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Matches 101 to 150 of 10,692

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101 Age: 69 Orr, Willard G (I39811)
 
102 Age: 69 Carper, Frank (I44207)
 
103 Age: 81 Carper, Ethel M (I44214)
 
104 Agni Dagsson, King of the Swedes was the son of Dagr Spaka Dygvason, King of the Swedes.1 Agni Dagsson, King of the Swedes succeeded his father, a powerful and celebrated man, expert, and exercised in all feats.1 King of the Swedes at Uppsala, Sweden.1 He married Skjálf Frostasdóttir, daughter of Frosti of Finland; Captured in marauding expedition.2 Agni Dagsson, King of the Swedes married N. N. (?).1 Agni Dagsson, King of the Swedes married the Finnish princess, Skjalf, whom he'd taken from the hall of her father, Froste, and at his wedding party he took the gold ornament of his ancestor, Visbur, and put it around his neck.1 He died. Now when King Agne had got drank, Skjalv bade him take care of his gold ornament which he had about his neck; therefore he took hold of the ornament, and bound it fast about his neck before he went to sleep. The land-tent stood at the wood side, and a high tree over the tent protected it against the heat of the sun. Now when King Agne was asleep, Skjalv took a noose, and fastened it under the ornament. Thereupon her men threw down the tent-poles, cast the loop of the noose up in the branches of the tree, and hauled upon it, so that the king was hanged close under the branches and died; and Skjalv with her men ran down to their ships, and rowed away.1
. King Agne was buried upon the spot, which was afterwards called Agnefet; and it lies on the east side of the Tauren, and west of Stoksund. 
Dagsson, King of the Swedes Agni (I3547)
 
105 airplane crash Pinick, Thomas Keith (I47458)
 
106 Alabama National Cemetery Elliott, Gerald Franklin (I57016)
 
107 Alanson was the son of Elisha Rittenhouse and Mabel Isabel Miller Rittenhouse.

On Feb. 6, 1819 he married Mary Ellen Sebold, the daughter of Jacob Sebold and Hannah Drake Sebold of Kingwood Twp., Hunterdon Co. Mary was born on Jan. 4, 1799 and died on Sep. 18, 1844.

Alanson and Mary had six children: (Rev.) Ephraim in 1820; Abijah in 1825; Hannah Sebold in 1827; and Elisah, Keturah and Mary, whose birthyears are unknown.

According to Linton Love's website Our Rittenhouse Families:

... The stone at the head [of his burial site] bears the following tribute to his character and worth: "This marble calls to our remembrance a man inclined from his youth to things sacred, an impartial inquirer after truth, an able defender of the Christian faith, a truly pious and devout man, a pattern of charity in all its branches, Alanson Rittenhouse." 
Rittenhouse, Alanson (I42087)
 
108 Albert and Nancy McKeever had eight children: Emma McKeever (February 4, 1881-January 17, 1904), Martha "McKeever" Cranford, Mary "McKeever" Reed, Idell "McKeever" Riley, Lucy "McKeever" Cupps, Edna "McKeever" Whitworth, Allen McKeever, and Edd McKeever.
Albert and Nancy left Arkansas with his Uncle William (Billy) and Aunt Sophia McKeever and moved to Palmer, Texas, in 1899. They, along with Uncle Billy and Aunt Sophia, are buried in Palmer Cemetery near many McKeever relatives. 
McKeever, Albert Monroe (I9489)
 
109 Albert Atto I (Italian: Alberto Azzo) (died 1029) was the son of Oberto II and Railend, widow of Sigfred, Count of Seprio. He was a member of the Obertenghi (or Adalbertini) family.

Albert first appears in the historical record in 1011. On 10 May 1013, he was acting as a missus in Italy. In 1014, he inherited the counties of Luni, Tortona, Genoa, and Milan on his father's death. His holdings were extensive and both feudal and allodial. Albert and his brothers Hugh, Adalbert (IV), and Obizzo all carried the title margrave. Their sister Bertha married Arduin of Italy to ally the Anscarid and Obertenga families. Another sister named Bertha married Ulric Manfred II of Turin. Albert himself married Adelaide, a Salian and relative of Lanfranc, Count of Aucia.

At first, Albert and his brothers supported their brother-in-law Arduin against the Emperor Henry II in the war for the Italian throne. In 1014, he did not oppose Henry's imperial coronation, but after Henry left in May, he sought to aid Arduin. After July, he confiscated Solingen, robbed the church, and assaulted Pavia, Vercelli, and Novara. In 1019, he reconciled with Henry, but in 1022, all four brothers were captured by Henry's forces and Albert submitted, receiving the iudiciaria (right of justice) in Monselice. In Spring 1026, Albert joined Ulric Manfred in defending Pavia from Conrad II.
Albert left one son: Albert Azzo II. 
Azzo, Albert I (I37139)
 
110 Albert I of Brunswick was the second son of Otto the Child, the first Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. When his father died in 1252, he was the oldest surviving son, and took over the rule of the duchy; later his younger brother John joined him. In 1267, the brothers agreed to divide the duchy, which happened in 1269. Albert partitioned the territory while John obtained the right to choose his part. He took the northern half including the region of Lüneburg and the city of Hanover, while Albert received the southern part, including Calenberg, Helmstedt, the Harz mountains and Göttingen. The City of Brunswick was to remain common property of the brothers.

Albert died on August 15, 1279 and is buried at Brunswick Cathedral. He was succeeded by his elder three sons, the younger three joined the Church. 
Albert, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg I (I37091)
 
111 Albia Cemetery Jurrish, Frank (I33742)
 
112 Albright Cemetery Butler, Addie E (I57225)
 
113 Albright Cemetery Politz, Edward (I57232)
 
114 Alexander I (c. 1078 - 23 April 1124), also called Alaxandair mac Maíl Coluim (Modern Gaelic: Alasdair mac Mhaol Chaluim) and nicknamed "The Fierce", was King of the Scots from 1107 to his death.

Life:

Alexander was the fourth son of Malcolm III by his wife Margaret of Wessex, grandniece of Edward the Confessor. Alexander was named for Pope Alexander II.

He was the younger brother of King Edgar, who was unmarried, and his brother's heir presumptive by 1104 (and perhabs earlier). In that year he was the senior layman present at the examination of the remains of Saint Cuthbert at Durham prior to their reinterrment. He held lands in Scotland north of the Forth and in Lothian.

On the death of Edgar in 1107 he succeeded to the Scottish crown; but, in accordance with Edgar's instructions, their brother David was granted an appanage in southern Scotland. Edgar's will granted David the lands of the former kingdom of Strathclyde or Cumbria, and this was apparently agreed in advance by Edgar, Alexander, David and their brother-in-law Henry I of England. However, in 1113, perhaps at Henry's instigation, and with the support of his Anglo-Norman, David demanded, and received, additional lands in Lothian along the Upper Tweed and Teviot. David did not receive the title of king, but of "prince of the Cumbrians", and his lands remained under Alexander's final authority.

The dispute over Upper Tweeddale and Teviotdale does not appear to have damaged relations between Alexander and David, although it was unpopular in some quarters.

A Gaelic poem laments::

It's bad what Malcolm's son has done,
dividing us from Alexander;
he causes, like each king's son before,
the plunder of stable Alba.

The dispute over the eastern marches does not appear to have caused lasting trouble between Alexander and Henry of England. In 1114 he joined Henry on campaign in Wales against Gruffydd ap Cynan of Gwynedd. Alexander's marriage with Henry's illegitimate daughter Sybilla de Normandy may have occurred as early as 1107, or as at late as 1114.

William of Malmesbury's account attacks Sybilla, but the evidence argues that Alexander and Sybilla were a devoted but childless couple and Sybilla was of noteworthy piety. Sybilla died in unrecorded circumstances at Eilean nam Ban (Kenmore on Loch Tay) in July, 1122 and was buried at Dunfermline Abbey. Alexander did not remarry and Walter Bower wrote that he planned an Augustinian Priory at the Eilean nam Ban dedicated to Sybilla's memory, and he may have taken steps to have her venerated.

