arduous undertakings. Alfred never lost sight of the sinister certainty that the Northmen would return; he knew that there must come a struggle between the men of the Dane-law and the men of Wessex for the possession of England. It is quite clear that he laid his plans to meet both events. He wanted to erect fortified strongholds round the coast, and he probably originated the plan for a line of fortresses across England which Edward and Æthelflaed afterwards carried out.

But the king's clear perception of coming events was not shared by his people. For the most part, they were content to live in the present, and postpone effort. Asser gives us a picture of the

It

king, active, persistent, prophetic in insight, urgent, persuasive, determined, trying to level up his sluggish and short sighted contemporaries to the level of his own foresight and energy. is evidently this matter of building and fortification which he has chiefly in view in a passage in which he describes the king's instruction, exhortation, and command, and when none of these were effective, the severe reproof and censure which followed them. "But, owing to the sluggishness of the people, these admonitions of the king were either not fulfilled, or were begun late at the moment of necessity, and so ended less to the advantage of those who put them in execution;

for I will say nothing of the castles which he ordered to be built, but which, being begun late, were never finished, because the hostile army broke in upon them by land and sea; and, as often happened, the thwarters of the royal ordinances repented when it was too late, and blushed at their own non-performance of his commands. I speak

of repentance when it is too late, on the testimony of Scripture, whereby numberless persons have had cause for too much sorrow, when many insidious evils have been wrought. But though by these means, sad to say, they may be bitterly affected and roused to sorrow by the loss of fathers, wives, children, ministers, servant-men, servant-maids, and furniture and household stuff, what is the use of baleful repentance when their kinsmen are dead, and they cannot aid them, or redeem those who are captive from captivity? for they are not able to assist those who have escaped, as they have not wherewith to sustain even their own lives. They repented, therefore, when it was too late, and grieved at their incautious neglect of the king's commands, and they praised the royal wisdom with one voice, and tried with all their power to fulfil what they had before refused-namely, concerning the erection of castles and other things generally useful to the kingdom." No better illustration of Asser's statements could be given than the entry in the English

Chronicle for the year 893. It describes the landing of the great army at Limnemouth, whence it had sailed from Boulogne with two hundred and fifty ships-the very disaster which Alfred had always feared. "This port is in the eastern part of Kent, at the east end of the great wood, which we call Andred (the wood is in length, from east to west, one hundred and twenty miles, or longer, and thirty miles broad: the river flows out of the weald). On this river they towed up their ships as far as the weald, four miles from the outward harbour, and there stormed a fortress: within the fortress a few churls were stationed, and it was only in part constructed."

In spite of all difficulties in the shape of wooden headed aldermen and sullen - tempered churls, Alfred managed to get some creditable things done. There were "cities and towns (ie. burhs or forts) which he restored, and others which he built, where none had been before; royal halls and chambers, wonderfully erected by his command, with stone and wood; royal vills constructed of stone, removed from their old site, and handsomely rebuilt by the king's command in more fitting places."1 Except in the case of fortifications, almost all buildings, even churches

1 Asser. Alfred's work at Old Sarum may be quoted as an illustration. An open moot-place is still shown and connected with his name, and he is said to have rebuilt the Roman fort which stood there.