For a basis to this enquiry, we must take the year 878, as being that in which the Jewel disappeared. This is now an established point in our argument. To this we were led both by history and by tradition: and it is only by keeping as close as possible to these that we can shun the proclivities of arbitrary hypothesis.
1. Taking then the year 878 as that in which Alfred saw the Jewel for the last time, how far back must we recede to come to the most probable time for his inventing it? Our first step must be to skip the seven years since his accession in 871. A glimpse at the events of that period may suffice to assure us that the constant pressure of sterner duties would have left him in no mood to amuse himself with enamel and filigree. And even if for the sake of winter relaxation he had done so, I think he would not have designated himself as plain Ælfred, when he was king. During his reign his constant style was Ælfred cyning, and it would have been quite easy to have added the letter R to his name, as his father did when he ordered the fashion of his ring. For these reasons (among others), I think the Jewel was made before 871.
We may still recede another long step, and say that the date we seek was probably before 866. That is the year in which Alfred began to share the burden of reigning without the title, the year in which the common danger entered upon a new and more menacing phase, as the heathen invasion began to be more systematically conducted. Wessex was not indeed attacked until the last of these five years, but the whole period must have been passed in apprehension and intense preparation. Accordingly, this process of reasoning back from the year 878 by the light of public events brings us to the result that the design and execution of the Jewel is probably to be dated before a.d. 866, that is to say, it must belong to the reign of king Æthelberht.
2. Coming now to the second process, we have to consider at what time it appears likely that Alfred might have been in the mood for such a work as this, and also in circumstances (as to his immediate surroundings) favourable for artistic and allegorical meditation. When does it appear likely that he had leisure for thinking out these details, while at the same time his mind was exercised with the themes represented in the Jewel? It was certainly subsequent to his return from Rome; not immediately, but after an interval, when the first agitation of his mind had subsided, and he had become reconciled to his lot.
For we cannot doubt that when he returned from Rome to England, and witnessed the state of his country—the danger and the depression—he must have experienced a great revulsion of feeling, a strong outburst of regret for the long and happy time that he had been enjoying abroad. His passionate yearning for Rome and his friends there must have amounted to something like a violent fit of home-sickness. All this it was his duty to live down; and to do so he had to look the facts in the face, and take their measure and their bearing, and ascertain their relation to his path of duty, and interpret his position by the light of a religious conscience. Some earnest and ardent minds would find solace and strength in writing poetry, and perhaps Alfred did so. If this Jewel is not the equivalent of such a poem it is nearly akin to it. In constructive art there certainly is a solace of a healing kind, and the Jewel before us answers remarkably to the situation. It is in many particulars like the outcome of such a mood. And if such a mood is likely to have followed the return of the young prince to England, it concerns us to form some opinion about the probable date of that event.
It is asserted in the bilingual Chronicle (F) that Alfred returned to England on the occasion of his father’s death, which took place in January, 858; but the statement is discredited by considerations which Mr. Plummer has given in his notes to the Saxon Chronicle (vol. ii, p. 80). Two years later, in 860, his eldest brother, Æthelbald, king of Wessex, died; and this event occasioned a definite call for his return. The three brothers, Æthelbald, Æthered, and Ælfred, held lands in common which were given by their father to these three sons, in such a way that the whole was to come to the latest survivor. This property would now pass to the two brothers, Æthered and Ælfred; and for the sanction of this transfer it was necessary that the parties should appear before the Witan. This transaction is related in Alfred’s Will. The two brothers agreed that their joint property should be held in trust by Æthelbriht, the new king, and that he should farm it for the benefit of his younger brothers, a trust which he fully discharged.
At the death of Æthelbriht and the accession of Æthered in 866, the heathen invasion began to assume a more alarming form; but the reign of Æthelbriht had been a quiet time, at least for Wessex. This period (860 to 866), from Alfred’s thirteenth to his eighteenth year, would be a time of leisure, and he would be at the age of youthful reverie, and his mind would be stimulated by reports that would reach his ear of the savagery of the heathen raids in neighbour and kindred nations contrasted with the humanities of Christianity, while his memory would contrast the learned culture of Rome with the ignorance of his own people. These appear to be apt conditions for exercising the mind of a serious prince with such thoughts as we find symbolized in the Alfred Jewel.
In collecting evidence for the argument of this Essay, I have been solicitous to omit nothing that seemed to make for the credit of a Jewel, concerning which I am persuaded in my own mind that it bears the authentic signature of Alfred of Wessex. I hope that this aim has not betrayed me into the use of any arguments which are of no validity. And if any reader’s opinion should be against me on this point, I would ask him to consider that in the region of probability all men do not judge exactly alike: one may think a particular fact or tradition of no argumentative value, while another may hesitate to exclude it. And even if any such instance were disallowed and ruled to be of no weight, still it cannot invalidate the rest.
Morally, it may damage the effect of the whole, because it may prejudice the mind of the reader; but logically, it leaves the argumentative effect of the rest where it was before. Such being the case, I have leaned toward comprehension as being the more useful course; and if I have erred I hope I may claim the reader’s indulgence, on the ground of being faithful to the view which I had of the task before me.