Alexander had at least one illegitimate child, Máel Coluim mac Alaxandair, who was later to be involved in a revolt against David I in the 1130s. He was imprisoned at Roxburgh for many years afterwards, perhaps until his death some time after 1157.

Alexander was, like his brothers Edgar and David, a notably pious king. He was responsible for foundations at Scone and Inchcolm. His mother's chaplain and hagiographer Thurgot was named Bishop of Saint Andrews (or Cell Rígmonaid) in 1107, presumably by Alexander's order.[2] The case of Thurgot's would-be successor Eadmer shows that Alexander's wishes were not always accepted by the religious community, perhaps because Eadmer had the backing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ralph d'Escures, rather than Thurstan of York. Alexander also patronised Saint Andrews, granting lands intended for an Augustinian Priory, which may have been the same as that intended to honour his wife.

For all his religiosity, Alexander was not remembered as a man of peace. John of Fordun says of him:

"Now the king was a lettered and godly man; very humble and amiable towards the clerics and regulars, but terrible beyond measure to the rest of his subjects; a man of large heart, exerting himself in all things beyond his strength."

He manifested the terrible aspect of his character in his reprisals in the Mormaerdom of Moray. Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland says that Alexander was holding court at Invergowrie when he was attacked by "men of the Isles". Walter Bower says the attackers were from Moray and Mearns. Alexander pursued them north, to "Stockford" in Ross (near Beauly) where he defeated them. This, says Wyntoun, is why he was named the "Fierce". The dating of this is uncertain, as are his enemies' identity. However, in 1116 the Annals of Ulster report: "Ladhmann son of Domnall, grandson of the king of Scotland, was killed by the men of Moray." The king referred to is Alexander's father, Malcolm III, and Domnall was Alexander's half brother. The Mormaerdom or Kingdom of Moray was ruled by the family of Macbeth (Mac Bethad mac Findláich) and Lulach (Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin); not overmighty subjects, but a family who had ruled Alba within little more than a lifetime. Who the Mormaer or King was at this time is not known, it may have been Óengus of Moray or his father, whose name is not known. As for the Mearns, the only known Mormaer of Mearns, Máel Petair, had murdered Alexander's half-brother Duncan II (Donnchad mac Maíl Coluim) in 1094.

Alexander died in April 1124 at his court at Stirling; his brother David, probably the acknowledged heir since the death of Sybilla, succeeded him.

Fictional portrayals:

Alexander I has been depicted in a fantasy novel.

Pater Nostras Canis Dirus: The Garrison Effect (2010). Alexander is depicted troubled by his lack of direct heirs, having no child with his wife Sybilla of Normandy. He points that his father-in-law Henry I of England is asking them for a grandson. 
Scotland, King Of Scots Alexander I of (I38036)
 
115 Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward of Scotland was the son of Walter Stewart, 3rd High Steward of Scotland and Beatrix of Angus. He was born circa 1214. He died circa 1283.

He gained the title of 4th High Steward of Scotland.

he participated in the Crusades 'in early life' (possible together with his brother John and brother-in-lawm Patrick Earl of Dunbar, both of whom dies on the Crusade 1248-49).

He was one of the regents of Scotland during the minority of Alexander III, 1255

Commander of the right wing against Haakon of Norway, Battle of Largs, 2 October 1263.
 
Stewart, 4th High Stewart Of Scotland Alexander (I13592)
 
116 Alexis Cemetery Lafferty, John Booth (I34552)
 
117 Alexis Cemetery Brownlee, Addie A (I34553)
 
118 Alexis Cemetery McKeague, John Thomas Sr (I34589)
 
119 Alexis Cemetery Smith, Rosa Evelyn (I34590)
 
120 Alexis Cemetery McKeague, John Robert (I34591)
 
121 Alexis Cemetery Lafferty, George B (I34595)
 
122 Alexis Cemetery Nelson, Hazel Mildred (I34605)
 
123 Alfonso III (c. 848-20 December 910), called the Great, was the king of León, Galicia and Asturias from 866 until his death. He was the son and successor of Ordoño I. According to some sources he was the first be called "Emperor of Spain", and he may have purchased a former "imperial crown". He was also titled "Prince of all Galicia" (Princeps totius Galletiae).

Little is known about Alfonso except the bare facts of his reign and of his comparative success in consolidating the kingdom henceforth known as "of Galicia" or "of Oviedo", during the weakness of the Umayyad princes of Córdoba. He fought against and gained numerous victories over the Muslims of al-Andalus, nonetheless his kingdom was always inferior to that of the Cordobans, and he was thus forced to pay them tribute.

He defeated a Basque rebellion in 867 and, much later, a Galician one as well. He conquered Oporto and Coimbra in 868 and 878 respectively. In about 869, he formed an alliance with the Kingdom of Pamplona, and solidified this link by marrying Jimena, who is thought to have been daughter of king García Íñiguez, or less likely, a member of the Jiménez dynasty, and also married his sister Leodegundia to a prince of Pamplona.

He ordered the creation of three chronicles in which was presented the theory that the kingdom of Asturias was the rightful successor of the old Visigothic kingdom. He was also a patron of the arts, like his grandfather before him. He built the church of Santo Adriano de Tuñón. According to a letter of disputed authenticity dated to 906, the Epistola Adefonsi Hispaniae regis, Alfonso arranged to purchase an "imperial crown" from the cathedral of Tours.

Alfonso died in Zamora, probably in 910. Upon his death his kingdom was divided among his three sons by Jimena. The eldest son, García, became king of León but died shortly after in 914 without an heir. The second son, Ordoño, reigned in Galicia from 910 and León after García's death. The youngest son, Fruela, received Asturias with Oviedo as his capital. When Ordoño died his children were too young to ascend and the territory of Alfonso was once again united under Fruela, but the latter did not enjoy his joint monarchy for long as he died the next year. Ordoño's eldest son, Alfonso, succeeded him. 
León, King of León, Galicia and Asturias Alfonso III of (I37410)
 
124 Alfonso V (994-1028), called the Noble, was King of León from 999 to 1028. He was the son of Bermudo II by his second wife Elvira García of Castile. The Abbot Oliva called him "Emperor of Spain".

Because of his youth at his father's death, his mother acted as a regent. She retired in 1007 and became a nun. He began the work of reorganizing the Christian kingdom of the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula after a most disastrous period of civil war and Arab inroads. Enough is known of him to justify the belief that he had some of the qualities of a soldier and a statesman.

His name, and that of his wife Elvira Mendes (sometimes Geloria Mendes), are associated with the grant of the first franchises of León (1017). He was killed by an arrow while besieging the town of Viseu in northern Portugal, then held by the Muslims. 
León, King of León Alfonso V of (I37405)
 
125 Alfonso VI (before June, 1040 - June 29/July 1, 1109), nicknamed the Brave (El Bravo) or the Valiant, was King of León from 1065, King of Castile and de facto King of Galicia from 1072, and self-proclaimed "Emperor of all Spain". After the conquest of Toledo he was also self-proclaimed victoriosissimo rege in Toleto, et in Hispania et Gallecia. Much romance has gathered around his name.

Accession:

As the middle of three sons of King Ferdinand I of León and Sancha of León, Alfonso was allotted León when the kingdom was divided following his father's death, while Castile was given to his elder brother Sancho, Galicia to younger brother García, and sisters Urraca and Elvira given the cities of Zamora and Toro respectively. Each of the brothers was also assigned a sphere of influence among the Taifa states. Alfonso appears to have taken the first step in violating this division, in 1068 invading the Galician client Taifa of Badajoz and extorting tribute. In response, Sancho attacked and defeated Alfonso at Llantada but three years later in 1071 they joined forces against García. Sancho over-marched Alfonso's León to conquer García's northern lands, while Alfonso himself is found issuing charters in the southern part of the Galician realm. García fled to taifa Seville, and the remaining brothers then turned on each other. This conflict culminated in the Battle of Golpejera in early January, 1072. Sancho proved victorious and Alfonso himself was forced to flee to his client Taifa of Toledo. Later that year as Sancho was mopping up the last of the resistance, besieging his sister Urraca at Zamora in October, he was assassinated, opening the way for Alfonso to return to claim Sancho's crown. García, induced to return from exile, was imprisoned by Alfonso for life, leaving Alfonso in uncontested control of the reunited territories of their father. In recognition of this and his role as the preeminent Christian monarch on the peninsula, in 1077 Alfonso proclaimed himself "Emperor of all Spain".

