Alfred the Great – 7

The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morning the King crossed to the mainland in a boat.

Continuing Alfred the Great’s Reign,
with a selection from Life of Alfred the Great by Thomas Hughes published in 1869. This selection is presented in 10.5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Alfred the Great’s Reign.

Time: 871-901
Place: Wessex

This is the news which comes to Alfred, Ethelnoth the alderman of Somerset, Denewulf the swineherd and the rest of the Selwood Forest group, some time before Easter. These men of Devonshire, it seems, are still stanch and ready to peril their lives against the pagan. No doubt up and down Wessex, thrashed and trodden out as the nation is by this time, there are other good men and true, who will neither cross the sea nor the Welsh marches nor make terms with the pagan; some sprinkling of men who will yet set life at stake, for faith in Christ and love of England. If these can only be rallied, who can say what may follow? So, in the lengthening days of spring, council is held in Selwood and there will have been Easter services in some chapel or hermitage in the forest, or, at any rate, in some quiet glade. The “day of days” will surely have had its voice of hope for this poor remnant. Christ is risen and reigns; and it is not in these heathen Danes or in all the Northmen who ever sailed across the sea, to put back his kingdom or to enslave those whom he has freed.

The result is that, far away from the eastern boundary of the forest, on a rising ground — hill it can scarcely be called — surrounded by dangerous marshes formed by the little rivers Thone and Parret, fordable only in summer and even then dangerous to all who have not the secret, a small fortified camp is thrown up under Alfred’s eye, by Ethelnoth and the Somersetshire men, where he can once again raise his standard. The spot has been chosen by the King with the utmost care, for it is his last throw. He names it the Etheling’s eig or island, “Athelney.” Probably his young son, the Etheling of England, is there among the first, with his mother and his grandmother Eadburgha, the widow of Ethelred Mucil, the venerable lady whom Asser saw in later years and who has now no country but her daughter’s. There are, as has been reckoned, some two acres of hard ground on the island and around vast brakes of alder-bush, full of deer and other game.

Here the Somersetshire men can keep up constant communication with him and a small army grows together. They are soon strong enough to make forays into the open country and in many skirmishes they cut off parties of the pagans and supplies. “For, even when overthrown and cast down,” says Malmesbury, “Alfred had always to be fought with; so, then when one would esteem him altogether worn down and broken, like a snake slipping from the hand of him who would grasp it, he would suddenly flash out again from his hiding-places, rising up to smite his foes in the height of their insolent confidence and never more hard to beat than after a flight.”

But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers came in slowly and provender and supplies of all kinds are hard to wring from the pagan and harder still to take from Christian men. One day, while it was yet so cold that the water was still frozen, the King’s people had gone out “to get them fish or fowl or some such purveyance as they sustained themselves withal.” No one was left in the royal hut for the moment but himself and his mother-in-law Eadburgha. The King — after his constant wont whensoever he had opportunity — was reading from the Psalms of David, out of the Manual which he carried always in his bosom. At this moment a poor man appeared at the door and begged for a morsel of bread “for Christ his sake.” Whereupon the King, receiving the stranger as a brother, called to his mother-in-law to give him to eat. Eadburgha replied that there was but one loaf in their store and a little wine in a pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for his own family and people. But the King bade her nevertheless to give the stranger part of the last loaf, which she accordingly did. But when he had been served the stranger was no more seen and the loaf remained whole and the pitcher full to the brim. Alfred, meantime, had turned to his reading, over which he fell asleep and dreamt that St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne stood by him and told him it was he who had been his guest and that God had seen his afflictions and those of his people, which were now about to end, in token whereof his people would return that day from their expedition with a great take of fish. The King awakening and being much impressed with his dream, called to his mother-in-law and recounted it to her, who thereupon assured him that she too had been overcome with sleep and had had the same dream. And while they yet talked together on what had happened so strangely to them, their servants come in, bringing fish enough, as it seemed to them, to have fed an army.

The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morning the King crossed to the mainland in a boat and wound his horn thrice, which drew to him before noon five hundred men. What we may think of the story and the dream, as Sir John Spelman says, “is not here very much material,” seeing that, whether we deem it natural or supernatural, “the one as well as the other serves at God’s appointment, by raising or dejecting of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead man to the resolution of those things whereof he has before ordained the event.”

Alfred, we may be sure, was ready to accept and be thankful for any help, let it come from whence it might and soon after Easter it was becoming clear that the time is at hand for more than skirmishing expeditions. Through all the neighboring counties word is spreading that their hero King is alive and on foot again and that there will be another chance for brave men ere long of meeting once more these scourges of the land under his leading.

Thomas Hughes begins here. John R. Green begins here.

More information here and here, and below.

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