King Alfred of England / Makers of History

of E

enable us to do so, we resume the general history of the national affairs by returning to the subject of the

it will be well to describe in detail some few of the incidents and scenes whi

shments possessed utensils of gold and silver for the service of the chapels, and a great variety of valuable gifts, such as pious saints or penitent sinners were continually bequeathing to them. The Danes were, consequently, never better pleased than when sacking an abbey or a monastery. In such exploits they gratified their terrible animal propensities, both of hatred and love, by the cruelties which they perpetrated personally upon the monks and the nuns, an

f England. There is a great [page 96] shallow bay, called The Wash, on this eastern shore, and it is surrounded by a broad tract of low and marshy land, which is drained by long canals, and traversed

es driven into the marshy ground, and they form at the present time a very interesting mass of ruins. The year before Alfred acceded to the throne, the abbey was in all its

ment and restraint, had separated a little, and began to feel somewhat more secure, their implacable foes returned again and attacked them in separate masses, and with more fury than before. The Saxons endeavored in vain either to defend themselves or escape. As fast as their comrades were killed, the survivors stood upon the heaps of the slain, to gain what little advantage they could from so slight an elevation.

ures suited to the emergency. He resolved to retain at the monastery only some aged monks and a few children, whose utter defenselessness, he thought, would disarm the ferocity and vengeance of the Danes. The rest, only about thirty, however, in number-nearly all the brethren having gone out under the Friar Joly into the great battle-were put on boa

d, and placed them in a boat-packing them as securely as their haste and trepidation allowed. The boats glided down the river till they came to a lonely spot, where an anchorite or sort of herm

their ceremonies, had been left behind, as they could not be easily removed. These the abbot and the monks concealed in the most secure places that they could find, and then, clothing themselves in their priestly robes, they assembled in the chapel, and resumed their exercises of devotion. To be found in so sacred a place and engaged in so holy an avocation would have been a great protection from any Christian soldiery; but the monks entirely misconceive

h garment, directing him, at the same time, to throw aside his own, and then to follow him wherever he went, and keep close to his side, as if he were a Dane. The boy, relieved from his terrors by this hope of protection, obeyed implicitly. He followed Sidroc every where, and his life was saved. The Danes, after killing all th

ge

which they had obtained from both abbeys in wagons, and moved toward the south. It happened that some of these wagons were under Count Sidroc's charge, and were in the rear of the line of march. In passing a ford, the wheels of one of these rear wagons sank in the muddy bottom, and the horses, in attempting to draw the wagon out, became

from the fire, and [page 102] gathering together the blackened remains of their brethren for interment. They chose one of the monks that had escaped to succ

re then handed down from generation to generation by oral tradition, till they found historians to record them. The story of the martyrdom of King Edmund is of this character. Edmund was a sort of king over one of the nat

falconry was, as might have been expected, a very picturesque and exciting species of hunting. The game which Lothbroc was going to seek consisted of the wild fowl which frequents sometimes, in vast numbers, the cliffs and shores of the islands in those seas. Before he reached his hunting ground, however, he was overtaken by a storm, and his boat was driven by it out to sea. Accustomed to

ge

and his

sought to conceal rather than to make known his arrival. He was, however, found, after a few days,

ge

fe; and soon discovering his great knowledge and skill as a huntsman, he received him into his own service, and treated him with great distinction and honor. In addition

for him. One day, when they two were hunting alone in the woods with their dogs, Beorn killed his rival, and hid his body in a thicket. Beorn went home, his own dogs following him, while the greyhound remain

post in search of food. He went home, and, as soon as his wants were supplied, he returned immediately to the wood again. This he did several days; an

shment for his cruelty to an unfortunate and homeless stranger, the king condemned him to be put on b

ce as had governed the king-drove the boat, with its terrified mariner, back again across to the mouth of the B

ears that their father's boat, in the hands of a Saxon stranger, had arrived on the coast. They immediately sought out the stranger, and demanded what had become of their father. Beorn, in order to hide his own guilt, fabricated a tale of Lothbroc's having been killed by Edmund, the king

e in a retired residence called Heglesdune. The Danes, having taken some Saxons captive in a city which they had sacked and destroyed, compelled them to make known the place of [page 109] the king's retreat. Hinquar, the captain of the Danes, sent him a summons to come a

rist, as if finding spiritual refuge and strength in the Redeemer in this his hour of extremity; and although these ejaculations afforded, doubtless, great support and comfort to him, they only served to irritate to a perfect phrensy of exasperation his implacable pagan foes. They continued to shoot arrows into him until he was dead, and then t

the cruel deed of his murder had been performed. They sought with mournful and anxious steps, here and there, all around, for the head, until at length, when they came into the wood where it was lying, they heard, as the historian who rec

ge

ity go together. We all believe whatever is in harmony with, or analogous to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation. Nobody could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, o

e papal authority, and looking to Rome as the great and central point of Christian influence and power, and the object of supreme [page 112] veneration. We have already seen that the Saxons had established a seminary at Rome, which King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt and re-endowed. One of the former Anglo-Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one penny from every house in

gious thoughts and affections of every pious heart throughout the realm centered in Rome. Rome, too, was the scene of many miracles, by which the imaginations of the superstitious and of the truly devout were excited, [page 113] which impressed them with an idea of power in which they felt a sort of confiding sense of prote

who was to act as regent until the boy became of age. The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother. She commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body

nd let fall upon the altar of St. Peter a paper,

me king bearne, lieth und

lated it into Latin, so that the pope and all others could understand it. The pope t

der some distinct conception of the ideas and habits of the times, and proceed, in the next

ge