In the cantar de gesta The Lay of the Cid, he plays the part attributed by medieval poets to the greatest kings, and to Charlemagne himself. He is alternately the oppressor and the victim of heroic and self-willed nobles - the idealized types of the patrons for whom the jongleurs and troubadours sang. He is the hero of a cantar de gesta which, like all but a very few of the early Spanish songs, like the cantar of Bernardo del Carpio and the Infantes of Lara, exists now only in the fragments incorporated in the chronicle of Alfonso the Wise or in ballad form.

His flight from the monastery of Sahagún (Safagún in Leonese language), where his brother Sancho endeavoured to imprison him, his chivalrous friendship for his host Almamun of Toledo, caballero aunque moro, "a knight although a Moor", the passionate loyalty of his vassal, Pero (Pedro) Ansúrez, and his brotherly love for his sister Urraca of Zamora, may owe something to the poet who took him as a hero.

They are the answer to the poet of the nobles who represented the king as having submitted to taking a degrading oath at the hands of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid) to deny intervention in his brother's death in the church of Santa Gadea at Burgos, and as having then persecuted the brave man who defied him.

Strong fighter:

When every allowance is made, Alfonso VI stands out as a strong man fighting as a king whose interest was law and order, and who was the leader of the nation in the reconquest. He impressed himself on the Arabs as a very fierce and astute enemy, but as a keeper of his word. A story of Muslim origin, which is probably no more historical than the oath of Santa Gadea, tells of how he allowed himself to be tricked by Ibn Ammar, the favourite of Al Mutamid, the King of Seville. They played chess for an extremely beautiful table and set of men, belonging to Ibn Ammar. Table and men were to go to the king if he won. If Ibn Ammar gained he was to name the stake. The latter did win and demanded that the Christian king should spare Seville. Alfonso kept his word.

Whatever truth may lie behind the romantic tales of Christian and Muslim, we know that Alfonso represented the two great influences then shaping the character and civilization of Hispania.

Alfonso showed a greater degree of continental integration than his predecessors. The marital practices of the Iberian royalty had been largely endogamous, previously limiting choice of partners to the peninsula and Gascony, but Alfonso married French and Italian wives, while marrying daughters to French princes and an Italian king. His second marriage was arranged, in part, through the influence of the French Cluniac Order, and Alfonso is said to have introduced them into Iberia, established them in Sahagun and choosing a French Cluniac, Bernard, as the first Archbishop of Toledo after its 1085 conquest. He also drew his kingdom nearer to the Papacy, a move which brought French crusaders to aid him in the reconquest, and it was Alfonso's decision which established the Roman ritual in place of the old missal of Saint Isidore - the Mozarabic rite.

On the other hand he was very open to Arabic influence. He protected the Muslims among his subjects and struck coins with inscriptions in Arabic letters. He also admitted to his court and to his bed the refugee Muslim princess Zaida of Seville.
Alfonso was defeated on October 23, 1086, at the battle of Sagrajas, at the hands of Yusuf ibn Tashfin, and Abbad III al-Mu'tamid, and was severely wounded in the leg.

Marriages and children:

Alfonso married at least five times and had two mistresses and a fiancée:

In 1067, two brothers from Iberia are said to have competed for the hand of Agatha, one of the daughters of William I of England and Matilda of Flanders and formerly fiancee of Harold Godwinson. Alfonso proved successful, and was betrothed to Agatha. A nun at the time, Agatha is said to have prayed for death rather than being forced to marry Alphonso, and she died before the marriage could take place.

In 1069, Alfonso married Agnes of Aquitaine, daughter of William VIII of Aquitaine and his second wife Mateoda. They last appear together in May 1077, and then Alfonso appears alone. This suggests that she had died, although Orderic Vitalis reports that in 1109 Alfonso's 'relict' Agnes remarried to Elias I of Maine, leading some to speculate that Alfonso and Agnes had divorced due to consanguinity. It seems more likely that Orderic gave the wrong name to Alfonso's widow, Beatrice. Agnes and Alfonso had no children.
Apparently between his first and second marriages he formed a liaison with Jimena Muñoz, a "most noble" (nobilissima) concubine "derived from royalty" (real generacion). She appears to have been put aside, given land in Ulver, at the time of Alfonso's remarriage. By her Alfonso had two illegitimate daughters, Elvira and Teresa.

His second wife, who he married by May 1080, was Constance of Burgundy, daughter of Robert I, Duke of Burgundy. This marriage initially faced papal opposition, apparently due to her kinship with Agnes. Her tenure as queen consort brought significant Cluniac influences into the kingdom. She died in September or October, 1093, the mother of Alfonso's eldest legitimate daughter Urraca, and of five other children who died in infancy.

Either before or shortly after Constance's death, Alfonso formed a liaison with a second mistress, Zaida of Seville, said by Iberian Muslim sources to be daughter-in-law of Al Mutamid, the Muslim King of Seville. She fled the fall of Seville for Alfonso's kingdom in 1091, and soon became his lover, having by him Alfonso's only son, Sancho, who, though illegitimate, was apparently not born of an adulterous relationship, and hence born after the death of Constance. He would be named his father's heir. Several modern sources have suggested that Zaida, baptised under the name of Isabel, is identical with Alfonso's later wife, Queen Isabel (or that she was a second queen named Isabel whom he married in succession to the first). Zaida/Isabel died in childbirth, but the date is unknown, and it is unclear whether the child being delivered was Sancho, an additional illegitimate child, otherwise unknown, or legitimate daughter Elvira (if Zaida was identical to Queen Isabel).

By April 1095, Alfonso married Bertha. Chroniclers report her as being from Tuscany, Lombardy, or alternatively, say she was French. Several theories have been put forward regarding her origin. Based on political considerations, proposals make her daughter of William I, Count of Burgundy or of Amadeus II of Savoy. She had no children and died in late 1099 (Alfonso first appears without her in mid-January 1100).

Within months, by May 1100, Alfonso again remarried, to Isabel, having by her two daughters, Sancha, (wife of Rodrigo González de Lara), and Elvira, (who married Roger II of Sicily). A non-contemporary tomb inscription says she was daughter of a "king Louis of France", but this is chronologically impossible. It has been speculated that she was of Burgundian origin, but others conclude that Alfonso married his former mistress, Zaida, who had been baptized as Isabel. (In a novel twist, Reilly suggested that there were two successive queens named Isabel: first the French (Burgundian) Isabel, mother of Sancha and Elvira, with Alfonso only later marrying his mistress Zaida (Isabel), after the death of or divorce from the first Isabel.) Alfonso was again widowed in mid-1107.

By May 1108, Alfonso married his last wife, Beatrice. She, as widow of Alfonso, is said to have returned home to France, but nothing else is known of her origin unless she is the woman Orderic named as "Agnes, daughter of William, Duke of Poitou", who as relict of Alfonso, (Agnetem, filiam Guillelmi, Pictavorum ducis, relictam Hildefonsi senioris, Galliciae regis), remarried to Elias of Maine. If this is the case, she is likely daughter of William IX of Aquitaine and niece of Alfonso's first wife. Beatrice had no children by Alfonso.

One other woman was reported by later sources to have been Alfonso's lover. The historian Abu Bakr Ibn al Sayraff, writing before 1161, stated that Alfonso abandoned Christianity for Zoroastrianism and had carnal relations with his sister Urraca, but then repented and was absolved, making pilgrimages to holy sites as penance. This has been followed by some later historians but others dismiss it as propaganda or misunderstanding.

Alfonso's designated successor, his son Sancho, was slain after being routed at the Battle of Uclés in 1108, making Alfonso's eldest legitimate daughter, the widowed Urraca as his heir. In order to strengthen her position as his successor, Alfonso began negotiations for her to marry her second cousin, Alfonso I of Aragon and Navarre, but died before the marriage could take place, Urraca succeeding.
 
