Alfred the Great
Alfred was the only English king to be called the Great, and he earned it by losing. He came to the throne of Wessex in 871 at about twenty-two, the fourth of his brothers to reign, in the year the Danish Great Heathen Army had already destroyed Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia. He bought peace, lost it, and in January 878 was surprised at Chippenham and driven into the Somerset marshes with a handful of men — the episode that produced the story about the burnt cakes, which is a tenth-century addition. He came out in May, raised the militias of three shires, beat Guthrum at Edington, and imposed a settlement in which the Danish leader accepted baptism with Alfred as godfather. The reconstruction afterwards is why he is remembered. He built some thirty burhs, fortified towns on a grid within a day's march of each other, garrisoned by a rota so that half the levy was always available; he reorganised the fleet; and he issued a law code that opens with the Ten Commandments and cites his predecessors. He also concluded that the kingdom had been punished for ignorance, imported scholars, and translated or had translated into English the books he thought most necessary — Gregory's Pastoral Care, Boethius, Orosius — writing prefaces himself. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was begun at his direction. He died in 899, and his children and grandchildren completed the conquest of the Danelaw. The title Great was applied to him in the sixteenth century rather than his own, and rests on the whole record rather than on the battles. He is the only English monarch to hold it, and the Victorians who built his statue at Winchester made him a good deal more national than he was.
- Lived: 849 CE – 899 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: leader, writer, military_leader
