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Documentary, King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons S01E01 Alfred of Wessex
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00:00In the winter of 877, the fate of England rested on the shoulders of one man.
00:14That time, the king wandered in great hardship, through the woods and fenned fastnesses.
00:35There was no food except what they could find.
00:42All the king had left were his closest retainers, for most of the English people had submitted to the Vikings.
01:02The old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and the East Angles had been destroyed.
01:07Mercia overrun, the monasteries plundered, the people lived in fear.
01:16And that winter, a Viking army attacked the last English kingdom, Wessex.
01:21And the young king, Alfred, was forced to take refuge here in the swamps of Somerset.
01:27All he ruled now, a few acres of marsh.
01:30But this is the moment out of which the chain of events will come, which will lead to the creation of a kingdom of England.
01:43The process will go through Alfred, his daughter Athelflaed, his son Edward and his grandson Athelstan.
01:50They're among the most gifted of all the rulers in British history.
01:57They will shape what we might almost call the deep bone structure of England, the English state and Englishness itself.
02:09The towns, shires, the monarchy, English law, the origins of parliament, English literature.
02:20What an impact they will have on the future history of the British Isles and of the world.
02:26And in their words, and in the words of their contemporaries, this is their story.
02:56The tale of Alfred's wars with the British Isles and of the West.
03:21The tale of Alfred's wars with the British Isles and of the West.
03:25Alfred's wars with the Vikings and the creation of the Kingdom of England by his children and grandchildren
03:31is one of the great stories of British history.
03:36But it's also a detective story, for much of the evidence has been destroyed by time and war.
03:44In telling the tale, we'll be helped by experts from the world's greatest Anglo-Saxon archive, the British Library.
03:58Here's Alfred's will, his writings, his thoughts on life and kingship.
04:09Some of his works are only now being restored by cutting-edge science.
04:15This is what a manuscript looks like when it's been through for fire.
04:20It looks like skin that's shrunk up together.
04:22They were kind of in balls because of the fire, because they had contracted.
04:27Others are totally lost, or known only through later copies.
04:32My heart's still in the switch time to tell the page.
04:34Alfred's biography, written by the Welsh Bishop Asser, was destroyed by fire in the 18th century
04:40and only survives in Tudor transcripts.
04:44So here is a copy of Asser's Chronicle.
04:50So to piece Alfred's story together, we'll also need to explore burned fragments and later notebooks.
04:57Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons.
04:59The precious clues out of which a tale emerges, not just of violence and war,
05:05but of vision and creativity in dark times.
05:09It faithfully reproduces the original Anglo-Saxons manuscript.
05:13And the first key story in Alfred's life, Asser says, took place not in England at all, but in Rome.
05:22In 853, when Alfred was about five, his father, King Athelwulf of Wessex, sent him to Rome.
05:34It was to be an inciting incident in his life.
05:52Rome, for Alfred, was more than a pilgrimage.
06:04You feel that it somehow gave him a map for his life.
06:08As a man, he would lay the foundations of the English state, but the England that Alfred dreamed wasn't insular.
06:16It was tied to Europe and, above all, inspired by Rome.
06:21By Roman civilisation, Roman Christianity, and Latin culture.
06:39In the old English quarter, close to the Vatican, today's street names hark back to Alfred's day.
06:45For 500 years, this is where the English pilgrims stayed, and it's where Alfred came as a boy.
07:06The highlight of his trip was an audience with the Pope.
07:10Alfred must have walked open-mouthed, and if you want to get a sense of the splendor that he actually saw, just come and look inside.
07:40The old Vatican was swept away in the age of Michelangelo, but this is what it looked like, the 5th-century church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
07:54Here, in this glittering late Roman basilica, you can imagine the pilgrims from far away Wessex.
08:01Pope Leo blessed Alfred and gave the inquisitive and impressionable boy the insignia of a Roman consul.
08:11You can imagine the Pope embracing the little boy, Alfred, investing him with the belt of a Roman consul,
08:29and adopting him as his spiritual son.
08:33For Alfred, it was an unforgettable moment.
08:36Alfred later claimed the Pope had hallowed him as king.
08:44That was just hindsight.
08:48But he came to see it as a mark of destiny.
08:52Alfred's personality, like all personalities, it was formed in his childhood.
08:57And I think there are two things that I would stress particularly about his childhood, which I think were formative.
