§ 60. Secondly, I can see nothing in the passage which obliges us to put the incident of the poetry book in Alfred’s thirteenth year. It is true that Asser introduces it with an ‘ergo.’ But when we have once grasped the thoroughly aimless way in which Asser sprinkles his conjunctions about, we shall not be inclined to lay much stress on this. And, if we are to construe so strictly, the ‘ergo’ couples the incident, not to the statement of Alfred’s want of literature, but to the sentence about his skill in hunting[403]. The incident may belong therefore to any period anterior to Alfred’s second visit to Rome in 855. This at once gets rid of all the chronological difficulties which have been evolved from the passage.
Other misconceptions refuted.
Nor is it necessarily implied that the reading of the poetry book was Alfred’s first essay in reading. It is only said that he went to a master and learnt to read that particular book. But a child would need help in mastering a new work, even if he could read to some extent before.
Again, the suggestion of Pauli[404] and others that even in this case Alfred was merely taught to say the poems by heart, and then repeated them to his mother, is based simply on a piece of bad scholarship. Because in the modern languages recitation means repeating by heart, it does not follow that that is the meaning of the Latin word. ‘Recitare’ means ‘to read aloud’; it occurs no less than seven times in Asser, and that is the meaning of the word in every case[405].
The mother in the story is Osburh.
Once more, the mother mentioned in the story is unquestionably Alfred’s own mother Osburh. That he should ever have spoken to Asser of Judith, who was only some four years older than himself, with all her doubtful after-history, as his mother, is, as Dr. Stubbs says[406], absolutely inconceivable.
Theory of Osburh’s divorce refuted.
Lastly, an emphatic protest must be entered against the abominable theory put forward by Wright[407] and Lappenberg[408], and accepted by Freeman[409], without a shred of evidence, that Æthelwulf had divorced his noble wife Osburh—noble in character as in race—as Asser excellently says[410], in order to marry the child Judith. The object of the theory is to get over the supposed chronological difficulties of the incident of the poetry book. I have tried to show that those difficulties are imaginary. But no amount of chronological difficulties would induce me to accept a moral impossibility like this. It would be better to give up the story altogether. When Osburh died we do not know. Her name does not occur in the Chronicle or in charters. If she died in 854 or 855[411], grief for her loss may have been an additional motive for Æthelwulf to seek the spiritual consolations associated with a visit to the holy places.
Æthelwulf’s death. Limitations of his power. Character of Æthelwulf’s reign. Question of Æthelwulf’s will.
§ 61. Æthelwulf did not long survive his return from the Continent, dying about fifteen months later, January 13, 858[412]. Looking back over his reign of eighteen and a half years we seem to see that Wessex had hardly maintained the advance which she had made under Egbert; and indeed in some respects that advance was probably greater in appearance than in reality. There is no trace of any exercise of superiority on Æthelwulf’s part in regard to Northumbria or East Anglia; and though it is unsafe to argue absolutely from silence, especially where our authorities are so meagre, the inference seems confirmed by the title which Æthelwulf gives himself in one of his charters, ‘Rex Australium populorum[413],’ a district coincident with that denoted by Asser’s Saxonia, as explained above[414]. While a Mercian charter which makes special provision for the entertainment of heralds (praecones) on their journeys between Mercia and Northumbria, and Mercia and Wessex[415] seems to indicate that those kingdoms existed on a footing of equality and mutual independence. If Burgred of Mercia’s application to Æthelwulf in 853 for help against the Welsh implies that he regarded the latter in any way as his over-lord, it equally shows that Egbert’s reduction of the Welsh had not been permanent. But on the whole I agree with Mr. Green[416] that the facts of Æthelwulf’s reign do not bear out that character of weakness commonly ascribed to him, which rests, I think, largely on the idea that a reputation for piety is incompatible with mental vigour. The hold of Wessex on Kent and its dependencies was not relaxed. Egbert himself had found it expedient to conciliate local feeling by making his son Æthelwulf under-king of these districts[417], a system for which he could have pleaded the example of the great Charles, with which he must have become acquainted in the days of his exile[418]. The same system was continued at Egbert’s death, and again at Æthelwulf’s departure for Rome, and at his death; the latter division being prescribed, according to Asser[419], by the terms of Æthelwulf’s will. Whether Æthelwulf really did venture to fly so much in the face of Mr. Freeman, as to dispose of his dominions by will, cannot be certainly known, as the will is not in existence. Anyhow, in view of the earlier precedents, I hesitate to accept the theory of Lappenberg and Pauli, that Æthelwulf intended definitely to sever Kent, &c., from Wessex, entailing it on the descendants of Æthelberht, who in turn were to remain excluded from the Wessex succession[420]. Possibly Kent was not at once ripe for incorporation with Wessex, and the arrangement may have been justified as a transitional measure. Happily it came to an end on Æthelbald’s death in 860; Æthelberht retained Kent on his accession to Wessex[421]; Æthelred on this occasion, and Alfred, on the death of Æthelberht, patriotically abstaining from pressing the claims to Kent, which they might have based on the recent precedents. And this I take to be the residuum of fact in Asser’s rhetorical statement[422] that Alfred might, if he liked, have assumed the royal power during his brother’s lifetime.