Ethelwulf’s devout liberality is recorded by the contemporary papal biographer, though his Italian ear has failed to catch or to retain his barbarous name: “At this time a king of the Saxons named ... leaving his goods and his own kingdom, came for prayer with a multitude of followers to the thresholds of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. And he gave to St. Peter a crown of pure gold weighing four pounds; vessels of pure gold weighing two pounds; a sword bound with pure gold; two smaller images of pure gold; a paten of silver gilt, Saxon work, four pounds; a vestment of purple with a golden border; a white surplice all of silk, embroidered and gold bordered; two large curtains of gold tapestry.[120] Then the Saxon king, on Pope Benedict’s request that he would employ the gold and silver [which he had brought with him] in giving largesse to the people in St. Peter’s church, dispensed gold to the bishops, presbyters, deacons and all the rest of the clergy and chief men of Rome, but he gave small silver coins to the common people.”[121]
A more obviously useful exercise of Ethelwulf’s liberality was connected with the Schola Saxonum, which is said to have been founded by his predecessor, Ine, or by the Mercian Offa. In this schola (something probably between a convent and an academic hostel) young Anglo-Saxons destined for the ecclesiastical profession probably dwelt for months or years, learning the Latin of the missal and the tones of Gregorian plain-song. Its memory even yet lingers in Rome, for the Church of the Holy Spirit in “the Leonine city” having been placed near the school of the Saxons still bears the name of “San Spirito in Sassia”. The schola had, however, been unfortunately destroyed by fire in the year before Ethelwulf’s visit, and patriotism as well as piety prompted him to spend on its restoration some part of the treasure which he had brought from England.[122]
After a year’s residence in Rome, Ethelwulf returned to England, visiting on the way the court of his much younger contemporary, Charles the Bald,[123] whose daughter Judith, a young girl of thirteen, he brought home with him as his wife, much to the astonishment, doubtless, of his subjects and to the annoyance of his sons by his first marriage. Though it is nowhere distinctly so stated, it seems probable that this extraordinary second marriage of Ethelwulf had some connexion with an event which clouded the last years of his life, the rebellion of his eldest son Ethelbald. This young man had probably exercised some of the functions of a regent during his father’s absence, and now stood arrayed in arms to repel him from his kingdom. The fact that he was abetted by the energetic Bishop Ealhstan and by the ealdorman of Somerset, who had helped Ealhstan to win his great victory over the Danes in Bridgwater Bay, suggests the possibility that this rebellion may not have been due merely to the ambition of an undutiful son, but may have been prompted by a patriotic desire to wrest the helm of the state from the hands of an inefficient pilot. Happily, though Ethelwulf had many partisans, shocked by what they deemed the unnatural conduct of Ethelbald, civil war was avoided. The gentle old man agreed without much difficulty to an arrangement whereby the western portion of the kingdom, the richer and fairer part, was handed over to his son, he himself retaining the eastern portion. The young Queen Judith, who had been crowned before her departure from France, now took her place on the royal throne side by side with her husband, notwithstanding the “infamous custom” of Wessex which, as has been said, on account of the evil example of the daughter of Offa, forbade the consorts of West Saxon kings to sit on the throne or to bear the name of queen.
Less than two years after his return from Rome, on January 13, 858, Ethelwulf died. His will was much talked of and was considered by his biographers a model for all future generations. After directing how his kingdom and his property should be divided between his sons, he ordained that throughout his dominions one man in ten, whether a native or a foreigner, should be supplied with meat, drink and clothing by his successors until the Day of Judgment, always supposing “that there should still be men and cattle in the land and that the country should not have become quite desolate,” a striking evidence of the anxieties caused by the Danish invasions. True to the last to his affection for Rome, he left a hundred mancuses (twelve and a half pounds of silver) to buy oil for the lights of St. Peter’s, the same sum for the lights of St. Paul’s (outside the city), and another hundred for the apostolic pontiff’s own private use. It does not seem possible to accept the theories of some recent writers who would fain represent Ethelwulf as a wise and capable statesman, the deviser of large continental alliances for defence against the Northmen. On the contrary, he was probably a man of slender intellect and feeble will, but devout, unworldly and affectionate, by no means the least lovable of Anglo-Saxon sovereigns.
CHAPTER XVI.
ETHELWULF’S SONS—DANISH INVASIONS TO THE BAPTISM OF GUTHRUM.
During the twenty years which followed the death of Ethelwulf four of his sons successively filled the West Saxon throne, namely, Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred. As the last named is to us incomparably the most interesting figure, it will be well to insert here some particulars relating to his childhood which were purposely omitted from the preceding chapter. For these particulars, as for almost all that makes the great king a living reality to us, we are indebted to the little book De Rebus Gestis Aelfredi, written by the Welsh ecclesiastic, Asser.[124]
The question of the date of Alfred’s birth is beset with some difficulty, but on the whole it seems safest to assign it to the year 848. The place of his birth was undoubtedly Wantage in Berkshire, about twenty-five miles from Reading. Throughout his life his chief exploits had reference to the valley of the middle Thames, and if any one county more than another may claim an interest in his glory, it is that county which, as Asser says, “has its name from the wood of Berroc, where the boxtree grows most plentifully”. The mother of Alfred was Osburga, whom Asser describes as “a very religious woman, noble of intellect and noble by birth, daughter of Oslac, the renowned butler of King Ethelwulf, and descended from the old Jutish kings of the Isle of Wight”.
In 853, when Alfred was only four or five years old, he was sent by his father to Rome “with an honourable train of nobles and others”. The Chronicle says that Pope Leo “anointed him as king and adopted him as his godson”. The pope himself, in a still extant letter to Ethelwulf, tells the king that he has “invested his son with the girdle, insignia and robes of the consulate after the manner of Roman consuls”. It is difficult to suppose that Ethelwulf, who had four strong sons older than Alfred, can have wished the little five-year-old child, much as he loved him, to be anointed as king. It has been suggested as a possible explanation of the ceremony that some of the West Saxon retinue, who saw the child invested in the splendid trabea of the consul, and were told that these were the robes once worn by the men who wielded kingly power in Rome, attached to the ceremony a political importance greater than was its due. Two years later the boy again went to Rome, accompanying his father on the visit already described. He returned with him through France, and doubtless witnessed the marriage ceremony which gave him a step-mother six years older than himself.
It is probably to the interval between his first and second visits to Rome that we must refer the episode of the ballad-book prize, the best-known story of Alfred’s childhood. That story must be told in Asser’s own words:—
“His father and mother loved him greatly, more than all his brethren; and so, too, did all men in his father’s court, in which he was ever nourished. As infancy grew into boyhood, he appeared more comely than all his brethren and pleasanter in countenance, in speech and in manners. From his very cradle, notwithstanding the practical bent of his disposition, his intellect, noble as his birth, inspired him with an earnest desire for wisdom, but, sad to say, through the shameful neglect of his parents and guardians, he remained unlettered till the twelfth year of his age or even later. He was, however, both by night and day an earnest and frequent listener to the recitation of Saxon poems, and being an apt pupil he easily retained them in his memory....