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Source: Alfred the Great: The Most Perfect Man in History? - History Today

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Titre	Alfred the Great: The Most Perfect Man in History? - History Today

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King Alfred of Wessex (r.871-99) is probably the best known of all Anglo-Saxon rulers, even if the first thing to come into many people’s minds in connection with him is something to do with burnt confectionery. The year 1999 saw the 1100th anniversary ofhis death on October 26th, 899, at the age of about 50. The occasion is being marked with conferences and exhibitions in Winchester, Southampton and London, but the scale of celebrations will be modest compared with those which commemorated his millenary, and culminated in the unveiling by Lord Rosebery of his statue in Winchester. Alfred’s reputation still stands high with historians, though few would now want to follow Edward Freeman in claiming him as ‘the most perfect character in history’ (The History of the Norman Conquest of England, 5 volumes, 1867-79). Alfred is someone whohas had greatness thrust upon him. How and why did he acquire his glowing reputation, and how does it stand up today? There can be no doubt that Alfred’s reign was significant, both for the direction of the country’s development and for the fortunes of his descendants. After the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia had fallen to the Vikings, Wessex under Alfred was the only surviving Anglo-Saxon province. Alfred nearly succumbed to the Vikings as well, but kept his nerve and won a decisive victory at the battle of Edington in 879. Further Viking threats were kept at bay by a reorganisation of military service and particularly through the ringing of Wessex by a regular system of garrisoned fortresses. At the same time Alfred promoted himself as the defender of all Christian Anglo-Saxons against the pagan Viking threat and began the liberation of neighbouring areas from Viking control. He thus paved the way for the future unity of England, which was brought to fruition under his son and grandsons, who conquered the remaining areas held by the Vikings in the east and north, so that by the mid-tenth century the England we are familiar with was ruled as one country for the first time. His preservation from the Vikings and unexpected succession as king after the death of four older brothers, seem to have given Alfred a sense that he had been specially destined for high office. With the help of advisers from other areas of England, Walesand Francia, Alfred studied, and even translated from Latin into Old English, certain works that were regarded at the time as providing models of ideal Christian kingship and ‘most necessary for all men to know’. Alfred tried to put these principles into practice, for instance, in the production of his law-code. He became convinced that those in authority in church or state could not act justly or effectively without the ‘wisdom’ acquired through study, and set upschools to ensure that future generations of priests and secular administrators would be better trained, as well as encouraging the nobles at his court to emulate his own example in reading and study. Alfred also had the foresight to commission his biography from Bishop Asser of Wales. Asser presented Alfred as the embodiment of the ideal, but practical, Christian ruler. Alfred was the ‘truthteller’, a brave, resourceful, pious man, who was generous to the church and anxious to rule his people justly. One could say that Asser accentuated the positive, and ignored those elements of ruthless, dictatorial behaviour which anyking needed to survive in ninth-century realpolitik. Alfred and Asser did such a good job that when later generations looked back at his reign through their works they saw only a ruler apparently more perfect than any before or after. Alfred is often thought to have provided his own epitaph in this passage from his translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius: I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to the men who should come after me, the memory of me in good works. Alfred, particularly as presented by Asser, may have had something of a saint in him, but he was never canonised and this put him at something of a disadvantage in the later medieval world. The Normans and their successors were certainly interested in presenting themselves as the legitimate heirs of their Anglo-Saxon predecessors, but favoured the recognised royal saints, especially Edmund of the East Angles, killed by the Danish army which Alfred defeated, and Edward the Confessor, the last ruler of the old West Saxon dynasty. St Edmund and St Edward can be seen supporting Richard II on the Wilton diptych, and members of the later medieval royal houses were named after them. Nor were Alfred’s heroic defeats of the pagan Vikings enough to make him the favoured military hero of the post-Conquest period. None of the Anglo-Saxon rulers qualified for this role. After Geoffrey of Monmouth’s successful promotion, the British Arthur was