§ 5. When the electors to the Ford Lectureship did me the great honour of offering me the lectureship, coupled with the informal suggestion that the present set of lectures might appropriately be devoted to some subject connected with King Alfred, I warned them, in the letter in which I accepted both the offer and the suggestion, that it was unlikely that on such a well-worked period of English history I should be able to offer anything very new or original. That warning I must now repeat to you. If in the course of our labours I can remove some of the difficulties and confusions which have gathered round the subject, and put in a clearer light some points which have been imperfectly apprehended, that will be all that I can aspire to. For the rest I must be content to put in my own words, and arrange in my own way, what has been previously written by others or by myself; and these lectures may rank as Prolegomena, in the sense in which the late Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, remarked that Dean Alford seemed to have used that word in his edition of the Greek Testament, viz. ‘things that have been said before.’

§ 6. But if I cannot tell you much that is very new, I hope that what I shall tell you may be approximately true. I shall not tell you, as a recent writer has done, that ‘by his invention of the shires [Alfred] anticipated the principles of the County Council legislation of ten centuries later[5].’ For, in the first place, Alfred did not ‘invent the shires’; and secondly, if I may quote a letter of my friend the Rev. C. S. Taylor, whose papers on Anglo-Saxon topography and archaeology[6] are well known to and appreciated by historical students, it ‘is surely a mistake to make Alfred, as some folks seem to do, into a kind of ninth century incarnation of a combined School Board and County Council.’ Yes, it is surely a mistake; and no less surely is it a mistake to make him into a nineteenth century radical with a touch of the nonconformist conscience[7]; or a Broad-Churchman with agnostic proclivities[8]. Nor shall I, with another recent writer, revive old Dr. Whitaker’s theory that St. Neot was an elder brother of Alfred, identical with the somewhat shadowy Athelstan who was under-king of Kent at any rate from 841 to 851[9]. For, firstly, it is very doubtful whether Athelstan was really Alfred’s brother, and not rather his uncle[10]; and secondly, as we shall see later on, St. Neot is an even more shadowy person than the under-king with whom Dr. Whitaker and Mr. Edward Conybeare would identify him; so shadowy indeed, as almost to justify an attitude of scepticism towards him as complete as that which Betsy Prig ultimately came to adopt towards the oft-quoted Mrs. Harris:—‘I don’t believe there never was no such person.’ I shall not repeat William of Malmesbury’s confusion of John the Old Saxon with John Scotus Erigena[11], and of Sighelm, Alfred’s messenger, with Sighelm, bishop of Sherborne in the following century[12]; or Henry of Huntingdon’s assertion[13] that Æthelwulf before his accession was bishop of Winchester. I shall not speak of an ‘Earl of Berkshire’ in the ninth century, nor tell you that Alfred’s Jewel is in the Bodleian[14], or that ‘the Danes made their first appearance on these shores in 832[15].’ Nor shall I tell you that ‘Alfred supplied chapter-headings and prefixed tables of contents to each of his authors, an improvement hitherto unheard of in literary work, which, simple as it seems now to us, betokened in its first conception no small literary genius[16]’; for I happen to have had better opportunities than most people of knowing that, in the case of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the chapter-headings were there long before Alfred undertook the work of translation. The same is true of Pope Gregory’s Dialogues, and of his Pastoral Care. The only works to which the above remarks could apply would be the Boethius and the Orosius translations; and even there we cannot be sure that the Latin MSS. used by Alfred had no chapter-headings; certainly the St. Gallen and Donaueschingen MSS. of Orosius have capitula[17], though, owing to the free way in which Alfred dealt with the Orosius, the Latin and Anglo-Saxon capitula do not correspond very closely. And the same is true of some Boethius MSS.[18] It is in truth a little disheartening to have all these old confusions and myths trotted out once more at this time of day as if they were genuine history. The fact is that there has been, if I may borrow a phrase from the Stock Exchange, a ‘boom’ in things Alfredian lately; and the literary speculator has rushed in to make his profit. Along with a few persons who are real authorities on the subjects with which they deal, eminent men in other departments of literature and life are engaged to play the parts which the ducal chairman and the aristocratic director play in the floatation of a company. They may not know very much about the business in hand, but their names look well on a prospectus. The result is not very creditable to English scholarship.

