What Is You Can Be King Again About
Who was King Alfred?
Alfred was the 5th son of Rex Æthelwulf (839-58), ruler of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex – the surface area s of the river Thames. When he was born at Wantage in 849, it might have seemed unlikely that Alfred would ever get rex, merely in a menstruation of increasing Viking attacks, his four brothers all died as young adults.
Alfred took over as rex of Wessex in 871 (bypassing his nephew Aethelwold, son of the late king Aethelred) in the middle of a yr of nine major battles between the West Saxons and Vikings, which the former were lucky to survive. Alfred was also tested in 878 when he was forced to retreat to the marshes of Athelney (Somerset), scene of some of the legendary stories about him, including the well-known burning of the cakes.
However, Alfred came back to win a decisive victory in the aforementioned year over his Viking opponent Guthrum at Edington (Wiltshire). There were further serious Viking attacks in the 890s, but past this time Alfred had fabricated armed forces improvements and was better able to resist them with the help of West Mercian [an Anglo-Saxon kingdom north of Wessex] and Welsh allies.
In 868 Alfred had married Ealhswith, a descendant of the Mercian majestic firm, probably as function of a long-term W Saxon plan to bring the regal houses of the two provinces closer together.
They had two sons and 3 daughters, who survived to adulthood. The middle daughter became abbess of Shaftesbury nunnery, 1 of ii religious houses founded by Alfred. The other was at Athelney, mayhap in thanksgiving for his escape at that place from the Vikings.
The other two daughters entered into diplomatic marriages to the ruler of Mercia (this was Aethelflaed, who became the 'Lady of the Mercians') and the Count of Flanders. Little is known of Alfred's 'spare', his 2nd son, Æthelweard, simply his heir, Edward the Elder, succeeded their father in 899, and continued the family success story.
Alfred is well known for his victories against the Vikings. What can y'all tell us about them?
Alfred's priority was survival in the face of Viking attacks. There had been four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time of Alfred'southward nascency, but before his death all but Wessex had been overrun by the Vikings, and their kings killed or exiled.
- Read more virtually Ragnar Lothbrok, the immortal Viking
Having survived by the skin of his teeth all-out Viking attacks in the 870s, when the other provinces barbarous, Alfred then enacted a serial of armed forces reforms to make Wessex less vulnerable in the hereafter. Most important was a network of fortified and garrisoned sites that created 'fortress Wessex', which the Vikings were unable to penetrate to whatever neat extent in the 890s.
Alfred besides organised a rota of military machine service to make keeping forces in the field for any length of time more feasible; the field army could respond quickly to a asking for aid from a local garrison should the Vikings assail. The king also overhauled his naval forces, bringing in experienced Frisian sailors to assistance with his new designs for ships.What else is Alfred famous for?
There are many Anglo-Saxon kings who were great armed forces commanders – what makes Alfred stand up out is that he was also interested in learning, and in the promotion of English as a written linguistic communication.
Hither we can meet the impact of the great religious and cultural movement from beyond the Channel, known as the Carolingian Renaissance, which had also much influenced his father. Alfred recruited Carolingian scholars [from what is now French republic and western Germany], as well as others from within Britain to act equally his directorate on improving educational and religious standards in Wessex.
- 10 things you didn't know about the Anglo-Saxons
He himself studied key works with them, and these seem to have had a profound consequence on his ain understanding and concept of duty, which he felt others at his court should share. He assisted in the translation of some of these works from Latin into Old English, so that they could be more readily understood inside his kingdom.
Alfred'due south resistance to the Vikings required a major commitment from his subjects, and and so he may well have been attracted to the Carolingian emphasis on obedience to the male monarch every bit a religious duty, and perhaps also sought to reinforce an English, Christian identity in opposition to a Scandinavian, pagan 1.
The championship 'King of the Anglo-Saxons' was i he used towards the end of his reign, as he became increasingly influential across Wessex itself.
Why is Male monarch Alfred pregnant?
Armed services and intellectual activities were in themselves sufficient to have established Alfred's reputation, but what really made him stand out to succeeding generations was the fact that his Welsh adviser Asser wrote a biography of the king in 893.
This work undoubtedly contains useful information about Alfred and his family unit, just information technology is besides based on classical, Biblical and Carolingian ideals of kingship, which can cause a difficulty in distinguishing idealisation from fact.
