52 Facts About Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great won a decisive victory in the Battle of Edington in 878 and made an agreement with the Vikings, dividing England between Anglo-Saxon territory and the Viking-ruled Danelaw, composed of Scandinavian York, the north-east Midlands and East Anglia.

Alfred the Great oversaw the conversion of Viking leader Guthrum to Christianity.

Alfred the Great defended his kingdom against the Viking attempt at conquest, becoming the dominant ruler in England.

Alfred the Great began styling himself as "King of the Anglo-Saxons" after reoccupying London from the Vikings.

Alfred the Great had a reputation as a learned and merciful man of a gracious and level-headed nature who encouraged education, proposing that primary education be conducted in English, rather than Latin, and improving the legal system and military structure and his people's quality of life.

Alfred the Great was given the epithet "the Great" in the 16th century and is only one of two English monarchs, alongside Cnut the Great, to be labelled as such.

Alfred the Great was described by Alfred's biographer Asser as "a most religious woman, noble by temperament and noble by birth".

Alfred the Great must have had it read to him because his mother died when he was about six and he did not learn to read until he was 12.

In 853, Alfred the Great is reported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have been sent to Rome where he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV, who "anointed him as king".

Alfred the Great blockaded them but was unable to take Wareham by assault.

Alfred the Great negotiated a peace that involved an exchange of hostages and oaths, which the Danes swore on a "holy ring" associated with the worship of Thor.

Alfred the Great blockaded the Viking ships in Devon, and with a relief fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes were forced to submit.

From his fort at Athelney, an island in the marshes near North Petherton, Alfred the Great was able to mount a resistance campaign, rallying the local militias from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.

Alfred the Great then pursued the Danes to their stronghold at Chippenham and starved them into submission.

Alfred the Great succeeded to Ceolwulf's kingdom consisting of western Mercia, and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged Kingdom of East Anglia.

In 882, Alfred the Great fought a small sea battle against four Danish ships.

The pope sent gifts to Alfred the Great, including what was reputed to be a piece of the True Cross.

Not long after the failed Danish raid in Kent, Alfred the Great dispatched his fleet to East Anglia.

The quiet years of Alfred the Great's life were coming to a close.

Alfred the Great had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed stronghold on the North Devon shore.

Alfred the Great determined their tactic was to launch small attacks from a secure base to which they could retreat should their raiders meet strong resistance.

Once inside the fortification, Alfred the Great realised, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter-attack because the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned.

The foundation of Alfred the Great's new military defence system was a network of burhs, distributed at tactical points throughout the kingdom.

Alfred the Great's burhs ranged from former Roman towns, such as Winchester, where the stone walls were repaired and ditches added, to massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades, such as at Burpham in West Sussex.

The author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle related that Alfred the Great's ships were larger, swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than either Danish or Frisian ships.

Alfred the Great had seapower in mind; if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from being ravaged.

Only one made it; Alfred the Great's ships intercepted the other two.

Similarly Alfred the Great divided his code into 120 chapters because 120 was the age at which Moses died and, in the number-symbolism of early medieval biblical exegetes, 120 stood for law.

The link between Mosaic law and Alfred the Great's code is the Apostolic Letter which explained that Christ "had come not to shatter or annul the commandments but to fulfill them; and he taught mercy and meekness".

Alfred the Great, according to Asser, insisted upon reviewing contested judgments made by his ealdormen and reeves and "would carefully look into nearly all the judgements which were passed [issued] in his absence anywhere in the realm to see whether they were just or unjust".

Alfred the Great corresponded with Elias III, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the pope were fairly frequent.

Alfred the Great undertook no systematic reform of ecclesiastical institutions or religious practices in Wessex.

Alfred the Great was equally comfortable distributing his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care to his bishops so that they might better train and supervise priests and using those same bishops as royal officials and judges.

Alfred the Great lamented in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care that "learning had declined so thoroughly in England that there were very few men on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English or even translate a single letter from Latin into English: and I suppose that there were not many beyond the Humber either".

Alfred the Great established a court school for the education of his own children, those of the nobility, and "a good many of lesser birth".

Alfred the Great recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction.

Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm, Alfred the Great proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin.

Alfred the Great sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know".

Alfred the Great was, until recently, often considered to have been the author of many of the translations, but this is considered doubtful in almost all cases.

Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridio, which seems to have been a commonplace book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a book greatly popular in the Middle Ages.

Alfred the Great meant the translation to be used, and circulated it to all his bishops.

The Alfred the Great jewel, discovered in Somerset in 1693, has long been associated with King Alfred the Great because of its Old English inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN.

Alfred the Great believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people.

Alfred the Great was an excellent listener and had an incredible memory and he retained poetry and psalms very well.

Alfred the Great is noted as carrying around a small book, probably a medieval version of a small pocket notebook, that contained psalms and many prayers that he often collected.

Alfred the Great's mother was Osburga, daughter of Oslac of the Isle of Wight, Chief Butler of England.

Alfred the Great was temporarily buried at the Old Minster in Winchester with his wife Ealhswith and later, his son Edward the Elder.

One of those unfortunate abbeys was the very New Minster abbey where Alfred the Great was laid to rest.

The 1999 archeological excavation uncovered the foundations of the abbey buildings and some bones, suggested at the time to be those of Alfred the Great; they proved instead to belong to an elderly woman.

Alfred the Great commissioned Bishop Asser to write his biography, which inevitably emphasised Alfred the Great's positive aspects.

In 2002, Alfred was ranked number 14 in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.

The centerpiece of Alfred the Great University's quad is a bronze statue of the king, created in 1990 by then-professor William Underhill.