§ 7. I would not be understood as wishing to confine the writing of English history to a small body of experts. It is one of the great characteristics of English learning that it has never been the monopoly of a professional or professorial caste, as in Germany, but has been contributed to by men of every, and of no profession. To this fact it owes many of its best qualities—its sanity and common sense, its freedom from fads and far-fetched fancies, its freshness and contact with reality—qualities in which German learning, in spite of its extraordinary depth and solidity, is sometimes conspicuously wanting.

Still the fact remains, that to write on any period of early English history requires something more than the power of construing the Latin Chroniclers in the light of classical Latin, and of spelling out the Saxon Chronicle with the aid of a translation[19]. It needs some knowledge of the general lie of English history, and of the main line of development of English institutions; it needs some grasp of the relations of England to the Continent during the period in question, some power of weighing and comparing different kinds of historical evidence, some acquaintance with the existing literature on the subject[20]. It must be confessed that in many of the recent writings on King Alfred we look for these requirements in vain.

§ 8. But, seeing that so many uncritical statements on the subject of King Alfred are abroad, it is all the more imperative that we should begin our work with a critical survey of the materials at our disposal. We shall find them in many respects disappointingly scanty and incomplete. But we must look that fact full in the face, and must not allow ourselves to supply the defects of the evidence by the luxuriance of a riotous imagination. The growth of legend is largely due to the unwillingness of men to acquiesce in inevitable ignorance, especially in the case of historical characters like Alfred, whom we rightly desire to honour and to love.

§ 9. The first place in our list of authorities for the life of Alfred must be given to his own literary works. It is true that the evidence which they furnish is mostly indirect, but it is, for that very reason, all the more secure. It might be thought that the fact that these works consist almost entirely of translations would prevent them from throwing much light on the life and character of their author. In reality the contrary is the truth.

It was very acutely remarked by JaffÉ[21] that if, as Ranke alleged, the fact that Einhard’s Life of Charles the Great is obviously modelled on Suetonius’ Life of Augustus detracts somewhat from its value as an original portrait, on the other hand the careful way in which Einhard alters those phrases of his model which were not strictly applicable to his own hero, brings out many a fine shade in Charles’ character of which we should otherwise have been ignorant. In the same way, the manner in which Alfred deals with the works which he translated reveals as much of his mind as an original work could do. And this is not merely the case with works like the Orosius, the Boethius, and the Soliloquies of St. Augustine, in which he allowed himself a large freedom in the way of adaptation and addition. Even in the Cura Pastoralis, in which he keeps extremely close to his original, there are little touches which seem to give us glimpses into the king’s inmost soul[22].

And sometimes the evidence is not indirect but direct. The well-known and oft-quoted Preface to the Cura Pastoralis is an historical document of the first importance; and, as a revelation of the author’s mind, it holds, as Professor Earle has said[23], the first place. Next to this would come the Preface to his Laws, which, for the purposes of this section, may be included among his literary works, and the mutilated preface to the translation of the Soliloquies of St. Augustine. On all these literary works I shall have much to say later on[24]; I only mention them here in their character of historical authorities.

§ 10. The next place in our list of authorities belongs on every ground to the Saxon Chronicle. Of the relation of Alfred to the Chronicle I may also have something to say subsequently[25]. But I have elsewhere[26] given my reasons for believing that the idea of a national chronicle, as opposed to local annals, was due to the inspiration of Alfred, and was carried out under his supervision; and I have said that ‘I can well fancy that he may have dictated some of the later annals which describe his own wars.’ For the former view the high authority of the late bishop of Oxford[27] may be quoted, while as to the second point Professor Earle writes[28]: ‘I never can read the annals of 893-897 without seeming to hear the voice of King Alfred.’ My friend Sir Henry Howorth indeed has a very low opinion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; and as regards the early part of the Chronicle I am entirely at one with Sir Henry Howorth. I have more than once[29] recorded my conviction of the futility of the attempts of Dr. Guest, Mr. Freeman, and Mr. Green, to base an historical account of the Saxon Conquest of Britain on the unsubstantial dreamwork of traditions embodied in the earlier entries of the Chronicle. But Sir Henry Howorth seems to me to carry his scepticism down to an unduly late period. Anyhow, for the period covered by the public activity of Alfred, 868-901, the Chronicle is as nearly contemporary with the events which it records as any written history is likely to be.