preferred – a man whose reputation was not constrained by inconvenient facts, and who proved extremely adaptable to changing literary conventions. However, Alfred was lauded by Anglo-Norman historians, like William of Malmesbury, Gaimar and Matthew Paris, and their presentations, and occasional embellishments, of his achievementswould be picked up by later writers. Alfred’s well-attested interest in learning made him the obvious choice to be retrospectively chosen as the founder of Oxford University when that institution felt the need to establish its historical credentials in the 14th century. Alfred’s lack of a saintly epithet, a disadvantage in the high Middle Ages, was the salvation of his reputation in a post-Reformation world. As a pious king with an interest in promoting the use of English, Alfred was an ideal figurehead for the emerging English Protestant church. The works he had commissioned or translated were interpreted as evidence for the pure Anglo-Saxon church, before it had become tainted by the false Romanism introduced by the Normans. With a bit of selective editing, Anglo-Saxonecclesiastical provision came to bear an uncanny resemblance to Elizabethan Anglicanism. Archbishop Matthew Parker did an important service to Alfred’s reputation by publishing an edition of Asser’s Life of Alfred in 1574, even if he could not resist adding the story of the burnt cakes which came from a separate, later, Anglo-Saxon source. Perhaps even more significant for getting Alfred’s reputation widely known was the enthusiastic notice of him in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1570 edition), where material derived from sources of Alfred’s own time was mixed with stories with a later currency, such as his visit to the Danish camp as a minstrel which was first recorded in a post-Conquest account. It was also writers of the sixteenth century who promoted the designation of Alfred as ‘the Great’, an epithet that had never been applied to him in the Anglo-Saxon period. Comparable claims of the contribution of the Anglo-Saxons to English life were used to support radical political change in the seventeenth century, when it was argued, for instance, that the right of all freemen to vote for representatives in Parliament was a lost Anglo-Saxon liberty. The relative abundance of sources from Alfred’s reign, including his surviving law-code and Asser’s description of his interest in law and administration, naturally meant that attention was drawn to him by those searching for an ancient constitution to serve contemporary needs. Alfred himself was an unlikely champion for the more radical movements, and was more readily adopted by those who wanted to show Stuart, and eventually Hanoverian, rulers, how they could become successful constitutional monarchs by emulating their most famous Anglo-Saxon ancestor. Robert Powell, in his Life of Alfred, published in 1634, attempted to draw parallels between the reigns of Alfred and Charles I, something which often called for considerable ingenuity, and his hope that Charles would share the same respect for English law as that apparently shown by Alfred proved misplaced. Rather more impressive as a work of scholarship was Sir John Spelman’s Life of King Alfred, which drew upon an extensive range of primary material and itself became a source for later biographers. The work was dedicated to the future Charles II when Prince of Wales, and was completed during the Civil War in 1642, in the royalist camp at Oxford. Spelman was to die the following year of camp fever, and publication of the biography was delayed until more propitious times. In fact, any attempts to interest Stuart monarchs in their Saxon forebears had only a limited success. The Stuarts’ preferred cultural reference points were from the classical world rather than the history of their own islands. The common Saxon heritage of the Hanoverians and the Anglo-Saxons provided more fertile ground for the promotion of a cult of King Alfred. His first aristocratic and royal backers came from the circle which gathered around Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-51), the eldest son of George II, and was united by the opposition of its members to the prime minister Robert Walpole. Walpole’s opponents called themselves ‘the Patriots’, and Alfred was the first ‘Patriot King’, who had saved his country from tyranny,as it was devoutly hoped Frederick himself would do when he succeeded his father. A number of literary works centred upon Alfred were dedicated to the prince. Sir Richard Blackmore’s Alfred: an Epick Poem in Twelve Books (1723) enlivened the conventionalaccounts of Alfred’s reign with an extensive description of his imaginary travels in Europe and Africa, in which were concealed many heavy-handed compliments to Prince Frederick. Of much more lasting worth was Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred, which was firstperformed in 1740 at the prince’s country seat of Cliveden. The main text was provided by two authors already active in Frederick’s cause, James Thomson and David Mallett, but included an ode by Viscount Bolingbroke, one continues...

