The Rest Is History - 251. Alfred the Great: Return of the King

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Battling with the expanding power of the Vikings, listen to Tom and Dominic discover how King Alfred the Great earned his name in the second instalment of our two part series on England's Founding Father. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Dominic's book, 'Adventures in Time: Fury of the Vikings', is available to buy now in all good bookshops. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. For Alfred, the next few days were like some terrible dream. He could barely remember how he and his bodyguards had got out of the hall,

staggering desperately into the snow, stumbling through the night, freezing and frightened, and yet somehow thank the Lord still alive. That first night they kept moving until sunrise before taking shelter in a farmer's shed. Alfred fell asleep instantly and by the time he woke, hungry and shivering, the light was fading. For the next few days they moved only after dark. They scavenged for food, found shelter at dawn and slept until twilight before shaking themselves awake to resume their journey. Eventually the landscape began began to change the hills flattened out the ground was becoming boggier marshier that dominic as you will well know because you wrote

that immortal prose um is from your new book fury of the vikings the latest in your splendid uh series adventures in time and it describes the escape of alfred in early january 878 from the treacherous viking ambush on chippenham he has no choice but to flee and he ends up in the what the anglicist action chronicle calls the fen fastnesses of athelny uh the prince's island in the somerset levels which now now, of course, is prime farmland because they've all been drained. But back then was very, very treacherous, boggy, watery, and therefore a perfect hiding place. And so that is where he takes shelter. So just for those people who have forgotten, as if you could, we're talking about the life of

Alfred the Great and his battles against the Vikings, his role in creating England and England's history. So Alfred was born in 849, wasn't he, Tom? He has been king since 871. It's now 878, as you say. And frankly, at this moment, you would think he's not going to be king much longer because he's had to flee into these sort of sodden marshes, as you say, the Somerset levels. He's been taken completely by surprise. It's clearly very hard for him to communicate with the rest of Wessex, with his kind of thanes and his eldermen. Because we're told that the Vikings spill out over Wessex. So they're seizing all this prime land.

And they think this is their moment. They haven't managed to kill him at Chippenham. He has escaped. But his defeat, as the Vikings would see it, is probably only a matter of time. You know, they'll catch up with him. Or he'll be betrayed. Or he'll flee. He'll flee. So that's what the King of Mercia has done.

Or he'll be captured. And that's what happened to the Northumbrian kings and Edmund, the King of East Anglia. And their fates were notoriously horrible. So it's he can defy the Danes, is, of course, the setting for one of the most famous stories in the whole of English history, Alfred and the Cakes. It is. So the story goes, isn't it, that after several days, he and what must presumably be a very small band of bodyguards, retainers, who knows, that they pitch up at the hut of a swineherd and his wife who don't recognize him. I mean, why would they recognize him? They can probably tell that he's somebody, perhaps from his clothes, but he's presumably covered in mud, shivering, miserable, not in

the mood for great banter. And so the story goes, I mean, the story that you'll see in every in almost every book of english history is that the swineherd goes out to mind his pigs or whatever he's doing his wife is needing little cakes of bread so they're not kind of you know fruit cakes or something not mr kipling exactly and she puts them by the hearth to to. She lays them out and she says to Alfred, who's just sitting there staring into space, very miserable, you know, feeling sorry for himself. Well, surely feeling sorry for his people. Of course, Tom, sorry.

I know I'm not, I should have known better than to be disrespectful about Alfred the Great. She goes out and she says, mind the cakes. He is thinking only of his kingdom and of God, isn't he? That's the trouble. Thinking of his people. Yes, thinking of his people. As you said in the last episode, he would make a very, very poor contender in the Great

British Bake Off, because when the swineherd's wife comes back in, the cakes are burning. They're blackened. And she beats him around the head with a broom, doesn't she? That's always the scene that you always get. She absolutely furious she has you know she doesn't care who he is she's just absolutely outraged that he has burned these cakes so do you think this is true definitely yeah definitely um well no i mean who who knows i want it to be true and if this is the you know this is my red line this is the hill on which i will die as a historian that that alfred definitely did burn the cakes what do you think tom i mean what's it but actually what's what's it a story about what's the meaning of the story do you think i

think it's possible um well it's so it's late 10th century um so it's the kind of anecdote that might be passed down but kings in disguise are very popular figures in medieval literature they are and so that's that's why people say this is just a kind of traditional tale yeah but those stories are popular because they're so dramatic and you could equally say well this story was remembered because it was a dramatic story so i wouldn't necessarily be poet i think well let's say we think it's true tom yeah let's say let's say we think it's true. Let's put Pinnaculus to the mast. But Dominic, there's another story, isn't there, about Alfred's time on Athelni that is actually much more stirring.