But granting that the Chronicle is, for this period, trustworthy as far as it goes; it must be confessed that it is often disappointingly meagre. Of the thirty-four years 868-901, three are entirely vacant[30]. Eight have merely brief entries of a line or two recording the movements of the Danish army or here; and of these eight entries the last three have nothing to do with England, being concerned with the doings of the here on the Continent[31]. Two other very brief entries deal with the sending of couriers to Rome, and with certain obits[32]. The date of Alfred’s death is barely (and probably wrongly) recorded[33]; not a word as to its place or circumstances. And there is a singular dearth of any note of panegyric like that which meets us in the records, meagre as they are, of the reigns of Athelstan, Edmund, and Edgar[34]. In regard to the doings of Alfred this may be due to the influence of Alfred himself; but on the occasion of his death one might have expected, if not the worthy tributes which Ethelwerd and Florence insert at that point[35], at least some recognition of the work which he did. But there is nothing beyond the rather cold statement that ‘he was king over the whole Anglekin, except that part which was under the power of the Danes.’ One would fain hope that this reticence was due to the feeling so finely expressed by Hallam where he speaks of Sir Thomas More as one ‘whose name can ask no epithet[36].’ But I do not think it was; and I rather doubt whether Alfred’s greatness was fully appreciated in his own day, except by one or two of those in his immediate neighbourhood.

§ 11. In charters, which often supplement so usefully the deficiencies of formal histories, the reign of Alfred is far from rich. The time, indeed, was not favourable to the preservation of documents. Of the destruction of title deeds owing to the troubles of the time we have a striking and pathetic instance[37]:—Burgred, king of Mercia, had, for a consideration, granted land to a man named Cered, with remainder to his wife after his death. In course of time Cered died, and his widow Werthryth desired to go to Rome, and to dispose of the land to her husband’s kinsman, Cuthwulf. The charter of the original grant to Cered had however been carried off by the Danes; and Werthryth consequently could not prove her title. She accordingly appeared before a Mercian WitenagemÓt held under Æthelred, Alfred’s son-in-law, as ealdorman of Mercia, and made oath to this effect. Whereupon Æthelred and the Witan allowed a new charter to be made out securing the land to Cuthwulf.

And the strong-handed took advantage of this confusion to annex the property of their neighbours. Thus in 896 Æthelred of Mercia, with Alfred’s permission, held a WitenagemÓt at Gloucester, in order ‘to right many men both clerical and lay in respect of lands and other things [wrongfully] withheld from them’; a measure no doubt necessitated by the great campaign of 892-895. Here Werferth, bishop of Worcester, complained that he had been robbed of woods at Woodchester, which had belonged to his see ever since the days of Æthelbald of Mercia[38]. If this was the experience of a powerful bishop, a special friend of the king himself, we may imagine the dangers to which lesser men were exposed. Fortunately among the documents which have been preserved is Alfred’s own will, a most interesting relic, on which something will be said later[39].

