#Alfred of wessex series#

One part, under Halfdan Ragnarsson, marched north to Yorkshire where they settled permanently. The Viking army, after taking Mercia, divided. This peace was not likely to last for any considerable length of time and was at best a temporary measure. As a result, they ceased their attacks and for five years, peace reigned in Wessex.

#Alfred of wessex series#

The depressing series of defeats at the hands of the Vikings continued unabated and Alfred was forced into a strategy of buying them off. The practice of crowning a successor as royal prince and military commander is well-known among Germanic tribes. The law of primogeniture was not then established in Saxon England and it was normal practice for the King to be elected in this manner. In electing Alfred king the Witan passed over the two young sons of Ethelred. His brothers between them had lasted barely a decade. The Witenagemot, or Saxon council of wise men, met after Ethelred's death from wounds sustained in battle and elected the twenty-two-year-old Alfred, who had already demonstrated himself a confident leader of men, as King. The Conflict with the Danes Coin of King Alfred At the Battle of Ashdown, in the Vale of the White Horse, the pious Ethelred remained so long in his tent praying for a victory that Alfred became impatient and led his men in a furious charge at the enemy without waiting for his brother to finish his prayers. During the reign of the youngest of these, Ethelred I, Alfred emerges from the mists of obscurity to fight loyally by his side in the struggle against the Danish incursions into Wessex. He was studious as a child and grew to be a man of determination, intelligence and resolution, despite suffering from ill health for much of his life.Īlfred's three elder brothers reigned in turn before him. Alfred was around eleven when his father died.

Nobly accepting the status quo in the hope that civil war and the consequent loss of life could be avoided, Ethelwulf retired to Kent, where he reigned as sub-king until his death in 858. On Ethelwulf's return to England he found his eldest son, Ethelbald, had usurped his throne in his absence.

It was rumoured that King Ethelwulf wished to make Alfred his successor. His youngest son appears to have been Ethelwulf's favourite, his father took Alfred on pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the blessing of his godfather, Pope Leo IV. Alfred quickly learned to read it aloud, and was made a gift of the book when he was only six years old. One of the few stories that survive from Alfred's early life relates that his mother, Osburh, showed her sons a beautifully illuminated volume of Saxon poetry and promised to make a gift of it to the first of them who was able to read it. He was a zealous practiser of hunting in all its branches, and hunted with great assiduity and success for skill and good fortune in this art, as in all others, are among the gifts of God, as we also have often witnessed.' King Alfred His noble nature implanted in him from his cradle a love of wisdom above all things but, with shame be it spoken, by the unworthy neglect of his parents and nurses, he remained illiterate even till he was twelve years old or more but, he listened with serious attention to the Saxon poems which he often heard recited, and easily retained them in his docile memory. As he advanced through the years of infancy and youth, his form appeared more comely than that of his brothers in look, in speech, and in manners he was more graceful than they. Described by Asser as ' loved by his father and mother, and even by all the people, above all his brothers, and was educated altogether at the court of the king.