set foot in that great country, which they were afterwards to win with so much bloodshed and so much wrong, an English king should have thought about India, and cared to do all the little that was in his power to further Christ's kingdom there. Alfred found money for these foreign gifts in the same way that he found time for all his various undertakings; he carefully divided both time and money, and spent them according to a fixed plan. And though he was the poor man's friend, and a most liberal giver, yet even in his charity he followed the maxim of St. Gregory, 'Do not give much to him who needs little, nor little to him who needs much.'

This was Alfred's work during the fifteen years of peaceto provide for the safety, the good government, and the enlightenment of his people. And all this was done by a man who, instead of being strong and robust, was in almost constant bodily pain. The disease-we do not know what it was, but some painful disease-which had afflicted him during his youth, never left him all his life, and he was always liable to severe attacks of it, which incapacitated him for the time for any business. Add to this that he had to struggle always against the slothfulness and incapacity of many of those who ought to have helped him. But through disease and pain and all other obstacles the light of his strong soul burnt only the clearer.

His ascen

And now the result of his labours began to be seen. Wessex, as the only state in England where there was order and enlightenment, began to earn the respect of her neighbours. The Welsh came of their own ac- dency in Britain. cord and chose Alfred for their over-lord; and they were afterwards his faithful allies. The Danes of Northumbria also entered into relations with him, and probably if his life had been prolonged he would in time have obtained supremacy over the whole of England. But this was reserved to his grandsons.

Renewed

In the meanwhile the marauding armies of the Danes had been harrying the coasts of France, Flanders, and Germany for several years. They plundered those countries until a general famine came on, so that there was Danish inreally nothing more to get; and then they turned their greedy eyes again towards England, which during the years of peace had had time to recover her former prosperity.

vasions, 893.

In the year 893, a large army of Danes came to the mouth of the river Lymne in Kent, in 250 ships. They towed their ships up the river into the heart of the dense forest with which half of Kent was then covered, till they came to an unfinished fort which was still in process of building, and was only defended by a few workmen. They easily stormed this fort, and then encamped at Appledore; and as they had brought horses with them, they went forth in bands and plundered the surrounding country. In the meanwhile another army of Danes, commanded by a famous and valiant leader named Hasting, had landed on the shores of the Thames, and made a stronghold at Milton in North Kent. Defended as both armies were by the almost impenetrable forest, Alfred did not feel strong enough to attack them; but gathering his forces, he encamped between them to prevent their joining, and to give them battle if they should venture into the open country. Their bands when they sallied forth to plunder were chased by the king's bands. At last the Danes at Appledore left their quarters, and attempted to cross the Thames. But the king's forces, under his son Edward, were down upon them directly, gave them a bloody defeat at Farnham in Surrey, and retook all the booty which they were trying to carry away. Edward pursued them across the Thames, but before Alfred was able to come up and utterly crush them news came that the English Danes, those who had settled in Northumbria and East Anglia, had broken faith, and had gathered a fleet and were besieging Exeter, at the very opposite end of the kingdom. Alfred had to turn about with all his force, except a strong body of troops which he left to carry on the struggle in the east. These were joined by the townsmen of London, and they advanced to Bamfleet in Essex, where Hasting and his army had now joined the remainder of the great army which came from Appledore, and had been defeated at Farnham. There they had built a fortress and had stored their plunder and their wives and children. The English stormed the fort while Hasting was out on a raid, and took everything that was in it; the wife and sons of Hasting they sent to King Alfred, the ships they destroyed or brought to London. Only a short time ago the faithless Hasting had sworn fidelity to Alfred, who had stood godfather to his son. But Alfred, with a chivalric spirit rare in those times, restored to the Dane his wife and children in all safety.

Alfred was now in Exeter, where as soon as he arrived the Danes raised the siege and took to their ships. When Hasting had drawn his men together after their defeat at Bamfleet, he went up the Thames; his troops were joined by a great number from East Anglia and Northumbria, and they went up the Thames to the Severn, and then up the Severn. Then Ethelred the ealdorman of Mercia, who had married King Alfred's daughter Ethelfled, and had already done good service against the Danes, gathered an army from every quarter whence he could summon one, even from parts of England which did not belong to Alfred, and from the Welsh. They overtook the Danes at Buttington on the Severn, and beset them on either side of the fort where they entrenched themselves. When they had besieged them many weeks, the enemy began to suffer from hunger, and after having eaten all their horses, they made a desperate sally. The English, however, were victorious, and made a great slaughter of them, and they fled away to Essex. But they soon gathered an army again, and marched at one stretch day and night across the country to Chester, following no doubt the Watling Street, the ancient Roman road which led from London to Chester. The English rode after them, but could not reach them before they got within the stronghold, for Chester had Roman walls; so they burnt the corn round about, and seized the cattle. Then when the Danes could stay no longer at Chester for want of food, they went into North Wales, and after plundering there, they went back again to Essex by a more roundabout way than they had come, still pursued by the English forces.