Well, you would find it more stirring, I think it's fair to say, wouldn't you? So we have already mentioned this story in our episode on St. Cuthbert. Yeah. That Alfred, again, he's not moping because Alfred doesn't mope, but he's pondering ways to redeem his people.

And meanwhile, all his thanes are off trying to fish, but he's pondering ways to redeem his people. And meanwhile, all his thanes are off trying to fish, but they can't get any fish because the rivers seem to be empty. They don't have much food left. An old man appears, his head covered with a cloak, and he asks Alfred for some food. And so Alfred, because he's so noble, gives him all the remaining food. The person eats it. And the man with the cow goes off. Alfred's men come back, absolutely freighted with fish. Suddenly they've started catching enormous amounts of fish. This is all great news.

And Alfred is very struck by this. And then that night he has a dream. And the cowed man reveals himself to be none other than top saint kuffbutt whose shrine at lindisfarne had been sat by the vikings always been an orthumbrian saint but he now reveals himself as a patron of of the saxons as well of the west saxons and he assures alfred that everything's going to be great he's going to get loads of fabulous fish so that's good he's um he's going to defeat the vikings and stay strong and courageous cuff but says and your descendants will be kings of england and rulers of all albion yes i mean

that's basically the interesting twist isn't it they won't just be kings of england but they'll be kings of all of great britain yeah the whole of britain and so this story this is almost definitely true isn't it tom that? Of course it's true. You wouldn't make up something like that. No, definitely not. And another story that's true also that is told of this period. Dominic, in part one, you described a Viking camp as being a kind of very, very frightening music festival. Yes. And Alfred actually dresses up, it is said, as a minstrel and goes off into the camp.

And infiltrates theiking camp and learns all their secrets he gigs and they love it and they all kind of gather around and listen to his latest hits and he picks up all the information that absolutely definitely happened tom in fact that story when i wrote my kids book i um i have to confess i left that story out oh why it just seemed so implausible i mean it seemed it's... It's so Walter Scott, isn't it? So would you believe, I put in the cakes, I even put in some Cuthbert, but I thought I'd draw a line at the infiltrating,

the Vikings dressed as a minstrel. I also just thought it set the wrong... Because I was going for a very Churchillian kind of tone. Dressing up as a minstrel is just too Faye, isn't it? It's too Errol Flynn. Yeah, the busking is much too errol flynn and because alfred is very serious isn't it there's not much humor with alfred i think it's fair to say what we just you said he's thinking he spends all this time thinking about god and his people

so this sort of i know what i'll do it's very errol flynn yes yeah and doubtless there's some saxon lady who exactly exactly it's actually to henry the eighth that's what it is yeah there is a bit of that uh but and also it's too i mean it's too kind of cod medieval isn't it it is but something that does happen and this i think is absolutely authentic it's it's described by contemporaries is that while alfred is on athelny plotting what to do there is a second viking army invades wessex and this crosses from wales um invades devon and it is led by our old friend hubba yeah uh who is the brother of iva the boneless one of the sons of ragnar lothbrok tom if you believe the legends yes and he's he's carrying a raven banner so the raven the emblem of odin and it's all terrifying you know you're kind of

hanging out on exmoor or something minehead or porlock or whatever and suddenly you see these guys approaching um but they are cornered by the uh the elder men of somerset um who has a name almost as good as hubba and his name is odder yeah it's hubba against odder and odder defeats hubba captures the raven banner And I mean, that's in Tolkien terms, that's kind of Helm's Deep, isn't it? Oh, this is a massively big deal, Tom. That's a... Because the Raven banner...

Get rid of Saruman. In the sort of legendary versions of this story, the Raven banner is the sort of badge of the Vikings' invincibility. And I think the claim is that it was woven by Ragnar Lothbrok's widow and given to her sons to carry to England when they sought revenge. And that, you know, as long as the Raven banner flew, they would never be defeated by the Anglo-Saxons. So when the Saxons... But now it's gone.

Exactly. Now, of course, more sceptical listeners at this point will be saying, they've been talking for 12 minutes, nothing they've said is true. Well, I think there is this victory, isn't there? Odder does get his victory. Yeah.

Think how seriously the Romans taught their standards. Yeah. Maybe they do capture some kind of banner, and this is a tremendous badge and a great fillip to them and a great boost. And it's at this point, isn't it, that Alfred sends messages out and says, tell everybody I'm still alive. Let's at this point, isn't it, that Alfred sends messages out and says, tell everybody I'm still alive. Let's do this.

