ABSTRACT
Placing King Alfred is, in some ways, easy. There is no difficulty in seeing him as a key member of the family which, in four generations, transformed England. Yet the historian of Alfred must be tormented by the wealth, poverty and imbalance of the sources. It is above all the translations which give historical weight and depth to Alfred and his enterprises. Their autobiographical elements may afford unique insight into the mind of a Dark Age king, even if the arrows of insight have to be winged by the feathers of speculation. It is hard to dissociate the Chronicle, our main narrative source, from the court, not least because of the strong evidence for a fair number of early or very early manuscripts. But the Chronicle is a peculiar production. It is odd that a very high proportion of its Alfredian annals are devoted to continental events (including some unconnected to Viking movements); odd that the annal for 757 (which has made Cynewulf and Cyneheard famous in some circles) should be so disproportionately long; odd that pretty important events, which one might expect to be noted, are not and that surprisingly little is said about the destruction of monasteries.1 Much fruitful analysis has been devoted to the Chronicle, not least by Dr David Howlett, who has argued powerfully that elements which can appear rough or hasty are, in truth, the result of a careful contrivance in ‘biblical style’ with a strong numerological element.2 The striking continental emphasis could be accounted for by a major input from Athelney, with its Old Saxon abbot and Frankish monks.3 The Chronicle’s ‘local’ Somerset information could derive from Athelney rather than from Stenton’s West Country noblemen, with his ‘personal reasons, not now to be discovered’.4
