Asser speaks grandiosely of Alfred's relations with foreign powers, but little definite information is available.

One of the terms of the surrender was that Guthrum convert to Christianity ; and three weeks later the Danish king and 29 of his chief men were baptised at Alfred's court at Aller, near Athelney, with Alfred receiving Guthrum as his spiritual son.

Alfred's burhs ( later termed boroughs ) consisted mainly of massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades.

When that occurred, the Danes rushed back to their boats, which being lighter, with shallower drafts, were freed before Alfred's ships.

The translation was undertaken at Alfred's command by Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, with the king merely furnishing a preface.

Alfred's first translation was of Pope Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, which he prefaced with an introduction explaining why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this one from Latin into English.

Unlike his translation of the Pastoral Care, Alfred here deals very freely with his original and though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to Alfred himself, but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is solely Alfred's and highly characteristic of his style.

Asser in his Life of Alfred claims that Alfred's mother, Osburga, was descended from the Jutes of the Isle of Wight, whom he identifies with the Goths.

Æthelwold disputed the throne with Edward the Elder after Alfred's death in 899.

" However, Janet Nelson thought that his reign has been under-appreciated in modern scholarship, and that he laid the foundations for Alfred's success, finding new as well as traditional answers, and coping more effectively with Scandinavian attacks than most contemporary rulers.

Hence it is possible that Alfred's relationship with the southern Welsh kings led him to hear of Asser.

It is evident from Asser's account that he spent a good deal of time with Alfred: he recounts meeting Alfred's mother-in-law, Eadburh ( who is not the same Eadburh who died as a begger in Pavia ), on many occasions ; and says that he has often seen Alfred hunting.

As a result, and given that Alfred's overlordship of south Wales was recent, it may be that Asser intended the work to acquaint a Welsh readership with Alfred's personal qualities and reconcile them to his rule.

In addition to the Life of King Alfred, Asser is credited by Alfred as one of several scholars who assisted with Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula Pastoralis ( Pastoral Care ).

In 1773 Barrington published an edition of Orosius, with King Alfred's Saxon version, and an English translation with original notes.

She worked with her husband's notes and comments to create the story of a man she had never met, publishing it after Alfred's death.

For the same library he translated in 1854 Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great, with Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius.

The Danes promptly slipped off to Exeter, even deeper into Alfred's kingdom, where they concluded in the autumn of 877 a " firm peace " with Alfred, under terms that entailed their leaving his kingdom and not returning.

She became strongly associated in the 1930s with publicising the plight of German and Austrian Jews and even played a concert with the scientist Albert Einstein ( Alfred's cousin ) in 1934 to raise funds to bring Jewish scientists out of Germany.

He is first recorded in 883, when he made a grant to Berkeley Abbey with the approval of King Alfred of Wessex, showing that he acknowledged Alfred's lordship.

Alfred's School of Engineering ( also autonomously-run with its own dean ) currently has four state-supported programs and two privately-endowed programs.

Guthrum withdrew his army from the western borders facing Alfred's territory and moved eastward before eventually settling in the Kingdom of Guthrum in East Anglia in 879.

The first half is based mainly on the Soliloquies of St Augustine of Hippo, the remainder is drawn from various sources, and contains much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him.

About half of the Life is little more than a translation of part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the years 851 – 887, though Asser adds personal opinions and interpolates information about Alfred's life.

It is often claimed to commemorate King Alfred's victory at the Battle of Eðandun in 878, and while this is not impossible, there is no trace of such a legend before the second half of the eighteenth century.

But in 973 Alfred's great-grandson was crowned King of England and Emperor of Britain at Bath.

The Old English versions of Orosius's Histories against the Pagans and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People are no longer accepted by scholars as Alfred's own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences.

King Alfred's ( Alfred the Great ) translation of Orosius ' history of the world uses Angelcynn (- kin ) to describe England and the English people ; Bede used Angelfolc (- folk ); there are also such forms as Engel, Englan ( the people ), Englaland, and Englisc, all showing i-mutation.

There are also sections such as the support for Alfred's programme of fortification that give the impression of the book's being aimed at an English audience.

Sherborne was made the capital of Wessex, one of the seven Saxon kingdoms of England, and King Alfred's elder brothers King Ethelbert and King Ethelbald are buried in the abbey.

Its origins are thought lie in celebrations following King Alfred's expulsion of the Danes.

Many scholars believe that the fifty Psalms in Old English that are found in the Paris Psalter represent Alfred's translation.

The exact circumstances of Alfred's death are not known, and varying accounts have been published.

In an 11th-century manuscript of King Alfred's account of the voyage from Hedeby to Truso by Wulfstan, held by the British Museum, includes ethnographic information on the medieval Aestii, in the which the terms Esti, Est-mere and Eastland are used.

Solemnly he walked me back to Alfred's house without a word passing between us.

He entered the house in silence, walked into Alfred's room, and closed the door behind him.

I could hear Alfred's voice a few words behind Meltzer's like a counterpoint, punctuated by sobs of sorrow and resignation.

In 1888 Alfred's brother Ludvig died while visiting Cannes and a French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary.

It may also be based on Alfred's later having accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome where he spent some time at the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, around 854 – 855.

When King Æthelwulf died in 858, Wessex was ruled by three of Alfred's brothers in succession, Æthelbald, Æthelbert and Æthelred.

It is possible that this arrangement was sanctioned by Alfred's father, or by the Witan, to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should Æthelred fall in battle.

Given the ongoing Danish invasion and the youth of his nephews, Alfred's succession probably went uncontested.

King Alfred's Tower ( 1772 ) on the supposed site of Egbert's Stone, the mustering place before the Battle of Ethandun.

The Danish fleet was able to defeat Alfred's fleet which may have been weakened in the previous engagement.

The relative peace of the late 880s was marred by the death of Alfred's sister, Æthelswith, who died en route to Rome in 888.

They were overtaken by Alfred's oldest son, Edward, and were defeated in a general engagement at Farnham in Surrey.

At the centre of Alfred's reformed military defence system was a network of fortresses, or burhs, distributed at strategic points throughout the kingdom.

Alfred's burh system posed such a formidable challenge against Viking attack that when the Vikings returned in 892 and successfully stormed a half-made, poorly garrisoned fortress up the Lympne estuary in Kent, the Anglo-Saxons were able to limit their penetration to the outer frontiers of Wessex and Mercia.

Alfred's burghal system was revolutionary in its strategic conception and potentially expensive in its execution.

Alfred's military reorganisation of Wessex consisted of three elements: the building of thirty fortified and garrisoned towns ( burhs ) along the rivers and Roman roads of Wessex ; the creation of a mobile ( horsed ) field force, consisting of his nobles and their warrior retainers, which was divided into two contingents, one of which was always in the field ; and the enhancement of Wessex's seapower through the addition of larger ships to the existing royal fleet.

Characteristically, all of Alfred's innovations were firmly rooted in traditional West Saxon practice, drawing as they did upon the three so-called ‘ common burdens ' of bridge work, fortress repair and service on the king's campaigns that all holders of bookland and royal loanland owed the Crown.

Neither Alfred's reformed fyrd nor his burhs alone would have afforded a sufficient defence against the Vikings ; together, however, they robbed the Vikings of their major strategic advantages: surprise and mobility.

The chronicler flattered his royal patron by boasting that Alfred's ships were not only larger, but swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than either Danish or Frisian ships.

Alfred's ships may have been superior in conception.

In the one recorded naval engagement in the year 896, Alfred's new fleet of nine ships intercepted six Viking ships in the mouth of an unidentified river along the south of England.

Alfred's ships immediately moved to block their escape to the sea.