The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027953854 Cornell University Library DA 153.H89 Alfred the Great, 3 1924 027 953 854 ^/ ^^Dt"^/?^^ THOMAS HUGHES, M.P. ' A uthor of ' Tom BrowrCs Sclwol Days. MACMII/IyAN &? Co CORhJEL UrsifVERSiTY \ LIBRARY CONTENTS. ffAGE PREFACE. I CHAPTER I. OF KINGS AND KINGSHIP ... ... 7 CHAPTER II. A THOUSAND YEARS AGO ... ... ... 1$ CHAPTER III. CHILDHOOD. 32 CHAPTER IV. CNIHTHOOD ... ... 44 CHAPTER V. THE DANE .... ... -56 CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST WAVE .... ... 68 CHAPTER VII. ALFRED ON THE THRONE 86 b CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAGJJ • 9' THE SECOND WAVE ... • CHAPTER IX. lOO ATHELNEY ... .... CHAPTER X. 1 ETHANDUNE - • - • . 14 CHAPTER XI. 12? RETROSPECT . ...... CHAPTER XII. THE king's board OF WORKS . 13^ CHAPTER XIII. THE king's WAR OFFICE AND ADMIRALTY . 147 CHAPTER XIV. THE king's laws . ... 159 CHAPTER XV. THE king's justice .... 1 73 CHAPTER XVI. THE king's EXCHEQUER . 1 89 CHAPTER XVII. THE king's CHURCH . ... 200 CHAPTER XVIII. THE king's friends . 212 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. f'ACE THE king's neighbours 228 CHAPTER XX. THE king's foe ... 24O CHAPTER XXI. THE THIRD WAVE . ... 250 CHAPTER XXn. THE king's home . 267 CHAPTER XXIH. THE KING AS AUTHOR .... 278 CHAPTER XXIV. THE king's DEATH AND WILL .... 3OI CHAPTER XXV. THE king's successors . 311 CHAPTER XXVI. THE END OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 317 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VACE MAP 11F F.i\(;l.A>"Il AHOUT A.]). lOOO AND AT THE PRESENT TIME frontispiece KING ALFRED AT THE BATTLE OF ASHDOWN . to face 76 SEDULOUSLY BENT ON ACQUIRING LEARMN'i; ,, 177 ; PREFACE. The early ages of our country's history have been studied, and written and re-written, with a care and ability which have left nothing to desire. Every source from which light could be drawn has been explored by eminent scholars, and probably all the facts which will ever be known have been now ascer- tained. Kemble, Palgrave, and Thorpe have been succeeded by Pearson and Freeman, whose great ability and industry every student of those times, however humble, must be able to recognise, and to whom the present writer is anxious to express his deep obligations. Thanks to their labours, whoever takes for his subject any portion of our early national history will find his task one of comparative ease. And of all that early history the life and times of Alfred are, beyond all question, the most absorbing in interest. The story has been written many times, from different points of view, by natives and foreigners from Sir John Spelman, the first edition of whose Life of Alfred was published in 1709, to Dr. Pauli, whose S.L. VIII. B 2 PREFACE. most admirable and exhaustive work is not yet eighteen years old. That book was written " by a German for Germans," as we learn from the preface. Its plan, Dr. Pauli tells us, was conceived at Oxford, in Novem- ber 1 848, " at a time when German hearts trembled, as they had seldom done before, for the preservation of their Fatherland, and especially for the continuance of those states which were destined by Heaven for the protection and support of Germany." Happily no German need now tremble for the preservation of his Fatherland, but the problems which 1848 started still await an answer. The revolutionary spur which was then given to the intellectual and political activity of Christendom has as yet done little beyond dooming certain conditions of political and social life, and awakening a very genuine and wide- spread longing for some better and higher life for nations than has ever yet been realized. The political earthquake of 1848, then, led Dr. Pauli to take so deep an interest in the struggles and life-work of King Alfred, that he could not rest until he had placed a picture of them before his German fellow-countrymen, for their study, warning, and en- couragement. The German student felt that some- how this story would prove of value to those in his Fatherland who were struggling for some solid ground upon which to plant their feet, in the midst of the throes of the last great European crisis. A like con- viction has led me to attempt the same work, an " PREFACE. Englishman for Englishmen, in a crisis which seems likely to prove at least as serious as that of 1848. For the events of the last few years—one may perhaps say more particularly of the last few months —have forced on those who think on such subjects at all, the practical need of examining once more