JUNE 117 



in the burnt-cake episode. It is to be hoped she shared 

 her husband's elevation — for the Church had not departed 

 in those early days from the Pauline precept, that 'a 

 bishop be the husband of one wife.' 



Alfred was a puissant soldier as well as a scribe, and a 

 good sailor to boot, as it behoved one who should hold 

 Wessex against the amphibious Dane. His crowning 

 victory over Guthorm or Godrun at Chippenham in 878 

 resulted in the treaty of Waedmor, which established him 

 as King of Wessex, and of as much of Mercia as lay to the 

 west of the Danelaw — namely, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- 

 bridgeshire, Essex, Herts, and parts of the shires of 

 Bedford and Huntingdon. And thus was the kingdom 

 of England founded, with Winchester as the capital. In 

 that city the Witenagemot continued to assemble ; thence 

 Alfred issued the Dombdc, or code of Wessex law ; and 

 thither, in 897, were brought to him the prisoners captured 

 from the fleet of the Danish usurper Hasting, to be 

 hanged on the walls of Wolvesey Castle. In this union of 

 Wessex and Mercia, London, the chief town of the latter 

 realm, was too busy a seaport to be overlooked ; but the 

 real day of London did not dawn till long afterwards. 



The bones of the founder of the English monarchy have 

 been lost. They laid Alfred the Great in the Old Minster 

 of St. Swithun, where the Cathedral now stands ; but the 

 monks vowed that his ghost walked and gave them no 

 rest, so the remains were moved to the half-finished New 

 Minster, which had been founded just behind the old one. 

 As time went on, the proximity of these two minsters was 

 found to be too great a strain on the Christian love of the 

 brethren ; so the monks of the newer foundation migrated 

 in 1110 to a spot outside the city walls, where they built 



