A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



From the analogy of other cathedral churches, such as Canterbury and York, 

 we cannot doubt that there was a school maintained by the bishop in con- 

 nection with his cathedral church from the earliest times, when in 676 

 Winchester became the West Saxon capital and the West Saxon see was 

 moved there from Dorchester in Oxfordshire. But we have no direct 

 evidence of it till the days of Alfred the Great. That king himself has 

 been claimed as a Winchester scholar l of the local saint, Bishop Swithun, 

 but the claim is unsupported by evidence. Alfred's early youth was spent 

 in Rome. After his return Winchester and nearly the whole of Hamp- 

 shire* were abandoned to the Danes, Again recently 3 his father Ethelwulf 

 has been claimed as Swithun's scholar ; but the authority (not cited) 

 appears to be the utterly untrustworthy fifteenth-century historian Rud- 

 borne. We may however accept the statement in the Life of Alfred by the 

 so-called Asser, that Alfred's youngest son * was educated at Winchester at 

 the public grammar school, not indeed as conclusive evidence of the fact, 

 or even as evidence that there was such a school in Alfred's days, but as 

 presumptive evidence that there was such a school in the days of the 

 compiler at the end of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh cen- 

 tury, and that he thought the school existed or might have existed in the 

 days of King Alfred. 



Edward the eldest son and Elfthryth the eldest daughter were bred 

 in the king's court, ' nor among their other pursuits appertaining to this 

 life were they suffered to pass their time idly and unprofitably without 

 liberal learning. For they carefully learnt the Psalms and Saxon books, 

 especially Saxon poems, and are continually in the habit of making use 

 of books.' But ' Ethelward the youngest, by the divine counsels and the 

 admirable prudence of the king, was sent to the Grammar School (ludis 

 Utterance discipline*), where with the children of almost all the nobility 

 of the country, and many also who were not noble, he prospered under 

 the diligent care of his masters. Books in both languages, namely Latin 

 and Saxon, were diligently read in the school. They also learned to 

 write, so that before they were of an age to practise manly arts, namely 

 hunting and such pursuits as befit gentlemen (nobilibus), they became 

 studious and clever in the liberal arts.' 



1 Winchester, p. 12, by G. W. Kitchin, Dean of Winchester (Historic Towns Series). 'The kindly 

 saint had gifts of influence and teaching ; the youth of Alfred the Great was spent at Winchester under 

 his eye.' 



2 Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 857, 861. See History of Winchester College, by A. F. Leach (Duckworth 

 & Co., 1898), hereafter cited as History, p. 14. 



3 History of the English Church, by the Rev. William Hunt. 



* Annales dlfredi, ed. F. Wise (Oxford, 1722), p. 42. It is impossible after reading the annals 

 analytically to accept them as genuine. Except where they are a translation or adaptation of the Saxon 

 Chronicle they contain no historical facts as to Alfred's public life, while the account of his private life 

 and of that of Asser are so full of statements, both self-contradictory and contrary to known historical facts, 

 besides being per se absurd, that they cannot be accepted. The authority they derived from the supposition 

 that the only ancient MS. (Brit. Mus. Cotton Otho, A. XII.) was contemporary with Alfred is de- 

 stroyed by this MS. being now admitted to be of the date, about 100 years after Alfred's time, above 

 indicated. Mr. Hunt, who maintains its genuineness ' as a whole ' (History of the English Church, 

 p. 267), admits that ' the text has been so much tampered with that its statements must be received with 

 caution except when supported by other good authority.' The famous passage invented by Camden in 

 his printed edition to show that Alfred founded Oxford University was not in any MS. at all. 



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