This ‘Winchester’ Chronicle also covers many Continental events during Alfred’s reign and not only events relating to Viking incursions into Europe, where England did have a common interest with the Frankish lands. There were at this time a number of Frankish monks in the fortified monastery founded by Alfred at Athelney, who no doubt kept up with their contacts in Francia and could have been the source of such information. Athelney input could also account for the Chronicle’s well-informed coverage of local Somerset news. This combination of the local, the national and the international adds to the perennial fascination of the source.

It may be that almost all the sources regarding Alfred’s reign ‘originated with either Alfred himself or his immediate entourage’ or, as another scholar somewhat acidly remarked, that ‘We hold that Alfred was a great and glorious king in part because he tells us he was.’
¹⁰
But if the king was ‘telling the tale’, was he not also perhaps telling the truth? In any case there were Continental precedents for
royal propaganda programmes. Einhard’s
Vita Caroli
is an obvious parallel and the
Royal Frankish Annals
was straight propaganda for Charles’s dynasty. Given the severity of the Danish Viking threat it would not be surprising if Alfred had a ‘profound sense of dynastic insecurity’ and turned, as has been suggested, to Frankish ‘experts on kingship’.
¹¹
We can assume that the
Chronicle
’s, principal target audience was not posterity but rather Alfred’s contemporaries; his aim, to rally them to take pride in the West Saxon royal house and support it in the struggle against the national enemy.

Apart from perhaps St Boniface, there is no Anglo-Saxon about whom we know more. The youngest of five brothers, it was noteworthy that he came to the throne at all. His sexuality seems to have been more or less normal for a king, with at least one illegitimate child credited to him by rumour. Unusually for a monarch of his time, and laughably by twenty-first century social convention, he valued personal chastity and prayed for some painful disease to inhibit his lusts. As a young man he did suffer from an extremely painful complaint, possibly haemorrhoids, possibly Chrohn’s disease, which seems to have recurred throughout his life. It hardly hampered his achievement. A king who could read was remarkable; one who authored books was unheard of elsewhere in western Christendom before the millennium.

For Patrick Wormald, Alfred was the ‘translucent mind of Old English authority’,
¹²
for Bishop Wulfsige, as we saw, the greatest of treasure-givers. The quality praised is that of the heroic war leader and Alfred was certainly that; but the context, the bishop’s preface to a translation commissioned by the king, is that of cultural patronage. For Alfred, recruits for the war against ignorance demanded the same kind of largesse as warriors against terror raids. In his own translation of Boethius the king claimed to have no interest in money or power for their own sakes but only as means to his job of administering his kingdom ‘virtuously’.

The birth of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ idea and cultural renewal

In the 870s Burgred, ruler of Anglian Mercia, had been expelled by the Danes. He made an English king’s pilgrimage to Rome, where he died. He was followed by Ceolwulf, who gave hostages to the Danes and whom the
Chronicle
considered a mere puppet, though he issued a joint currency with Alfred. Nothing more is heard of him after 880 and Alfred placed Mercia under the rule of Æthelred, as ealdorman.