Castile, Emperor of All Spain Alfonso VI of León And (I37391)
 
126 Alfred the Great (Old English: Ælfred, Ælfr?d, "elf counsel"; 848/849 - 26 October 899) was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.

Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons". Details of his life are described in a work by the 10th century Welsh scholar and bishop Asser. Alfred was a learned man who encouraged education and improved his kingdom's legal system and military structure. He is regarded as a saint by some Catholics, but has never been officially canonized. The Anglican Communion venerates him as a Christian hero, with a feast day of 26 October, and he may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches.

Childhood:

Alfred was born in the village of Wanating, now Wantage, Oxfordshire. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, by his first wife, Osburga.

At the age of five years, Alfred is said to have been sent to Rome where, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he was confirmed by Pope Leo IV who "anointed him as king". Victorian writers interpreted this as an anticipatory coronation in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of Wessex. However, his succession could not have been foreseen at the time, as Alfred had three living elder brothers. A letter of Leo IV shows that Alfred was made a "consul"; a misinterpretation of this investiture, deliberate or accidental, could explain later confusion. 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. On their return from Rome in 856, Æthelwulf was deposed by his son Æthelbald. With civil war looming, the magnates of the realm met in council to hammer out a compromise. Æthelbald would retain the western shires (i.e., traditional Wessex), and Æthelwulf would rule in the east. King Æthelwulf died in 858; meanwhile Wessex was ruled by three of Alfred's brothers in succession.

Bishop Asser tells the story of how as a child Alfred won a prize of a volume of poetry in English, offered by his mother to the first of her children able to memorize it. This story may be true,[says who?] or it may be a myth intended to illustrate the young Alfred's love of learning.[original research?] Legend also has it that the young Alfred spent time in Ireland seeking healing. Alfred was troubled by health problems throughout his life. It is thought that he may have suffered from Crohn's disease. Statues of Alfred in Winchester and Wantage portray him as a great warrior. Evidence suggests he was not physically strong, and though not lacking in courage, he was more noted for his intellect than a warlike character.

Under Æthelred:

During the short reigns of the older two of his three elder brothers, Æthelbald of Wessex and Æthelbert of Wessex, Alfred is not mentioned. However, his public life began with the accession of his third brother, Æthelred of Wessex, in 866. It is during this period that Bishop Asser applied to him the unique title of "secundarius", which may indicate a position akin to that of the Celtic tanist, a recognised successor closely associated with the reigning monarch. 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. The arrangement of crowning a successor as royal prince and military commander is well known among other Germanic tribes, such as the Swedes and Franks, to whom the Anglo-Saxons were closely related.

In 868, Alfred is recorded as fighting beside Æthelred in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the invading Danes out of the adjoining Kingdom of Mercia. For nearly two years, Wessex was spared attacks because Alfred paid the Vikings to leave him alone. However, at the end of 870, the Danes arrived in his homeland. The year which followed has been called "Alfred's year of battles". Nine engagements were fought with varying outcomes, though the place and date of two of these battles have not been recorded. In Berkshire, a successful skirmish at the Battle of Englefield on 31 December 870 was followed by a severe defeat at the siege and Battle of Reading on 5 January 871; then, four days later, Alfred won a brilliant victory at the Battle of Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs, possibly near Compton or Aldworth. Alfred is particularly credited with the success of this latter battle. However, later that month, on 22 January, the English were defeated at the Battle of Basing and, on the 22 March at the Battle of Merton (perhaps Marden in Wiltshire or Martin in Dorset), in which Æthelred was killed. The two unidentified battles may have occurred in between.

King at war:

Early struggles, defeat and flight

In April 871, King Æthelred died, and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex and the burden of its defence, despite the fact that Æthelred left two under-age sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold. This was in accordance with the agreement that Æthelred and Alfred had made earlier that year in an assembly at Swinbeorg. The brothers had agreed that whichever of them outlived the other would inherit the personal property that King Æthelwulf in his will had left jointly to his sons. The deceased's sons would receive only whatever property and riches their father had settled upon them and whatever additional lands their uncle had acquired. The unstated premise was that the surviving brother would be king. Given the ongoing Danish invasion and the youth of his nephews, Alfred's succession probably went uncontested. Tensions between Alfred and his nephews, however, would arise later in his reign.

While he was busy with the burial ceremonies for his brother, the Danes defeated the English in his absence at an unnamed spot, and then again in his presence at Wilton in May. The defeat at Wilton smashed any remaining hope that Alfred could drive the invaders from his kingdom. He was forced, instead, to ‘make peace’ with them. The sources do not tell what the terms of the peace were. Bishop Asser claimed that the 'pagans' agreed to vacate the realm and made good their promise; and, indeed, the Viking army did withdraw from Reading in the autumn of 871 to take up winter quarters in Mercian London. Although not mentioned by Asser or by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Alfred probably also paid the Vikings cash to leave, much as the Mercians were to do in the following year. Hoards dating to the Viking occupation of London in 871/2 have been excavated at Croydon, Gravesend, and Waterloo Bridge; these finds hint at the cost involved in making peace with the Vikings. For the next five years, the Danes occupied other parts of England. However, in 876 under their new leader, Guthrum, the Danes slipped past the English army and attacked and occupied Wareham in Dorset. Alfred blockaded them but was unable to take Wareham by assault. Accordingly, he negotiated a peace which involved an exchange of hostages and oaths, which the Danes swore on a "holy ring" associated with the worship of Thor. The Danes, however, broke their word and, after killing all the hostages, slipped away under cover of night to Exeter in Devon. There, Alfred blockaded them, and with a relief fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes were forced to submit. They withdrew to Mercia, but, in January 878, made a sudden attack on Chippenham, a royal stronghold in which Alfred had been staying over Christmas, "and most of the people they killed, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band made his way by wood and swamp, and after Easter he made a fort at Athelney in the marshes of Somerset, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe". From his fort at Athelney, an island in the marshes near North Petherton, Alfred was able to mount an effective resistance movement, rallying the local militias from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire.

A popular legend, originating from 12th century chronicles, tells how when he first fled to the Somerset Levels, Alfred was given shelter by a peasant woman who, unaware of his identity, left him to watch some cakes she had left cooking on the fire. Preoccupied with the problems of his kingdom, Alfred accidentally let the cakes burn.

870 was the low-water mark in the history of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. With all the other kingdoms having fallen to the Vikings, Wessex alone was still resisting.

Counterattack and victory

In the seventh week after Easter [4-10 May 878], around Whitsuntide, Alfred rode to ‘Egbert's Stone’ east of Selwood, where he was met by "all the people of Somerset and of Wiltshire and of that part of Hampshire which is on this side of the sea [that is, west of Southampton Water], and they rejoiced to see him". Alfred’s emergence from his marshland stronghold was part of a carefully planned offensive that entailed raising the fyrds of three shires. This meant not only that the king had retained the loyalty of ealdormen, royal reeves and king’s thegns (who were charged with levying and leading these forces), but that they had maintained their positions of authority in these localities well enough to answer Alfred’s summons to war. Alfred’s actions also suggest a finely honed system of scouts and messengers.[citation needed] Alfred won a decisive victory in the ensuing Battle of Ethandun, which may have been fought near Westbury, Wiltshire. He then pursued the Danes to their stronghold at Chippenham and starved them into submission. 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. The "unbinding of the chrism" took place with great ceremony eight days later at the royal estate at Wedmore in Somerset, after which Guthrum fulfilled his promise to leave Wessex. There is no contemporary evidence that Alfred and Guthrum agreed upon a formal treaty at this time; the so-called Treaty of Wedmore is an invention of modern historians. The Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, preserved in Old English in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Manuscript 383), and in a Latin compilation known as Quadripartitus, was negotiated later, perhaps in 879 or 880, when King Ceolwulf II of Mercia was deposed. That treaty divided up the kingdom of Mercia. By its terms the boundary between Alfred’s and Guthrum’s kingdoms was to run up the River Thames, to the River Lea; follow the Lea to its source (near Luton); from there extend in a straight line to Bedford; and from Bedford follow the River Ouse to Watling Street. In other words, Alfred succeeded to Ceolwulf’s kingdom, consisting of western Mercia; and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged kingdom of East Anglia (henceforward known as the Danelaw). By terms of the treaty, moreover, Alfred was to have control over the Mercian city of London and its mints - at least for the time being. The disposition of Essex, held by West Saxon kings since the days of Egbert, is unclear from the treaty, though, given Alfred’s political and military superiority, it would have been surprising if he had conceded any disputed territory to his new godson.

