lfred, b. 849, d. Oct. 26, 899, succeeded his brother
Æthelred as king of Wessex in April 871. Both he and his brother
were sons of King Æthelwulf. The only English king called "the
Great," Alfred is renowned both for his ability as a war
leader and for his love of learning. He can be counted, with
Charlemagne, as one of the two most outstanding rulers of the 9th
century. Alfred was the first English monarch to plan
systematically for the defense of his realm against the Danes,
with whom he was almost constantly at war from 876 until the end
of his life. He was also the first monarch of an English kingdom
to become a symbol and focus of national unity. Although
effective ruler only of Wessex and English Mercia, he was
regarded as the protector of all the English living under Danish
rule. His capture of London in 886, which marked the farthest
extent of his essentially defensive territorial expansion, led to
general English recognition of his leadership. After his death,
however, Wessex and Mercia were still unable to expel the Danes
from England. A learned layman, Alfred tried to ensure that his
countrymen had the opportunity to become literate. To that end,
he relied upon the bishops of the Anglo-Saxon church both to
teach and to seek out students. Alfred himself translated into
Anglo-Saxon the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory I, Orosius’s
Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, Boethius’s
Consolation of Philosophy, (possibly) the Ecclesiastical History
of the Venerable Bede, and part of Saint Augustine of Hippo’s
Soliloquies. To each of these except the fourth he added his own
commentary. Alfred’s military victories saved English
culture and national identity from destruction, and his
intellectual activities began the education of his people in the
Latin heritage. James W. Alexander
Bibliography: Duckett, Eleanor S., Alfred the Great (1956);
Dumville, David, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar
(1992); Frantzen, Allen, King Alfred (1986); Mapp, Alf
Johnson, The Golden Dragon (1974; repr. 1991); Smyth,
Alfred P., King Alfred the Great (1996); Stevenson, W. H.,
ed., Asser’s Life of King Alfred (1904; repr. 1959);
Sturdy, David, Alfred the Great (1995); Woodruff,
Douglas, The Life and Times of Alfred the Great (1974).
[Grolier’s Online Encyclopedia]
Alfred, the Great (c. 849-c. 901)
King of Wessex from 871. He defended England against Danish
invasion, founded the first English navy, and put into operation
a legal code. He encouraged the translation of works from Latin (some
he translated himself), and promoted the development of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. Alfred was born at Wantage, Oxfordshire, the
youngest son of Ethelwulf (died 858), king of the West Saxons. In
870 Alfred and his brother Ethelred fought many battles against
the Danes. He gained a victory over the Danes at Ashdown 871, and
succeeded Ethelred as king April 871 after a series of defeats.
Five years of uneasy peace followed while the Danes were occupied
in other parts of England. In 876 the Danes attacked again, and
in 878 Alfred was forced to retire to the stronghold of *Athelney,
from where he finally emerged to win the victory of Edington,
Wiltshire. By the Peace of Wedmore 878 the Danish leader Guthrum
(died 890) agreed to withdraw from Wessex and from Mercia west of
Watling Street. A new landing in Kent encouraged a revolt of the
East Anglian Danes, which was suppressed 884-86, and after the
final foreign invasion was defeated 892-96, Alfred strengthened
the navy to prevent fresh incursions. © Copyright Helicon
Publishing Ltd 1996 [The Hutchinson Encyclopedia]
Alfred [Old Eng.