§ 12. We come now to what is the greatest crux in our whole subject, viz. the so-called life of Alfred which bears the name of Asser. It is obvious that if this work is genuine, it is an historical authority of the highest interest and importance. On the other hand, it must be confessed that there are features in it which do excite suspicion. Apart from difficulties of detail, some of which will come up for subsequent consideration, the general form of the work is most extraordinary, and high authorities have pronounced that, in its present shape, it cannot possibly be original[40]. The work is made up, as most students know, of at least two distinct elements. There is a series of annals extending from 851 to 887 inclusive, which are for the most part parallel to the corresponding annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I deliberately choose a neutral phrase ‘parallel to,’ as I do not wish, at this stage, to prejudge the question whether the Latin or the Saxon annals are the more original. Into this series of annals are inserted, at various points, sections of biographical matter, of which the earliest refer to Æthelwulf and Æthelbald, one refers to Æthelred, and the remainder to Alfred. In some cases these biographical sections are introduced by editorial head-links (if I may borrow a word from the Chaucerian specialists), consisting as a rule of very florid and elaborate metaphors[41]. But the way in which these biographical sections are inserted is so inconsequent and inartistic, that one is sometimes almost inclined to think that the compiler, while keeping his annals (as he could hardly help doing) in chronological order, cut up his biographical matter into strips, put the strips into a hat, and then took them out in any order which chance might dictate; much as a famous Oxford parody supposed the names of successful candidates in certain pass examinations to be determined[42]. It is true that in Florence of Worcester the biographical matter identical with that in Asser is woven much more skilfully into the chronological framework of the story; but, after careful consideration, I do not think that this implies that Florence’s Asser was any better arranged than our own. I attribute the changes to Florence’s own skill and judgement; and Florence had more of both than some of his modern critics are willing to allow.

§ 13. Another general ground of suspicion is, if I may so say, psychological; and I may illustrate what I mean by a little personal reminiscence. Some few years ago I was dining in a college not my own, where one of the junior fellows told us a somewhat startling tale, prefacing it with the remark that the incident was unquestionably true, as it had happened to himself. ‘Ah,’ said the senior fellow, with the frankness which is one of the privileges of seniority, ‘whenever a man begins a story in that way, I always know that some bigger lie than usual is going to follow.’ Now it is at least curious that our author so constantly lays stress on the fact that he had himself witnessed some of the most striking of the things which he relates, or at least had heard them from those who had seen them. Thus he had frequently (‘saepissime’) witnessed Alfred’s skill in hunting[43]; he had himself seen the little book containing the daily offices and Psalms and prayers which Alfred always carried about with him[44]; he had with ‘his very own eyes’ often seen Alfred’s maternal grandmother, Eadburh[45]; ‘with his very own eyes’ again he had seen the solitary thorn which marked the site of the battle of Ashdown[46]; he had himself surveyed the site of the fort of Cynwit, and verified its capacities for defence[47]. He gives us to understand that he, with others, had witnessed Alfred’s mysterious attacks of illness[48]; that he had not only seen, but read the letters which Alfred received from the patriarch of Jerusalem[49]; that he had seen in Athelney Monastery the young Dane whom Alfred was educating there in the monastic life[50]. So he had heard from various persons different opinions as to the relative guilt of the parties in the alleged rebellion of Æthelbald[51]; he had conversed with many who had seen Offa’s daughter Eadburh, the Jezebel of Wessex history, in her dishonoured and mendicant old age at Pavia[52]; while the story of her crimes in Wessex, which deprived all her successors of the title of queen, he had heard from Alfred himself[53]. He had heard from eye-witnesses how Æthelred at Ashdown refused to engage till mass was finished[54], and of the military skill of Abbot John the Old Saxon from those who knew him[55]. Now in all these things there is nothing impossible, or even improbable. It is only the constant asseveration which excites suspicion.