The quiet years; Restoration of London:

With the signing of the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, an event most commonly held to have taken place around 880 when Guthrum’s people began settling East Anglia, Guthrum was neutralized as a threat. In conjunction with this agreement an army of Danish left the island and sailed to Ghent. Alfred however was still forced to contend with a number of Danish threats. A year later in 881 Alfred fought a small sea battle against four Danish ships “On the high seas”. Two of the ships were destroyed and the others surrendered to Alfred’s forces. Similar small skirmishes with independent Viking raiders would have occurred for much of the period as they had for decades.

In the year 883, though there is some debate over the year, King Alfred because of his support and his donation of alms to Rome received a number of gifts from the Pope Marinus. Among these gifts was reputed to be a piece of the true cross, a true treasure for the devout Saxon king. According to Asser because of Pope Marinus’ friendship with King Alfred the pope granted an exemption to any Anglo-Saxons residing within Rome from tax or tribute.

After the signing of the treaty with Guthrum, Alfred was spared any large scale conflicts for some time. Despite this relative peace the king was still forced to deal with a number of Danish raids and incursions. Among these was a raid taking place in Kent, an allied country in Southeast England during the year 885, quite possibly the largest raid since the battles with Guthrum. Asser’s account of the raid places the Danish raiders at the Saxon city of Rochester, where they built a temporary fortress in order to besiege the city. In response to incursion Alfred led an Anglo-Saxon force against the Danes who, instead of engaging the army of Wessex, fled to their beached ships and sailed to another part of Britain. The retreating Danish force supposedly left Britain the following summer.
Not long after the failed Danish raid in Kent Alfred dispatched his fleet to East Anglia. The purpose of this expedition is debated, though Asser claims that it was for the sake of plunder. After traveling up the River Stour, the fleet was met by Danish vessels that numbered 13 or 16 (sources vary on the number) and a battle ensued. The Anglo-Saxon Fleet emerged victorious and as Huntingdon accounts,“laden with spoils.” The victorious fleet was then caught unaware when attempting to leave the River Stour and was attacked by a Danish force at the mouth of the river. The Danish fleet was able to defeat Alfred's fleet which may have been weakened in the previous engagement.

A year later in 886 Alfred reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again. Alfred entrusted the city to the care of his son-in law Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia. The restoration of London progressed through the later half of the 880’s and is believed to have revolved around a new street plan, added fortifications in addition to the existing Roman walls, and some believe the construction of matching fortifications on the South bank of the River Thames. This is also the time period almost all chroniclers agree the Saxon people of pre-unification England submitted to Alfred. This was not, however, the point in which Alfred came to be known as King of England; in fact he would never adopt the title for himself. In truth the power which Alfred wielded over the English peoples at this time seemed to stem largely from the military might of the West Saxons, Alfred’s political connections having the ruler of Mercia as his son-in-law, and Alfred’s keen administration talents.

Between the restoration of London and the resumption of large scale Danish attacks in the early 890’s Alfred’s reign was rather uneventful. The relative peace of the late 880’s was marred by the death of Alfred's sister, Æthelswith, who died en route to Rome in 888. In the same year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelred also passed away. One year later Guthrum, or Athelstan by his baptized name, Alfred’s former enemy and king of East Anglia died and was buried in Hadleigh, Suffolk. Guthrum’s passing marked a change in the political sphere Alfred dealt with. Guthrum’s death created a power vacuum which would stir up other power-hungry warlords eager to take his place in the following years. The quiet years of Alfred’s life were coming to a close, and war was on the horizon.

Further Viking attacks repelled:

After another lull, in the autumn of 892 or 893, the Danes attacked again. Finding their position in mainland Europe precarious, they crossed to England in 330 ships in two divisions. They entrenched themselves, the larger body at Appledore, Kent, and the lesser, under Hastein, at Milton, also in Kent. The invaders brought their wives and children with them, indicating a meaningful attempt at conquest and colonisation. Alfred, in 893 or 894, took up a position from which he could observe both forces. While he was in talks with Hastein, the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck northwestwards. They were overtaken by Alfred's oldest son, Edward, and were defeated in a general engagement at Farnham in Surrey. They took refuge on an island in the Hertfordshire Colne, where they were blockaded and were ultimately forced to submit. The force fell back on Essex and, after suffering another defeat at Benfleet, coalesced with Hastein's force at Shoebury.

Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed stronghold on the North Devon shore. Alfred at once hurried westward and raised the Siege of Exeter. The fate of the other place is not recorded. Meanwhile, the force under Hastein set out to march up the Thames Valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their friends in the west. But they were met by a large force under the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wiltshire and Somerset, and forced to head off to the northwest, being finally overtaken and blockaded at Buttington. Some identify this with Buttington Tump at the mouth of the River Wye, others with Buttington near Welshpool. An attempt to break through the English lines was defeated. Those who escaped retreated to Shoebury. Then, after collecting reinforcements, they made a sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade, but contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the neighbourhood. Early in 894 (or 895), want of food obliged the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of this year and early in 895 (or 896), the Danes drew their ships up the River Thames and River Lea and fortified themselves twenty miles (32 km) north of London. A direct attack on the Danish lines failed but, later in the year, Alfred saw a means of obstructing the river so as to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The Danes realised that they were outmanoeuvred. They struck off north-westwards and wintered at Cwatbridge near Bridgnorth. The next year, 896 (or 897), they gave up the struggle. Some retired to Northumbria, some to East Anglia. Those who had no connections in England withdrew back to the continent.

Military reorganisation:

Wessex's history of failures preceding his success in 878 emphasized to Alfred that the traditional system of battle he had inherited played to the Danes' advantage. While both the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes attacked settlements to seize wealth and other resources, they employed very different strategies. In their raids, the Anglo-Saxons traditionally preferred to attack head-on by assembling their forces in a shield wall, advancing against their target and overcoming the oncoming wall marshaled against them in defense. In contrast, the Danes preferred to choose easy targets, mapping cautious forays designed to avoid risking all their accumulated plunder with high-stake attacks for more. Alfred determined their strategy was to launch smaller scaled attacks from a secure and reinforced defensible base which they could retreat to should their raiders meet strong resistance. These bases were prepared in advance, often by capturing an estate and augmenting its defenses with surrounding ditches, ramparts and palisades. Once inside the fortification, Alfred realized, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter attack as the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned.

The means by which they marshaled the forces to defend against marauders also left the Anglo-Saxons vulnerable to the Vikings. It was only after the raids were underway that a call went out to landowners to gather men for battle, and large regions could be devastated before the newly assembled army arrived. And although the landowners were obliged to the king to supply these men when called, during the attacks in 878, many of them opportunistically abandoned their king and collaborated with Guthrum.
With these lessons in mind, Alfred capitalized on the relatively peaceful years immediately following his victory at Ethandrun by focusing on an ambitious restructuring of his kingdom's military defenses. When the Viking raids resumed in 892, Alfred was better prepared to confront them with a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons, and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries.

Burghal system:

At the center of Alfred's reformed military defence system was a network of fortresses, or burhs, distributed at strategic points throughout the kingdom. There were thirty-three total spaced approximately 30 kilometres (20 mi) distant, enabling the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a single day. Alfred's burhs, (later termed boroughs), consisted mainly of massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades. The size of the burhs ranged from tiny outposts such as Pilton to large fortifications in established towns, the largest at Winchester. Many of the burhs were twin towns that straddled a river and connected by a fortified bridge, like those built by Charles the Bald a generation before. The double-burh blocked passage on the river, forcing Viking ships to navigate under a garrisoned bridge lined with men armed with stones, spears, or arrows. Other burhs were sited near fortified royal villas allowing the king better control over his strongholds.