Meanwhile Alfred and his fleet had driven away the Danes from Exeter; but as they were going homewards they landed near Chichester, where the townsmen bravely fought them, slew many hundreds of them, and took their ships. The next year the army of Danes in Essex built a work on the river Lea, twenty miles above London. The Londoners attacked them, but were put to flight with slaughter. 'Then after this,' says the chronicler,' during harvest, the king encamped near to the town, while the folk reaped their corn, so that the Danish men might not take their crop from them. Then on a certain day the king rode up the river, and noted where the river might be dammed

up, so that they might be unable to bring out their ships. And they then did so; they wrought two works on two sides of the river.' But when the Danes saw the trap which was being laid for them, they left their ships and went across the country to Bridgenorth, on the Severn, where they wintered. The Londoners took their ships, destroyed those they could not bring away, and brought the rest to London.

The next summer (897), the Danish army broke up ; they scattered themselves in the Danish parts of England, where some got ships and went to France. 'Thanks be to God,' says the old chronicler, drawing his breath, the army had not utterly broked down the English nation.' It had been a hard time, not only on account of the Danes, but also because of much sickness and death amongst men and cattle. But Alfred's kingdom was now so organised and so firm that the invaders were met at every point, and Hasting was outwitted in all his manoeuvres. Instead of the Danes always seeking to give battle, as they had done in their first invasions, they skulked in forests or in fastnesses, only coming out to plunder, and they were chased by the English army from sea to sea.

Alfred's fleet.

Alfred's last triumphs were at sea. As for about a year the disbanded Danes who had got ships gave trouble by harrying the sea coasts, Alfred caused new ships to be made, which were both swifter and steadier and higher than the enemy's, after a model of his own, not copied from the Frisian or the Danish. Nine of these ships fought with six Danish ships off the Isle of Wight in 897, and though they did not succeed in taking them all, they were so damaged that the sea afterwards cast them ashore in Sussex. The crews being brought before the king at Winchester, he ordered them to be hung, a severe but needful justice. That same summer no less than twenty Danish ships with their crews perished wholly upon the south coast. After this come four years in which we read of no fighting at all, so we may hope that King Alfred had rest for a while before his death. He died in 901, when he was only fifty-three. His wife, Ealhswith, whom he seems to have much loved and valued, survived him only one year.

Alfred's name is such a great one in English history, that

many things have been put down to him which are not really his doing. He did not invent trial by jury, nor divide England into shires and hundreds; these things are older in their germ than Alfred's time, though later in their present form. Nor did he found the University of Oxford. But he saved England from the Danes; founded the English monarchy; organised an army and navy; and created an English literature. It was reserved to his children and grandchildren to conquer the rest of England from the Danes, and to turn the kingdom of the West Saxons into the kingdom of England. But Alfred made Wessex the cradle of the English Empire, because he secured in Wessex a firm seat for the English laws, polity, and language; and he made Wessex so much better organised and more enlightened than its neighbours in the island, that its future supremacy was inevitable. Through all the conquests and changes which England has since undergone, the laws, the institutions, and the language of this country have remained English; English influence has eventually conquered the conquerors and the foreigners, and turned them into Englishmen. To this permanence and supremacy of the English element in our history Alfred contributed most powerfully, because he wrought for it a stable footing in England, and put it in a position to begin that work of conquest which was carried out by his successors.

DATES.

Alfred King of the West Saxons

Battle of Edington and Peace of Wedmore

A.D. 871-901

878

CHAPTER VI.

THE last chapter has given an outline of the settlements of the Northmen in England. All the country between Watling Street (the old Roman road from London across Danish the island to Wroxeter and Chester) and the settlements in England. Firth of Forth was under their hand. Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire were thickly colonised by