The Alfred Jewel: An Historical Essay

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The Alfred Jewel

J. Earle

Henry Frowde, M.A. Publisher to the University of Oxford London, Edinburgh, and New York

[Illustration:

Front Back

Enamel

Right Left

The Jewel In Four Aspects With Separate Figure Of Enamel]

The Alfred Jewel:

An Historical Essay

By

John Earle, M.A., LL.D. Rector of Swanswick, Prebendary of Wells Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford

With Illustrations and Map

Oxford At the Clarendon Press mdcccci

Oxford Printed at the Clarendon Press By Horace Hart, M.A. Printer to the University

Preface

It is full fifty years since I began to contemplate the Alfred Jewel with a wonder and curiosity which became a habit. At length, in the latter half of that period, the vague attitude of enquiry began to point in a definite direction, and to exhibit susceptibility of development suggesting promise of possible discovery. Prompted by such anticipations, I one day ventured to express a wish to the Principal of Hertford College that he would exercise his well-known graphic talent upon the Alfred Jewel, and make some enlarged drawings of it suitable for a Public Lecture. The result was that he gave me a beautiful set of coloured drawings of the Jewel in various aspects admirably calculated for exhibition in the Lecture Room. Thus equipped, I was able to make the subject more intelligible and more attractive, and I lectured upon it the oftener. As it has not been my wont to write my lectures out in full, it was all the more necessary for me on every new occasion to make a fresh study of the Jewel. In this recurring process new lights rose at wide intervals of time, and drew me on to devote more thought to the object and to the times associated with it; and I found more than I had looked for in the design, and more (I think) than I should have found, but for the generous aid so readily extended to me by Dr. Boyd.

It was after such a lecture delivered in May, 1899, that I had the great and unexpected pleasure of a proposal from the Delegates of the Press to make a book of it. I was able to accept this proposal without misgiving, because I was satisfied that I had a solid interpretation to offer—one which had been slowly matured and scrupulously tested by every means in my power. All the old theories had come to nothing: there was not one of them that could be seriously advocated as resting upon evidence either in history or in common sense and the natural reason of things. In saying so much as this, I am only accounting for my readiness to accept the task, and not by any means prejudging the general verdict upon the validity of my argument. In this argument I seek to establish the intimate relation of the Jewel with the history and the mind and the person of Alfred of Wessex, not indeed as a scientifically demonstrated fact, but as a well-founded and abundantly supported probability. I have no desire that this conclusion should be admitted without a complete and rigid scrutiny.

In the carrying out of this undertaking I have received welcome and much-needed help from many quarters. The subject is one that calls for illustration by maps and drawings and I desire to express my sincere acknowledgements to Mr. Alfred A. Clarke of Wells for his four drawings, among which I will particularly mention his characteristic landscape of the Isle of Athelney.

The map of Athelney and the lands adjacent is very ingeniously devised for exhibiting the contrast between the low level of the moorland and the contours of the rising country around; it is expressive and intelligible at a glance: and for this excellent illustration my acknowledgements are due to Mr. Bernhard V. Darbishire.

My hearty thanks are due to Mr. Charles H. Read of the British Museum for the ample information he kindly afforded me concerning the gold rings of the Saxon period which are in his department. Also for the permission which he gave (as Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries) to transfer to these pages their engraving from the Book of Kells, and also their three figures of the gold ring of queen Æthelswith.

To those gentlemen of Somerset who have aided me with local information and hospitality and personal guidance, I have good cause to be always grateful. Major Barrett, junior, of Moredon, the owner of the Isle of Athelney, took me over the ground in a manner that is very agreeable to remember, and caused me to see the historical sites of his country with every advantage. It was under his auspices that I first realized the full import of Alfred’s fort at Borough Bridge, and what a speaking object-lesson it certainly is. I had seen it in 1856, but I had not adequately appreciated it.

From Mr. Cely Trevelian of Midelney Place I learnt much that was useful to me concerning the history and present conditions of the moorlands of Somerset. He was my hospitable friend and companion over the country on either side of the Parrett in the circle of Langport, and from that to Borough Bridge. Under his guidance I revisited Aller (pronounced Oller), and renewed acquaintance with its sacred associations, after an interval of forty-four years. In 1856 I was conducted by an old Oriel friend who was my host, the Rev. James Coleman, then Curate of the parish in which Athelney is situated; he subsequently became Vicar of Cheddar and Prebendary of Wells. When I entered upon the present work, after so long an interval, it was with Mr. Coleman that I began to make enquiries for local information.

To Sir Alexander Acland Hood I am indebted for genealogical and topographical information, and particularly for some new light on the history of the Jewel, now for the first time made public. The statement in the manuscript of Mr. Thomas Palmer, which is preserved at Fairfield, that the Jewel was ‘dug up,’ is a new item in the circumstances of the discovery, to which I attach important evidential weight.

I have also to thank Sir Cuthbert Slade of Maunsel, for his courtesy in answering my enquiries, genealogical and territorial, concerning the Slade family.

On Mr. C. F. Bell, the Assistant Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, I chiefly depended for help in that part of my subject where I was most wanting, namely in the technicalities of ancient art, and especially concerning enamels.

To my friend Dr. Shadwell my obligations are not the less but the greater for that they are somewhat indefinable. He has read through the proofs, and has given me valuable suggestions, and he has always been ready to help when I needed advice.

For me this trinket has assumed the proportions of a serious historical problem, and its investigation has been rewarded with new light in many directions, and I do not think I shall regret the time spent upon it, even though my conclusions should hereafter be modified or even refuted. I hold that, apart from the conclusions, the investigation itself was worth the while, but when I say this I am not to be understood as admitting that I have little confidence in my conclusions.

In putting forth this Essay, I desire to convince the reader only as fully as I am convinced myself, that is to say, with a conviction which makes no claim to finality, but lies open to correction in case of new light or better use of old data; yet which nevertheless, in the mean time and for the main issues of the enquiry, reaches a degree of probability whereby all doubt and uncertainty is practically excluded.