§ 14. One general objection which has sometimes been brought against our author is, I am convinced, without foundation:—I mean the presence in him of a certain Frankish element. He uses certain Frankish words, vassallus, indiculus (a letter; both these words puzzled the scribes a good deal), comes (in the sense of ealdorman), senior (a lord, seigneur), and possibly others[56]. So too the story how Eadburh ‘put her foot in it,’ if I may use the phrase, with Charles the Great[57], and of her subsequent fate, evidently reflects the gossip of the Carolingian Courts. It is possible that the story of Æthelbald’s incestuous marriage[58] comes from the same source; as, with the exception of Asser, the only contemporary authorities in which it is found are Frankish[59]; so too, perhaps, the judgement on Arnulf’s conduct in deposing Charles the Fat[60], and the more correct form Carloman, as against the Carl of the Chronicle[61]. But when we consider that two at least of Alfred’s principal literary and educational coadjutors, Grimbald and John the Old Saxon, came from different parts of the Carolingian empire, that Æthelwulf married a Frankish wife, stayed some time at the Frankish Court[62], and had, as the epistles of Lupus of FerriÈres show, a Frankish secretary[63], that some of these words occur in English charters[64], where likewise they probably bear witness to the influence of Frankish scribes, we shall see that there were plenty of channels through which these Frankish elements might find their way into the biography of an English king. Moreover, if we should come to the conclusion that the book is mediately or immediately the work of Asser, we may be inclined to connect this element in it with a statement quoted by Leland from a lost life of Grimbald[65], that Asser was one of the ambassadors deputed to bring Grimbald to England[66]. The description of Paris also looks as if it might rest on personal knowledge[67].

§ 15. Of the objections in detail which have been brought against our author, the most important perhaps relates to his statement that Alfred gave him ‘Exeter with the diocese belonging to it both in Cornwall and Saxony,’ i.e. Wessex[68]. Mr. Wright[69] thought that this was conclusive evidence that the work was later than the transference of the united see of Cornwall and Devonshire to Exeter, under Edward the Confessor. I shall show presently that there is evidence, both external and internal, for the existence of our Asser about 975. Meanwhile, I would point out that under the year 875 the Welsh Annals record the drowning of Dumgarth, king of Cornwall[70], though it gives one a little start to realise that there were kings in Cornwall as late as the last quarter of the ninth century[71]; and we know from the Chronicle that in 877 Alfred recovered Exeter from the Danes. Now the state of affairs in South Wales which Asser represents[72] as determining him, at any rate in part, to accept Alfred’s invitation, in the hope of securing his protection for St. David’s, clearly refers to a period 877 × 885. Rotri Mawr is obviously dead, as his sons only are spoken of, and Rotri Mawr was slain in 877; while Howel, son of Rhys, king of Glewissig, is spoken of as alive; and he is probably the Howel who died at Rome in 885[73], having gone there, it is likely, in expiation of a crime, of which the record is preserved in the Book of Llandaff[74]. It seems to me not unlikely that in view of the events of 875 and 877, Alfred may have wished to place the districts round Exeter under episcopal supervision, without necessarily intending to create a definite diocese, and may have thought a Celtic-speaking prelate likely to be more effective than an Englishman[75]; for at this time the Bristol Channel was not either physically or linguistically a serious barrier between the Celts on either side of it.

Whether Asser was already a bishop when he first came to Alfred is difficult to determine. He is often spoken of as bishop of St. David’s. Novis, or Nobis, bishop, or, as Asser in the passage referred to above patriotically calls him, archbishop of St. David’s, died, according to the Welsh Annals, in 873, after a rule of thirty-three years[76]. His immediate successor was Llunwerth or Llwmbert[77]; but when the latter died I have not succeeded in satisfying myself[78].

Confirmation of the grant of Exeter to Asser is sometimes sought in the fact that Alfred, in the Preface to the Cura Pastoralis, speaks of Asser as ‘my bishop,’ at a time when Asser cannot have held his later diocese of Sherborne, as one of the copies of Alfred’s Cura Pastoralis was actually addressed to Wulfsige, Asser’s predecessor in that see. But if Asser was bishop of St. David’s when he came to Alfred, I should feel myself precluded from using this argument, for I could not regard it as impossible that Alfred should speak of Asser as ‘my bishop’ in respect of his Welsh bishopric, seeing that Asser expressly says that Hemeid, king of Dyfed, had commended himself to Alfred; or he might be called ‘my bishop’ in regard to the position which he held in Alfred’s service[79].