King Alfred of Wessex (r.871-99) is probably the best known of all Anglo-Saxon rulers, even if the first thing to come into many people’s minds in connection with him is something to do with burnt confectionery. The year 1999 saw the 1100th anniversary ofhis death on October 26th, 899, at the age of about 50. The occasion is being marked with conferences and exhibitions in Winchester, Southampton and London, but the scale of celebrations will be modest compared with those which commemorated his millenary, and culminated in the unveiling by Lord Rosebery of his statue in Winchester.

Alfred’s reputation still stands high with historians, though few would now want to follow Edward Freeman in claiming him as ‘the most perfect character in history’ (The History of the Norman Conquest of England, 5 volumes, 1867-79). Alfred is someone whohas had greatness thrust upon him. How and why did he acquire his glowing reputation, and how does it stand up today?
There can be no doubt that Alfred’s reign was significant, both for the direction of the country’s development and for the fortunes of his descendants. After the kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia had fallen to the Vikings, Wessex under Alfred was the only surviving Anglo-Saxon province. Alfred nearly succumbed to the Vikings as well, but kept his nerve and won a decisive victory at the battle of Edington in 879. Further Viking threats were kept at bay by a reorganisation of military service and particularly through the ringing of Wessex by a regular system of garrisoned fortresses. At the same time Alfred promoted himself as the defender of all Christian Anglo-Saxons against the pagan Viking threat and began the liberation of neighbouring areas from Viking control. He thus paved the way for the future unity of England, which was brought to fruition under his son and grandsons, who conquered the remaining areas held by the Vikings in the east and north, so that by the mid-tenth century the England we are familiar with was ruled as one country for the first time.
His preservation from the Vikings and unexpected succession as king after the death of four older brothers, seem to have given Alfred a sense that he had been specially destined for high office. With the help of advisers from other areas of England, Walesand Francia, Alfred studied, and even translated from Latin into Old English, certain works that were regarded at the time as providing models of ideal Christian kingship and ‘most necessary for all men to know’.

Alfred tried to put these principles into practice, for instance, in the production of his law-code. He became convinced that those in authority in church or state could not act justly or effectively without the ‘wisdom’ acquired through study, and set upschools to ensure that future generations of priests and secular administrators would be better trained, as well as encouraging the nobles at his court to emulate his own example in reading and study. Alfred also had the foresight to commission his biography from Bishop Asser of Wales. Asser presented Alfred as the embodiment of the ideal, but practical, Christian ruler.
Alfred was the ‘truthteller’, a brave, resourceful, pious man, who was generous to the church and anxious to rule his people justly. One could say that Asser accentuated the positive, and ignored those elements of ruthless, dictatorial behaviour which anyking needed to survive in ninth-century realpolitik. Alfred and Asser did such a good job that when later generations looked back at his reign through their works they saw only a ruler apparently more perfect than any before or after. Alfred is often thought to have provided his own epitaph in this passage from his translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius:

I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to the men who should come after me, the memory of me in good works.

Alfred, particularly as presented by Asser, may have had something of a saint in him, but he was never canonised and this put him at something of a disadvantage in the later medieval world. The Normans and their successors were certainly interested in presenting themselves as the legitimate heirs of their Anglo-Saxon predecessors, but favoured the recognised royal saints, especially Edmund of the East Angles, killed by the Danish army which Alfred defeated, and Edward the Confessor, the last ruler of the old West Saxon dynasty. St Edmund and St Edward can be seen supporting Richard II on the Wilton diptych, and members of the later medieval royal houses were named after them. Nor were Alfred’s heroic defeats of the pagan Vikings enough to make him the favoured military hero of the post-Conquest period. None of the Anglo-Saxon rulers qualified for this role. After Geoffrey of Monmouth’s successful promotion, the British Arthur was preferred – a man whose reputation was not constrained by inconvenient facts, and who proved extremely adaptable to changing literary conventions. However, Alfred was lauded by Anglo-Norman historians, like William of Malmesbury, Gaimar and Matthew Paris, and their presentations, and occasional embellishments, of his achievementswould be picked up by later writers. Alfred’s well-attested interest in learning made him the obvious choice to be retrospectively chosen as the founder of Oxford University when that institution felt the need to establish its historical credentials in the 14th century.