J. E.

Table Of Contents

Chapter I Page Description Of The Alfred Jewel 1–9

The place of its deposit 1 Structural details of the Jewel 2 The name of Alfred upon it 4 Question what this name imports _id._ Other persons bearing this name 5 The perfection of the Jewel suggested doubt 7 The firm judgement of Dr. George Hickes 8 Nevertheless, the question must be kept in view throughout this Essay 9

Chapter II

The Epigraph Or Legend 10–21

The forms of the lettering 10 The Syntax of the Sentence: 12 (1) as to collocation 13 (2) usage of words _id._ (3) flexional construction 15 (4) active and passive structure 16 Other time-indications in the Epigraph 17 Quotation from Alfred’s Prologue to his _Pastoralis_ 19 Similarity between the Prologue and the Epigraph 21

Chapter III

Early Speculations About Its Design And Manner Of Use 22–30

The Epoch of the Discovery—The Royal Society 22 The persons who first were conversant with the new-found object—Colonel Nathaniel Palmer 23 Dr. Hans Sloane—The British Museum 24 Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford _id._ First published notice of the Jewel—Dr. William Musgrave 25 Hickes’s _Thesaurus_ _id._ Variety of opinions about the Jewel _id._ Francis Wise—Samuel Pegge 27 Mr. Philip Duncan 28 St. Neot and St. Cuthbert 29 Abortiveness of these attempts 30

Chapter IV

Bishop Clifford’S Theory 31–43

Bishop Clifford 31 The handle of a choirmaster’s wand 32 Identical with the ‘æstel’? 34 Given by Alfred to Athelney Abbey and there kept to Henry VIII’s time 35 This theory inapplicable to the Jewel 37 But perhaps applicable to the ‘æstel’ 41 Theory of sceptre-tip 42

Chapter V

A Jewel In The Crown 44–50

Form convenient for erection in the helmet 44 Transforms the helmet into a Coronet 45 The minor jewel from Minster Lovel 46 Dr. Wilson and Dr. Griffiths 48 Quotations from Beowulf and Laȝamon 49 The Crown of Queen Victoria 50

Chapter VI

The Boar’S Head 51–60

Diversity of opinion about the animal’s head 51 Testimony undesigned 52 The wild boar in the helmet _id._ Quotations from the _Beowulf_ 53 ff. The Boar’s Head at Queen’s College, Oxford 57 Religious origin of the Boar’s Head as a Crest 59

Chapter VII

The Figure In Enamel And The Engraved Plate At The Back Of It 61–91

Our Chief Problem is ‘A figure hard to characterize’ 61 Division of this Chapter 62 Enamelling as an artistic industry _id._ Enamel _cloisonnée_ 63 Chief extant specimens according to M. Labarte 64 ff. The Enamelled Ouche of Mr. Roach Smith 68 Enamel _champlevée_ _id._ Obscurity of the history of enamelling 69 Philostratus 70 Enamelled horse-gear 71 The Symbolism of the _icuncula_ and its Source 74 The _Book of Kells_ 76 f. Relations of Alfred with Irish travellers 78 The Tufa 79 Evidence for the Enamel’s being an insular product 80 Allegorical engraving on the back-plate 81 Dualistic theory of Sir Francis Palgrave 83 The brothers John and Philip Duncan 84 Unity of thought in the Jewel 86 Alfred’s Epilogue to his _Pastoralis_ 87 ff. Summary of this Chapter 90

Chapter VIII

Alfred In Somerset Beyond Pedrida 92–132

The central episode of Alfred’s career 92 Suddenness of the surprize at Chippenham 94 Apprehension of attack on north coast of Wealcyn 95 Alhstan, bishop of Sherborne 96 Meditations of king Alfred _id._ Danish invasion of Wessex 97 Placable temper of the West Welsh 98 Hostility of the ‘North Welsh’ _id._ Alfred’s disguise 99 f. The Jewel must be buried 100 Selwood 101 Story of Denewulf _id._ Hingston Down 102 The Danes in Exeter _id._ The Danes at Cynwit 103 The political import of Pedrida 104 f. Selwoodshire 105 The Transpedridan dialect 106 The Devonian ‘u’ 107 The Pixies 108 Somerset in Alfred’s day 109 Subsidence of the land 110 f. Elm-trees 112 Red Deer 113 Leland’s _Itinerary_ 115 Etymology of ‘Pedrida’ 117 British policy of Wessex _id._ f. Aldhelm’s letter to Gerontius 119 His little church at Bradford-on-Avon 120 Associations of Glastonbury _id._ ff. Asser’s _Life of Alfred_ 124 The Fort at Athelney 128 Brixton Deveril 129 The buried Jewel not recovered 130 The Peiwar Kotal (1878) 131 ‘What follows is like a dream’ 132

Chapter IX

Newton Park And Fairfield House 133–145

‘Newton Park’ 133 Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury 134 The Forest of North Petherton _id._ Three co-heiresses 135 The Perambulation of the Forests _id._ Gefferey Chaucer 136 The improvements of Sir Thomas Wrothe 137 A surmise about the Manor of Newton 138 Petherton Park 139 The parish of Stogursey _id._ Fairfield House 140 ‘Always a Vernai at Fairfield’ 142 The Palmer family _id._ Nathaniel Palmer 144 Thomas Palmer _id._ Two co-heiresses 145

Chapter X

Gold Rings Contemporaneous 146–156

The Enamelled Ouche of Mr. Roach Smith 146 The Ring of Alhstan 147 The place of its discovery 148 The Ring of Alfred’s father 149 The place and manner of its discovery 150 The Ring of Alfred’s sister 151 The manner of its discovery 153 The Ring of Æthred 154 Runes intermixed with Roman lettering 155 The artist bears a Saxon name 156

Chapter XI

Some Closing Reflections 157–174

Fine workmanship no longer an objection 157 Early cumulation of evidence 158 Evidence added since _id._ Rejected theories 159 The Cynehelm theory _id._ The unity of the work makes for Alfred of Wessex 160 Outline of the Symbolism _id._ My surprize at the latent meanings 161 The fondness of king Alfred for imagery _id._ ff. The Simile of the Waggon 163 The Jewel illustrated by the Writings of king Alfred 165 The Jewel probably records a Crisis 166 At what Epoch designed? _id._ Double process of investigation 167 Date of Alfred’s return from Rome 170 f. The nature of Probable Evidence 172 ff. Conclusions from the above data 174

