§ 51. Curiously enough, among the statements of later writers, some of those which sound most authentic occur in Ingulf, one of the most notable forgeries of the Middle Ages[317]. It seems to me that the accounts of the ravages of the Danes[318] may rest, at least in their outlines, on genuine local traditions. Other statements, though probably false considered as descriptions of concrete facts, may be true as types of things which must almost certainly have occurred. For instance, when we are told[319] that a monk of Croyland named Tolius, formerly a Mercian soldier of repute, organised military resistance to the Danes, I take the freedom very seriously to doubt the historical existence of any person of that name. But that in the time of their country’s need, more than one world-weary warrior may have come forth from their monastic retreats, to lead their countrymen against the foe, just as two centuries earlier Sigbert, ex-king of the East Angles, had been dragged from the cloister to lead his former subjects against the heathen Penda[320], is more than likely. So when we read how Beornred, king of Mercia, took advantage of the confusion caused by the Danish raids to annex monastic estates[321], how, owing to the ravages of the Danes, and the exactions of their puppet king, Ceolwulf, Croyland became so poor that no one could be found to take the monastic vows there[322], we have every disposition to accept the statements.
It is in Ingulf that Alfred is praised for his devotion to St. Neot and St. Werferth[323]. It is curious to find the very definite connexion of Alfred with the human friend who helped him so much in his literary and other tasks, converted into the shadowy relation of a votary to a saint.
‘A land where all things are forgotten.’ Alfred eclipsed by Edgar. Decline of Alfred’s fame.
§ 52. Where, on the other hand, this growth of legend does not appear in later chroniclers, we seem to come into ‘a land where all things are forgotten.’ And it is, I think, unquestionably true, that Alfred’s fame was in after times largely obscured by that of Edgar. The connexion of the latter with the monastic revival secured him the homage of monastic historians, and his imperial position appealed more to the imagination of posterity than the weightier achievements of Alfred. And then he was three-quarters of a century nearer to their view. It is not unnatural therefore that the laws and homilies of Æthelred’s reign should look back to the reign of Edgar as a golden age[324]; that here in Oxford, in 1018, Canute and his conquered subjects should be reconciled on the basis of Edgar’s law[325]. The one exception is the Anglo-Saxon homily on St. Neot, in which the later years of Alfred are regarded as the golden age[326]. The motive of this is too obvious to be dwelt on. But to show how small a space Alfred occupies in some of the later Chronicles, I may point out that in the Annals of Waverley[327] the only thing mentioned about him is his foundation of the three monasteries of Athelney, Newminster, and Shaftesbury, that in the Annals of Dunstaple[328] the only act recorded of him is the sending of alms to St. Thomas in India; while this is what his reign shrinks to in the pages of Capgrave, the first to apply the English tongue once more to the original writing of history in prose:—
‘In this tyme regned Alured in Ynglond, the fourt son of Adelwold. He began to regn in the ȝere of our Lord 872. This man, be the councelle of St. Ned, mad an open Scole of divers sciens at Oxenford. He had many batailes with Danes; and aftir many conflictes in which he had the wers, at the last he overcam hem; and be his trety Godrus (a nominative inferred from Godrum = Guðrum) here king was baptized, and went hom with his puple. XXVIII ȝere he regned, and deied the servaunt of God[329].’
And so through these dim pages the greatest name in English story moves like the shadow cast by some great luminary in eclipse[330].
LECTURE III
LIFE OF ALFRED PRIOR TO HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE
Date of Alfred’s birth.