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every coast, their ravages suddenly cease to meet us, and the conquest of our island so entirely absorbs the whole energies of the race that the sea knows them no more. All the long struggle with the Britons and amongst themselves, which makes up their history for nearly 400 years, was wholly waged on land; we never hear of a sea-fight. Nor for all that time did any hostile fleet ever threaten our shores.

§ 6. Thus when, at length, invaders from oversea did begin once more to pour into the country, the one thought of the defence was to meet and crush them on land. Though a hundred years had passed since the first ships of Northmen sought Angle-kin' in 787, the idea of meeting them on the water never seems to have occurred to anyone before Alfred, unless, indeed, it were to his brother and adviser, St. Neot.1 It needed a wonderful power of rising above contemporary conservatism to perceive that England's true line of defence is not her coast, but the waves around it. So ingrained is that thought in our national consciousness now, after being acted upon all these centuries, that we are almost unable to realize how extraordinary a flash of genius was its first inception.

$ 7. And this was wholly Alfred's. Not one of the line of valiant Kings before him, his three brothers, his father, his grandfather, who, one and all, made so brave a stand against the Danes on shore, ever, like him, 'fared out to sea with a ship-host' to fight them on their own element. This he had first done in 875, the year before the victory off Swanage, when he had defeated a small Danish squadron and taken seven ships. Doubtless it was the inspiriting effect of this little victory in their first attempt which encouraged our sailors to meet and break the much more formidable armament of 876.

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$8. Who these sailors were is a further question. It must be remembered that Alfred had to begin at the very bottom. The thought was his only, and he had to find both the ships and the seamen to carry it out. Both must, at first, have been largely foreign; for neither English ships nor English

1 One MS. of the A.S. Chronicle makes St. Neot (Athelstane of Kent) fight on shipboard' in 851; but the entry, if correct, stands absolutely alone.

seamen as yet existed. But there was no lack of adventurers, Danish, Norse, Frisian, and what not, haunting the Channel, and quite ready to hire out their services. Some of these pirates we know that Alfred took into his pay to begin with; adding, doubtless, a detachment of English warriors to each crew. But more and more as he went on did his navy become wholly English. For he himself designed the ships, and had them built to his own plans, and himself trained the crews that manned them.

$9. Nor did Alfred's navy die with him. Throughout the reigns of his great descendants, Edward, Athelstane, and especially Edgar, we find the English fleet a most important factor in the national polity. And ever since, whenever the Government of our country has been in able hands, then has England been strong upon the waters; so strong that she has actually claimed the empire of the seas. From the reign of John to that of Victoria this claim was more or less made; and for three centuries at least (the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth) no foreign ensign might fly, even in peace, save by express permission, within sight of the flag of England. And what our fleet, with all its glorious traditions, all its uplifting effect upon the national heart, is to us now, we all know. But few remember that all this we owe to Alfred.

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§ 10. The annihilation of the Danish fleet at Swanage produced an effect akin to that of the Battle of the Nile. The invaders' plan of campaign was simply ruined; the disappointed pirates were forced to make yet another truce with Alfred, with more oaths and hostages; 'and this time they kept it well.' But while most of them returned into Mercia, Exeter was still held, until in 878, during midwinter, after Twelfth Night,' the garrison stole away" to take part in yet another secretly-planned and rapidly-executed invasion of Wessex. For ever fresh hordes of pirates had been pouring into Mercia over the North Sea, so that 'the number of the miscreants [perversi] grew day by day; and though thirty thousand were slain in one field, others, aye, twice as many, cftsoon took their place."

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§ 11. The foul mob thus got together burst over the

JA.S. Chronicle.

2 Asser.

• Ethelwerd.

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frontier and successfully effected a junction with their comrades from Exeter at Chippenham, and over-ran the land of the West Saxons and settled down therein,' 'covering the face of the earth like locusts, for none could stay them." 'Many of the country folk drave they beyond sea by force of arms and by lack of victual," probably to seek refuge amid the already Saxon population of Coutance and the Bessin. 'And of the rest the more part did they subdue and force to serve them, save King Alfred only.'3

§ 12. Both King and kingdom had evidently been taken completely unawares. All the early authorities leave the impression that there was no time to organize any resistance whatever before all was lost. A wholly inexact insertion in the late chronicle of John of Brompton speaks of a small and hasty English levy under Alfred himself as annihilated before the walls of Chippenham. And this may have

been so.