Ælfred], 849-899, king of Wessex (871-99), sometimes called
Alfred the Great, b. Wantage, Berkshire. Youngest of the four
sons of King Æthelwulf, he was sent in 853 and again in 855 to
Rome, where the pope invested him with the honorary dignity of a
Roman consul. He lacked adequate instruction and learned to read
English only after he was 12. His adolescence was marked by ill-health
and deep religious devotion, both of which persisted for the rest
of his life. Little is known of him during the end of his father’s
reign and the reigns of his older brothers, Æthelbald and Æthelbert,
but when Æthelred took the throne (865), Alfred became his
secundarius (viceroy?) and aided his brother in subsequent
battles against the Danes, who now threatened to overrun all
England. When the Danes turned from the east and north regions
late in 870 to Wessex, Æthelred and Alfred resisted with varying
fortunes in a victory at Ashdown, Berkshire, a defeat at Basing,
and several indecisive engagements. Upon his brother’s death
after Easter in 871, Alfred became king of the West Saxons and
overlord of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex. Faced by an enemy
too powerful to defeat decisively, Alfred cleared the Danes from
Wessex by a heavy payment of tribute (see Danegeld) in 871. In
876 and 877 the Danes returned to ravage for several months and
finally, halted by Alfred’s army, swore to leave Wessex
forever. However, in a surprise invasion early in 878 the Danes
crushed Alfred’s forces, and he fled to Athelney in the fens
of Somerset, from which he continued to wage guerrilla war. The
famous legend of Alfred and the cakes, in which he appears as an
unrecognized king, exposed to the scolding of a peasant woman,
probably reflects this period of his life. Alfred rallied his
army to win a complete victory at Edington. He then dictated the
Peace of Chippenham (or Wedmore) by which Guthrum, the Danish
leader, accepted baptism and probably agreed to seperate England
into English and Danish "spheres of influence." The
Danes moved into East Anglia and E Mercia, and Alfred established
his overlordship in W Mercia. In later campaigns, scantily
recorded, Alfred captured London and again defeated the Danes.
Another treaty with Guthrum in 886 marked off the Danelaw E and N
of the Thames, the Lea, the Ouse, and Watling Street, leaving the
south and west of England to Alfred; established the relative
indemnities of Englishmen and Danes in law; and attempted to
prevent border raids.
Alfred’s Achievements. Security gave Alfred his chance.
He instituted reforms. Against further probable attacks by the
Danes, he reorganized the militia or fyrd about numerous
garrisoned forts throughout Wessex and commanded the construction
of a fleet. Drawing from the old codes of Æthelbert of Kent, Ine
of Wessex, and Offa of Mercia, he issued his own code of laws,
marked at once by Christian doctrine and measures for a stronger
centralized monarchy. He reformed the administrations of justice
and energetically participated in it. He came eventually to be
considered the overlord of all England, although this title was
not realized in concrete political administration. His greatest
achievements were the revival of learning and the establishment
of Old English literary prose. Alfred gathered together a group
of eminent scholars, including the Welshman Asser. They
strengthened the Church by reviving learning among the clergy and
organized a court school like that of Charlemagne, in which not
only youths and clerics but also mature nobles were taught.
Alfred himself between 887 and 892 learned Latin and translated
several Latin works into English -- Gregory the Great’s Pastoral
Care, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Orosius’s
universal history, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,
and St. Augustine’s Soliloquies. The adaptation of
Boethius is most remarkable for the liberal interpolation of his
own thoughts. The Orosius is interesting for the addition of
accounts of voyages made by the Norse explorers, Ohthere and
Wulfstan. Although he did not write it, Alfred greatly influenced
the extant form of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle. All these pursuits were interrupted, but not ended,
by new Danish invasions between 892 and 896. The struggle was
severe because Alfred’s military reforms had not been
completed and because the invading forces were joined by settlers
from the Danelaw. He received strong support from his son Edward
the Elder, his daughter Æthelflæd, and her husband, Æthelred
of Mercia, and in the critical year of 893 the great Danish fort
at Benfleet was successfully stormed. One Danish expedition
attempting conquest by way of the Thames and Severn was defeated
at Buttington; another occupying Chester was besieged and forced
back to Essex. In 896 the Danes slowly dispersed to the Danelaw
or overseas, and Alfred’s new long ships fought with varying
success against pirate raids on the south coast. Alfred’s
career was later embroidered by many heroic legends, but history
alone justifies the inscription on the statue at his birthplace:
"Alfred found learning dead, and he restored it; the laws
powerless, and he gave them force; the Church debased, and he
raised it; the land ravaged by a fearful enemy, from which he
delivered it. Alfred’s name shall live as long as mankind
shall respect the past." Our knowledge of Alfred’s life
depends upon the biography by Asser, the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, the royal charters, and Alfred’s own writings.
