{"id":8798,"date":"2022-01-13T12:08:16","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T11:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=55263"},"modified":"2022-01-13T12:34:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T11:34:08","slug":"alfred-the-great-he-was-an-excellent-king-but-thats-not-the-whole-story","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/alfred-the-great-he-was-an-excellent-king-but-thats-not-the-whole-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Alfred the Great: \u201cHe was an excellent king, but that\u2019s not the whole story\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By HistoryExtraAdmin\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 13 January 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Imagine the perfect Anglo-Saxon king. A man of intellect, a philosophical warrior-king who is devastating in battle yet magnanimous in victory. In the popular imagination, that man is King Alfred the Great<\/a>. He shines like a beacon out of the ninth century: a kind of Anglo-Saxon<\/a> superhero, who single-handedly defeated the Vikings<\/a> and united England under his rule (871\u201399).<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a problem: this sounds too good to be true. And as a historian, when something sounds too good to be true, I want to take a closer look.<\/p>\n

Alfred is, of course, remembered as \u2018the Great\u2019. Yet despite what you might think, he was only given this epithet in the 16th century. Alfred suited the tastes of the time \u2013 as a scholar, philosopher and statesman he looked very much like a textbook Renaissance man<\/a>. As one of the few early Christian English kings who wasn\u2019t a Catholic saint, he could also be co-opted for Henry VIII<\/a>\u2019s Protestant cause \u2013 echoing back to a lost form of Christianity uncorrupted by papal influence. That may be total nonsense, but it suited Henry\u2019s needs at the time.<\/p>\n

How much do you know about Alfred the Great?<\/a><\/h4>\n

Barbara Yorke, professor emerita of early medieval history at the University of Winchester, brings you the facts about the Anglo-Saxon king\u2013 including the major events of his life, his accomplishments, his family, his death and his burial place\u2026 | Read more<\/a><\/p>\n

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A century later, Oliver Cromwell\u2019s republicans were hailing Alfred as a man who promoted democracy through his council. This also wasn\u2019t true, but it was a convenient rewrite. Fast-forward to the 18th century, and the Germanic Alfred was even handier to Britain\u2019s Hanoverian kings. Later still, the Victorians \u2013 who were attracted by a narrative that advocated benign patriarchal influence \u2013 adopted him as the perfect avatar of the English imperial state.<\/p>\n

Alfred has been reinterpreted for every age, but if we strip away all of these retrofitted myths, what remains?<\/p>\n

Most of what we know about Alfred comes from his own pen, or from people he commissioned to write. Rather like Winston Churchil<\/a>l centuries later, Alfred managed to ensure history\u2019s enduring affection by making sure that he wrote it himself. The most detailed source we have on his reign is the Life of King Alfred<\/em>, written by the king\u2019s own bishop, Asser<\/a>, a Welshman and zealous convert to the Wessex cause. Alfred commissioned Asser to write his history during a brief period of peace in Wessex in around 890. Much of it is copied directly out of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, another manuscript Alfred was having compiled at the same time.<\/p>\n

On the podcast: The Welsh churchman Asser is in large part responsible for how the early medieval king was viewed, and the fact that he eventually got the moniker \u2018the Great\u2019. SDr Robert Gallagher tells us about a new discovery he\u2019s made about this monastic wordsmith<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/bristolcdn.s3.amazonaws.com\/bbchistory\/audio\/HistoryExtra_2021_11_15.mp3<\/a><\/audio>

You wouldn\u2019t expect Alfred to come out of these sources badly. Both texts are propagandist narratives from the Wessex court, so it\u2019s a historian\u2019s obligation to scrutinise more carefully what they tell us. And that scrutiny reveals some sizeable cracks in the heroic narrative that Alfred was trying to project about himself. I don\u2019t want to lower Alfred in anyone\u2019s estimation \u2013 he was an excellent king. But even if he was brilliant, that\u2019s not the whole story.<\/p>\n

Money talks<\/h3>\n

One of the most dispassionate sources we have on Alfred\u2019s rule is coinage. Archaeologists trust coins because they tend not to lie about the reality of things. They carry all sorts of clues and hints about the state of affairs, and can reveal how realistic a king\u2019s ideas of grandeur were.<\/p>\n

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser\u2019s Life of King Alfred<\/em>, Alfred was combatting the Viking threat alone. At the battle of Edington<\/a> (fought in May AD 878), he reportedly crushed the Norse pretty much single-handedly. However, a set of coins called the \u2018two emperors\u2019 coinage series (one of which is pictured left) gives a different version of events. Minted in Wessex and Mercia, they show not one but two faces in profile. We see Alfred facing another king \u2013 Ceolwulf II of Mercia. Issued jointly by Alfred and Ceolwulf, the coins suggest that Wessex had a key ally in the king of Mercia, and that Alfred was far from the lone defender of England. Ceolwulf\u2019s role has been demoted in other documentation \u2013 and we can\u2019t be sure that he fought at Edington \u2013 but it seems he made a significant contribution to the resistance to the Vikings<\/a>.<\/p>\n