09:06And one was not just one, but two visits to Rome, which he made with his father.
09:13The other was on his way back from Rome.
09:18His father remarried a Frankish princess, a Carolingian princess.
09:27Alfred, at this point, was eight, and she was twelve.
09:34The relationship between those two, although it only lasted for four or five years, must have been a close one.
09:42Because they were at the court, and they both had a very strong sense of belonging to a dynasty, of embodying a dynasty.
09:50She was the great-granddaughter of Charlemagne, and he was the youngest son of a king whose dynasty went back far beyond that of the Carolingians.
10:01The young boy grew up in a world torn by war.
10:10The old patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the Northumbrians and Mercians, West Saxons and East Angles, had already been shaken by Viking attacks.
10:21And in Alfred's youth, the map of England began to change forever.
10:25The story of the Viking wars is told in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
10:36There are several different versions, but the key one was written in Alfred's reign, and maybe under his direction.
10:44It's now in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, after the British Library, the greatest collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.
10:52Here, saved from the vandalism of the Reformation, are the records of our medieval ancestors' efforts to make a Christian civilisation in savage times.
11:08And among them is the single most important source for English history.
11:15Compiled in the 890s, early 890s, probably in the court of Alfred the Great.
11:22And it takes us through English history, the peoples of Anglo-Saxon England, first in quite short notes, and then much more detailed accounts coming into the present day in the Viking wars.
11:36This fateful sense of the momentum of events.
11:43Take this, 855.
11:44The first time that the heathens, the Viking armies, actually spent the whole winter in England.
11:56That's a landmark.
11:58And very soon, of course, those ancient kingdoms and Northumbrians and East Angles would be destroyed.
12:03Their royal families exterminated.
12:06Mercia would be dismembered.
12:08And Wessex very soon would stand alone.
12:11And that's the theme of the narrative, really.
12:13It's almost as if the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, this version of it, has been produced to be disseminated, to show the peoples of England that they have a common history and a common destiny.
12:24And that resistance against the Vikings is the way forward.
12:28And, of course, that the West Saxon kings, Alfred and his line, will be the true inheritors of that history.
12:45Late in 870, the king of the East Angles was defeated and killed by the Danes.
12:51The scene was set for a full-scale attack on Wessex.
12:55The date the Vikings chose was the middle of the Christmas holidays.
13:16The Vikings studied the Christian calendar.
13:20They often make their big attacks on church festivals.
13:23Christmas was a favourite.
13:25They came here late December to construct a typical Viking base between the two rivers, protected on all sides.
13:36Reading will be the centre for their attack on Wessex itself.
13:41It was the beginning of a deadly game of cat and mouse.
13:44On the 1st of January, the English defeated a Viking probe west of Reading.
13:49On January the 4th, King Æthelred and his brother Alfred launched a frontal attack on the Reading defences, but were defeated.
13:58Driven across the Thames at Twyford, they regrouped to the west.
14:02And there, on the 8th of January, the Viking army attacked them, on Ashdown.
14:10The site of the Battle of Ashdown has never been found, but it must have been on the main east-west route, the Great Ridgeway.
14:18According to Bishop Asser, the heaviest fighting was around a single thorn tree, and that must be the local meeting place known later as the Naked Thorn.
14:31Up on the Ridgeway, where five tracks met.
14:40Alfred himself later told the tale to Bishop Asser, with a vivid insight into his character.
14:49So, the English army had camped in front of us the previous night on these fields.
14:54And early in the morning, the Danish army comes on that ridge over the horizon in full battle array in two great divisions.
15:04But at this moment, Æthelred is still in his tent, performing the morning mass with his priests, and he refuses to come out until the rituals are complete.
15:15For Alfred, though, this is a critical moment.
15:18We either retreat, or we go forward.
15:21But Asser says, then, without any hesitation, Alfred gave the order for the attack.
15:28And he went for the Viking army, like a wild boar.
15:33Thus, in the last night, the king of Ardred and Alfred, his brother, with all the knights of the king and Ashdown.
15:42Eventually, the Viking line was broken.
15:45Their bodies were strewn all over the breadth of Ashdown, says the chronicle, and we chased them back to Reading.
16:04Alfred would remember the dramatic events of this year as his year of battles.
16:14Nine major battles, countless forays and expeditions, he remembered later,
16:20through which the untested young warrior would emerge, not only as king, but as a born leader.
