1899.] on King Alfred. T7 



earth ; no account of time ; no arts ; no letters ; no society ; and 

 which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death ; and 

 the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." 



England was still parcelled out into several kingdoms, whose 

 dynastic intrigues and mutual jealousies blinded their rulers to the 

 common danger already growing upon them from the Northmen. 

 Some of these kingdoms had come out of heathendom at a time not 

 very far back. Two hundred years before Alfred's birth the most 

 powerful prince in Britain was a heathen, Penda of Mercia. This 

 was, indeed, half a century after Augustine's mission to Kent. But 

 Augustine's work had not run smooth, and the final triumph of 

 Christianity came from the North. It was late in the seventh century 

 when the Church was definitely established in England, mainly by the 

 work of Theodore of Tarsus, under the supremacy of Rome. 



Little more than a hundred years passed when the new civilisation 

 of England was surrounded by fresh heathen enemies. In the second 

 quarter of the ninth century a great Viking expedition, which had been 

 preceded by sundry smaller and inconclusive raids, conquered all the 

 northern part of Ireland. The Northmen could not, indeed, retain a 

 permanent hold on more than the maritime stations of Dublin, Water- 

 ford and Limerick. But their power resting on these bases of opera- 

 tion was formidable for more than two centuries.* About the middle 

 of the same century — soon after King Alfred's birth — there began 

 systematic attacks on the coasts of Western Europe, which continued 

 through a generation of alarm and disaster. The Vikings were 

 settled at the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt ; they harried the 

 lands of the Seine and the Loire, and — until Alfred ordered things 

 better — had full command of the Chanuel and the North Sea. Warn- 

 ing had not been wanting, for successive raids, apparently in consider- 

 able force (834-837), were repulsed by Alfred's grandfather, Egberht 

 of Wessex. But, in Alfred's infancy, the Danes began to settle down 

 for winter quarters in England. In 851 London was ruined ; in 860 

 — when Alfred was old enough to hear and understand the tale — 

 Winchester was plundered. ^Ethelwulf, Alfred's father, was a well- 

 meaning but feeble prince, it seems, a kind of pious founder born out 

 of due time. He gave his thoughts to enlarging his offerings to the 

 Church when the question was whether the Danes would leave any 

 gifts for the King to offer, or any churches to receive them, and he 

 talked of remitting dues when the kingdom needed all its resources 

 in men and wealth. At best those resources were barely adequate 

 for the need. Population was scattered ; great parts of the country 

 were still covered with uncleared forests ; communication by land 

 was so slow and precarious that the rude navigation of those days 

 was better wherever it was possible ; the warlike habits of the old 



* Keary, ' The Vikings in Western Christendom,' c. vi. Even after the 

 Norman Conquest, a Danish fleet from Ireland did much damage on the South 

 Devon coast, which is not only recorded but estimated in Doomsday Book, 



