Alter in alterius nil sibi iure petit.
Pax stabilis, uita concors, discordia nulla;
Inter eos regnat gratia, liuor abest[253].’
Neot becomes a monk at Glastonbury under Dunstan[254] (who was made abbot of Glastonbury in 946!), and was the special friend of Æthelwold[255] (bishop of Winchester 963!) or of his successor Ælfheah[256]! After this Neot becomes an anchorite in Cornwall, whence he goes to Rome to Pope Marinus[257]. On his return he founds a monastery in Cornwall[258], and now it is that Alfred first hears of him (though according to the pedigree he would be his own brother). Alfred visits him, and Neot rebukes him for his licentiousness and tyranny[259], compelling him, in the words of the Bollandist Life, ‘to tremble at the sulphureous flames of Gehenna’; he prophesies Alfred’s expulsion from the throne, and his ultimate restoration, and then dies[260]. Next comes the invasion of Guthrum. Alfred gives up everything and flies to Athelney; the cakes are duly burnt[261], and then St. Neot appears in a vision and finally leads the English hosts to victory at Ethandun[262].
Absurdity of the story.
§ 45. It would not be necessary to quote this precious stuff, even in outline, were it not that people still continue to treat it as more or less historical. I have already adverted to the strange inconsistency of making Alfred first hear of Neot’s fame after the latter’s return from Rome, although he was his own brother according to the pedigree. This seems to show that the making Neot a son of Æthelwulf was a later development, and not part of the original legend. And, indeed, in the fragment of the Life interpolated in Asser he is no more than Alfred’s ‘cognatus[263],’ which in mediaeval Latin means cousin, or sometimes brother-in-law, like ‘cognato’ in modern Italian[264]. But if St. Neot ever existed, his connexion with the royal house of Wessex has probably as little basis in fact, as the forged Carolingian pedigree which the later Lives of St. Hubert give to that Saint[265]. Another noteworthy point is that the only pope contemporary with Alfred known to these Lives is Marinus[266], though his obscure pontificate only lasted a little over a year (December, 882, to the beginning of 884[267]), and was some time posterior to the death of Neot, who is represented as dying before the campaign of 878[268]. The reason for this prominence is, of course, to be found in the privileges which this pope was said to have granted, at Alfred’s request, to the English School at Rome[269], and still more in the story that he had sent a fragment of the true cross to Alfred[270]. I need hardly say that the idea of Alfred’s early licentiousness, or of his tyranny at the beginning of his reign, is absolutely inconsistent with authentic history. The year 871, when Wessex was at deathgrips with the foe, was not the time, even if Alfred had been the man, for establishing a tyranny. It is pitiable that modern writers should lend even half an ear[271] to these wretched tales, which besmirch the fair fame of our hero king, in order to exalt a phantom saint.
Alfred’s withdrawal to Athelney.
§ 46. But perhaps the worst misconception, and the one which has most injuriously affected English history, is that connected with the withdrawal to Athelney. The Lives represent Alfred on the invasion of Guthrum as becoming not merely a helpless, but a cowardly and criminal fugitive. This view is put most strongly in the Saxon Life, which runs as follows[272]: ‘Then came Guthrum the heathen king with his cruel host first to the eastern part of Saxland (Saxonia).… When King Alfred … learnt that the host … was … so near England, he straightway for fear took to flight, and forsook all his warriors and his captains and all his people, … and crept by hedge and lane, through wood and field, till he … came to Athelney,’ where the cakes are burnt. Now there is no doubt that Wessex was thoroughly surprised by the sudden attack of the Danes at mid-winter, after twelfth-night, 878[273]. And it is possible that in this the Danes were hardly ‘playing the game.’ Military operations were generally suspended in the winter. Chippenham was a ‘villa regia’ as Asser notes; and it looks as if the Danes, with Boer ‘slimness,’ had tried to surprise Alfred in his winter home[274]. Happily they failed in this, and, as Pauli has finely said[275], Alfred’s cause was not hopeless as long as Alfred was alive. For the moment the struggle was converted into a guerilla war. But this is what authentic history has to say about it: ‘Here the host … stole on Chippenham and surprised Wessex, … and most of the people they reduced except the King Alfred[276], and he with a little band made his way with difficulty by wood and swamp; … and then after Easter he with his little band made a fort at Athelney, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe[277],’ until he in his turn surprised the Danes, and forced them to submit. Athelney, in fact, played no small part in the redemption of England.
Later Chroniclers; Ethelwerd.