Appendices

APPENDIX A. The First published Notice of the Alfred Jewel (to pp. 25 and 144) 175

APPENDIX B. St. Neot and St. Cuthbert (to pp. 29 and 74) 177

APPENDIX C. The Two-sceptered Figure in the _Book of Kells_ (to p. 78) 181

APPENDIX D. The British Origin of the Enamelled Figure (to p. 91) 184

APPENDIX E. Athelney Abbey (to p. 115) 189

APPENDIX F. North Newton Church (to p. 139) 192

APPENDIX G. The Presentation of the Alfred Jewel to the University of Oxford (to pp. 140 and 145) 194

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Alfred Jewel in four aspects, with separate Figure of Enamel _Frontispiece_ The Inscription on the Jewel 1 The Minster Lovel Jewel _to face_ 47 Illumination from the _Book of Kells_ ” 77 The Isle of Athelney ” 92 Fairfield House 141 Inscription on the Ring of Æthelwulf 149 The Ring of Æthelwulf 150 The Ring of Queen Æthelswith, the bezil 151 Inscription within the Ring of Queen Æthelswith 152 The Ring of Queen Æthelswith showing niello 153 Inscription on Æðred’s Ring 154 The Jewel, Front and Back _to face_ 174 Sculptured Bosses found at Athelney Abbey 189, 191 Tower of North Newton Church _to face_ 192 Map of the Isle of Athelney _At end_

The Alfred Jewel

Chapter I

Description Of The Alfred Jewel

The subject of this Essay is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, which has been its home for a period of time now approaching two hundred years. It is there installed under glass in such a manner that every side of it is plainly exhibited to the eye of the visitor. It bears an inscription in conspicuous lettering which sets forth that by Alfred’s order it was made, and this is the ground upon which it is known as THE ALFRED JEWEL.

[Illustration]

The Alfred Jewel has been compared to a battledore, not untruly for the matter of shape; but the wide diversity of size makes the comparison seem incongruous. The extreme length of the Jewel is a very small fraction under two inches and a half; its greatest width is just one inch and a fifth; its thickness barely half an inch.

It contains a sitting Figure enamelled on a plate of gold which is protected in front by a slab of rock crystal, and at the back by a gold plate engraved; the whole enshrined in a golden frame of delicately executed filigree work. The picture is visible through the rock crystal, making the obverse of the Jewel; while the reverse is formed by the gold plate which is at the back of the enamelled plate. Upon this gold plate is engraved an allegorical design. Both these surfaces (obverse and reverse) are flat, but in every other part of the Jewel the surface is rounded.

The rounded contours may be likened to those of a pigeon’s egg. If we imagine a longitudinal section of a pigeon’s egg, the engraved plate at the back of the picture will correspond to the plane of the egg’s diameter. From this plane, if we measure three-quarters of an inch in the girth of the egg, and then take another section parallel to the gold plate at the back, we obtain the front surface of the crystal, through which the Enamel is visible.

The effect of this arrangement is, that the sides all round the Jewel are curved and sloping, and that the obverse is of more contracted area than the reverse, and also that the measurement of the sloping side exceeds that of the thickness. The head of the sitting Figure occupies the broad end of the oval section; the smaller end is prolonged, and is fashioned like the head of a wild boar on the obverse, but the reverse of this head is flat and covered with fish-like scales.

The snout is projected in the form of a socket adapted to receive a peg or stem; athwart this socket is a cross-pin, having a head at one of its ends, while the other end is riveted. This indicates that the Jewel was furnished with a stem which has perished, and which, therefore, was not metallic, but of some organic material, perhaps walrus ivory. Around the sloping sides runs a legend:

✠ AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN _Alfred me ordered make_

and this legend starts from the narrowest point of the oval, beginning on the right-hand side and running round to the corresponding point on the left, so that it encircles the oval completely, running in the contrary direction to that with which we are familiar in our coins, which are read from left to right, as indeed were also the coins of the ninth century.

Some have doubted whether the owner of the Jewel was the famous Alfred of Wessex. It has been urged that the name of ÆLFRED in the Epigraph is not of itself adequate proof of the fact, and it must be admitted that this is literally true. And it is not superfluous to point out the inconsequence of such reasoning, for it has actually been advanced in serious argument. Samuel Pegge, an antiquary of repute, wrote in _Archæologia_ ii as if there had been but one eminent person of the name of Alfred:—‘There is no doubt but this κϵιµήλιον was once the property of the great King Ælfred, notwithstanding the goodness of the work which has been an objection to its authenticity; for the king’s name is expressly mentioned in the inscription.’ There were many persons of that name in the course of the Saxon period, and the name was not confined to men born after his time, for there were persons of this name who were men of mark among his contemporaries, one of whom (to say the least) was certainly his senior.

When Swithun died, in 862 (in Alfred’s fourteenth year), his successor in the See of Winchester was named ÆLFRED.

A contemporary of position and intelligence and of great wealth was that ÆLFRED who redeemed from heathen hands a noble volume of the Gospels, and conveyed it by a solemn deed of gift in his own name and that of his wife to the brotherhood of Christ Church, Canterbury[1]. That volume is the _Codex Aureus_, which is now in the Royal Library at Stockholm. The Will of this Alfred, who in the course of that document styles himself ‘Elfred dux,’ is one of the most precious relics of Saxon antiquity[2].

A few years after the king’s death, the Chronicle records, in 906, the death of an Alfred, who was Reeve of Bath.

It has been argued that with such facts before us the ownership of the Alfred Jewel must be a matter of uncertainty, for we only know that it was ordered by a person of the name of Alfred. Such arguments may sometimes be heard from persons whose opinions are entitled to respect, but I am not aware that any one has undertaken to reason out and maintain this view in a published writing. And perhaps if we attend well to the whole of the evidence, we shall see no cause to marvel at the unanimity of authors in accepting this Jewel as a personal possession of king Alfred’s, and (in some measure, diversely estimated) as a product of his own artistic design.