See the various editions of Alfred’s works; R. H. Hodgkin, A
History of the Anglo-Saxons, Vol. II (1935); biography by E.
S. Duckett (1956). [The Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia, Third
ed., 1969]
Alfred the
Great (849-901), king of the West Saxons in England, was born at
Wantage in Berkshire. He was the youngest son of King Ethelwulf;
but when his brother Ethelred died, in 871, Alfred was declared
king by universal consent in the midst of a Danish invasion. He
practically founded the British navy; reorganized the national
defences; raised public buildings and reclaimed waste lands; and
revised all existing laws, combining those which he found good
into a single code. He established schools, encouraged literature
in the native tongue, and improved the services of the church.
Alfred’s principal writings are as follows: A translation
of the Universal History of Orosius; a translation of
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History; a translation of the
De Consolatione Philosophioe of Boëtius; and a close
translation of Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis and Dialogues.
There are Lives of Alfred by Asser, Reinhold Pauli,
Thomas Hughes, Plummer, and Draper. Consult also Turk’s Legal
Code of Alfred the Great; Snell’s Age of Alfred
(1912). [World Wide Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1935]
Notes on King Alfred the Great Alfred was born in Wantage (now
in Oxfordshire) and in 853 was taken to Rome, where he was
confirmed by Pope Leo IV. Alfred assumed the crown in 871. He was
the staunchest defender of his country’s soil against the
Danish invaders who had begun to harass England during his Father’s
and brother’s reigns. He was at first driven into obscure
quarters in the Isle of Athelney in the Somerset levels, where
legend has it that he burnt the cakes of the housewife who was
providing him with shelter. In 878, however, Alfred overthrew the
Danes at Ethandune or Edington in Wiltshire and compelled them to
accept the Treaty of Wedmore. Alfred then ruled England South of
the Thames and most of Mercia. In 866 he captured and fortified
London. At about that time Northumbria made submission to Alfred
making him overlord of all-England. Alfred is surnamed the Great
and is renowned for his martial abilities, as Founder of the Navy
and for his efforts to further the causes of law, education and
culture. He died on 26 or 28 Oct 899 (or 900, or 901) and was
succeeded by his second son, Edward. {Burke’s Peerage and
Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary} [GADD.GED]
King of All England 871-899. Also has death date of 26 Oct 899.
[ROWLEYHR.GED]
Alfred, called
The Great (849-99), king of the West Saxons (871-99), and one of
the outstanding figures of English history. Born in Wantage in
southern England, Alfred was the youngest of five sons of King
Ethelwulf. On the death of his brother Ethelred Alfred became
king, coming to the throne during a Danish invasion. Although he
succeeded in making peace with the Danes, they resumed their
marauding expeditions five years later, and by early 878 they
were successful almost everywhere. About Easter of 878, however,
Alfred established himself at Athelney and began assembling an
army. In the middle of that year he defeated the Danes and
captured their stronghold, probably at present-day Edington.
During the following 14 years Alfred was able to devote himself
to the internal affairs of his kingdom. By 886 he had captured
the city of London, and soon afterward he was recognized as the
king of all England.
In 893 the Danes invaded England again, and the following four
years were marked by warfare; eventually, the Danes were forced
to withdraw from Alfred's domain. The only ruler to resist Danish
invasions successfully, Alfred made his kingdom the rallying
point for all Saxons, thus laying the foundation for the
unification of England.
Alfred was a patron of learning and did much for the education
of his people. He began a court school and invited British and
foreign scholars, notably the Welsh monk Asser and the Irish-born
philosopher and theologian John Scotus Erigena, to come there.
Alfred translated such works as The Consolation of Philosophy
by the Roman statesman and philosopher Boethius, The History
of the World by the Spanish priest Paulus Orosius, and Pastoral
Care by Pope Gregory I. Alfred's laws, the first promulgated
in more than a century, were the first that made no distinction
between the English and the Welsh peoples. [Mircosoft Encarta 98
Encyclopedia]
Additional information: Britannia.com
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