16:27That April, King Æthelred died.
16:38All four of Alfred's brothers were gone, and at twenty-two he became king.
16:43There were more battles that year.
16:50The people were worn out by the constant fighting.
16:54Wracked by ill health, it was long odds on Alfred even staying alive.
16:58He could only pay the Vikings off.
17:01And buy time.
17:02But in Northumbria and the East Midlands, Alfred's world was about to change dramatically.
17:23The great heathen army had divided into three, and the main force moved to Repton in Derbyshire.
17:32Great view from up here, of the landscape of Repton.
17:37You can see the River Trent over there in the middle distance, and the old track of the Trent, right down there behind the trees.
17:45It was here that the Viking great army, the Mikelhera, as the Anglo-Saxons called it, came in the winter of 873-4.
17:54And they dug a great defensive earthwork round their camp here, anchored on the river at both ends, with the church here in the middle of the defences.
18:04Then the chronicle says they shared out the land, and began to plough and make a living.
18:20And still today, their names, Slugger the Sly, Blood the Blade, can be read on our village signs.
18:31Vikings putting down roots, staking their claim to their part of England.
18:36The news of those developments in the Midlands and East Anglia and Northumbria, the idea that the great heathen army were actually taking the land, settling, beginning to plough, forming their own kingdoms, must have been deeply disturbing.
18:56The whole geopolitical map, if I can put it that way, of Anglo-Saxon England, was shifting, maybe permanently, before their eyes.
19:04Then, the remaining section of the great army turned on Wessex.
19:09WELCOME
19:39Alfred and hey Leetley were a day who near the lychee after wooden for and one
19:49more fast alone caught off guard Alfred fled into the marshes of Somerset there
20:00in the freezing New Year of 878 he survived by hit-and-run raids all was
20:07moving from place to place in a landscape he'd known from his youth here at least
20:15he would be safe
20:27our most famous story about him comes from this time how he stayed with a peasant
20:33woman and burnt the bread in her oven her cakes it's a fable perhaps but easy to
20:43imagine in a guerrilla war when the resistance depended for food on the
20:49local people people used to eat all the birds ducks the swans so those stories
21:00that they didn't have much to eat are probably true if you caught a duck you'd
21:03be well fed yes yeah it's catching it as well really because they can fly a lot
21:09faster than you can walk for this be a harsh life to live out here I think yeah
21:15if you didn't have a home to go to and the water supply what would the water be
21:22like here it's not pleasant most of the time it's really you'd probably boil it to
21:28drink it yeah yes you don't want to be falling in it either because it's wet and
21:32sticky and muddy and deep
21:40but there's one story about that time that emerged within living memory one day
21:46Alfred here in the woods met a wandering hermit a poor pilgrim and Alfred shared
21:53with him the tiny amount of food that he got left and the pilgrim blessed him and
21:59then went on his way and that afternoon Alfred and his men made an almost miraculous catch of
22:05fish in one of the lakes here so for the first time in days they at well
22:10that night the pilgrim appeared to Alfred in his dreams
22:20it's St. Cuthbert himself told Alfred don't lose courage you will triumph in the end and your
22:31descendants will be rulers of all England
22:40in such divinely sent dreams medieval people saw the future
22:48and from that moment Alfred began to create his own myth of destiny
23:01in the spring Alfred's fight back began around Easter the 23rd of March they built a fort on an
23:19island in the marshes a place called Athelny from up here on Ling church you can really get an idea of
23:26the layout of the land in 878 surrounded by marshes of course and the the borough itself the fortress
23:35over here you're looking down on the Alfredian burgh of Ling if you just look to the end of the
23:44village there you can see the causeway snaking out past that last house that's where Alfred's fortress of
23:52Athelny was joined to the fortress of Ling by a causeway or a bridge this is the place from where
24:01Alfred launched the salvation of Wessex and if it's not too dramatic to say so of England
24:12according to Asser Athelny was surrounded by swamp on every side you can't reach it he said except by punts
24:19or along the causeway from Ling you see Ling church over there small hill Athelny maybe four or five hundred