It is not the name by itself, but this name taken in connexion with the richness and costliness of the work, with the thoughtful ingenuity of its device and composition, and with the symbolic meanings which must be assigned to certain parts of the structure;—such evidences as these, again combined with certain external evidences, namely, the locality in which the Jewel was found, and any affinities apparent in the above data with the career or exploits of the king, or with his character and tastes,—when the ownership is questioned, we find ourselves face to face with an accumulation of evidence varying in quality and requiring to be judged by the delicate and sensitive standard of probability. In presence of such a problem we should not neglect the impressions and expressed opinions of persons whose instincts have been cultivated in the sphere of such probabilities.

George Hickes, in 1705, mentions some doubting critics, whose difficulty lay in the beauty and perfection of the work. They could not understand how such artistic work could proceed from Anglo-Saxon artists in the ninth century. But for himself, he added, the mere sight of the Jewel had been enough, and that from his first view of it he had never doubted that it was a personal possession of the great king Alfred[3].

When an elaborate piece of workmanship like the Alfred Jewel is presented to the experienced mind and practised eye of a man like Hickes, the evidence is rapidly, almost unconsciously, sifted, and the probabilities converge to a focus, so as to produce a conviction which seems like a simple apprehension of the senses. I welcome Hickes’s expression of confidence as a confirmation of that which I have experienced myself. But while I am entirely free from uncertainty I quite recognize the reasonableness of the doubt, and I know that (logically speaking) the uncertainty is there. And I know also that many of my readers will entertain it and will look more or less dubiously upon the assumption of certainty in this matter. And, indeed, there is a certain advantage in having to reckon with this sceptical attitude of mind, insomuch as the presence of doubt has a stimulating effect in furnishing the discourse with a determinate aim and direction. It will set me on the alert, that I may not miss any incidental chance of a reflection tending to assure those who would be gratified to think that we do indeed possess a relic intimately associated with the person, and with the mind, of ALFRED, KING OF WESSEX.

[1] This remarkable document begins thus:—✠ In nomine domini nostri Ihesu Christi. Ic ÆLFRED aldormon and Werburg min gefera begetan ðas béc æt hæðnum herge mid uncre clæne feó ðæt ðoune wæs mid clæne golde, and ðæt wit deodan for Godes lufan and for uncre saule ðearf ond forðon ðe wit noldan ðæt ðas halgan beoc lencg in ðære hæðenesse wunaden. ‘✠ In the name of our Lord Jesu Christ. I Alfred alderman and Werburg my consort purchased these books at a heathen host with our clean money, that is to say with clean gold; and that we two did for God’s love and for the benefit of our souls, and for that we would not that these holy books should longer lie in hethenesse.’ Birch, _Cartularium Saxonicum_, No. 634.

[2] Kemble, _Codex Diplomaticus_, No. 317; Birch, _Cartularium Saxonicum_, No. 558; Earle, _Land Charters_, p. 152.

[3] ‘Quoad opificium autem, tam elegans quidem id est et perfectum, ut eius antiquitatem in dubium vocandi doctis nonnullis occasionem dederit, etsi _Ælfredi_ regis hoc olim fuisse peculium, ex quo primum vidi, nunquam dubitavi.’ _Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus_, vol. i, p. 144.

Chapter II

The Epigraph Or Legend

We must now consider and see what we can learn from the Epigraph. This was the cue whereby Hickes introduced the Jewel into the argument of his _Dissertatio Epistolaris_, and there gave us the cream of the discussions which had been developed in the space of twelve years from the discovery. Observing that in a Saxon inscription which Dr. Hans Sloane had communicated to the _Philosophical Transactions_ (No. 247) only two letters of Anglo-Saxon form occurred, the C and the G, he proceeded to describe and discuss the Jewel in all the points of view which up to that time had occupied the attention of the curious. The forms to which he adverted were the angular C and G, which however are rather Epigraphic than Saxonic forms. These square letters occur (as Mr. Falconer Madan informs me) in the inscriptions of the sixth and seventh centuries in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Hickes added that all the other letters of the Epigraph were in ordinary Roman characters[4]:

Aelfred Mec Heht Gewyrcan

In fact there was only one place where a distinctly Saxon character might have come in, namely in the place of the W, which instead of the Runic Wên (ƿ) is composed of two Roman V’s. There is no place for the Runic Thorn (þ).

He had been pursuing an argument, of which the aim was to show that from the time of Alfred the characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon writing were less used, being superseded by Gallic or Italic forms. He attributes the change to the teachers which the king had drawn from Gaul. That such a change was taking place in Alfred’s time is quite manifest, but its beginnings were further back; the taste for Frankish fashions having been introduced by his grandfather Ecgberht, who had passed years of exile at the Court of Charlemagne. Doubtless the movement grew under the influence of Alfred, who not only had visited Rome, but in all probability had resided there for some years.

If now passing from the alphabetic characters we consider the syntax of this sentence, we shall find that it varies so widely from our habits of speech at the present time as to furnish something like a measure of the intervening period, and as it were to render some account of the lapse of a thousand years. Let us begin by translating the sentence verbally with the minimum of change, retaining the selfsame words in their modern guise. On this plan the sentence will run thus: ‘Alfred me hight work;’ where the baldness of the diction exhibits roughly the gulf there is between this Epigraph and our present usage. Each word is English, but the sentence is far from being so. This great contrast is the result of a combination of causes, and it may be resolved into four chief movements which have slowly operated during the long interval.

(1) A change has taken place in the collocation of words in forming a sentence. The governed pronoun stands in a place where it is now inadmissible: the present habit of the language requires that the pronoun ‘me’ should come in after its governing verb. If we make this change, we shall see that the sentence will become a trifle more like English, thus: ‘Alfred hight work me.’

(2) Another movement is that which in process of time takes place in the usage of words. There is a fashion in the choice of words for the clothing of our ideas, and that fashion changes sometimes capriciously and fitfully, but for the most part so slowly and gradually that it takes an era of time to make the change conspicuous. Words are liable to this kind of alteration in various degrees, and this inequality of change is observable even in a sentence of four words. The verb HEHT, _hight_, has undergone so great a change of sense that to the general reader it is apt to be unintelligible[5]. But while this verb has altered greatly, the verb ‘work’ has altered little. Still, it has altered, and it is no longer the right word for its place.

The remaining two words have in usage undergone no change at all. The pronoun MEC has suffered alteration in form by dropping a consonant, but it is absolutely unchanged in its application. Indeed, it may be stated as a general law, that pronouns as a class are among the slowest of words to admit semantic change.

