CHAPTER III.

CHILDHOOD.

IN the year 849, when Alfred was born at the royal burgh of Wantage, the youngest child of Æthelwulf and Osberga, the King of the West Saxons had already established his authority as lord over the other Teutonic kingdoms in England. Until the time of Egbert, the father of Ethelwulf, this overlordship had shifted from one strong hand to another amongst the reigning princes, each of whom, as occasion served, rose and strove for the dignity of bretwalda, as it was called. Now it would be held by a Mercian, then by a Northumbrian, and again by a king of East Anglian or Kentish men. But when, in the year 800, the same in which the Emperor Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope, the Great Council of Wessex elected the Etheling Egbert king of the West Saxons, all such contention came to an end. For Egbert, exiled from his own land by the bretwalda, Offa of Mercia, had spent thirteen years in the service of Charlemagne, and had learned in that school how to consolidate and govern kingdoms. He reigned thirty-seven years in England, and at his death all the land owned him as over-king, though the Northum

brians, Mercians, and East Anglians still kept their own kings and great councils, who governed within their own borders as Egbert's men. In Egbert's later charters he is called King of the English, and the name of Anglia was by him given to the whole kingdom.

successor.

It is said that the last bretwalda and first king of all England felt uneasy forebodings as to the destiny of his kingdom when he was leaving it to his son and Ethelwulf, from his youth up, had been of a strongly devotional turn, and was too much under the influence of the clergy to please his father. He would probably have followed his natural bent, and entered holy orders, but that Egbert had no other son. So as early as 828 he had been made King of Kent, and soon afterwards married Osberga, the daughter of his cup-bearer Oslac. There in Kent, under the eye of Egbert, he reigned for ten years, not otherwise than creditably, making head against the Danish pirates, who were already appearing almost yearly on the coast, in a manner not unworthy of his great father and still greater son. Indeed, if he was swayed more than his father liked by churchmen, the influence of Ealstan, the soldier-bishop of Sherborne, would seem to have been as powerful with him as that of the learned and non-combatant Bishop Swithin of Winchester, afterwards saint. Nor did courage or energy fail him after he had succeeded to Egbert's throne, for we find him in the next few years commanding in person in several pitched battles with the Danes, the most important of which was fought in 851 at a place in Surrey which the chroniclers call

Aclea (the oak plain), and which is still named Ockley. The village lies a few miles south of Dorking, under Leith Hill, from which probably Ethelwulf's scouts marked the long line of Pagans, and signalled to the King their whereabouts. They were marching south, along the old Roman road, the remains of which may still be seen near the battlefield, heavy with the spoils of London, it is said, part of which city they had succeeded in sacking. Ethelwulf fell on them from the higher ground, and severely defeated them, recovering all the spoil. Again, a little later in the same year, at Sandwich in Kent, and after that Wessex was scarcely troubled with them for eight years. So now Ethelwulf had leisure to turn his thoughts to a pilgrimage to Rome, which he had had it in his mind to make ever since he had been on the throne. But two years passed and still he was not ready to start, and in 853 Buhred, king of Mercia, applied to him as his over-lord for help against the Welsh. Then Ethelwulf marched himself against the Welsh with Buhred, and pursued their king, Roderic Mawr, to Anglesey, where he acknowledged Ethelwulf as his over-lord, who returning in triumph to Wessex, there at the royal burgh of Chippenham gave his daughter Ethelswitha to Buhred as his wife.

Being thus hindered himself from starting on his pilgrimage, Ethelwulf in that same year sent his young son Alfred, of whom he was already more fond than of his elder sons, to Rome, with an honourable escort. There the boy of five was received by Leo IV. as his son by adoption, and, it would seem, anointed

him king of the West Saxons. The fact is recorded both in the Saxon Chronicle and in that of Asser, who upon such a point would probably have the King's own authority. Whether a step so contrary to all English custom was taken by Ethelwulf's request, in order to found a claim to the succession for his

favourite son, is unknown. In any case, no such special claim was ever urged by Alfred himself.

Leo was no unworthy spiritual father to such a boy. He was busy at this time with the enclosure of the quarter of the Vatican, the restoration of the old walls and fortifications, and the arming and inspiriting of the Romans. Moorish pirates had been lately in the suburbs of the Eternal City, and had profaned the tombs of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. What with pagan Danes in the northern seas, and Moors in the Mediterranean, the coasts of Christendom had little rest a thousand years ago, and it behoved even the Holy Father to look to his fighting gear and appliances.

How long Alfred stayed at Rome on this occasion is uncertain; but if the opinion which would seem to be gaining ground amongst students is correct-that he did not return, but waited the arrival of Ethelwulf two years later-we must give up the wellknown story of his earning the book of Saxon poems from his mother.

This is related by Asser as having happened when he was twelve years old or more, which is clearly impossible, as his mother Osberga must have been. dead before 856, when his father married Judith, as

we shall hear presently. However, the tale is thus told by the old chronicler, the personal friend of Alfred: "On a certain day, his mother was showing him and his brothers a book of Saxon poetry which she held in her hand, and said, 'Whichever of you shall first learn this book shall have it for his own.' Moved by these words, or rather by a divine inspiration, and allured by the illuminated letters, he spoke before his brothers, who though his seniors in years were not so in grace, and answered, 'Will you really give that book to the one of us who can first understand and repeat it to you?' Upon which his mother smiled and repeated what she had said. So Alfred took the book from her hand and went to his master to read it, and in due time brought it again to his mother and recited it."

Now Alfred, one regrets to remark, before his first journey to Rome, could scarcely have been old enough to get by heart a book of poems, though he might have done so after his return, and before his second journey in his father's train.

This happened in 855. Before starting, Ethelwulf, by charter signed in the presence of the bishops Swithin and Ealstan, gave one-tenth of his land throughout the kingdom for the glory of God and his own eternal salvation; or, as some chroniclers say, released one-tenth of all lands from royal service and tribute, and gave it up to God. In that same year we may also note that an army of the Pagans first sat over winter in the Isle of Sheppey.

A bright brave boy, full of the folk-lore of his own