24:29yards long Alfred's fought probably at that end where there were the remains of Iron Age defences
24:36ditches and mounds and the the monastery he built in thanksgiving for his victory on this spot where they
24:42built the monument a couple of hundred years ago but it was from here that Bishop Asser says Alfred
24:48was able then after Easter to mount his attacks against the pagan army and archaeology here has turned
24:56up a few details of what was happening then especially slag from furnaces Alfred and his warriors were
25:04perhaps day and night forging weapons ready for the coming climax to the war
25:14Saxon sword would have three twist left hand and three twist right hand
25:24sword blades spears chain mail war gear good enough to take on battle-hardened vikings
25:36it's rather magical isn't it it was as if he'd risen from the dead said Asser
26:04this is the main track they made their last camp at Eilie oak near warminster protected by an old earthwork
26:13according to the map my guess is it's not that much further it's now right next year next 20 left
26:20Jenny and Mike Dumford know the site and here it is it's so unexpected isn't it hidden in a plantation of
26:33monkey puzzle trees oh look there's a ditch here this is what we were referring to look at this
26:42is this the mound that you were talking it is exactly yes circular earthwork can you see it curves around
26:48there this is exactly where the the famous oak tree was here they prepared themselves for battle oh that's great
26:58oh that's great the last survivor of the oaks looks like it of Eilie wood confessing their sins
27:07praying before the holy relics carried by Alfred's mass priests
27:13it runs all the way around and then they took their last instructions from the king and his marshal edgewolf
27:20that's brilliant yeah
27:22the highest point looks over here
27:25it always pays to go on the ground doesn't it
27:28perhaps they stood to arms all night ready to move before dawn
27:32maybe three or four thousand men with their horses
27:38the anglo-saxon chronicle and an assa both say this was the place that they spent that last night
27:45and then at dawn they rose and they went to a place called Eddington
27:52Alfred's scouts had reported that the main Viking army under King Guthrum had moved to Eddington under Salisbury Plain
28:13and there at first light he attacked them
28:20there was a royal estate down there an anglo-saxon royal estate
28:23with a great wooden hall, stables, barns, outbuildings
28:27maybe even flocks of sheep as there still are
28:30that's why Guthrum and the Danes had made this their forward base in the campaign
28:36Alfred brings his forces under the escarpment of the plain there
28:42and makes his attack across these fields
28:44along the line of those telegraph poles running out into the field
28:53as it says Alfred fought the battle atrochite
28:57atrociously, ferociously
28:59nothing romantic about these Viking Age battles
29:02it was brutal stuff, toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball
29:07stabbing and slashing
29:10and as it says Alfred had to hang in there
29:13tenaciously persevering for a long time
29:16before with God's will he won the victory
29:19and there destroyed the pagan army with great slaughter
29:24Alfred pursued the survivors back to Chippenum
29:39and two weeks later they surrendered
29:44and then Alfred started what can only be called the peace process
29:59about the 15th of June
30:02King Guthrum and 30 of the best men of his army
30:05came here to meet King Alfred at Alla
30:08and received Christian baptism
30:13Asser says something very interesting about this
30:16he says that King Alfred had been moved by fellow feeling
30:20by compassion for his enemies
30:24as he always was
30:26Guthrum was received from the front by Alfred as his foster son
30:30and with that moment the relations between the Vikings and the English
30:35took a whole new path
30:37what to me is interesting about the Vikings as they're usually called
30:47is that they're so often portrayed as violent and aggressive and destructive
30:52all those aspects were true
30:55which isn't to say that the West Saxons themselves
30:57weren't pretty violent and destructive on occasion
31:00but what the Scandinavians wanted
31:04was to buy into European culture
31:07very soon they began to settle
31:11and they needed to integrate
31:13the best way was conversion
31:25adopting all the characteristics of Christian culture
31:29which is really about organizing your life
31:31your personal life and your social life
31:33about the rules that Christianity preached
31:37come secuning to him Godroom at Alla
31:44and his secuning Theron thing at full week day