Nevertheless there is a group of words which are still more unchangeable in signification, and these are the Proper Nouns. External changes of form they do admit, but not the internal change of sense. The name ÆLFRED is the form prevalent on the coinage of his reign, but there are variations, thus: ÆLFRED, ÆLBRED, ELFRED, ELFERED; and there is the form ALFRED, which has become established in modern English in consequence of the fact that our earliest popular histories of the king were derived from Latin books, in which language his name was commonly spelt ALFREDUS. But whatever changes may pass over the visible representation of the word, there is no alteration possible in the relation between this word and the memory of that royal person whose proper name it was.

If now we remove the words that have suffered a semantic change, and substitute those which at the present time seem most natural, the sentence will take this form: ‘Alfred ordered make me;’ and thus it approaches another step towards the present manner of our speech.

(3) The third movement to be noticed is that from the flexional to the phrasal method of syntax. The word GEWYRCAN is a flexional verb, the last syllable, -AN, being the sign of the infinitive mood, and indicating the syntactical function of that word in the sentence. By slow degrees this method of syntax fell out of use, and another way came up of expressing the same function. Instead of the syllable -AN at the end of the verb, a little word, ‘to,’ was set before the verb, with the same effect of expressing the infinitive mood. If now we add this change to the other modifications of our sentence, we shall bring it considerably nearer to current speech, thus: ‘Alfred ordered to make me.’ But still it wants something to reduce it into the shape which we can recognize as modern English.

(4) The fourth and last change which we must note in the habits of our speech is the great extension of the passive verb, and particularly in the infinitive mood. Many infinitive phrases which were once cast in the Active have been changed to the Passive, and a lingering survival of the active formula may be observed to have a peculiar and exceptional air. We feel this in the phrase, ‘The reason is not far to seek.’ A more familiar example may be seen on the boards of the house agents. Some of these boards say ‘House to let,’ while others prefer ‘House to be let,’—the one is homely and native English, the other is modish and reminds us of the schoolmaster. The same authority will guide us to bring our Legend up to date, and stamp our version with the mint of the nineteenth century, thus: ‘Alfred ordered me to be made.’

In the above analysis it has been necessary to depart in some measure from the course of nature by exhibiting in succession a group of changes which are due to processes more or less simultaneous. This accumulation of gradual changes furnishes a measure, partly scientific, partly sentimental, of the wide interval that separates us from the time when this Epigraph was curiously woven in golden filigree by the lucky artist who executed the design of the ingenious prince.

But the Epigraph has time-indications which are closer and more definite. There are features which, besides telling of the lapse of time, do also in some sense indicate the point of time; features in virtue of which this Legend may be said to suggest proximately its own date. The two words ‘MEC HEHT’ are archaic forms, the one of which is never, and the other rarely, found in the prose of the tenth century; indeed they were both archaic in the ninth. MEC had given place to ME, and (though less absolutely) HEHT to HÊT; but the older forms were still at the service of the poet, and Epigraphy has some share in poetic privilege. Indeed it would seem that in the time of Alfred MEC was consciously used as an archaic curiosity. There is a gold ring which I take to be contemporaneous with our Jewel, and it bears an English inscription in which MEC occurs twice. It will be described below[6].

It would be too much to say that the forms MEC HEHT convey a definite date, but they certainly fit well with the time of Alfred, and (but for that vague licence of Epigraphy) they might even be said to suggest the ninth century as the latest probable date of a work with which they are identified.

It is worthy of notice that HEHT occurs in another piece of Alfred’s inditing, which I will introduce here not only for the sake of the old reduplicative verb, but also because the passage is germane to the argument, and imports an illustration of a comprehensive kind. The king prefixed to his version of Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_ a preface in prose and a prologue in verse. The prose preface was about the main purpose of his work; the poetical prologue dealt with literary matters, the authority of his text, the history of his copy, the manner of his own literary operation. It is this poetical and literary Prologue which I here quote:

Þis ærendgewrit This Epistle Agustinus Augustine ofer sealtne sæ over salt sea suan brohte brought from the south ieg-buendum, to us island-dwellers, swa hit ær fore just as it erst adihtode indited had been drihtnes cempa by Christ’s doughty champion Rome papa. the pontiff of Rome. Ryhtspell monig Much rightful discourse Gregorius gleawmôd did Gregory’s glowing wit gind wôd give forth apace ðurh sefan snyttro, with skilful soul, searoðonca hord. a hoard of studious thought.

Forðæm he monncynnes Wherefore he of mankind mæst gestriende converted the most rodra wearde: to the Ruler of heaven: Romwara betest, he of Romans the best, monna môdwelegost, of men the most mind-rich, mærðum gefrægost. and widest admired.

Siððan min on Englisc At length into English Ælfred kyning Alfred the king awende worda gehwelc, every word of me wended, and me his writerum and me to his writers sende suð and norð; south and north he did send; heht him swelcra ma more ordered of such brengan bi ðære bisene, by the copy to bring, ðæt he his biscepum that he to his bishops sendan meahte: might be able to send: forðæm hi his sume ðorften, for some of them needed it, ða ðe Lædenspræce such as of Latin læste cûðon. very little did know.

In the last six lines of this little poem a new attitude is taken up; the book itself becomes the speaker, and sets forth how ÆLFRED was the translator, how he ordered (HEHT) more copies of his translation to be made, and for what purpose. In mentioning purpose, the prologue communicates something beyond the Legend, which leaves the purpose and signification of the design shrouded in symbolism. But for the rest, if we analyze these six lines, we shall find the heart and core of them to be essentially identical with the Legend on the Jewel—

Aelfred Mec Heht Gewyrcan

[4] ‘Saxonici ductus duas tantum literas habet, C et G.’ _Thesaurus_, vol. i, p. 142.

[5] This is briefly explained in my _English Philology_, § 270.

[6] Chapter x.

Chapter III

Early Speculations About Its Design And Manner Of Use

The finding of the Alfred Jewel chanced upon a remarkable time in the intellectual life of the English nation. It was the time of Dryden, Defoe, Swift, Christopher Wren, Bentley, Lord Somers, Sir Isaac Newton, Addison. In literature the coming man was Alexander Pope.