§ 16. Another objection has been based on the passage in which Asser relates how, at the close of his first visit to Alfred, he promised to return in six months’ time, and give a definite answer to the king’s proposals; but on his way home, he says, ‘I was seized in the city of Winchester by a troublesome fever, in which I lay for a year and a week’; until Alfred sent letters to inquire why he had not kept his promise[80]. Now it has been argued that it is quite impossible that Asser should have been for over a year at Winchester without Alfred knowing about it. On the other hand, my late friend, Mr. Park Harrison, who, in spite of his advanced age, kept up his interest in these matters to the very end, called on me only a few weeks before his death, and argued that this same passage showed that Alfred could have had but little to do with Winchester, and therefore it was an impertinence of Winchester to attempt to monopolise the millenary celebration. As a matter of fact both arguments are baseless, and rest on a mistranslation. For in the passage cited, the words ‘in which’ (in qua), refer not to the city of Winchester, but to the fever. It is quite evident, I think, from the context that though it may have been at Winchester that Asser was attacked by the fever, yet he managed somehow to reach St. David’s, and that it was there that Alfred’s letters reached him.

§ 17. But before we can judge fairly of the work before us, we must try to do something to rescue the text from the very parlous condition in which it has come down to us. Indeed, with the exception of Ethelwerd’s Chronicle, hardly any work connected with Early English history has been textually so unfortunate as Asser. The only known manuscript of any antiquity perished almost entirely in the great Cottonian fire of 1731; the two existing manuscripts are paper copies of the sixteenth century. For our knowledge of the ancient Cottonian MS. we are dependent mainly on Wise’s edition of 1722; an excellent work for the time at which it was produced, but that it is not scrupulously accurate, according to modern notions, is proved by the fact that, whereas the facsimile given by Wise himself of the beginning of the MS. writes the name of Alfred’s birthplace, Uuanating, the text prints it Wanading. Moreover, the work has been shamefully tampered with by editors. Apart from longer interpolations, of which I shall speak presently, numberless smaller additions have been introduced into the text from the so-called Annals of Asser or of St. Neot[81], a compilation of the eleventh or twelfth century[82], largely based it is true on Asser for the period 851-887, and therefore available, within proper limits, like the works of other authors who have made use of Asser, for purposes of textual criticism; but not to be used, as has been done, for the wholesale depravation of the text. Even the editors of the Monumenta Historica Britannica were content to place these additions in brackets, instead of removing them altogether. Consequently they are often quoted by modern writers as if they were part of the original Asser.

Of writers who have made use of Asser the most valuable, for our purposes, is Florence of Worcester. Very often he furnishes us with what is evidently the true reading[83], in one case at least a passage of some length can be recovered from his pages, which has been dropped out of our present text of Asser merely owing to homoioteleuton[84]. But even Florence must be used with caution for textual purposes. For just as his greater skill in composition led him (as we have seen[85]) to rearrange the materials with which Asser furnished him, so his better taste and greater command of Latin led him to revise and prune the language of his author. Moreover, in certain cases, Florence has corrected and supplemented Asser by the direct use of the Saxon Chronicle[86]. It must not therefore always be assumed that because Florence’s reading is better than Asser’s, it is therefore more original. Conversely, though rarely, Asser enables us to correct the text of Florence[87].

It is very curious that though Florence shows, by substituting the name Asser for the pronoun of the first person wherever it occurs, that he accepted Asser’s authorship of the work, he should place Asser’s death in 883, while continuing to use his narrative for four years longer.

Of the use of Asser by Simeon of Durham I shall have something to say presently[88].

§ 18. Of the longer interpolations alluded to above, the first that must go is, of course, the famous passage about the University of Oxford[89]. This passage is a fine illustration of the remark, made in this place by my brilliant predecessor, Professor Maitland, that the earliest form of inter-university sports seems to have been a competition in lying. The different phases of that competition have been traced by Mr. James Parker in the first two chapters of his Early History of Oxford[90], and need not detain us here. This passage made its first appearance in the text of Asser under Camden’s auspices in 1603. It is much to be regretted that so worthy a name should be connected with so questionable a transaction[91]. I will only add that the use of the one word ‘Diuus’ instead of ‘Sanctus’ stamps the passage as a post-renaissance forgery.

