He became Bishop of Sherborne in the s. Guthrum — more of an enemy than a friend! He was king of the Danish chieftains and was actively fighting Alfred from In his surprise night-time attack on Alfred forced Alfred to hide out in the Somerset marshes.
Guthrum was defeated by Alfred at Edington and as part of the peace treaty converted to Christianity taking the name Aethelstan. Alfred became his godfather. He lived in East Anglia until his death in During this time Alfred visited him twice on pilgrimage. The Battle of Ostia , a famous victory of the papacy over Saracen pirates, took place in Pope Leo is also said to have halted the burning of the Anglo-Saxon quarter of Rome by making the sign of the cross.
Need help? How to videos Why join? Alfred the Great. Why is King Alfred famous? Alfred was born in at the royal palace in Wantage. He became king in and died in He had four older brothers who all ruled as king before he did.
As a boy of four he accompanied his father Aethelwulf on a pilgrimage to Rome. Wessex was the only Anglo-Saxon kingdom to hold out against the Vikings. In Alfred and his brother Aethelred fought nine battles against the Vikings. In Alfred won a decisive victory against the Vikings at Edington. After defeating Guthrum the Dane , Alfred made him convert to Christianity and then adopted Guthrum as his foster son. Whom misfortune could not subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose perseverance, nothing could shake.
Who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. Who loved justice, freedom, truth and knowledge. So much had Alfred become the epitome of the ideal Victorian that Walter Besant, in a lecture on Alfred in , thought it entirely appropriate to apply to him verse that Alfred, Lord Tennyson had written to commemorate Prince Albert.
Alfred was no longer the totem of one political party. Problems with the calculation of Anglo-Saxon dates meant it was widely believed then that Alfred had died in , rather than , which is now recognised as the true date of his death, but at the time it seemed particularly apposite to many that the great Queen and her illustrious forebear had died a thousand years apart.
But in Britain was embroiled in the Boer War, and the priority was the reality of the present rather than an imagined past. The National Committee did not raise nearly as much money as it had expected and had to abandon many of its ambitious plans, including one for a Museum of Early English History.
But there was also a more positive side to the celebrations when Alfred was used, as he had been in the past, as a cloak for the introduction of change in society.
It was not by chance that the statue was unveiled by the Liberal leader Lord Rosebery, for the former Whig support for British Worthies had never completely died away, and Liberals were prominent in the many commemorations of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Alfred, though no doubt gratified by his posthumous fame, would have trouble recognising himself in some of his later manifestations, and would find it difficult to comprehend, let alone approve, some of the constitutional developments he was supposed to have championed.
Now that Britain is relapsing into its regional components, who better than Alfred, the champion of the English language and Anglo Saxon hegemony, to be a figurehead of the new England?
Alfred is often thought to have provided his own epitaph in this passage from his translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius: I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to the men who should come after me, the memory of me in good works. Lord Rosebery commented that the statue he was to unveil in Winchester can only be an effigy of the imagination, and so the Alfred we reverence may well be an idealised figure Anglo-Saxon England Alfred Political.
Popular articles. The element of surprise meant that Alfred and his people were completely taken off guard, resulting in a high death toll and forcing the king and a small band of men into the nearby woods. In the spring of the same year, Alfred and his remaining men managed to build a fort in the Somerset marshland at Athelney. Athelney was essentially an island in the marshes, an advantageous position away from the Danes which bought Alfred enough time to rally together the local militia.
Men came from nearby towns and villages to form a tight resistance movement: the conflict had begun to take on a guerrilla style of combat.
These tactics ultimately proved to be successful. From his hidden position in the Somerset marshland, the king and his men tackled the Danes for seven weeks. Alongside the skirmishing, Alfred was also assembling a formidable army which would soon go on to defeat the invaders at the Battle of Edington. This proved to be a decisive victory for the Saxon King, forcing the Danes to surrender and securing the baptism of their King Guthrum, with Alfred serving as his sponsor, and thus securing long-term peace.
This was a treaty designed to divide England. Although the proceeding years would be far from completely peaceful the Danish still made regular raids in to Anglo-Saxon territory , a sense of normality and security was restored in Anglo-Saxon Britain. In the years after Danelaw, Alfred also took the time to address the need for defence. Keen to reflect on where he and his army had previous fallen short, the Saxon King took time to challenge traditional army structures and introduce new methods to deal with the continuous threat from overseas.
Building work took place, ensuring that the settlements across southern England would be fortified against possible future invasions. Most of the information we have on Alfred is gleaned from the writings of Asser, a 10th century scholar and bishop from Wales.
The story of Alfred burning the cakes of a woman whose house he was sheltering in from the Vikings is a famous historical legend. Unaware of who he was, she was said to have roundly scolded her king for his inattentiveness. He was known to chase many women in is younger years, from household servants to ladies of standing. Alfred admits this freely in his own works and Asser, his biographer, reiterates it in his biography of Alfred. Alfred had intense stomach complaints. Sometimes it was so severe that it made him unable to leave his room for days or weeks at a time.
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