Frankish element in Asser; no ground for suspicion.
§ 14. One general objection which has sometimes been brought against our author is, I am convinced, without foundation:—I mean the presence in him of a certain Frankish element. He uses certain Frankish words, vassallus, indiculus (a letter; both these words puzzled the scribes a good deal), comes (in the sense of ealdorman), senior (a lord, seigneur), and possibly others[56]. So too the story how Eadburh ‘put her foot in it,’ if I may use the phrase, with Charles the Great[57], and of her subsequent fate, evidently reflects the gossip of the Carolingian Courts. It is possible that the story of Æthelbald’s incestuous marriage[58] comes from the same source; as, with the exception of Asser, the only contemporary authorities in which it is found are Frankish[59]; so too, perhaps, the judgement on Arnulf’s conduct in deposing Charles the Fat[60], and the more correct form Carloman, as against the Carl of the Chronicle[61]. But when we consider that two at least of Alfred’s principal literary and educational coadjutors, Grimbald and John the Old Saxon, came from different parts of the Carolingian empire, that Æthelwulf married a Frankish wife, stayed some time at the Frankish Court[62], and had, as the epistles of Lupus of Ferrières show, a Frankish secretary[63], that some of these words occur in English charters[64], where likewise they probably bear witness to the influence of Frankish scribes, we shall see that there were plenty of channels through which these Frankish elements might find their way into the biography of an English king. Moreover, if we should come to the conclusion that the book is mediately or immediately the work of Asser, we may be inclined to connect this element in it with a statement quoted by Leland from a lost life of Grimbald[65], that Asser was one of the ambassadors deputed to bring Grimbald to England[66]. The description of Paris also looks as if it might rest on personal knowledge[67].
Detailed objections; the Diocese of Exeter.
§ 15. Of the objections in detail which have been brought against our author, the most important perhaps relates to his statement that Alfred gave him ‘Exeter with the diocese belonging to it both in Cornwall and Saxony,’ i.e. Wessex[68]. Mr. Wright[69] thought that this was conclusive evidence that the work was later than the transference of the united see of Cornwall and Devonshire to Exeter, under Edward the Confessor. I shall show presently that there is evidence, both external and internal, for the existence of our Asser about 975. Meanwhile, I would point out that under the year 875 the Welsh Annals record the drowning of Dumgarth, king of Cornwall[70], though it gives one a little start to realise that there were kings in Cornwall as late as the last quarter of the ninth century[71]; and we know from the Chronicle that in 877 Alfred recovered Exeter from the Danes. Now the state of affairs in South Wales which Asser represents[72] as determining him, at any rate in part, to accept Alfred’s invitation, in the hope of securing his protection for St. David’s, clearly refers to a period 877 × 885. Rotri Mawr is obviously dead, as his sons only are spoken of, and Rotri Mawr was slain in 877; while Howel, son of Rhys, king of Glewissig, is spoken of as alive; and he is probably the Howel who died at Rome in 885[73], having gone there, it is likely, in expiation of a crime, of which the record is preserved in the Book of Llandaff[74]. It seems to me not unlikely that in view of the events of 875 and 877, Alfred may have wished to place the districts round Exeter under episcopal supervision, without necessarily intending to create a definite diocese, and may have thought a Celtic-speaking prelate likely to be more effective than an Englishman[75]; for at this time the Bristol Channel was not either physically or linguistically a serious barrier between the Celts on either side of it.
When did Asser become a bishop?
Whether Asser was already a bishop when he first came to Alfred is difficult to determine. He is often spoken of as bishop of St. David’s. Novis, or Nobis, bishop, or, as Asser in the passage referred to above patriotically calls him, archbishop of St. David’s, died, according to the Welsh Annals, in 873, after a rule of thirty-three years[76]. His immediate successor was Llunwerth or Llwmbert[77]; but when the latter died I have not succeeded in satisfying myself[78].
Mention of Asser in the Cura Pastoralis.
Confirmation of the grant of Exeter to Asser is sometimes sought in the fact that Alfred, in the Preface to the Cura Pastoralis, speaks of Asser as ‘my bishop,’ at a time when Asser cannot have held his later diocese of Sherborne, as one of the copies of Alfred’s Cura Pastoralis was actually addressed to Wulfsige, Asser’s predecessor in that see. But if Asser was bishop of St. David’s when he came to Alfred, I should feel myself precluded from using this argument, for I could not regard it as impossible that Alfred should speak of Asser as ‘my bishop’ in respect of his Welsh bishopric, seeing that Asser expressly says that Hemeid, king of Dyfed, had commended himself to Alfred; or he might be called ‘my bishop’ in regard to the position which he held in Alfred’s service[79].
Argument from the mention of Asser’s illness.
§ 16. Another objection has been based on the passage in which Asser relates how, at the close of his first visit to Alfred, he promised to return in six months’ time, and give a definite answer to the king’s proposals; but on his way home, he says, ‘I was seized in the city of Winchester by a troublesome fever, in which I lay for a year and a week’; until Alfred sent letters to inquire why he had not kept his promise[80]. Now it has been argued that it is quite impossible that Asser should have been for over a year at Winchester without Alfred knowing about it. On the other hand, my late friend, Mr. Park Harrison, who, in spite of his advanced age, kept up his interest in these matters to the very end, called on me only a few weeks before his death, and argued that this same passage showed that Alfred could have had but little to do with Winchester, and therefore it was an impertinence of Winchester to attempt to monopolise the millenary celebration. As a matter of fact both arguments are baseless, and rest on a mistranslation. For in the passage cited, the words ‘in which’ (in qua), refer not to the city of Winchester, but to the fever. It is quite evident, I think, from the context that though it may have been at Winchester that Asser was attacked by the fever, yet he managed somehow to reach St. David’s, and that it was there that Alfred’s letters reached him.