The Life and Times of Alfred the Great / Being the Ford lectures for 1901

by Charles Plummer

[247] See below, p. 56, note 4.

[248] Grundriss … der angelsächsischen Litteratur, p. 494.

[249] Gorham, pp. 256, 257.

[250] ibid. 258.

[251] AA. SS. u. s. p. 321ᵃ; Whitaker, pp. 318, 367.

[252] AA. SS. ibid.; Whitaker, p. 367. The Metrical Life seems to make him king of Kent only, ibid. 318.

[253] Whitaker, p. 318.

[254] AA. SS. p. 321ᵇ; Whitaker, pp. 320, 367.

[255] AA. SS. ibid.; Whitaker, p. 321.

[256] Whitaker, p. 343; Gorham, p. 257: ‘on Sc͠es Ælfeges dagen þæs halgen biscopes.’ The absurdity is hardly less if we suppose the earlier Ælfheah to be meant, 934-951. But the title of ‘Saint’ seems to show that the later one is intended. If so, the life cannot at any rate be earlier than 1012. And this alone would be fatal to Ælfric’s authorship, as he was himself a personal friend of this later Ælfheah, and could not possibly have made such a confusion; cf. Wülker, Grundriss, p. 455.