You know, very sort of, you opened the first episode, didn't you, Tom? Yes, stirring passage. The meeting at Egbert's Stone. Egbert's Stone. I mean, it's very JRR Tolkien. And there's no reason to doubt that they did meet at Egbert's Stone. Well, this is absolutely standard practice. If you want to raise the army, raise the fyrd, raise your levies, there are certain places that you meet.

And the idea that you would meet at a stone set up by his grandfather, the great king who'd made Wessex, the power that it was, absolutely fitting. So, yes, I think all that is entirely credible. And he gives out the summonsons and the summons is answered yeah not george you know what a great writer says about this scene tom yeah tell us so alfred rides over the uh hill and below him spread across the meadows he could see people rising to their feet hundreds thousands of people not warriors not, but ordinary farmers and villagers gathered in answer to their captain's call.

I'm less convinced by that. Well, you haven't written the book, so it doesn't matter what you think. Well, you know, Alfred's army is full of very proficient fighters, and the measure of that is that they win. Yeah. Well, this is the thing. Two days after the meeting at Egbertstone, they catch up with the Danes outside the village of Eddington. Have you been to Eddington, Tom? It's not entirely clear where Eddington is, but I have been to all the various locations where it is traditionally thought it might have been fought. Yes. Oh, that's good. I would expect nothing less. You know what Bishop Asser says

about it? Alfred shouted like a boar and waved a bible and the danes melted away like snow in spring kind of alfred attacked the whole pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order which is why i think it's improbable that you know these are just humble farmhands i think this is absolutely shocking and persevered resolutely for a long time to let lengthen by god's will he won the victory he made great slaughter among them and pursued them to their fortress, hacking them down. And their fortress is Chippenham, where they sent Alfred running into the night. And they barricade themselves inside, don't they? For a fortnight, Alfred puts them under siege and they give in.

And they arrive at terms. And Guthrum agrees to not only go away, but to be baptized and to become Alfred's godson. And you know the name that he takes? I do. Of course you do. Athelstan. Athelstan. So let's talk about this, because this is a sort of, to some people, it might seem that

after these various sort of stirring legends, the Cakes, St. Cuthbert, impersonating a minstrel, meeting at the Stone, ordinary farmers and villagers, Tom. Yeah, the ordinary sons of Wessex. To answer their captain's call. After all this, he beats Guthrum. Hurrah, hurrah. Tremendous victory. What a great turning point. And then he does a deal with Guthrum, in which Guthrum is baptised and is actually sent off to become king of East Anglia as a Christian king. So this now returns us very much to the world of realistic history, doesn't it? Rather than legend. Of realpolitik. That Alfred knows the Vikings actually can't just be defeated and driven back into the sea. They're much too powerful for that.

He has to do a deal with Guthrum. And they both win from this deal, I would say. So Alfred has his victory, and he also now has a Christian neighbour. And Alfred is his godfather, that's right, isn't it? Alfred has sponsored the baptism. Yeah, so he gets baptised at a place called Allah, not as in the Muslim god, but A-double-L-E-R, which is the church that was closest to Athelni. And so it's very possible that that was where Alfred was going to pray

during his time on Athelni. So it has a great symbolic resonance. And some of Guthrum's warriors are baptized too, aren't they? His closest kind of companions. They wear these white robes as symbols of their purity. And they are basically acknowledging Alfred as their, as what? As their overlord? Not quite.

Well, they are acknowledging the model of kingship that Alfred represents as being something worth having. So they've moved from a purely predatory understanding of what the Anglo-Saxon kingships could offer them to a recognition that they could have a part of it. So I think it's an acknowledgement that Alfred has reserves of authority that are rooted in the dimension of the supernatural, as well as in his earthly status. And that this is something that the Vikings are willing to acknowledge. And it may be that the loss of have led Guthrum to accept that the Christian king is actually as powerful as the Anglo-Saxons have said, in which case he wants to be a part of it. And that is the likeliest explanation, I think, because from this point on, Guthrum basically behaves himself. He does, doesn't he?

And in some ways, this is actually a preview of what will happen to the Vikings more generally. That becoming Christian represents a step up in status doesn't it in prestige well i have this incredible coin minted um in east anglia a few a few decades later so it's it's stamped with the name of alfred's son edward but it's a fake uh and it's been taken by a viking pilgrim to rome and say what that is showing is firstly that, you know, Vikings are going to Rome, they're obviously Christian, but it's also the fact that they want the, you know, they've come to a sufficient understanding of the roots of Anglo-Saxon wealth that they want to have coinage to.

