78 



Sir Frederick Pollock 



[March 3, 



English invaders were forgotten ; there was little skill and less disci- 

 pline, and every kind of authority was weak. The Danish foemen, 

 compact, mobile, seafaring, expert in the wars by which they lived, 

 and trained by necessity to obey their chiefs at least in the day of 

 battle, had the advantage at all points. It was Alfred's task to redress 

 the balance — a task demanding both genius and perseverance. 



In such a world, in the year 849, as we are told,* Alfred was 

 born, the youngest son of his father jEthelwulf. In his boyhood 

 he was sent to Home in great state, and some ceremony took place 

 which was afterwards magnified into the Pope having anointed 

 him as king. As Alfred's claim to succeed his father in Wessex 

 was then quite remote according to any known rule or custom, this 

 cannot be accepted in its obvious meaning. Perhaps iEthelwulf 

 meant him to be an under-king. The official Roman account was 

 that Alfred was invested with the marks of consular rank. He 

 may have been confirmed by the Pope at the same time. However 

 this may be, Alfred was at Rome in 853, and again, this time with 

 his father, in 855. iEthelwulf's choice of a season when the Danes 

 had been wintering in force at Sheppey to make a pilgrimage to 

 Rome seems to do more credit to his piety than to his judgment.! 



The incident, many times retold, which illustrates Alfred's early 

 love of learning, seems to come between these two journeys ; there 

 is some mistake or confusion % which prevents us from being sure 

 of the date, but the tale can hardly be a fiction. Alfred's memory 

 was good, and he was fond of getting English ballads by heart, 

 but he had no regular lessons in his early youth, as indeed few 



* The difficulties arising from Alfred's mission to Kome as a young child, and 

 from the apparent want of a suitable date for the circumstantial story of his 

 learning to read, are well known to students of the period. They have led, on the 

 one hand, to doubts as to the life by Asser being genuine. The text as we have 

 it is certainly not in the be&t condition, and there may be dislocations as well as 

 corruptions ; but the objections to any hypothesis of forgery are greater than any 

 relief that it would give. On the other hand, there is a strong temptation to 

 suppose a mistake of seven years in the date of Alfred's birth. If he were born 

 in 842, the incidents would fall in very well. The Bishop of Oxford felt the 

 temptation some years ago (Pref. to William of Malmesbury's ' Gesta Regum,' ii. 

 xli.), but resisted it; Sir James Kamsay (•Foundations of England,' i. 217) has 

 yielded to it. Asser's existing text makes various inconsistent statements, and so 

 far we might pick and choose. But the Parker MS. of the Chronicle — represent- 

 ing a statement probably authorised by Alfred himself — says that Alfred was 

 twenty-three years old when he came to the throne, thus confirming the date 

 given at the opening of Asser's narrative. The same reading is found in another 

 early fragment. I do not see how this can be got over without suppositions 

 which, as much as that of forgery, would be a remedy more violent than the 

 disease. 



f Sir James Ramsay, i. 234. 



% Asser, or an early copyist, is more likely to have blundered in dates than to 

 have spoken of Judith, jEthelwulf's second wife, who was hardly older than 

 Alfred's elder brothers, as Alfred's mother. Mater sun does not mean stepmother 

 in Latin of any age. Neither can we, in my opinion, believe that Osburh, Alfred's 

 own mother, was repudiated : see below, p. 80. 



