1 - Alfred

Summary

Me com swiðe oft on gemynd, hwelce wiotan iu wæron giond Angelcynn, ægðer ge godcundra hada ge worul[d]cundra; and hu gesæliglica tida ða wæron giond Angelcynn; and hu ða kyningas ðe ðone onwald hæfdon ðæs folces [on ðam dagum] Gode and his ærendwrecum hersumedon; and hie ægðer ge hiora sibbe ge hiora siodo ge hiora onweald innanbordes gehioldon, and eac ut hiora eðel gerymdon; and hu him ða speow ægðer ge mid wige ge mid wisdome; and eac ða godcundan hadas hu giorne hie wæron ægðer ge ymb lare ge ymb liornunga, ge ymb ealle ða ðiowotdomas ðe hie Gode [don] scoldon; and hu man utanbordes wisdom and lare hieder on lond sohte, and hu we hie nu sceoldon ute begietan, gif we hie habban sceoldon.

In this well-known passage from Alfred's preface to his translation of Gregory's Regula Pastoralis the king looks back to a glorious past in which Anglo-Saxon kings were pious, wise, and capable of both maintaining the peace and expanding their dominions. Although it may have been lost, this past was able to provide Alfred at the end of the ninth century with a vision of kingship and kingdom which could be used as both a model and a justification for his own political agenda in forging a future for the Angelcynn. If the great kings of the past were able to offer their people moral and intellectual leadership while simultaneously extending the land under their control, then so could Alfred, and his reign (871–99) thus came to be perceived as a revival of the original spirit of Anglo-Saxon leadership. In this respect Alfred very consciously occupies a temporal borderland from which he maps both the present and the future, a position that would equally consciously be adopted by later kings, most notably Edward the Confessor, the last of the ‘Cerdicing’ kings, as they continued the work of forging a nation begun by Alfred. In essence, what Alfred was doing was breaking with the past by returning to the past in order to transform it into a new image for a new regime.