And they're buying into the kind of, you know, the whole system. So I think that that's what's going on. There is also one further possibility that some historians brood, which I obviously, and I'm sure you as well, don't even want to contemplate, but I should probably mention it, which is that our understanding of everything to do with this period is pretty much dependent on Alfred and his sponsorship. And it's possible that the narrative of his utter prostration, the utter oblivion that he faced, and then this spectacular comeback, that perhaps it's been

slightly shaped, and that perhaps things weren't quite as bad for Alfred as the sources make out. And that therefore, when Guthrum agrees to be baptized, it's not like it's just the sudden shock of an abrupt defeat, but a kind of recognition that actually Alfred and the Wessexian monarchy cannot be extirpated as easily as the other monarchies have been. I mean, that is a possibility. We obviously cannot. No, we can't because that would make a mockery of about the last 40 minutes of podcasting. No, I don't think so. I mean, you could a little bit of shade perhaps on that. Yeah.

A little bit, perhaps. But, you know, these sources are being written when people who've lived through these events were alive, so they couldn't just make it up from scratch. But perhaps there's been a little bit of spin. Yeah. Who knows? I like the deal with Guthrum

because I think it returns us to the realm of what feels concrete and what feels realistic. Alfred looks out, you know, as he looks out from Wessex, he sees that, you know, the Vikings are not just going to all these thousands of people are not just going to vanish. That he has to find a modus vivendi for the time being with them. And he can, you know, he can perhaps in the long run, push them back, erode their boundaries, retake land. But for the time being, if he has a compliant neighbour in Guthrum, so much the better for Wessex. Well, also, I mean, it takes time for the treaty to be signed. So it's not until 886 that the division of basically of Mercia, so a line running from London up to the Mersey becomes instituted by treaty.

And it sets up for kingdoms with English on one side ruled by English laws and Danes on the other governed by Danish laws. And so that in due course is where the phrase the Dane law. It's not contemporary with Alfred. And for people who are not familiar with this, so if you draw a diagonal line across England today in 2022, you will generally find that place names, or indeed surnames actually, with Danish Norse endings, so Thorpe, Thwaites, and so on, they're all on the far side, on the sort of the northeastern

side of that dividing line. And that deal was to prove massively important in the history of Englishness, English culture, you know, the English language, all these kinds of things. I mean, this goes back to what you were saying, Tom, about contingency. You know, the thing we talk about so often in this podcast the structural changes versus contingencies yes and this gives wessex a degree of stability that it has not had certainly under alfred certainly not under his brothers not for a very long time and the measure of this is that it's not just guthrum who withdraws, but in 879, this other kind of Viking force that had appeared in the Thames estuary in 878, so the same year that Alfred is winning his great victory,

they set sail. They think this isn't worth it. Let's go off to the continent and plunder the Franks. And they will be away for, I think it's 13 years, 13 years and basically those 12 and 13 years enable alfred to set to the great labor of restoring his kingdom and it's that labor i think that really justifies the sense of him as you know as as a great king a king who who deserves to be remembered for for the scale of his achievements perfect so let's take a, Tom, to go and drink some mead or whatever. And eat some fish. Yeah. And then we'll return after the break

and you can make your case for Alfred's lasting greatness. I think you're going to be talking, it grieves me to say this, I think you're going to be talking about town planning. But I think you're also going to be talking about more interesting things. So town planning is really, really interesting. If you love town love town planning you're in clover if you don't love

it don't worry there's loads of other fun stuff too so see you after the break all right i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom and i are talking about the life of alfred the great

and his great struggles against the vikings so tom in the first half alfred swore off guthrum but sent him packing to east anglia with a new name and you're about to make the case for alfred as the great town planner so crack on well i'm making the case for alfred as we talked about in the first episode that he is great as a a captain in war but there were many anglo-saxon kings who did that alfred is exceptional for the uses that he puts his victories in war too he seems to have an understanding of what it takes to repair and restore a badly maimed and bleeding kingdom and he he does this in a hard way he is a hard ruler like harold he's you know he's he's not quite as hard as harold i think it's fair to say

he's not he's not a soft touch and he pushes his subjects very very hard because he recognizes that there has been so much destruction so much ruin ruin visited on England and on Wessex in particular, that the labour of restoration demands huge, huge effort. And he's willing to put his shoulders to the wheel, but he demands that his subjects do as well. Right. Yeah. And you talked about town planning. Basically, he recognizes that he cannot stop the Vikings without strong fortified centers and without markets that are generating money. Because ultimately, money is the sinews of war. Gold is the sinew of war gold is the sinew of war so he consciously sets out either to restore or repair abandoned roman towns of which the most famous example is london so we we talked um about how he gets hold of london he takes possession of london in 886 either from the vikings or from