31:47and his Christmas missing was at Westmore
31:50Alfred honors Guthrum
31:52that's laying a template for how he thinks relations with the Vikings will go
31:57yes
31:58the baptism literally integrated
32:00the Danish warlord chief
32:03Guthrum into the family of Alfred
32:06because Alfred was his godfather
32:08for twelve knights
32:20the chronicle says
32:21the king feasted Guthrum
32:23and his thirty worthiest men
32:26and he greatly honored them
32:29and gave them rich gifts
32:31it's an extraordinary way to end what had been a savagely fought war
32:38in which the very existence of the kingdom of Wessex had hung in the balance
32:43but it's going to be typical of the way Alfred operates
32:48it's his idea of politics
32:50of peacemaking with this enemy who he knows by now
32:54will not go away in English history
32:59and in 886 the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
33:03amid all the detail of the campaigns
33:07has a line that it would be very easy to miss
33:10but which is very significant in the story
33:13and it's this
33:15El Angelkin
33:17all the English people
33:20acknowledged Alfred as their king
33:23except those who were still
33:25under the rule of the Danes
33:27in the north and the east
33:32Anglekin
33:33the English kin
33:37long ago
33:38Bede had given the Anglo-Saxons this idea
33:41that there was one English people
33:43one gens anglorum
33:48here
33:49Alfred is
33:50claiming to speak for them
33:52this alone would make him one of our most remarkable rulers
33:59but it's what follows
34:01that raises him to the ranks of true greatness
34:08first Alfred secured his kingdom
34:10with a network of forts
34:12burghs
34:13it's the beginning of English towns
34:15they were much much more than merely forts
34:18which is what the written sources would give us to believe
34:22they were really designed to develop
34:25and within them people were doing all sorts of things
34:28there were merchants, traders, craftspeople
34:32so they were really complicated places
34:34so Alfred is setting out to transform society
34:39it's hard to believe that he didn't have some vision to that effect
34:42that when he established these places
34:45they were not urban
34:46they were not
34:47they wouldn't have looked particularly urban
34:49it took a long time
34:51that was part of his vision
34:53to establish a framework within which urbanization could develop
34:57of course these places were fortified places
35:00but it also meant that there were safe places
35:02within which to transact business
35:04and of course you can see that not only within the burghs themselves
35:09but in the way in which the countryside around the burghs
35:12is being exploited and organized
35:15burghs must have depended on the countryside
35:18they had to be supported in some way
35:25and the whole burgh system I think depended on
35:30food producers from outside the burghs
35:32sustaining and supporting life in those towns
35:35that does imply some sort of major reorganization
35:40how you plow your fields
35:42how you manure your fields
35:44all this sort of stuff
35:45it suggests intensification
35:47I don't think we can understand the burghs
35:50and what made them work
35:51what made them tick
35:52without thinking about the rural hinterland
35:55and without thinking about the vision that enabled
35:59surplus production in the countryside
36:02to sustain the burghs
36:06so when Asser says that a lot of people didn't like
36:10what Alfred was doing
36:13they resisted these military burdens
36:16well there are military burdens
36:18but clearly the implication is also other sorts of burdens
36:23if you're going to sustain permanent garrisons
36:27men fighting men who are not going to be farmers
36:29who are not going to be producing food
36:31you need to organize the countryside in a new way
36:33in order to make that work
36:35a very demanding boss
36:37I would imagine
36:38a bit of a control freak perhaps
36:39I'm wanting to make sure that he's everywhere at once
36:42and able to oversee what's going on
36:44a very smart guy
36:45a guy with a vision
36:46but Alfred's ambitions went beyond Wessex
36:56his 16 year old daughter Aethelflaed
36:57had married Aethelred the Lord of Mercia
37:00and Alfred was accepted as ruler of both kingdoms
37:03king of the Anglo-Saxons
37:05and in 886 with his son-in-law
37:09he embarked on his biggest urban project
37:12the restoration of the Mercia city of London
37:17here for sure he left west
37:21the air air still ended
37:22and saw upon CNN's air winter settle now
37:26to you can nere you set the Alfred Kuning London
37:30Alfred occupied laid out
37:36refounded difficult word to translate