§ 13. Moreover, the records not obscurely hint that Alfred had not at this time won the hearts of his people as he did afterwards. He was not yet England's darling.' We have seen how thoroughgoing a reformer he was; and reformers always carn, to begin with, more hatred than goodwill. Besides, he was a young reformer, and, we may well believe, carried out his reforms with the uncompromising severity of youth, and by methods overmuch lacking in conciliation. We may well, too, believe the story which tells us that this was no small vexation and anxiety to the King's friend and counsellor St. Neot, with his wider experience of bearing rule; and that the saint often warned Alfred in vain that this overweening course would assuredly bring after it disastrous consequences.

'But Alfred heeded not the reproof of the man of God, nor listed what he foretold. Wherefore (seeing that a man's sins must needs be some way punished, either in this world or in that which is to come), the Righteous Judge and True willed that he should not be unpunished here, that so he might be spared hereafter.'

§14. The popular shortcomings which he had tried to

1 Henry of Huntingdon.

• Asser.

3 A.S. Chronicle.

level up are also given by the historians as reasons for this sore judgment:

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'For in West Anglia . . . they had long lived in peace which itself is no small incentive to vice . . . and gave themselves up to sloth and luxury . . . eating and drinking even as the brute beasts. On them therefore came a brute beast in man's shape, King Gutrum, to wit, brutal and ferocious toward each and all, who with sword and axe wrought his bestial will. Nay, he spared not even such as . . threw themselves at his feet. Neither old nor young, boy nor girl, mother nor maiden, spared he. . . . For his eye spared none. And piteous was the slaughter that might be seen. There lay they in each road and street and crossway-old men with hoar and reverend locks butchered at their own doors; young men headless, handless, footless; matrons foully dishonoured in the open street and maidens with them; . . . children stricken through with spears; all exposed to every eye and trodden under every foot. Some, too, there lay half-burnt within their half-burnt houses, not having dared to leave them; for they who were driven from their hiding-places by the fire perished by the sword."

§ 15. It is evident that the advantage gained by the invaders was utterly overwhelming. All Wessex was for the moment at their feet, save only the wild hills of Exmoor, with the yet more impenetrable marshes lying between the Quantocks and the Mendips.

This tract was well fitted by Nature to be the asylum of the vanquished. Already it had delayed for 200 years the westward sweep of the Saxon conquest, thus preserving the continuity of its great sanctuary, Glastonbury (for ere the invaders passed the barrier they too were Christians, eager to revere rather than destroy the churches of the Britons), and preserving, moreover, to no small extent the continuity of its population. Once Christians, the English no longer simply massacred and enslaved; they recognised their vanquished foes as fellow-Christians, and merely held them in subjection, settling amongst them, intermarrying with them, and ultimately assimilating them. How much Celtic John of Wallingford.

blood was still to be found in the district is shown by Asser giving the Welsh as well as the English name for almost every place he mentions thereabout.

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§ 16. Hither then Alfred fled with a few faithful friends, making for the Isle of Athelney, a small, inconspicuous elevation, where the river Tone joins the Parret, 'girded in with fen on every side, and not to be come at save by boat. Thereon is all dense alder-brake, full of stags and goats and such creatures, and in the midst one bit of open ground, scarce two acres.' This fastness he made his chief place of refuge, whence he and his would sally out by twos and threes in quest of food, and to spy upon the enemy. Nay, sometimes in these wanderings the King found himself absolutely alone, as in the oft-told episode of the cakes in the cowherd's hut, and the equally oft-told occasion when he sought the Danish camp under the guise of a minstrel and thus learnt their proposed movements.

§ 17. Athelney, moreover, is the scene of the less-known tale which connects this last exploit with the name of St. Cuthbert, the renowned evangelizer of Northumbria :

'There had the King no sustenance save what he caught by fowling, hunting, or fishing. And at length it came to pass while his men were away fishing, and he was solacing his distress by meditating on the Scriptures, suddenly there stood beside him a pilgrim, begging alms in the name of God. Then did the kind-hearted monarch lift up his hands to heaven and said, “I thank my God that me, His beggar, He visiteth to-day in beggar's guise; that to-day He asketh back what He hath given, and requireth from me His own with usury." And quickly doth the King in his pity call his servant, who had naught but a little wine and one loaf, and bids him give the half unto that beggar. The beggar thanks him, and in a moment, leaving no foot-print in the mire, vanisheth away. And, lo, the things bestowed on him were found untouched, as well the bread as the wine; and they who had gone a-fishing brought back an innumerable multitude of fishes.

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And when the King slept there appeared unto him one 1 Roger of Wendover.

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