Alfred’s lack of a saintly epithet, a disadvantage in the high Middle Ages, was the salvation of his reputation in a post-Reformation world. As a pious king with an interest in promoting the use of English, Alfred was an ideal figurehead for the emerging English Protestant church. The works he had commissioned or translated were interpreted as evidence for the pure Anglo-Saxon church, before it had become tainted by the false Romanism introduced by the Normans. With a bit of selective editing, Anglo-Saxonecclesiastical provision came to bear an uncanny resemblance to Elizabethan Anglicanism. Archbishop Matthew Parker did an important service to Alfred’s reputation by publishing an edition of Asser’s Life of Alfred in 1574, even if he could not resist adding the story of the burnt cakes which came from a separate, later, Anglo-Saxon source. Perhaps even more significant for getting Alfred’s reputation widely known was the enthusiastic notice of him in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1570 edition), where material derived from sources of Alfred’s own time was mixed with stories with a later currency, such as his visit to the Danish camp as a minstrel which was first recorded in a post-Conquest account. It was also writers of the sixteenth century who promoted the designation of Alfred as ‘the Great’, an epithet that had never been applied to him in the Anglo-Saxon period.

Comparable claims of the contribution of the Anglo-Saxons to English life were used to support radical political change in the seventeenth century, when it was argued, for instance, that the right of all freemen to vote for representatives in Parliament was a lost Anglo-Saxon liberty. The relative abundance of sources from Alfred’s reign, including his surviving law-code and Asser’s description of his interest in law and administration, naturally meant that attention was drawn to him by those searching for an ancient constitution to serve contemporary needs. Alfred himself was an unlikely champion for the more radical movements, and was more readily adopted by those who wanted to show Stuart, and eventually Hanoverian, rulers, how they could become successful constitutional monarchs by emulating their most famous Anglo-Saxon ancestor. Robert Powell, in his Life of Alfred, published in 1634, attempted to draw parallels between the reigns of Alfred and Charles I, something which often called for considerable ingenuity, and his hope that Charles would share the same respect for English law as that apparently shown by Alfred proved misplaced. Rather more impressive as a work of scholarship was Sir John Spelman’s Life of King Alfred, which drew upon an extensive range of primary material and itself became a source for later biographers. The work was dedicated to the future Charles II when Prince of Wales, and was completed during the Civil War in 1642, in the royalist camp at Oxford. Spelman was to die the following year of camp fever, and publication of the biography was delayed until more propitious times. In fact, any attempts to interest Stuart monarchs in their Saxon forebears had only a limited success. The Stuarts’ preferred cultural reference points were from the classical world rather than the history of their own islands.

The common Saxon heritage of the Hanoverians and the Anglo-Saxons provided more fertile ground for the promotion of a cult of King Alfred. His first aristocratic and royal backers came from the circle which gathered around Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-51), the eldest son of George II, and was united by the opposition of its members to the prime minister Robert Walpole. Walpole’s opponents called themselves ‘the Patriots’, and Alfred was the first ‘Patriot King’, who had saved his country from tyranny,as it was devoutly hoped Frederick himself would do when he succeeded his father. A number of literary works centred upon Alfred were dedicated to the prince. Sir Richard Blackmore’s Alfred: an Epick Poem in Twelve Books (1723) enlivened the conventionalaccounts of Alfred’s reign with an extensive description of his imaginary travels in Europe and Africa, in which were concealed many heavy-handed compliments to Prince Frederick. Of much more lasting worth was Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred, which was firstperformed in 1740 at the prince’s country seat of Cliveden. The main text was provided by two authors already active in Frederick’s cause, James Thomson and David Mallett, but included an ode by Viscount Bolingbroke, one continues...