37:40you set London
37:42it's a key moment in the story of the city
37:47it's destined to be the richest city in Britain
37:51even by the end of the 10th century
37:57and the amazing thing is
37:59what Alfred actually did on the ground
38:01can still be seen
38:03if you go down to the London waterfront today
38:12there, look at that
38:15this is an 18th century map here
38:18it gives you a fantastic idea
38:20much better than the modern A-Z
38:22of the Anglo-Saxon layout
38:25the re-planning of the city
38:30this is where the Anglo-Saxons created the
38:33well the original wharves of London that we know today
38:36Billingsgate there, the old fish market
38:38Billing is an Anglo-Saxon name
38:42who Billing was we don't know
38:44maybe a 9th century mover and shaker
38:47you can see the line of the Anglo-Saxon lanes coming down
38:52remains of Anglo-Saxon city churches there
38:55and the great fire monument
38:57the jetties coming out into the river
39:01and a host of ships in the middle ages
39:04little wooden ships ferrying produce across the river
39:07from the continent and back
39:09all these little lanes coming down to the wharves
39:14all Hallows, Steelyard, Dow Gate is Anglo-Saxon
39:20and Queen Hive
39:22the one wharf of the medieval world that still survives
39:27can you see the shingly beach running up to the modern buildings
39:30and him all Angel Queen torture this that boot on
39:37Danish Ramana haft near the west and here
39:40that be fastest a burgh as a ready elder man to held
39:43there's Queen Hive from the landward side
39:56the last Anglo-Saxon wharf of London
40:00in the eight eighties when Alfred replanned the city
40:03as we saw in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle
40:05it was called Ethelred's Hype
40:07presumably Alfred's son-in-law the Earl of Mercia
40:10and it's a great place to actually see what that replanning meant
40:20to build up the trading shore
40:22the Rippa Emptoralis
40:24they did what the Victorians and later generations did
40:27which is to drive great wooden piles into the beach
40:30you can see there on which they erected the jetties
40:33if you want one place which can stand for the
40:37the medieval origins of the city of London
40:39and indeed the origins of London's pre-eminence
40:43in our national life from then until now
40:46it's here
40:52but for towns and trade to flourish
40:55people not only need security
40:59they must be able to trust the currency
41:03the Anglo-Saxon coinage had been debased in the Viking Wars
41:08so Alfred and his advisors not only had to build towns
41:14they had to plan the economy
41:16around about the middle of the eight seventies
41:20when things are looking very bleak from a military and political point of view
41:24he changes the coinage quite dramatically
41:27we go from a very debased coinage
41:32in which each coin contains only about 10% silver
41:36to one in which they are extremely pure
41:3990% pure or higher
41:42he starts off inheriting this system from his brother and the Mercian kings
41:48in which Alfred II makes lunette pennies
41:51and these are really a coinage of crisis
41:55the quality of the silver has dropped dramatically
42:00these coins contain about 10 or 20% silver each
42:03so they're trying to eke out a smaller amount of silver
42:06and make more and more coins
42:08presumably to pay more and more men to fight more and more Vikings
42:12and what does Alfred do in those first years then Rory?
42:15I mean does he... you talk about low silver content and all this
42:18does he work to improve fineness, design, all those sort of things?
42:23he most certainly does, yes
42:25this is known as the cross and lozenge coinage
42:27very pure, the design is completely different
42:30on the obverse the bust of the king surrounded by his title Alfred Rex
42:35and then on the reverse we have a beautiful cross
42:40surrounded by the name of the man who made the coin
42:43and this was the standard at this time
42:45most all of these coins name the man who was responsible for making it
42:49respect to the coinage is respect of the king's authority
42:53so there are very strict regulations against forgery
42:56against adulteration of the coinage
42:58one of the aims of reforming the coinage was to stop that
43:02oh gosh you can actually see the... you can see the silver almost in that
43:11yes
43:12and this is minted in southern England is it?
43:15it is, almost certainly in London
43:17with a Roman style monogram that carries London... that canteens letters Londonia
43:23oh that is absolutely wonderful isn't it?
43:26reminds me of those late Roman coins for Constantinople
43:29when you've got a C-O-N and this is an L-O-N isn't it?