the principles upon which society, and the life of nations, rest. How are nations to be saved from the tyranny or domination of arbitrary will, whether of a Csesar or a mob ? is the problem before us, and one which is becoming daily more threatening, demanding an answer at the peril of national life. France for the moment is the country where the question presses most urgently. There the most democratic of Euro- pean peoples seemed to have given up her ideal commonwealth in despair, and Imperialism or Csesarism had come out most nakedly, in this generation, under our own eyes. The Emperor of the French has shown Christendom, both in practice by his government, and theoretically in his writings, what this Imperialism is, upon what it stands. The answer, maturing now these seventeen years, has come in a shout from a whole people, thoroughly " roused at last, Away with it ! It is undermining society, it is destroying morality. Brave, simple, honest life is becoming, if it has not already become, im- possible under its shadow. Away with this, at once, and for ever, let what will come in its place ! But when we anxiously look for what is to come B 2 PREFACE. ill its place in France, we are baffled and depressed. We seem to be gazing only into the hurly-burly of driving cloud and heaving sea, in which as yet no " trace of firm land is visible. The cry for minis- terial responsibility,'' or "government by the majo- rity," seems for the moment to express the best mind of the nation. Alas ! has not Louis Napoleon shown us how little worth lies in such remedies 1 Responsibility to whom .'—To no person at all, I presume the answer would be, but to the majority of the nation, who are the source of all power, whose will is to be done whatever it may be. But the Emperor of the French would acknowledge such responsibility, would maintain that his own govern- ment is founded on it, that he is the very incar- " " nation of government by the majority ; and one cannot but own that he has at least proved how easily such phrases may be turned to the benefit of his own Imperialism. The problem has been showing itself, though not in so urgent a form, in England, in the late discus- sions as to the House of Lords. That part of our machinery for government has been so nearly in conflict with the national will as to rouse a host of questions. What principle worth preserving does this House of Lords represent .' Is it compatible with government by the majority } Does not its existence involve a constant protest against the idea that the people are the source of all power } Is PREFACE. such a protest endurable, if the machinery for govern- ing, in so complicated a state of society as ours, is to work smoothly ? Here, again, one has heard little beyond angry declamation ; but the discussion has shown that the time is come when we English can no longer stand by as interested spectators only, but in which every one of our own institutions will be sifted with rigour, and will have to show cause for its existence. In every other nation of Christendom the same restlessness exists, the same ferment is going on ; and under many different forms, and by many different roads, the same end is sought—the deliverance from the dominion of arbitrary will, the establishment of some order in which "righteousness shall be the girdle of the loins, and truth the girdle of the reins," of who- ever wields the sovereign power amongst the nations of the earth. As a help in this search, this life of the typical English King is here offered, not to historical stu- dents, but to ordinary English readers. The writer has not attempted, and is not competent to take part in, the discussion of any of the deeply interesting critical, antiquarian, and philological questions which cross the path of every student of Anglo-Saxon history, and which have been so ably handled by the authors already referred to, and many others. As a politician, both in and out of the House of Commons, he has had to examine for himself for many years PREFACE. the actual gi'ound upon which the political life of the English nation stands, that he might solve for his own individual guidance, according to the best light he could get, the most practical of all questions for a public man,—what leader he should support ? what reforms he should do his best to obtain ? Born in Alfred's own county, and having been from childhood familiar with the spots which history and tradition associate with some of the most critical events of the great King's life, he has reached the same conclusion as Dr.