§ 19. The next passage which must go is what I must be pardoned for once more[92] calling the silly story about the cakes, and the yet more silly story of the tyranny and callousness of Alfred in the early days of his reign[93]. I hope to show later[94] how utterly inconsistent both these stories are with the genuine history of the reign. Here I need only say that the passage was introduced into our text by Archbishop Parker from the so-called Annals of Asser. It comes ultimately, as stated in the passage itself, from some life of St. Neot which I have not yet succeeded in identifying.

§ 20. I have pointed out in another place[95] that the printed text of Asser contains two accounts of the events of the year 877[96]. With the exception of a few words relating to the division of Mercia by the Danes, neither of these versions, according to Wise, existed in the oldest MS. That they were not in Florence’s MS. of Asser seems indicated by the fact, that this is one of the annals in which he resorts directly to the Saxon Chronicle. They therefore must also be expunged. I still, however, retain the conviction that the former of the two versions, though not traceable higher than Roger of Wendover in the thirteenth century, is yet perfectly genuine as history, and furnishes a valuable supplement to the account of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

§ 21. So far our task has been comparatively simple. We have only had to remove what are obviously later accretions. But the question must now be faced whether the text, as we can prove it to have existed about the year 974, had not already suffered from the hand of the interpolator. From this point of view the most suspicious passage is that which describes the mysterious illness with which Alfred is said to have been attacked at his wedding-feast[97]. This passage has already been severely criticised by Pauli[98], though he has not exhausted all the arguments which can be brought against it.

In the first place it is entirely out of position. Though it refers to Alfred’s wedding, which has already been given, probably correctly, under 868, when Alfred was about twenty years old, it is inserted between the events of the year 884[99] and those of 886. The substance of the story is as follows:—During the marriage festivities Alfred was suddenly attacked by an intolerable pain, from which he has suffered, as those who daily see it know, without intermission, from his twentieth to his fortieth year, or longer. No one could trace its origin. Some thought it was ‘fascination,’ that is, the evil eye, due to the applause of the multitude; others, that it was the envy of the devil; others, some strange kind of fever; others, the disease called ‘ficus,’ from which he had suffered from his infancy. Once, when he was hunting in Cornwall, he turned aside to pray in a church, where St. Guerier reposes, and now also St. Neot rests, and entreated that some lighter affliction might be substituted for that from which he was suffering; such, however, as would not be externally apparent, like blindness or leprosy, so as to make him contemptible and incapable of discharging his functions. Shortly afterwards he was divinely healed of the ‘ficus.’ Though, indeed, this very ‘ficus’ had been given him in answer to prayer; for, in the first flower of his youth, before his marriage, feeling the assaults of carnal desire, he would often rise secretly and visit churches and relics of the saints, praying that God would strengthen him by sending him some infirmity, such, however, as would not make him unworthy or incapable in worldly matters. In answer to this prayer he shortly after received the ‘ficus,’ from which he suffered for many years, until it was removed by prayer. But alas, on its removal a worse affliction came upon him at his marriage which lasted from his twentieth to his forty-fifth year without intermission; and even if it leaves him for a single hour, the fear and horror of it never quit him, but render him, as he deems, almost useless in things divine and human.

§ 22. It would be difficult to cram more inconsistencies into so short a space. First of all, though the whole point of the story is to show that the wedding-feast disease was different from, and in substitution for, the ‘ficus,’ the writer ineptly says, that some people thought it was the ‘ficus.’ This is inserted in order to introduce the statement that Alfred had suffered from the latter disease ‘from infancy.’ Then, after telling how it was removed by prayer at the Cornish shrine, he adds that this same disease was sent in answer to prayer, when Alfred was ‘in the flower of his youth.’ We can hardly place this period earlier than (say) the seventeenth year (a very different thing from infancy); yet he suffered from it ‘for many years,’ though it had certainly ceased before his marriage in his twentieth year. Again, the condition that the visitation sent should not be disfiguring or incapacitating, is in one place attached to the substituted disease, lower down it is attached to the original trouble. It may be noted that the original disease does fulfil this condition, the substituted one certainly did not, seeing that it rendered Alfred ‘almost useless in things divine and human.’ And yet a main point of the passage is to illustrate the efficacy of Alfred’s prayers. Once more, at the beginning of the passage the substituted disease lasts from Alfred’s twentieth year to rather over his fortieth; towards the close it extends from the same date to his forty-fifth year—a very rapid growth. After all this it seems somewhat tame to remark that leprosy and blindness hardly come under one’s idea of ‘lighter infirmities.’