This network of well-garrisoned burhs posed significant obstacles to Viking invaders, especially those laden with booty. The system threatened Viking routes and communications making it far more dangerous for the Viking raiders. However the Vikings lacked both the equipment necessary to undertake a siege against the burh and a developed doctrine of siegecraft, having tailored their methods of fighting to rapid strikes and unimpeded retreats to well defended fortifications. The only means left to them was to starve the burh into submission, but this allowed the king time to send assistance with his mobile field army or garrisons from neighbouring burhs. In such cases, the Vikings were extremely vulnerable to pursuit by the king's joint military forces. 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. His contemporary biographer Asser wrote that many nobles balked at the new demands placed upon them even though they were for "the common needs of the kingdom". The cost of building the burhs was great in itself, but this paled before the cost of upkeep for these fortresses and the maintenance of their standing garrisons. A remarkable early tenth-century document, known as the Burghal Hidage, provides a formula for determining how many men were needed to garrison a borough, based on one man for every 5.5 yards (5 meters) of wall. This calculates to a total of 27,071 soldiers needed system wide, or approximately one in four of all the free men in Wessex.

Reconstituted fyrd:

Over the last two decades of his reign, Alfred undertook a radical reorganisation of the military institutions of his kingdom, strengthened the West Saxon economy through a policy of monetary reform and urban planning and strove to win divine favour by resurrecting the literary glories of earlier generations of Anglo-Saxons. Alfred pursued these ambitious programmes to fulfil, as he saw it, his responsibility as king. This justified the heavy demands he made upon his subjects' labour and finances. It even excused the expropriation of strategically located Church lands. Recreating the fyrd into a standing army, ringing Wessex with some thirty garrisoned fortified towns, and constructing new and larger ships for the royal fleet were costly endeavours that provoked resistance from noble and peasant alike. But they paid off. When the Vikings returned in force in 892 they found a kingdom defended by a standing, mobile field army and a network of garrisoned fortresses that commanded its navigable rivers and Roman roads.

Alfred analysed the defects of the military system that he had inherited and implemented changes to remedy them. 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. Each element of the system was meant to remedy defects in the West Saxon military establishment exposed by the Viking invasions. If under the existing system he could not assemble forces quickly enough to intercept mobile Viking raiders, the obvious answer was to have a standing field force. If this entailed transforming the West Saxon fyrd from a sporadic levy of king's men and their retinues into a mounted standing army, so be it. If his kingdom lacked strongpoints to impede the progress of an enemy army, he would build them. If the enemy struck from the sea, he would counter them with his own naval power. 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. Where Alfred revealed his genius was in designing the field force and burhs to be parts of a coherent military system. 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.

Administration and taxation:

To obtain the needed garrison troops and workers to build and maintain the burhs' defences, Alfred regularised and vastly expanded the existing (and, one might add, quite recent) obligation of landowners to provide ‘fortress work’ on the basis of the hidage assessed upon their lands. The allotments of the Burghal Hidage represent the creation of administrative districts for the support of the burhs. The landowners attached to Wallingford, for example, were responsible for producing and feeding 2,400 men, the number sufficient for maintaining 9,900 feet (3 km) of wall. Each of the larger burhs became the centre of a territorial district of considerable size, carved out of the neighbouring countryside in order to support the town. In one sense, Alfred conceived nothing truly new here. The shires of Wessex went back at least to the reign of King Ine, who probably also imposed a hidage assessment upon each for food rents and other services owed the Crown.

English navy:

Alfred also tried his hand at naval design. In 896, he ordered the construction of a small fleet, perhaps a dozen or so longships, that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of Viking warships. This was not, as the Victorians asserted, the birth of the English Navy. Wessex possessed a royal fleet before this. King Athelstan of Kent and Ealdorman Ealhhere had defeated a Viking fleet in 851, capturing nine ships, and Alfred himself had conducted naval actions in 882. But, clearly, the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and probably Alfred himself regarded 897 as marking an important development in the naval power of Wessex. 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. (It is probable that, under the classical tutelage of Asser, Alfred utilised the design of Greek and Roman warships, with high sides, designed for fighting rather than for navigation.) Alfred had seapower in mind: if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from ravaging. Alfred's ships may have been superior in conception, however in practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which a 'naval' battle could occur. (The warships of the time were not designed to be ship killers but troop carriers. A naval battle entailed a ship's coming alongside an enemy vessel, at which point the crew would lash the two ships together and board the enemy. The result was effectively a land battle involving hand-to-hand fighting on board the two lashed vessels.)

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. The Danes had beached half their ships, and gone inland, either to rest their rowers or to forage for food. Alfred's ships immediately moved to block their escape to the sea. The three Viking ships afloat attempted to break through the English lines. Only one made it, Alfred's ships intercepted the other two. Lashing the Viking boats to their own, the English crew boarded the enemy's vessels and proceeded to kill everyone on board. The one ship that escaped managed to do so only because all of Alfred's heavy ships became mired when the tide went out. What ensued was a land battle between the crews of the grounded ships. The Danes, heavily outnumbered, would have been wiped out if the tide had not risen. When that occurred, the Danes rushed back to their boats, which being lighter, with shallower drafts, were freed before Alfred's ships. Helplessly, the English watched as the Vikings rowed past them.[citation needed] But the pirates had suffered so many casualties (120 Danes dead against 62 Frisians and English), that they had difficulties putting out to sea. All were too damaged to row around Sussex and two were driven against the Sussex coast. The shipwrecked sailors were brought before Alfred at Winchester and hanged.

Legal reform:

In the late 880s or early 890s, Alfred issued a long domboc or law code, consisting of his "own" laws followed by a code issued by his late seventh-century predecessor King Ine of Wessex. Together these laws are arranged into 120 chapters. In his introduction, Alfred explains that he gathered together the laws he found in many 'synod-books' and "ordered to be written many of the ones that our forefathers observed--those that pleased me; and many of the ones that did not please me, I rejected with the advice of my councillors, and commanded them to be observed in a different way." Alfred singled out in particular the laws that he "found in the days of Ine, my kinsman, or Offa, king of the Mercians, or King Æthelbert of Kent, who first among the English people received baptism." It is difficult to know exactly what Alfred meant by this. He appended rather than integrated the laws of Ine into his code, and although he included, as had Æthelbert, a scale of payments in compensation for injuries to various body parts, the two injury tariffs are not aligned. And, Offa is not known to have issued a law code, leading historian Patrick Wormald to speculate that Alfred had in mind the legatine capitulary of 786 that was presented to Offa by two papal legates.

About a fifth of the law code is taken up by Alfred's introduction, which includes translations into English of the Decalogue, a few chapters from the Book of Exodus, and the so-called 'Apostolic Letter' from Acts of the Apostles (15:23-29). The Introduction may best be understood as Alfred's meditation upon the meaning of Christian law. It traces the continuity between God's gift of Law to Moses to Alfred's own issuance of law to the West Saxon people. By doing so, it links the holy past to the historical present and represents Alfred's law-giving as a type of divine legislation. This is the reason that Alfred divided his code into precisely 120 chapters: 120 was the age at which Moses died and, in the number-symbolism of early medieval biblical exegetes, 120 stood for law. The link between the Mosaic Law and Alfred's code is the 'Apostolic Letter,' which explained that Christ "had come not to shatter or annul the commandments but to fulfill them; and he taught mercy and meekness" (Intro, 49.1). The mercy that Christ infused into Mosaic Law underlies the injury tariffs that figure so prominently in barbarian law codes, since Christian synods "established, through that mercy which Christ taught, that for almost every misdeed at the first offence secular lords might with their permission receive without sin the monetary compensation, which they then fixed." The only crime that could not be compensated with a payment of money is treachery to a lord, "since Almighty God adjudged none for those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any for the one who betrayed Him to death; and He commanded everyone to love his lord as Himself." Alfred's transformation of Christ's commandment from "Love your neighbour as yourself" (Matt. 22:39-40) to love your secular lord as you would love the Lord Christ himself underscores the importance that Alfred placed upon lordship, which he understood as a sacred bond instituted by God for the governance of man.