Information technology may be significant that Alfred is not known to have endorsed the work or ordered its circulation. Information technology may not exist how he idea of himself or how he wanted to be remembered.
Merely in the 19th century, when in that location was great interest in Anglo-Saxon origins of the English state and character, there were no such doubts. Alfred was "the most perfect human in history", and the famous statue in Winchester was erected in 1901 as the climax to international celebrations of the millenary of his expiry.
In the December 2013 effect of BBC History Magazine, Alex Burghart asked whether nosotros're guilty of overplaying Alfred'due south greatness. What do you think?
Alex Burghart was right to propose that Alfred'south reputation is in danger of beingness exaggerated. Equally a result of beingness the only Anglo-Saxon rex to have a contemporary biography, he has been sometimes handed the credit by subsequently writers for everything of note that happened in the Anglo-Saxon flow.
Alfred did not invent Anglo-Saxon law or the navy, though he did write laws and design ships. At that place was also an element of luck in his survival at the beginning of his reign, and in the fact that the Vikings were more interested in eastern England that was closer to their homelands.
- The truth about Viking berserkers
Mercian involvement was crucial to his success in defeating the Vikings in the 890s. But to a certain extent Alfred made his own 'luck', a quality much prized in Anglo-Saxon leaders, and the qualities of intellectual curiosity, inventiveness and an essential attention to detail come through in Asser'southward account, for all its problems.
Alfred does seem to have been a rather exceptional ruler, only it seems to accept been a case of the right person in the right place at the right time.
Where, when and how did Rex Alfred die, and who was he succeeded by?
Alfred died on 26 October 899. The exact circumstances and the place of his expiry are not known.
He was laid to rest at first in the cathedral in Winchester, the Sometime Minster, but his elder son and successor at once commissioned work on a bigger, grander church – the New Minster immediately to the cathedral'southward due north. Information technology seems to have been intended every bit a burial identify for the new dynasty of English language kings founded by Alfred.
The bodies of Alfred and Ealhswith were transferred to New Minster, to be joined somewhen past Edward himself and other members of the royal family. Edward connected and developed the policies of his father, and used the idea of garrisoned, fortified centres offensively against Viking-settled areas of eastern England.
- The undignified fates of the bodies of Anglo-Saxon kings in the medieval period
By 920 he had extended his rule to the river Humber, and Edward'southward own son Aethelstan (who reigned from 924–39) gained control of the residual of England to create the land more or less equally we know it today.
What might we acquire from the discovery of a piece of pelvic bone, almost likely belonging to King Alfred or to his son, Edward?
In 1110 the monks of New Minster relocated to the suburb of Hyde in the north of Winchester, because of the cramped atmospheric condition in the centre, and took with them the bodies of Alfred, Edward and Ealhswith, which were laid in honoured positions in forepart of the High Altar.
It was idea that their bodies had been lost when the site was dug up for a prison in the belatedly 18th century. In the 19th century an amateur historian claimed he had dug up their bones, but no one locally believed him, and information technology appears that he had in any case been digging in the wrong part of the site.
- Was the skeleton in the Leicester motorcar park really Richard 3?
These basic were the ones buried in an unmarked grave in St Bartholmew'due south graveyard in Hyde. Radio-carbon testing established once and for all that they were later medieval in date.
However, Dr Katie Tucker, the osteoarchaeologist from the University of Winchester who led investigations, checked whether in that location might exist other human bones of interest from the previous excavations at Hyde Abbey.
Role of a male pelvis found nearly the High Altar produced a radio-carbon engagement centring on the 10th century, thus raising the possibility that it could exist function of the body of either Alfred or his son, Edward. This leaves us with the exciting possibility that further remains of them might be recovered.
Asser provides no physical descriptions of either Alfred or Edward, so the thought that we might one day be able to rediscover their advent and give them a proper reburial is an enticing prospect.
Barbara Yorke is professor emerita of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, from which she has recently retired subsequently a long career. Her inquiry interests lie with early medieval British history, with special interests in kingship, conversion, Wessex, women, religion and 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism
This commodity was get-go published by HistoryExtra in 2014
Source: https://www.historyextra.com/period/anglo-saxon/king-alfred-great-facts-life-death-famous-buried/
0 Response to "What Is You Can Be King Again About"
Post a Comment