The cardinal event of that period was the institution of the Royal Society in 1660, the year of the Restoration. The most conspicuous bent of the intellectual world was in the direction of physical science, and ‘the great work of interpreting nature was performed by the English of that age as it had never before been performed in any age by any nation[7].’ This was the period in which a national Observatory was established at Greenwich (1676). To this period belong the chemical discoveries of Boyle, the botanical researches of Sloane, and the classifications of Ray. In every department of knowledge enquiry was roused, and with it the genius of theory, whose movements were sometimes hasty and erratic. But this tendency was gradually counteracted by the deepening conviction that sound knowledge must be based on careful observation, and the need of museums began to be recognized. The Ashmolean Museum was built by the University of Oxford, in 1683, to receive Elias Ashmole’s collection of curiosities, the formation of which had originated with the Tradescants. The architect was Sir Christopher Wren. Altogether it was a time of new ideas and new institutions.

When the Jewel was found, in 1693, it fell into the hands of persons who belonged both socially and intellectually to the foremost ranks. The first recorded owner was Colonel Nathaniel Palmer, of Fairfield House, in the region of the Quantocks. Of this house and this family some particulars will be related in the ninth chapter.

The first notice of the Jewel was published by Dr. Hans Sloane, a Fellow of the Royal Society, eminent as physician, natural philosopher, and antiquarian. He was elected Secretary of that Society in 1693, the year in which the Jewel was found. Whether by reason of the new cloud of political and religious trouble which brooded over the land in the latter years of James II, or from whatever cause, so it was that the _Philosophical Transactions_ had been suspended for the past six years, and they were resuscitated by the new Secretary, who was himself an active contributor. This remarkable man lived to a great age, and when he died, in 1752, in his ninety-second year, his museum was bought by the Government, and this purchase was the origin of the British Museum; for until the middle of the eighteenth century the idea of a national library and museum had never been entertained in England.

The same Act of Parliament (26 Geo. II) which directed the purchase of the Sloane museum also directed the purchase of the Harleian collection of manuscripts which had been made by Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, whose name is also memorable in the study of the Alfred Jewel; for it was from an engraving furnished by Robert Harley, and made from a drawing of his own, that the first of the three figures in Hickes’s _Dissertatio Epistolaris_ was printed.

The first published notice of the Jewel appeared in the _Philosophical Transactions_ (No. 247 in 1698), and it was contributed by Dr. William Musgrave, Fellow of New College, physician in London, and an active member of the Royal Society, and author (1709) of _Antiquitates Britanno-Belgicæ_. He also contributed to Hickes’s _Thesaurus_ the second and third figures of the Jewel which are there engraved[8].

These were the eminent persons who prepared the material for the elaborate account which Hickes (1705) gave of the Alfred Jewel in the first volume of his _Thesaurus_. For the minutiæ of the description he was particularly indebted to Harley and Musgrave, who appear to have been occasional visitors at Fairfield House.

The first impression which prevailed as to its design and use was that it might be an amulet. This was Dr. Musgrave’s first opinion. But afterwards he followed Hickes in supposing it was a pendant to a chain or collar of state, and Hickes even says (but here he must be simply repeating the expressions of his informants) that the cross-pin in the socket seems adapted to such a use.

The boar’s snout is developed into a tubular ending which furnishes a socket with a cross-pin, manifestly asking a peg or (as artisans speak) a stert; and when this observation was maturely appreciated, it generated two inferences: (1) that there was no provision for attachment answering to the above theory; and (2) that in the position imagined, the picture would hang upside down.

These criticisms opened the way for new observations and new conjectures. The antiquary Hearne interpreted the Jewel as if it were designed to be fixed at the extremity of a roller on which a manuscript was rolled, as a suitable ornament for some ceremonious presentation. But this hypothesis neglected the fact that the Jewel is made with an obverse and a reverse, a front and a back, which renders it quite unfit for such a position as Hearne had assigned to it.

By Francis Wise and Samuel Pegge, chief antiquarians of the eighteenth century, it was imagined that our Jewel might have adorned the top of a stilus or ancient pen for writing upon a waxen tablet. In refutation of this theory it sufficed to observe how awkward and unwieldy an ornament it would prove to the penman.

Nevertheless, this idea had a career, winning a momentary plausibility from the assumption that Alfred’s ‘æstel’ was a stylus. In _Archæologia_ ii there is a letter signed ‘S. Pegge,’ from which I extract the following:—

‘It is not certainly known to what use this valuable curiosity ... might be put: but among other conjectures Mr. Wise imagines, and very probably, it might have been the handle of a stylus. And if one should say it was one of those styli which the king sent along with his translation of Gregory’s _Pastoral_, it would be no great absurdity.... It may here be alleged that the king sent his present to the cathedral churches: but, with submission, this does not imply that he might not also send the like to the two monasteries of his own foundation, this of Athelney and the other at Shaftesbury; it is most probable he would send a book and a stylus to both those places, and if he did, this jewel in my opinion bids fair to be the handle or upper part of the stylus which was presented by him to the House of Athelney where it was found.’

Collinson, the historian of Somersetshire (1791), in a passage to be quoted below (chapter ix), designates it an amulet, and this was probably the way in which it was usually regarded in the eighteenth century. To this Pegge (in the article cited above) objected as follows: ‘Dr. Musgrave once thought it might be an Amulet, but Alfred never ran (that we know of) into such vanities.’

Passing now to the nineteenth century, Mr. Philip Duncan, in his Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum, advanced the theory that it might have been mounted on the top of a staff (after the manner of a Roman eagle), and that it was carried into battle as a standard to animate the courage of warriors. This exquisite bijou, of materials so brittle as enamel and crystal, cased in a delicate web of golden filigree, looks strangely inappropriate for the fury of battle and the interchange of hard knocks.

And indeed this theory was never suggested to its author by the reason or probability of the thing, but by certain texts which at that time were in better esteem than they are now, especially the hagiography of St. Neot, wherein it was said of this saint that he went before the king in war, carrying a palm and guiding him to victory, to all which the palm-bearing figure in the Enamel seemed to correspond. And this also explains why that figure was supposed to represent St. Neot.

In like manner, Hickes was carried away by a passage in pseudo-Ingulph to abandon his first and best interpretation of the enamelled Figure, and to adopt the idea that it may have been intended to represent St. Cuthbert[9].