the mercians we're not entirely sure um and he fortifies it and he clears it of rubble and weeds and singing nettles and lays out street plans. And he does this elsewhere as well across southern England. But he also plants a lot of settlements from scratch and he builds huge fortifications. And the measure of that is, I don't know if you've been to Wareham in Dorset. I've never been to Wareham, Tom. It's fantastic. The fortifications are so high that they used them in 1940 as they were going to be used as part of the defences against the seaborne German landing. So you get a really, really impressive sense of the scale of Alfred's vision there. And it's been estimated that something like maybe 5 percent of the entire population

of wessex were involved in the construction of these crikey these enormous structures which are called burrs so that's where you get borough so we talked about berry st edmunds that's you know yeah wherever you have a burr that's basically the guiding hand of a west saxon town builder so these are i mean just looking at the list exeter shaftsbury bath wilton oxford wallingford buckingham warwick these are towns that are now very familiar across what would have then been um wessex and southern mercia it's this sort of network isn't it as you said of strongholds and the point is as you said you know this isn't an age when you can stop you where you can just stop a raiding party day with a kind of border wall they're gonna come but alfred's genius is he says well let well you know if they come they come if we've built these

fortified towns and everybody can just pile into the town take shelter and the vikings are terrible at they don't really do sieges because they don't have siege engines they don't have all the equipment they don't have patience for it They don't have all the equipment. They don't have the patience for it. Yeah. This is how we deal with the Viking threat. You know, and they can attack Chippenham where all the gold is or the monasteries because they're relatively undefended.

But if the money-making facilities, namely marketplaces, and then the gold that is raised from that and the monasteries are within fortifications, then it becomes much, much harder to get hold of it. I think I mentioned, I got this coin minted by Athelflad, Alfred's daughter in Chester, and it shows this tower and the tower is simultaneously an emblem of the church. So it's about the restoration of God's writ to land savaged by heathens. But it's also an emblem of military strength. It's a bulwark. And it's that kind of idea that essentially the generation of money, the repairing of monasteries, the construction of fortifications, these are all kind of interwoven projects.

And Alfred basically is the father of english urbanism and so michael wood you know who who writes so brilliantly on this period yeah he's he's hailed it as probably the most remarkable single achievement of the anglo-saxon state and there's an absolutely brilliant book that covers this it's wonderful by uh by john blair building anglo-saxonon England. And it's amazing to read about it. It's literally state building. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's almost, you know, kind of the kind of thing that you might more readily associate with pharaonic Egypt or something.

It's a vast national project of infrastructure building. Well, not just that, but I mean, in terms of, you need a bureaucracy to do it. So you need a degree of literacy because you need to arrange all this and he also part of the arrangement is every year i think just over 25 000 men are basically they're basically conscripted aren't they to take their turn on the walls of all these burrs guarding the walls and again that requires a level of administrative muscle that you don't get in most early medieval European states. It does.

And so this is where Alfred's other great obsession, which is with the restoration of learning, comes in. Because you cannot have that kind of level of bureaucratic control without scribes. You can't have scribes without learning. You can't have learning, as Alfred sees it, without monasteries and nunneries. And the measure of his commitment to this is that he himself devotes hours of his day to learning. And he describes this very movingly. He does a translation of a text written by Gregory the Great, the great pope who had

sent the missionaries to England and who therefore is always regarded with the utmost respect by the Angles and the Saxons. And Alfred writes in his introduction to his translation of this, he says, I recollected how before everything was ransacked and burned, the churches throughout England stood filled with treasures and books. And it's everything was ransacked and burned and that's what he's trying to bring back he's trying to restore treasure and he's trying to restore books and he makes his court a great center of learning for scholars from the continent from the frankish lands but also from mercia and mercia seems to have survived um the viking raids better perhaps because they arrived at accommodation earlier.

And it's really telling that Alfred is a great, great patron of Mercia learning. And the most distinguished figure is a guy called Plagamund who becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. Plagamund. Plagamund. I've got one of his coins as well. Have you?

He's got coins of them all. I've got them all in 890. And this sense that the learning of mercia is part of the common inheritance that the west saxons share with everybody in what will come to be called england is crucial not just for providing the kind of the bureaucracy that alfred needs but also much more kind of potently a sense of Anglo-Saxon identity. And what you're getting in the late 880s and 890s is Alfred is starting to issue charters in which he terms himself king of the Anglo-Saxons.

So this is not a phrase that is invented by racists. This is a phrase that Alfred is using in his charters to describe this emergent sense that the Saxons and the Angles are, in a way, a common people. And one of the great projects that Alfred sponsors is a translation into English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which we talked about. Bede, the great Northumbrian scholar who wrote this incredible account of how the Angles and Saxons are given England by God and how they then are brought to Christ and their role as a Christian people. Alfred translates this and he sponsors the use in the vernacular of this word Anglekin.

