The latter agreement was made, says Alfred, when Æthelred had succeeded; that is, shortly after 866. It does not seem to me unreasonable to suppose that some arrangement was made at the same time with reference to the succession, and sanctioned in the same Witenagemót. Alfred’s marriage took place according to Asser in 868, the very year of the Mercian expedition. Whether at the time of the agreement about the private property any of Æthelred’s children had been born is uncertain. The subsequent modifications, providing for the children of the two brothers, would seem to suggest that they had not. Anyhow they must have been too young to be contemplated as possible successors, in the not unlikely event of Æthelred’s falling in battle; and the danger of the country required that there should be no uncertainty on the question of the succession. It is by this definite recognition of Alfred as successor that I would explain the title of ‘secundarius’ given to him by Asser. I may add that, except as to the Celtic analogies which I have suggested, this is practically the view of Dr. Stubbs[439], though I was not conscious of the fact when I worked out my own theory.
‘Alfred’s Year of Battles.’ Chronology.
§ 65. For two years Wessex had a respite. The year 869 was spent by the invaders in Deira with their headquarters at York. In 870, as already mentioned, they completed their conquest of East Anglia. But in the following year the storm burst. This was indeed ‘Alfred’s Year of Battles,’ as it is called by the late Mr. W. H. Simcox in an excellent article on the subject, which he contributed to the second number of the English Historical Review[440]. Here, as seven years later, the object of the Danes seems to have been to surprise Wessex by an attack in mid-winter. Mr. Simcox, by reckoning back the intervals between the various engagements as given in the Chronicle from the death of Æthelred, which is stated to have occurred ‘after Easter,’ placed the beginning of the campaign in January. But a fact, first pointed out, as far as I know, by Sir James Ramsay[441], enables us to fix it more precisely. Heahmund, bishop of Sherborne, fell in the battle of Marton, the last engagement in which Æthelred took part. So little was his warlike activity held to derogate from his episcopal character, that his death in battle against a heathen foe won him the title of martyr[442], and a place in the calendar. His day is March 22, and that would almost certainly be the day on which he fell; and this fits in well with the statement of the Chronicle that the battle of Marton was before Easter, which fell on April 15 in 871[443]. Reckoning backward from this we get January 22 for the English defeat at Basing, January 8 for the victory of Ashdown, January 4 for the abortive attack on the Danish lines at Reading, December 31 for the successful engagement at Englefield, and December 28 for the descent of the Danes on Reading. These two last dates according to our reckoning belong to 870; but the Chronicler, who begins his year with Christmas Day[444], is quite correct in placing them in 871.
The Danes at Reading. Battle of Ashdown.
The Danes seized Reading and fortified the tongue of land between the Kennet and the Thames[445]; a large foraging party under two jarls was cut up by Æthelwulf, the ealdorman of Berkshire, at Englefield, but the main attack by the royal brothers on the Danish lines at Reading failed, and here the victor of Englefield was slain. Gaimar gives some details as to the route by which the defeated English made their escape, which seem to me perfectly genuine, though I know not whence he derived them[446]. Mr. Simcox objects to them on military grounds, of which I do not profess to be a judge. Anyhow, only four days later the English gained the brilliant victory of Ashdown, about five-and-twenty miles further to the west. I confess I find it difficult to fit into the Chronicler’s account of the battle the well-known anecdote of Asser[447], which tells how Æthelred refused to engage until the priest had finished saying mass, though Mr. Simcox accepts it as ‘perfectly historical.’ However, if true, Æthelred’s delay had no bad effect on the result of the battle; and the bringing up of a fresh body of troops after the enemy had already been disordered by Alfred’s ‘boar-like’ charge[448], may have largely contributed to the victory. So that the cheap sneers of some writers have not the merit of being even superficially effective.
The Ashdown thorn.
We have noticed[449] that among the objects of interest which Asser claims to have seen with his own eyes was the solitary thorn round which the battle of Ashdown raged. It is an interesting fact, first pointed out to me by my friend Mr. Taylor, that among the Berkshire Hundreds enumerated in Domesday is one called Nachededorn, i.e. Naked-thorn, containing within itself a manor of the same name, and also the manor of Ashdown[450]. As the name of a hundred, ‘Naked-thorn’ has perished; and the manors which it contained are by modern arrangements distributed among several hundreds. But it was suggested by Dr. Wilson, formerly President of Trinity College, Oxford[451], that the name of ‘Naked-thorn’ manor probably survived in a slightly altered form in the name of Roughthorn Farm, close to Ashdown[452]. The manor of Naked-thorn was held by the Conqueror in demesne; that of Ashdown by Henry de Ferrers. It is certainly, as Mr. Taylor remarks, an interesting fact that the site of the battle of Ashdown should have been owned by the Conqueror himself.
Battles of Basing and Marton. Death of Æthelred.
From Ashdown the beaten Danes withdrew to their lines at Reading. A fortnight later fortune turned once more, and the English were defeated at Basing. This southward movement seems to indicate that the Danes were striking for Winchester, the capital of Wessex[453]. The fact that they were unable to press the attack home, shows that the English, though defeated, were still formidable. Then for two months our authorities are silent. The Chronicler tells us that in this year of battles there were no less than nine general engagements[454], not counting minor operations. But of these nine engagements only six are actually named, Englefield, Reading, Ashdown, Basing, Marton, Wilton. It is just possible that one or more of the unnamed battles may have taken place in the interval. The next engagement, however, that we hear of was at a place called by the Chronicler Meretun, which is neither Merton in Surrey, nor Merton near Bicester, nor (as I once thought) Marden near Devizes, but, as Mr. Simcox argues with great probability, Marton, about three miles south of Great Bedwin in Wiltshire; and here the English, at first victorious, had ultimately to yield possession of the field of battle, and a month later, shortly after Easter[455], Æthelred died. Whether he was wounded in the battle[456], or whether he was simply worn out by the incessant strain and exposure of the last four months, he equally died for England and the Faith, and it is difficult to read with patience the depreciatory comments of some writers, who seem here also to assume that piety and efficiency must be mutually exclusive qualities. But with Alfred to succeed him, Browning’s noble words were certainly true of Æthelred:—