§ 23. In this triumph of ineptitude we may, I think, detect a conflation of two separate traditions; one of which represented Alfred as suffering from infancy from a disease for which in answer to prayer another was substituted; while, according to the other version, the original disease was granted in answer to prayer, and though removed by the same means, only departed to make way for a heavier visitation. But the whole passage is a concoction in the worst hagiological manner, to the source of which we are guided by the mention of St. Neot; for if the legendary Alfred was reformed by the legendary St. Neot, there is no doubt that the historical Alfred has been deformed in an extraordinary degree by the same agency. And in the present instance we may be glad, I think, to free the historical Alfred from the atmosphere of morbid religiosity which taints this whole passage. It may be noted that Florence, with his usual good sense, has entirely recast the incident, so as to remove most of the absurdities above enumerated. Whether the other two passages, which refer to Alfred’s illness[100], are also to be rejected is less easy to say. In one of them the language is very nearly akin to that of the present passage; but that might be due to the compiler having made use of it for his own bad purposes. Personally, I should not be sorry to let all these passages go; for it seems to me quite inconceivable that Alfred could have accomplished what he did under the hourly pressure of incapacitating disease[101]. Still we must distinguish between what is historically doubtful and what is textually suspicious. There are several things in Asser which, as we shall see, come under the former category, though I could not bring them under the latter.

§ 24. One source of the corruption of the text of Asser is, I think, to be found in the fact that words and phrases, which were originally interlinear glosses, have become, as often happens, incorporated with the text[102]. In one case the text of Florence seems to show that the gloss has entirely expelled the original reading, at least in the printed copies[103].

In another instance a marginal note by a later scribe has got into the text. As this case is of some importance as bearing on the date of the composition, I must ask your particular attention to it. In the description of Alfred’s visit to the Cornish shrine, already alluded to, the following sentence occurs:—‘Cum … ad quandam ecclesiam … diuertisset, in qua S. Gueryr requiescit, et nunc etiam S. Neotus ibidem pausat, subleuatus est (erat enim sedulus sanctorum locorum uisitator, …) diu in oratione prostratus … Domini misericordiam deprecabatur[104],’ &c. Here the words ‘subleuatus est’ can by no possibility be construed, either with what goes before, or with what follows. Some time before I saw the meaning of them, I had underlined these words in my copy of the Monumenta, and noted on the margin ‘this seems to make nonsense.’ The explanation, I believe, is this:—The original scribe had stated the repose of St. Neot’s remains in his Cornish home as a present fact, ‘ibidem pausat.’ A later scribe notes on the margin ‘subleuatus est,’ ‘he has been taken up’; a word very fitly used of the taking up a saint’s body from the grave in order to place it in some elevated shrine, or translate it to some other abode. A subsequent copyist incorporated the note with the text, which is again a frequent phenomenon[105]. Now the translation of St. Neot to the site which bears his name in Huntingdonshire took place about the year 974[106]. The original text of this passage must therefore be anterior to that date; the marginal note, and a fortiori the MS. on which our present text of Asser rests, must be subsequent to it. If, as I think, the passage in which these words occur is itself an interpolation, the evidence for the genuine text of Asser is thrown yet further back. However, the argument for a text of Asser earlier than 974, derived from the use of the present tense ‘pausat,’ is quite independent both of my explanation of the words ‘subleuatus est,’ and of my views as to the spurious character of the passage in which they occur.