So this will become the English. When Aelswith, his Mercian wife, dies, she is described as the true and beloved lady of the English, Domina Anglorum. So that could be a reference to the Angles of Mercia, but it's not because she's also the Queen of the West Saxons. So there, Angli is being used to describe both Saxons and Mercians. And this is the great project of state building that Alfred sets in train that will be picked up by Edward, his son, who will conquer East Anglia and in due course take over Mercia. But not before Alfred's daughter, Athelflaed, who I mentioned, whose coin I bought. You may wonder what she's doing minting coins in Chester. She marries a

Mercian nobleman called Athelred, who has basically become Alfred's deputy in Mercia. He is Lord of the Mercians when he dies, Athelflad becomes Lady of the Mercians. And again, it's about this idea of the angles of Mercia, the Saxons of Wessex becoming a single people. And this is the great vision that is realized under athelstan who is alfred's grandson and none of this would have been possible without alfred's vision i think so he's building in england a new a new identity a new a more capacious identity that would include wessex mercia other english-speaking kingdoms christian kingdoms and it's based on administration based on the physical concrete stuff of the birds,

but it's also based on all these translated books, isn't it? Alfred, I mean, that's a wonderful line. He says at one point, very few people can understand Latin anymore because it's fallen into sort of disrepair. And he says, our forefathers loved wisdom and left it to us. Here we can still see their footprints, but we cannot follow them.

And therefore, we have lost both wealth and wisdom. And this idea that you translate all these great works into English, or as he puts it, what does he say? The language we can all understand. Yeah, so I think there are two sides to it. I think one is absolutely hard-nosed, very, very hard-nosed understanding of the reality of power yeah that money is incredibly important to alfred so an admirer of alfred commemorates him as the greatest treasure giver of all the kings i have ever heard of tell in recent times or any earthly king that

i previously learned of um so alfred's renown as a kind of giver, a treasure giver, is fundamental to his prowess. The building of the Burrs are designed to provide a bulwark against Viking incursions, which do happen in the 890s. So that force that had come to the Thames estuary and gone off to the continent, they come back and they just batter themselves against the defenses of Wessex. There's a great battle where they're defeated by Æthelred, the Lord of the Mercians, in alliance with Alfred's son, Edward. Great victory. Alfred himself sees off a Viking siege at Exeter. And basically the Vikings give up. They recognize that there's no point and they withdraw and Wessex is fine. So the fact that Wessex has become

militarily strong and has become wealthy, it's not an accident. It's absolutely conscious, deliberate policy on Alfred's part. And that is what makes him so remarkable a political figure. But I think he does also very, very devoutly believe that he is doing God's will because he is, you know, he describes kingship as a mighty burden. He has this responsibility before God. And I'm sure that that is what drives him to these incredible kind of extremes of effort and achievement. Well, in the first podcast, Tom, so on Monday, you talked about Alfred as a man who had this kind of inattention, didn't you? You said between being a sort of kindly Christian and also being a warlord. And what we do know about Alfred is that he's plagued by these mysterious internal, what appear to be kind of bowel complaints.

Some people say they might be piles. Well, so Asser, the Welsh bishop who writes his biography, he does say they're piles. And he has this, I think, possibly my favourite sentence in any biography I've ever written, where he says that the Lord God blessed Alfred with piles, with the gift of piles, because it's a cause of suffering. There's a claim that Alfred prayed for all this, because it would be good for him, rather like Thomas More with his hair shirt. This was Alfred's.

Alfred said, please torment me. And there's one biography of Alfred I read that suggested that this came on around the time of his wedding or something, that there was some sort of sexual explanation for all this. Have you seen this claim? Yeah. Do you believe it? I don't know. I mean, we you know oh you don't i don't know the details i don't think that we can get into the you know psychoanalysis of alfred and his wedding night or anything like that

but i think what you can say is that alfred's sense of christian kingship you know he says it himself it's a burden it weighs very very heavily on his shoulders and why i find him a moving an admirable figure is that he shoulders this weight to heroic effect yeah and i think that you know when if he does stand before his savior he could quite legitimately say i have i've did best I could. Because Wessex becomes a great and powerful and wealthy kingdom. And the people of Wessex live at peace in a way that they had not done for decades. And in due course, this kingdom will become the basis for what will become the unitary state of England. Let's talk about that in just a sec. One more thing from Alfred's reign.