When one turns from the domboc's introduction to the laws themselves, it is difficult to uncover any logical arrangement. The impression one receives is of a hodgepodge of miscellaneous laws. The law code, as it has been preserved, is singularly unsuitable for use in lawsuits. In fact, several of Alfred's laws contradict the laws of Ine that form an integral part of the code. Patrick Wormald's explanation is that Alfred's law code should be understood not as a legal manual, but as an ideological manifesto of kingship, "designed more for symbolic impact than for practical direction." In practical terms, the most important law in the code may well be the very first: "We enjoin, what is most necessary, that each man keep carefully his oath and his pledge," which expresses a fundamental tenet of Anglo-Saxon law.

Alfred devoted considerable attention and thought to judicial matters. Asser underscores his concern for judicial fairness. Alfred, according to Asser, insisted upon reviewing contested judgments made by his ealdormen and reeves, and "would carefully look into nearly all the judgements which were passed [issued] in his absence anywhere in the realm, to see whether they were just or unjust." A charter from the reign of his son Edward the Elder depicts Alfred as hearing one such appeal in his chamber, while washing his hands. Asser represents Alfred as a Solomonic judge, painstaking in his own judicial investigations and critical of royal officials who rendered unjust or unwise judgments. Although Asser never mentions Alfred's law code, he does say that Alfred insisted that his judges be literate, so that they could apply themselves "to the pursuit of wisdom." The failure to comply with this royal order was to be punished by loss of office. It is uncertain how seriously this should be taken; Asser was more concerned to represent Alfred as a wise ruler than to report actual royal policy.

Foreign relations:

Asser speaks grandiosely of Alfred's relations with foreign powers, but little definite information is available. His interest in foreign countries is shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of Orosius. He certainly corresponded with Elias III, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and possibly sent a mission to India in honour of Saint Thomas the Apostle, whose tomb was believed to lie in that country. Contact was also made with the Caliph in Baghdad. Embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the Pope were fairly frequent.Keynes & Lapidge 1983, p. 14 Around 890, Wulfstan of Haithabu undertook a journey from Haithabu on Jutland along the Baltic Sea to the Prussian trading town of Truso. Alfred personally collected details of this trip.

Alfred's relations with the Celtic princes in the western half of Britain are clearer. Comparatively early in his reign, according to Asser, the southern Welsh princes, owing to the pressure on them from North Wales and Mercia, commended themselves to Alfred. Later in the reign the North Welsh followed their example, and the latter cooperated with the English in the campaign of 893 (or 894). That Alfred sent alms to Irish and Continental monasteries may be taken on Asser's authority. The visit of the three pilgrim "Scots" (i.e. Irish) to Alfred in 891 is undoubtedly authentic. The story that he himself in his childhood was sent to Ireland to be healed by Saint Modwenna, though mythical, may show Alfred's interest in that island.

Religion and culture:

In the 880s, at the same time that he was "cajoling and threatening" his nobles to build and man the burhs, Alfred, perhaps inspired by the example of Charlemagne almost a century before, undertook an equally ambitious effort to revive learning.[8] It entailed the recruitment of clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales and abroad to enhance the tenor of the court and of the episcopacy; the establishment of a court school to educate his own children, the sons of his nobles, and intellectually promising boys of lesser birth; an attempt to require literacy in those who held offices of authority; a series of translations into the vernacular of Latin works the king deemed "most necessary for all men to know";[citation needed] the compilation of a chronicle detailing the rise of Alfred's kingdom and house; and the issuance of a law code that presented the West Saxons as a new people of Israel and their king as a just and divinely inspired law-giver.

Very little is known of the church under Alfred. The Danish attacks had been particularly damaging to the monasteries, and though Alfred founded monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury, the first new monastic houses in Wessex since the beginning of the eighth century,[63] and enticed foreign monks to England, monasticism did not revive significantly during his reign.[citation needed] Alfred undertook no systematic reform of ecclesiastical institutions or religious practices in Wessex. For him the key to the kingdom's spiritual revival was to appoint pious, learned, and trustworthy bishops and abbots. As king he saw himself as responsible for both the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects. Secular and spiritual authority were not distinct categories for Alfred.[citation needed] He was equally comfortable distributing his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care to his bishops so that they might better train and supervise priests, and using those same bishops as royal officials and judges. Nor did his piety prevent him from expropriating strategically sited church lands, especially estates along the border with the Danelaw, and transferring them to royal thegns and officials who could better defend them against Viking attacks.

The Danish raids had also a devastating impact on learning in England. Alfred lamented in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care that "learning had declined so thoroughly in England that there were very few men on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English, or even translate a single letter from Latin into English: and I suppose that there were not many beyond the Humber either".[65] Alfred undoubtedly exaggerated for dramatic effect the abysmal state of learning in England during his youth. That Latin learning had not been obliterated is evidenced by the presence in his court of learned Mercian and West Saxon clerics such as Plegmund, Wæferth, and Wulfsige, but Alfred's account should not be entirely discounted.[citation needed] Manuscript production in England dropped off precipitously around the 860s when the Viking invasions began in earnest, not to be revived until the end of the century.[66] Numerous Anglo-Saxon manuscripts burnt up along with the churches that housed them. And a solemn diploma from Christ Church, Canterbury dated 873 is so poorly constructed and written that historian Nicholas Brooks posited a scribe who was either so blind he could not read what he wrote or who knew little or no Latin. "It is clear," Brooks concludes, "that the metropolitan church [of Canterbury] must have been quite unable to provide any effective training in the scriptures or in Christian worship."

Following the example of Charlemagne, Alfred established a court school for the education of his own children, those of the nobility, and "a good many of lesser birth".[citation needed] There they studied books in both English and Latin and "devoted themselves to writing, to such an extent .... they were seen to be devoted and intelligent students of the liberal arts."[68] He recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction. Grimbald and John the Saxon came from Francia; Plegmund (whom Alfred appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 890), Bishop Werferth of Worcester, Æthelstan, and the royal chaplains Werwulf, from Mercia; and Asser, from St. David's in south-western Wales.[citation needed]
Alfred's educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war, Alfred aimed "to set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment) all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it."[69] Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm, Alfred proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin. The problem, however, was that there were few "books of wisdom" written in English. Alfred sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know."[69] It is unknown when Alfred launched this programme, but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks.

Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridion, which seems to have been a commonplace book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a book greatly popular in the Middle Ages. The translation was undertaken at Alfred's command by Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, with the king merely furnishing a preface.[8] Remarkably, Alfred, undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars, translated four works himself: Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, St. Augustine's Soliloquies, and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter. One might add to this list Alfred's translation, in his law code, of excerpts from the Vulgate Book of Exodus. 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.[70] Nonetheless, the consensus remains that they were part of the Alfredian programme of translation. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest this also for Bald's Leechbook and the anonymous Old English Martyrology.

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. Although he described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense," Alfred's translation actually keeps very close to his original, although through his choice of language he blurred throughout the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. Alfred meant his translation to be used and circulated it to all his bishops.

Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages. Unlike his translation of the Pastoral Care, Alfred here deals very freely with his original and though the late Dr. G. Schepss[72] 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. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "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." The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only. In one of these[73] the writing is prose, in the other[74] a combination of prose and alliterating verse. The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries,[75] and the authorship of the verse has been much disputed; but likely it also is by Alfred. In fact, he writes in the prelude that he first created a prose work and then used it as the basis for his poem Metres of Boethius, his crowning literary achievement. He spent a great deal of time working on these books, which he tells us he gradually wrote through the many stressful times of his reign to refresh his mind. Of the authenticity of the work as a whole there has never been any doubt.

The last of Alfred's works is one to which he gave the name Blostman, i.e., "Blooms" or Anthology. 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. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore he seems to me a very foolish man, and truly wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear."

Alfred appears as a character in the twelfth- or thirteenth-century poem The Owl and the Nightingale, where his wisdom and skill with proverbs is praised. The Proverbs of Alfred, a thirteenth-century work, contains sayings that are not likely to have originated with Alfred but attest to his posthumous medieval reputation for wisdom.