43:32precisely yes
43:33you know
43:34this is... this is entirely intended to show off Alfred's control of London
43:39and its importance within the kingdom as a whole
43:52but Alfred's dream went further still
43:55though he'd only learn to read and write in middle age
43:58he hoped to rebuild English culture
44:00or as he would say
44:02restore wisdom
44:04Alfred combined a deep spirituality
44:08and a high degree of intellectual curiosity
44:11with great practical wisdom
44:14and designing his own clock was absolutely symptomatic of that
44:22he was multi-talented and multi-skilled I think so
44:29that's why he drew so many different talents to his court
44:33it was a court of many talents
44:37Alfred knew that there were scholars on the continent
44:40Carolingian scholars
44:41the world that his stepmother had come from
44:45and that they were well versed in Christian Latin texts
44:52and had written commentaries on them
44:55to help to explain them to new Christians in a different kind of setup
45:00Alfred embarked on a programme of translations
45:04and contributed very significantly to them himself
45:08his experience of interpolating his own interpretations
45:15his own additions to these texts
45:19is a way into his mind
45:21I have often thought about what wisdom there was in England
45:28he said before everything was ravaged and burnt
45:32when I became king
45:36education had so completely collapsed
45:39that very few people could translate a letter from Latin into English
45:43so it seems best to me
45:47that we should translate the books
45:50which are most needful for all men to know
45:53into the language we can all understand
45:56I began to translate those books from Latin into English
46:03with the help of my mass priests and my Bishop Asser
46:07sometimes word for word
46:10sometimes sense for sense
46:13there we go
46:24there are annotations
46:27which were clearly made in southwestern England
46:30or in perhaps in Wales
46:32there are three different hands
46:34which have been identified
46:36which are insular hands
46:38meaning they're
46:39I guess you would say British hands
46:42but the one which wrote most of the comments
46:45of the three insular hands
46:47was clearly belonged to a Welsh scribe
46:51late 9th or early 10th century
46:53so again about the time of King Alfred
46:57the later scholar specifically says
46:59that Asser helped Alfred
47:02with his English version of Boethius'
47:05consolation of philosophy
47:07so here you've got a Welsh hand
47:09and Welsh abbreviations
47:11it's very clearly
47:13yes
47:14well paleography always
47:15proceeds by comparing something that you know
47:18which is dated and identified clearly
47:20with something that you want to place somewhere
47:24and in this case
47:25the hand which wrote most of the insular commentary
47:29has been very closely compared with
47:31identified and dated hands
47:33which we know belong to Welsh scribes
47:36you can wonder what the audience was for such a commentary
47:42people who were perhaps learning Latin
47:45and who clearly needed this kind of guidance
47:48in order to understand the text
47:51but Boethius is a sort of unusual text perhaps
47:57it is rather odd isn't it
47:59it's not really an obvious obviously Christian text for that matter
48:03the early middle ages are often thought of as bad time
48:06a dark time and it could be that the sort of dark world view
48:12view and the need for the consolation that comes out of this text
48:17and the sort of dark circumstances in which Boethius wrote it
48:20for his personal circumstances
48:23resonated with people in this time
48:27which was rather difficult and dark in fact
48:32so here's Asser explaining to Alfred the Greek myth of the Furies
48:43fearful goddesses
48:48and these goddesses had no respect for any man
48:52for any human
48:54but punished each according to their deeds
48:57and are said to rule men's fate
49:00in Alfred's life by now
49:07we've gone beyond matters of war and peace
49:10to the mystery of creative imagination itself
49:17Augustine, Gregory the Great, Boethius
49:23key texts of the Latin West
49:25reimagined by the descendants of the barbarians
49:29how our ancestors loved wisdom he wrote
49:34and they passed it on to us
49:36now we can still make out their footprints
49:40but can we follow their track?
49:44one of the books most needful for people to know as Alfred put it
49:56and it's a world history
49:58literally a world history
49:59I mean Persian Empire, the Babylonians, Alexander the Great
50:03and the Roman Empire
50:05but what they add to this account
50:07what you couldn't have got from the classical historians and geographers
50:11which is an account of the northern world
50:14the Viking world
50:16and he gets these from a Norwegian merchant called Otterer
50:24Otterer said his slavord Alfred König
50:29Otterer said his slavord Alfred König
50:33that he earl ra northman northmest bude
50:37he quaest that he bude on some land in northwardum with the west sae
50:42he deals in skins and hides
50:48you can imagine Alfred and his courtiers sitting spellbound
50:53as they heard this story of the northern lights
50:57the world up to the Arctic Circle
51:14what Alfred did was to import continental scholars
51:18and from Ireland
51:20also from Wales
51:22these people rubbed shoulders at court with their secular counterparts
51:30from these same places