The Alfred jewel, Tom. So that's something a lot of people will be familiar with. In the Ashmolean, isn't it? This magnificent relic of what appears to be of Alfred's reign. It's in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Scholars have hypothesized that the jewel comes from these special sort of reading sticks, these pointers that Alfred had sent out across the land with copies of a book by Pope Gregory the Great. And because on what might be the pointer in the Ashmolean Museum,

there's the old English inscription, Alfred McHit Gwirkan. Is it something like that? Is that my old English? Not very good. It's sounding good. Better than my as good as my portuguese probably not alfred ordered me to be made and and this is we think this is definitely

alfred as in king alfred tom i think that's the consensus yeah yeah so that's probably the best single apart from the existence of all these towns is that probably the most spectacular relic of alfred's reign do you think the alfred jewel i think it's the most spectacular relic of Alfred's reign, do you think? The Alfred Jewel? I think it's the most moving and beautiful. I mean, I think the fortifications of Wareham are actually probably the most impressive. And also there's one in London, Queen's Hive, which is basically, if you think of the embankment in the city of London, it's very kind of linear. But there is a kind of indentation, which is the marker of the docks that were repaired by Alfred. So it's called Queen's Hive after Matilda, as in Stephen and Matilda who arrived there.

But it was originally called Athelred's Hive. And I'd have to check, but I assume that that's, you know, Athelred, who's the husband of Athelflad. So, you know, there are the trace elements of Alfred across southern England. But of course, his greatest achievement is the existence of England, I think. I think he is the founding father of England. Let's talk about that a little bit. So he dies in 899, and there's no England. There's still just Wessex, right?

So to what extent? We know very little about, really, compared with we have that amazing ass's life of alfred um and we have very and we have reasonably detailed accounts in the anglo-saxon chronicle but we know comparatively little about edward his son or athelstan his grandson the rest is history world cup champion in the rest of history's world cup of kings to what extent do you think alfred's reputation is actually resting on the shoulders of those two and and i guess um what's her name uh at the flat yeah because if they hadn't pushed the vikings back further if they hadn't built on all this then we wouldn't even be talking about alfred the great would we of course um he is the founding father

but they also are founding fathers and athelflaed is a founding mother and i think that you know if you're english and you're happy that england exists you can be grateful that three generations of rulers were probably the most able kings most able rulers that england has had i mean they were astonishingly able, astonishingly tough. Boris and Liz Truss. I mean, just, you know, look at Athelstan and Athelflad and weep with the comparison. You know, but these are, that's not to sugarcoat them. These were very tough, brutal figures, but they were figures who felt themselves to be laboring in a great cause. As much as Alfred was, these were very devoutly

christian who felt called upon by you know given the responsibility by god to create and to defend and to preserve their kingdom from heathen men yeah and they do that to spectacular effect and to enduring effect and so you don't think at all that this is all Victorian propaganda? No, I don't. Because that's definitely, so you mentioned earlier on, some people might find that a bit weird if they don't follow academic disputes on Twitter, which I advise you not to do. Because you mentioned the phrase Anglo-Saxon, which has now become incendiary in America and American academia. People don't want to call them. They don't even want to call them the Anglo-Saxons, do they? Yeah. So the word Anglo-Saxon has different significations in different countries. So here it means the Anglo-Saxons. It's the period,

basically. It's shorthand for the period between the Roman withdrawal from Britain and 1066. It's been that for a long time. And in France or in Germany or the continent, Anglo-Saxon basically means english speak the english speaking in france it means margaret thatcher and mcdonald's doesn't it exactly kind of liberal free market economics yeah but but there is the use of anglo-saxon as you know britain america australia new zealand so on canada the the anglosphere yeah might be another way of putting it in america you know the word wasps white ang Anglo-Saxon Protestants, there's a sense there that it is used to connote a kind of the 19th century, well, white's a desire to get rid of the very word. It's seen as providing succor to racists in America. But because America is an imperial country and preponderant, there is an absolute assumption among, I think, too many American academics that their use of a word should have global resonance.

And they don't acknowledge the fact, firstly, that in England, Anglo-Saxon has the connotation that it does. It does not connote racist supremacy. We have the English Defence League. We don't have the Anglo-Saxon Defence League. And they want to call it early English. English is a much more problematic word in the context of early medieval history. But the other problem with banning the word Anglo-Saxon is it ignores the fact, as we said, that Alfred is using Anglo-Saxon as in his charters. And it's a word that underpins his entire sponsorship of the idea of the Anglican, the idea of Angles and Saxons being part of a unitary kingdom, a unitary people that in the long run will give birth to england and this is this

this is looking forward to the future but it's also rooted in the past because it's drawing on beads great work you know he's writing in northumbria the angling kingdom of northumbria um a long time before alfred so the the word anglo-saxon seems to me by far the best description of this very complicated period and and it seems insane to try and get rid of it anyway that's my rant no no i can tom i could not agree with you more you've never had a better rant on this podcast in this series and as all as so often why get rid of it's bonkers to get rid of the term that is natural to most people i think there is a certain a kind of cultural cringe on the part of too many academics in Britain to truckle to American hegemony.