All these speculations on the design and use of the Jewel are unsatisfactory and, considering the eminence and ability of the propounders, strangely poor in the craft of interpretation. If this surprizes us in an age when the minds of men were so much awakened, we should remember that the new movement was chiefly in the direction of physical science, and that little progress had as yet been made in the analysis of human history and the science of historical criticism.

From these abortive attempts at interpretation, we gather that this singularly elaborate phenomenon of a Jewel had the effect of setting curiosity and imagination awork in the minds of those who contemplated it, and that some theory, however precipitate, became a sort of necessity. To this category must be added a more recent conjecture, which, as it proceeded from a highly honoured source, as it was persistently and circumstantially argued out, and as it has been widely accepted, demands a chapter by itself.

[7] Macaulay, _History_, c. iii.

[8] Appendix A.

[9] Appendix B.

Chapter IV

Bishop Clifford’S Theory[10]

The theories about the Alfred Jewel which have been noticed hitherto, belong to the crude attempts at interpretation which were evoked by the surprize of the strange discovery in the last decade of the seventeenth century. We come now to a new theory which was broached in our own time by Bishop Clifford, in his Inaugural Address as President of the Somersetshire Archæological Society in 1877, when the Annual Meeting of that Society was held at Bridgwater.

This theory demands a fuller attention than any of the foregoing, first, because it bears manifest tokens of maturer thought, but further, because there is much curious material woven into its fabric, which gives it independent value. If only for the single fact that it introduces a new explanation of the problematic ‘æstel,’ it ought to quicken the interest of every reader. It will be better on all accounts that the ideas of the author be presented in his own words:

Amongst the articles of church furniture used in the middle ages, frequent mention is made of ‘Baculi Cantorum,’ or choir staves. In the year 1222 there were eight such staves in the treasury of Salisbury Cathedral. ‘The staves at Canterbury Cathedral (writes Dr. Rock, _Church of our Fathers_, vol. ii) were as rich as they were curious, in the year 1315.’ He gives a list of them, and among them are ‘IV baculi de cornu, cum capitibus eburneis’—four staves of horn with ivory handles; others were adorned with gold and silver and precious stones. The use of these staves was to enable the Cantor or master of the choir to point out to the singers and to the readers their places in the book, and so prevent the manuscripts and their illuminations being soiled by the touch of fingers. When the lessons were read, the choirmaster not only pointed out the spot where the lesson commenced, but handed, if necessary, the staff to the lector, that he might use it to guide his eye along the lines in reading. This precaution was not only observed with regard to those beautifully illuminated volumes used for the church services, but was equally, if not more so, required in the case of books which were intended for the use of the general public. Most readers required to use their fingers to assist their eyes in following the lines, a practice which, if allowed, would not only soil the manuscripts, but in course of time obliterate them. Therefore when books were intended for public use it was customary to place by them a small staff or pointer for the use of the reader, even as in modern days a paper-knife forms one of the ordinary articles of furniture on a library table. In many instances these little staves or pointers were inserted in the binding of the books themselves, something after the fashion in which pencils are inserted in modern pocket-books.

I may seem to be widely departing from Alfred and from Athelney, but you will soon perceive the pertinency of these remarks. Alfred, as you know, did much to encourage learning amongst his subjects, and he was especially anxious that useful works should be translated into English, and copies of them be arranged in public places, where all might gain access to them and read them.

To encourage this good and noble work by his example he became himself an author. And he thus describes, in the preface which he wrote to the book he translated, the steps he took to start what I may call the first public reading in England:—‘When I reflected,’ he says, ‘how the knowledge of the Latin tongue had fallen away throughout England, though many still knew how to read English writing, I began in the midst of divers and manifold affairs of this kingdom to turn into English this book (of St. Gregory the Great) which in Latin is named _Pastoralis_, and in English, _The Herdsman’s Book_; sometimes word for word, and sometimes sense for sense, even as I had been taught by Plegmund my Archbishop, and Asser my Bishop, and Grimbald my Mass-Priest, and John my Mass-Priest. After I had learned of them how I might best understand it, I turned it into English. And I will send a copy to every bishop’s see in my kingdom, and in each book there is an aestel (i.e. a staff) of (the value of) 50 mancusses; and I command, in God’s name, that no man take the staff from the book, nor the book from the minster, seeing that we know not how long there shall be such learned bishops, as now, thank God, there be. Therefore I command that these remain always in their places, unless the bishop have them with him either to lend somewhere, or to have other copies made from them.’

Here, then, we have the explanation of Alfred’s gem. It is the handle of a book-staff or pointer which, like those at Canterbury, and elsewhere, was made of horn (which has perished), the handle itself being of precious and durable materials. The inscription on it bears witness that it was made by Alfred’s order, ‘Aelfred had me worked;’ and this circumstance, taken in conjunction with the costliness of its material and the beauty of its execution, makes it in the highest degree probable that it is one of those aestels which Alfred says were worked by his order, and inserted in the presentation copies of his translation of _The Herdsman’s Book_, and which were valued at 50 mancusses, or (taking the value of the mancus at 7_s._ 6_d._) £18 15_s._, a large sum for those days.

But if so, how came this gem to be found in this neighbourhood? Alfred presented one to each bishop’s see in his kingdom, and there was no bishop’s see in those days in these parts nearer than Sherborne, in Dorsetshire. You will have remarked that Alfred in his preface mentions four persons who assisted him in translating the book: Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury; Asser, Bishop of Sherborne; the Priest Grimbald, who presided over the school which Alfred had founded for the training of the English youth; and the Priest John, who was placed by Alfred as abbot over the monastery which he founded at Athelney. Copies of the book, each having a book-staff, were sent to Plegmund and Asser, for they both were bishops. Can there be any reasonable doubt that this mark of attention was equally observed in the case of the other two collaborators? More especially as Grimbald was at the head of Alfred’s school, and it was in order to promote English reading that Alfred had undertaken the translation of the book, and John, though not a bishop, was abbot over the monastery which Alfred himself had built in gratitude to God for the victory he had gained. A copy of the book, with the costly aestel in it, was no doubt sent by Alfred to his friend John, at Athelney, as well as to the other three collaborators. The book and the staff were, agreeably to Alfred’s order, preserved in the minster, till, in the days of trouble, (probably at the dissolution of the monastery,) both were hidden out of sight, and for that purpose buried in the grounds of some neighbouring friend at Newton Park, in the hopes of recovering them in better days. As time passed on, the secret of the place where they were hidden died with the man who had hidden them; and when after many years chance revealed the place of the deposit, the book itself and the perishable portion of the staff had rotted away, leaving only the gold and crystal handle, with the words, ‘Aelfred had me worked,’ to tell the tale. This I believe to be the true history of Alfred’s gem.