The Alfred jewel, discovered in Somerset in 1693, has long been associated with King Alfred because of its Old English inscription "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN" (Alfred ordered me to be made). The jewel is about 2½ inches (6.1 cm) long, made of filigreed gold, enclosing a highly polished piece of quartz crystal beneath which is set a cloisonné enamel plaque, with an enamelled image of a man holding floriate sceptres, perhaps personifying Sight or the Wisdom of God.[76] It was at one time attached to a thin rod or stick based on the hollow socket at its base. The jewel certainly dates from Alfred's reign. Although its function is unknown, it has been often suggested that the jewel was one of the æstels-pointers for reading-that Alfred ordered sent to every bishopric accompanying a copy of his translation of the Pastoral Care. Each æstel was worth the princely sum of 50 mancuses, which fits in well with the quality workmanship and expensive materials of the Alfred jewel.

Historian Richard Abels sees Alfred's educational and military reforms as complementary. Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to Alfred's mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs.[77] As Alfred observed in the preface to his English translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, kings who fail to obey their divine duty to promote learning can expect earthly punishments to befall their people.[78] The pursuit of wisdom, he assured his readers of the Boethius, was the surest path to power: "Study Wisdom, then, and, when you have learned it, condemn it not, for I tell you that by its means you may without fail attain to power, yea, even though not desiring it".[79] The portrayal of the West-Saxon resistance to the Vikings by Asser and the chronicler as a Christian holy war was more than mere rhetoric or 'propaganda'. It reflected Alfred's own belief in a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments rooted in a vision of a hierarchical Christian world order in which God is the Lord to whom kings owe obedience and through whom they derive their authority over their followers. The need to persuade his nobles to undertake work for the 'common good' led Alfred and his court scholars to strengthen and deepen the conception of Christian kingship that he had inherited by building upon the legacy of earlier kings such as Offa as well as clerical writers such as Bede, Alcuin and the other luminaries of the Carolingian renaissance. This was not a cynical use of religion to manipulate his subjects into obedience, but an intrinsic element in Alfred's worldview. He believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people. If the Christian faith fell into ruin in his kingdom, if the clergy were too ignorant to understand the Latin words they butchered in their offices and liturgies, if the ancient monasteries and collegiate churches lay deserted out of indifference, he was answerable before God, as Josiah had been. Alfred's ultimate responsibility was the pastoral care of his people. 
Ælfr?d (I37350)
 
127 Alias: John /Bost/
German spelling Baust was born and educated in Germany, born ca.
1718/1720. He migrated to America by 1730 and he was active in the
Lutheran Church of Bucks Co., Pa. from 1740 till the summer of 1754. In
the fall of 1754 he moved his family to Cabarrus county, N. C. He settled
near the town of Concord along the Adams River or Adams Creek, in a
community with other German families. He helped establish the St. Johns
Lutheran Church. The road leading to the church site went through his
land and was known as the John Bost Meeting House Road and traces of the
road still remain. John Bost died in 1777.
John and Susannah Catharine were the parents of 14 children. They were:
William b. 1739, Anna Maria, Leonhardt, Maria Catharine, John, b. 1743,
Elias b. 1747, Margaretha Barbara, Elizabeth, Jacob b. 1753, d. 1830.
George d. 1808, a daughter (name unknown), Dorthy b. 1759, Christina and
Margaret.
According to his will, John Bost was a very wealthy man. He owned many
acres of land, tenements, and slaves. The original will of Johannes Bost
(also spelled Bast) as well as 22 legal sized pages recording the estate
settlement is in the N. C. Dept. of Archives and History. Susannah
Catharina ---- Bost b. ca. 1724/25. She died ca. 1800 in N. C. It is not
known if she was born in Germany or Pa., but it is known that she married
John Bost in Berks Co., Pa. Nothing is known of her parents at this time.
John and Susannah Catharina Bost were the Great great great grandparents
of Charles Scott Chafin.
Note: From information from the Bost family history it is now assumed the
John Petree and Dorothy Bost married in Cabarrus Co., N. C. in 1778, that
the two families were neighbors in Buck Co., Pa., that they migrated to
N.C. about the same time. John Petree was born in Pa. and Dorothy Bost
was born in N.C. That John and Dorothy Bost Petree lived in Stokes Co.,
N. C. until the time of his death and then Dorothy returned to Cabarrus
Co. to live and raise her children on land she inherited from her father.
that she died there after 1830 and before 1840.
Notes from Biography: The Johnannes Bast Family by Mary Pegram West
Johannes Bast was an educated German, a farmer, the father of fourteen
children and all were ardent Lutherans. The first records found to date
are in the History of Old Williams Township Congregation (Lutheran) of
Bucks Co., PA. but now in Northampton County due to county line changes.
Here we find the names of his wife, Susanna Catharina, and nine of his
children. Their church activities are set forth from 1740 until the late
summer 1754.
It is safe to assume that the whole family left PA by early fall 1754 and
came to NC where they settled in this community of many German families.
Johannes secured a land grant on Adams Creek, west of St. John's Church.
Some of his descendants are living there today. Traces of the old John
Bost Meeting House Road remain on the farm even though the road has not
been used for several generations. His land was within walking distance
of the church., Johannes died in late 1777 but Susanna Catharina was
living in 1787. Both must have been buried at St. John's but their grave
stones have crumbled long ago.
Children by first wife (name not known):
William (Ger., Johann Wilhelm Bast)
Anna Maria
Children by Susanna Catharina
Leonhardt b. 10/19/1740
Maria Catharina b. 3/7/1742
John b. 8/23/1743 Bucks Co., PA
Elias b. 6/24/1747 Bucks Co., PA
Margaretha Barbara b. 3/10/1749 Bucks Co., PA
Elizabeth b. 2/24/1751 Bucks Co., PA
Jacob b. 1/1/1753
George b.
Unknown Daughter
Dorothy
Christina
Margaret
Johannes signed his name Johannes Bast and we have kept this spelling for
our Pioneer Ancestor. In later years it was Anglicized to Bost and so
remains today. Our family is not to be confused with the French Huguenot
one of the same name-Bost-which 
Bast, Johannes (I1982)
 
128 Alix de Normandie was shown as the illegitimate daughter, by unknown mistress, of Richard III in Weis' Ancestral Roots, 7th Edition. She was appears in the ES as an unnamed, illegitimate daughter of Richard III who married NN Vicomte de Bayeux.3
She was the daughter, by concubine, of Richard III.4 She was not shown as a daughter of Richard III in the pedigree of the Dukes of Normandy in ES 2:79 (new series).5 She was born circa 1022.1 She was the daughter of Richard III, duc de Normandie and N. N. , a mistress of Richard III of Normandy.2 Alix de Normandie married Ranulph I, Vicomte du Bessin, son of Anschitil de Bayeaux, before 1040. 
De Normandie, Alix (I3859)
 
129 All Hallows Chapel Cemetery Larkin, John (I8586)
 
130 Allegheny Cemetery Bard, Richard (I37923)
 
131 Allegheny Cemetery Carson, Eliza Jane (I37924)
 
132 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Hoschauer, Peter (I45233)
 
133 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Mosser, Margaretha Magdalena (I45234)
 
134 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Hoschauer, Daniel (I45238)
 
135 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Hoschauer, Maria Lydia (I45252)
 
136 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Schweitzer, Isaac Iareal (I45262)
 
137 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Schweitzer, Susanna (I45263)
 
138 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Schweitzer, Jacob H (I45264)
 
139 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Schweitzer, Charles H (I45265)
 
140 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Remp, Aaron K (I45270)
 
141 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Remp, Howard S (I45272)
 
142 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Hoffert, Elizabeth M (I45273)
 
143 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Hoffert, Nelson (I45274)
 
144 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Zerbe, Elizabeth (I45277)
 
145 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Ziegler, Catherine (I45299)
 
146 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Schweitzer, Monroe William (I45300)
 
147 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Kissinger, Louisa M (I45304)
 
148 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Ziemer, Amelia (I45314)
 
149 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Hoschauer, Susan (I45315)
 
150 Allegheny Union Cemetery (New) Bixler, Augustus S (I45317)
 

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