They are, in a way, they need to decolonize themselves, to coin a phrase. They need to stop behaving like colonial subjects and assuming that what happens in America should automatically determine what happens here. I couldn't agree with you more, Tom. I mean, you know, I could not agree with you more. So Alfred the Great, when does he get that label, the great? Well, we said in the first, he gets it, I think in around the 13th century, he's first called it. Yeah. And you think it's, and you clearly do think it's justified.

Well, we've, you know, our first ever episode, we discussed, you know, greatness. Is it a worthwhile term? It's, you know, all ever episode we discussed you know greatness is it is it a worthwhile term it's you know all that kind of stuff i think if you're going to call it a king great in british history i would go for alfred greater than athelstan who won our world cup i think so to the degree that um the scale of the challenge that faces alfred is that much greater so if you're going to be a great king you need a great challenge yeah and we also know more we know much more about alfred and we know all the stuff about the about the reading and about the books and about you know his interest in the church now that's not to say that alfred

didn't have those things too but we just don't know so much about them it's harder it's harder to to construct a sense of athelstan's reign although they're not impossible the other difference i suppose is that alfred has the underdog story doesn't he and athelstan is an overdog he literally becomes the overlord of britain yeah whereas um alfred hiding out in the marshes with his cakes i mean that's a more attractive trajectory i i mean it's that there's the inherent drama of the well the return of the king um you know and alfred alfred literally means you know cancelled by the elves so i think there is a kind of an allure of glamour to it that perhaps i mean athelstan does have athelstan is a glamorous figure but i think the glamour of alfred is is something else and that's why he is a figure

who tends to be known by people even if they know nothing about history yeah they know about cakes they have a big sense of him being great. Yes. Alfred the Cake has 1066 and all that. And just a word on the Vikings before we wrap up. Do you think there would have been an England without the Vikings? Impossible to say, isn't it? But there's no question that the destruction of the other three major kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England make the conquests of Wessex much simpler over the course

of the 10th century yeah uh you know there are there is no east anglian king there is no mercy and king there is no northumbering king to stand in the way first of edward and then of athelstan because there's an argument isn't there that when you look at the beginning of the i don't know 9th century or whatever and you look at the map of what becomes great of the island of great britain it's not obvious that there'll be three different 2000 years or whatever, and you look at the map of the island of Great Britain, it's not obvious that there'll be three different 2000 years or whatever. There'll be three places called Scotland, England, and Wales. They could have evolved very differently. So this does bear on Scotland, obviously, as well, because Northumbria had originally stretched up to the Firth of Forth. And the first use of the word England is applied to Lothian. So that's a reminder stretches of what become Scotland had not become part of

Scotland then Scotland would be would probably not have emerged as an English-speaking nation yeah interesting very and so many things turn on this period and they I mean it's such a foundational I know you always say that when we because when we talk about what should people study in school you always say that you think it's mad that everybody in England doesn't study this particular, this moment in history. I think if you're going to secondary school, this would be a great place to start and then do 1066. Yeah. So that you have the story of how England's created and then the great drama of 1066. And, you know, Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror, two top kings that everyone should know about.

A very good king and a very bad man, I think it's fair to say. All right. So, Tom, have you any more to say about Alfred the Great or are you spent? No, I'm done. Excellent. So I think we should end with another lovely reading. Do you think that'd be nice, Tom? That'd be lovely.

So this is from the very end of alfred the great section in this absolutely tremendous book which i cannot recommend too highly because i wrote it adventures in time fury of the vikings if you're aged between 8 and 12 or indeed 8 and 100 this is the book for you so here we go when athelstan died in the autumn of 939 the task of building a united christian england was not yet finished. Northumbria in particular had thousands of Danish speakers who still worshipped at the feet of Odin, Thor and Freya. Yet Alfred and his heirs had shown that the Vikings could be beaten. And in fighting off the invaders from the seas, they had created something that would never die. They hadn't just created a

vision of England, They had written one of the greatest underdog stories in all history. So don't laugh, Tom. Can boys and girls learn from this? Wait, wait, wait. They had written one of the greatest underdog stories in all history. The story of a king who found his hope in a peasant's hut and a people who found their courage. The story of a nation battered, bruised and yet unbowed, who found a fighting spirit they never knew they had. And somehow, at the end of it all, came through to victory. Wow. That is the reading we need now.

Bye bye. Bye bye. That is the reading we need now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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