Notes for Alfred: Became King April 871. Known as Alfred "the great", he was king of the West Saxons. Born at Wantage, Alfred is the only English king called "great". His reputation rests on his defence of Wessex against the Danes and his embodiment of the ideals of Christian kingship. Asser's biography and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle stress his decisive role in the creation of an English kingship. His early years established his priorities. As a boy he was taken to Rome, where he was honourably treated and his father's second wife may have popularized Carolingian culture at the West Saxon court. From 865, Alfred's main preoccupation was the Danes, and when his elder brother was killed "in the year of battles" (871), he succeeded to the West Saxon throne. Forced into the Athelney marshes (whence stories of how his preoccupation with strategic planning made him neglect his baking had emerged by the eleventh century), his determination gave him victory at Edington (878). Alfred spent the next decade consolidating his hold on Wessex; he recaptured London and concluded a treaty (886) with Guthrum the Dane which fixed the Anglo-Danish frontier between London and Watling Street. Alfred was now the acknowledged leader of Englishmen outside Danish-held territory. During this period he built a fleet of large ships, developed at least thirty burhs, and organized the army (fyrd) so that renewed Danish attacks were less effective. By the 890's his charters and coins could refer to him as "king of the English", and Welsh kings sought his alliance. Even more significantly, his conception of regal authority, Christian morality, and religious devotion was stamped on Wessex and its dependent kingdoms by his law codes, copies of which were sent to the deoceses he controlled; these were also the principles of his educational and religious refors and his English translations. Alfred's intellectual curiosity and enery, his religious devotion, and sense of duty preserved Wessex's independence and so revitalized its kinghship that it could rule all England in the next century.
Alfred (b. 849, d. October 26, 899)
Notes for Alfred: