One day Alfred saw his French stepmother reading a roll of parchment on which Latin words were printed by hand in many colors. As the lad admired it, the queen told him she would make him a present of the scroll as soon as he learned to read and understand it. He went right out and coaxed a monk, or priest, to teach him Latin, and he soon became the happy owner of the beautiful parchment.
Learning to read opened a new world to Prince Alfred. He wrote verses and songs for his harp, and began to compose both words and music of hymns to be sung in the cathedral near his father’s palace.
When Alfred was fourteen his father died. Each of his three older brothers became king, one after another, and died within a few years.
Alfred was twenty-two when the last brother died and left him to be king. Some rough people, called Danes, from the north countries across the sea, had landed on the island of Britain, and the Saxons were compelled to give battle to them so as not to be killed or made slaves to those rough Northmen. So Alfred had to fight to keep on being king. When he began to reign, he ruled like all the other kings he had known. His father and brothers had treated the people as if they were made only to work and pay their way, like cattle; so Alfred did the same at first.
The fierce Danes kept coming over in larger numbers. In a hard-fought battle, Alfred was defeated and most of his army was slain. Flying for his life, the young king found a hiding place in the hut of a swineherd, a man who tends hogs. This man knew who Alfred was, but kept the king’s secret from his wife, who thought the stranger was a poor soldier from the Saxon army.
Many stories are told of what the king did while he lived in the hut of this swineherd. These tales have changed so much, all the hundreds of years which have passed since Alfred’s time, that they are called legends. The best known of these is the story of the king and the cakes. Once when the housewife was going out to do some work, she asked him, while he was fixing his bow and arrows, to mind the cakes she had left baking in the ashes of the fireplace. The distracted king’s mind was on higher things than coarse meal cakes. When the woman came in she found them burning. She was so angry that she called Alfred a good-for-nothing beggar, and added that if he could not pay for what she gave him to eat, he ought at least to look after her cakes a little while.
Alfred had the good sense to see his own conduct through the poor woman’s eyes. So, instead of being angry or telling her who he was, he said gently, “I am sorry I was so careless. I will try not to forget again.”
“A soft answer turneth away wrath,” Alfred had read in the roll of Proverbs in his Latin Bible. It may have been during the long months he spent in the home of this shepherd that the humbled king decided to translate the best parts of the Bible into the Saxon language so that the people could read it.
Another story is that Alfred stayed in the hut alone while the family were away fishing. He had only a loaf of bread to last until their return. A beggar came and asked for bread. Alfred broke his little loaf in two, gave the man half, and ate his half with the beggar. The swineherd returned that day with fish enough for a family feast. In the night the beggar of the day before appeared, as an angel, to the captive king, and said that God had seen how Alfred had humbled his heart so that he was now fitted to rule his people wisely and well.
The Danish army was now encamped not far from the king’s hiding place. Encouraged by the vision of the shining pilgrim, Alfred started out to see for himself how strong the enemy were and what they were going to do. So he disguised himself as a wandering musician, playing a harp. He played and sang for the Danish soldiers, and was soon taken before their fierce leader, like David, with his harp, before King Saul. The Danes were so pleased with him and his music that they asked him to stay with them. As soon as he had found out all he wanted to know, he took up his harp and left the camp of the enemy. The Danes invited him to come again.
Hurrying back to the swineherd’s hut, Alfred sent word to the leaders among his people that he was alive and ready to go on with the war against the Danes. The people had been in despair, for they had believed that their brave young king was dead.
The Saxon chiefs came at once and knelt to King Alfred. When the poor woman realized who her guest was, she fell on her knees and begged him to forgive all she had said to him. Alfred lifted her tenderly from the ground, and told her he would reward her and her loyal husband when he was safe on his throne again.
The Danish army was astonished, early one morning, to hear three trumpet blasts, and to see a great army of Saxon soldiers marching to meet them, led by that wandering minstrel! Of course, the Saxons gained the victory and made the Danes promise not to come and attack them again. They agreed, but did not keep their word long. After that, instead of waiting for the Danes to land in Britain, King Alfred fitted up a fleet of ships so that he could go out and fight them on the sea. This has been called “the beginning of the British navy.”
Then Alfred improved the years of peace by making laws which allowed the people more rights and privileges. He invented a simple clock of candles, by which the people could tell the time of day. He rebuilt the towns that had been destroyed in the war and trained his people not only to fight but to till their farms. He made wise laws and did much to educate his subjects by having books translated from the Latin into Anglo-Saxon, the language of the Saxons. Best of all, he translated the Bible into the language of the people. Because of all the acts which taught the people how to make their lives better and happier he is known in history as Alfred the Great. In one of his histories, King Alfred wrote what he tried to do in his own life:
“My will was to live worthily as long as I lived and, after my life, to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works.”
HOW WILLIAM OF NORMANDY CONQUERED A KINGDOM
WHEN the first son was born to Robert, Duke of Normandy, and Arlette, the daughter of a tanner, the nurse laid the day-old baby on the straw carpet of the castle. In those days most of the floors of the houses, whether huts or castles, were of earth or stone, covered with straw which could be cleared out, as from a modern stable, to allow fresh straw to be laid down. When placed on the floor in his little blanket, Baby William reached out and clutched some of the straws so tightly in his small pink fists that one of those who noticed smiled and said, “He will take fast hold on everything he lays his hands on when he grows up.”
When William was seven, Duke Robert, his father, being about to make the voyage to the Holy Land, called some of his nobles together and said, “I am resolved to journey to the place where our Lord Christ died and was buried. But because I know this journey is full of dangers, I would have it settled who should be duke if I should die.”
The nobles and knights took an oath that they would stand by his son William and not let any one keep him from being duke of Normandy. Then Duke Robert sailed away and died during the long voyage.
William was away hunting in a Norman forest when his faithful fool (as they called a sort of clown kept by a king to amuse the court) broke in where he lay asleep and shouted, “Fly, or you will never leave here a living man!” The young duke jumped up, dressed in haste, and mounted his horse, riding through the forest in the moonlight and fording rivers till he came to the castle of a friend who was sure to be faithful to him. This knight and his three sons rode with William to his own castle.
It turned out that a number of the Norman lords who had taken the oath to satisfy Duke Robert were now declaring that they would not serve under the low-born grandson of a tanner. The fool had learned that they were plotting rebellion and the death of his young master.
William, who was now twenty years old, gathered an army of loyal knights and men,