51:32so you can imagine quite significant groups of people
51:37in lay life and in religious life gathered around Alfred
51:43from that first visit to Rome
51:52he'd always had a vision of a wider world
51:55a kind of European culture
51:59which was a Christian culture
52:01but also a deeply classical culture
52:03was being created
52:06bishops
52:08the aldermen
52:10and even people below that level I think
52:13were being encouraged
52:14to read
52:15or listen to at least
52:17works in Old English
52:19and with them Alfred gave other gifts
52:23small scale
52:25but precious as batches
52:27signs
52:28of
52:29a relationship
52:30between
52:31them and the giver
52:33Alfred
52:34Hi Pat
52:35brought the jewel
52:37I have indeed
52:38great
52:40fantastic
52:41let's just have a look at this
52:43tremendous
52:44that is gorgeous isn't it
52:49gorgeous
52:50it's got this inscription around it hasn't it
52:52yes
52:53Alfred
52:54mech
52:55het
52:56je wirken
52:57Alfred ordered me to be made
52:59and found close to Athelney
53:01so this is a
53:02as personal a piece from his time as you could imagine isn't it
53:06and
53:07and anybody know what the figure is
53:09do you know
53:10there's lots of speculation
53:12some people say it's Christ
53:14right yeah
53:15and the figure of wisdom I've heard
53:17which would be quite suitable
53:18for Alfred wouldn't it
53:20well yes he was a scholar
53:21do we know what it was used for
53:23there's a sort of prongy
53:25thing for a fitting
53:26well I think it was
53:27I think it was used as a pointer
53:29and it would have either had a pointer of ivory or ebony
53:35and he would use it to point when he was teaching
53:40lovely
53:41but in our window he's wearing it in his crown
53:44that's a bit of artistic license I think
53:46so why's the village got this
53:50well it was found in Newton Park
53:53but the original was given to the Ashmolean of course
53:56yes back there yeah
53:57but lovely that East Ling has got
53:59oh we've got a copy
54:00it's got that
54:01but we do guard it very jealously
54:03look at this lovely
54:06floral ornament on the back there
54:10I think it's wonderful
54:12we think we're clever
54:14yes yeah yeah the workmanship's beautiful isn't it
54:17absolutely
54:18yeah
54:19he's giving these these books
54:23which are of the translations that he does
54:26and of course there's an immense amount of wealth and effort
54:29and skill has gone into the making of the book
54:31so it's a very very valuable gift you know
54:34he's giving these to his main monasteries
54:37and he's giving with them a beautiful asto jeweled pointer
54:44which you'd use for following the lines of the manuscript
54:48as you were reading it
54:49with this personal note on saying
54:52Alfred ordered me to be made
54:54this is this is always a reminder of who gave this book
54:57and its and its pointer
54:59and surely he would have given one of these
55:03and there would have been a few of them made
55:05by his goldsmiths accord
55:07he would have given one of them to Athelny
55:09which was the monastery that meant most to him
55:13and by miracle it was found
55:18and has survived
55:34Alfred had secured the survival of his kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons
55:38and he'd bequeathed his successors a dream of one England
55:45he was still only in his late forties
55:49still racked by illness
55:52and he never stopped fighting
55:55in the eight nineties he fought his third war
55:58four years of campaigning from Devon to Essex
56:02and up to the Welsh borders
56:04one battle took place under the Heathrow flight path
56:08a thorny island
56:10for the English war had become a way of life
56:15this was the hardest time says the chronicle
56:21for we were ravaged too by plague
56:23and the best of the king's friends died then
56:26and the best of the king's friends died then
56:30Swithwulf, Bishop of Rochester
56:32and Caelmund, Eldermund
56:36Caelmund, Alderman in Kent
56:38And Edgewolf, the king's marshal.
56:44And I have only named the most distinguished.
56:52The loss of the wartime generation must have hit Alfred hard.
56:57Wasn't 50 yet, but battered, one imagines, by life, war and bad health.
57:04It must have felt time for the next generation.
57:08To come on.
57:14And at this point he's still worrying away on his translation of the Constellation of Philosophy.
57:19It's obviously a text that meant a great deal to him.
57:22He'd already turned it into prose.
57:25But now he does a version in verse.
57:30And in working on it, he reflected on his own life.
57:34This is what he said.
57:38What I set out to do was to virtuously and justly administer the authority given to me.
57:47And to do it with wisdom, for without wisdom, nothing is worthwhile.
57:52It's always been my desire to live honorably and to leave my descendants, my memory, in good works.
58:02For each man, according to the measure of his intelligence, must speak what he can speak, and do what he can do.
58:14Next in the story, Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, and his daughter, the Lady of the Mercians.
58:27On the debatPS Trust
58:39Today, man.
58:41There's no wonder.
58:41Land iskop22, uh...
58:43The next category, as long as he gradually ejerced the work of God,
58:48the human becomes vBL.
58:50And ever since he struggles, he continues to divorce the death ofheimer's attorney,
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