When I visited the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, in the month of July, I was shown by the courteous Curator, by the side of Alfred’s jewel, a smaller specimen of ancient goldsmith’s work which was dug up a few years ago at Minster Lovel, in Oxfordshire, on the site of an ancient abbey. It is smaller than Alfred’s gem, but, like the latter, it is evidently the handle of a reading-staff. The handle of Alfred’s staff was made of a size that might be conveniently grasped in the hand; the one from Minster Lovel was intended to be held between the finger and thumb. It is smaller and less costly, but the workmanship of the gold is so like the larger one of Alfred as almost to suggest its being the work of the same man.

Thus Bp. Clifford would fain persuade us to see in our Jewel the costly handle of a pointing stave. This satisfies the requirement of the socket and rivet, which is a fit provision for the insertion of a fine stave. The only question at this point that could be raised in opposition is, whether the socket is not too small to admit a stave of useful thickness for the purpose contemplated. And as the author of this theory has applied it equally to the Minster Lovel jewel, this objection gains in force, as the rod that could be inserted in that little jewel would be of very doubtful service as a pointer.

But when we consider the common elements in the design and workmanship of these two jewels, we are compelled to reject the theory that they were intended as handles to pointers. And first of the design. Both of these jewels have an obverse and a reverse, which in such an instrument would not only be unnecessary and unmeaning, but absolutely inconvenient and detrimental. Both of them are obviously designed to gratify the eye; as objects to be displayed in positions which they are to adorn and beautify. The Alfred Jewel contains the picture of a man in enamel, framed in golden filigree, glazed with crystal, and backed with a plate of gold curiously engraved; the whole composition plainly dictates which side is to be foremost and which end is to be uppermost when it is fixed in the position for which it is intended. Bp. Clifford’s theory cannot be accommodated to these conditions.

So much for the design: now as to the materials and workmanship. In both of these jewels the outer surface is filigree work of very fine texture; can it be imagined that this agrees with the suggested use of a handle to a choirmaster’s wand, whether we consider the implied defacement of the finest goldsmith’s work, or the galling friction to the musician’s hand?

But besides appropriateness of design and workmanship, there is yet another condition to be satisfied, and one which this theory can only meet by means of a roundabout and arbitrary hypothesis. Any interpretation of the Jewel, to be satisfactory, must harmonize naturally and spontaneously with the Alfredian associations of the spot on which it was found. Bp. Clifford has felt this, and he has employed an elaborate machinery to meet it. The place of the find is one that naturally suggests direct and immediate connexion with the goings and comings of the king himself, for it lies near the centre of that region in which he spent some months of acute effort in the most critical juncture of his diversified and adventurous life. If our interpretation harmonize with the associations which are linked to the spot, and through the spot to the Jewel, probability is strengthened while the interest is heightened; but what possibility is there of bringing these associations to bear upon a costly book-pointer? If anything so extravagant existed, it might be preserved in the treasury of the minster or in the book-room of the cloister; but it could have no place about the person of a fugitive king and a struggling warrior. Accordingly the author of this theory is compelled to detach the interpretation from the personal history of the king, and to rest his solution of the problem upon a highly speculative assumption combined with the chances and vicissitudes of a later age.

The author of this theory has to face the inevitable question—On the supposition that the Alfred Jewel is the handle of a book-pointer, how do you account for its being found in the neighbourhood of Athelney? In preparing to answer this question, he fetches a wide compass, enclosing in his sweep the literary achievements of the king, and seven centuries of the after-time. He begins by recalling Alfred’s acknowledgements to Plegmund, Asser, Grimbald, and John, for their help in his translation of Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_, and he recites the king’s statement that he would send a copy of the translation to each bishop’s see, and with each book an ‘æstel’ worth 50 mancusses. It is an essential part of his theory that the ‘æstel’ was a book-pointer with a costly handle, and moreover that the Alfred Jewel was one of these handles. But there was no bishop’s see at or near Athelney, the nearest being at Sherborne: how then did this relic find its way to Newton Park by Athelney? The answer is that John the Priest became abbot of Alfred’s foundation at Athelney, and that there can be no reasonable doubt that Alfred gave the book and ‘æstel’ not only to Plegmund and Asser, but that he also extended his bounty to Grimbald and John, his two other collaborators[11]. So the Alfred Jewel having thus arrived at Athelney as the handle of a book-pointer, was religiously preserved there until the time of Henry VIII, when it was buried to await better times, and in the course of nature forgotten. My objection to this is not that it is imaginative, but that it is ill suited to its purpose, because it is needlessly cumbrous, and because the Jewel can be traced to Athelney by a much simpler and more obvious process.

But while I find it impossible to admit Bp. Clifford’s theory as an interpretation of the Alfred Jewel, seeing that this relic absolutely refuses to be classed with the decorated handles of the _baculi cantorum_, I must add that the question of the ‘æstel’ stands apart. I am by no means prepared to maintain that the explanation of that problem which I have recently offered in _Alfred the Great_ is preferable to Bp. Clifford’s. There is a close affinity between the two explanations; they both rest upon a common basis in the ancient gloss: ‘_Indicatorium_, æstel.’ I interpreted the _indicatorium_ to be a light slab, much like a flat ruler, which was to be brought to bear across the page so as to guide the reader’s eye, and perhaps furnish a rest for his fingers. The Latin term would fit a pointer as well as a flat ruler, and perhaps better. It may therefore well be that in the endeavour to interpret the Jewel, Bp. Clifford has incidentally explained that problematical object which king Alfred sent as a fitting accompaniment with each of the presentation copies of his version of Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_. The remark that the pointer might be fitted to the volume by an arrangement like that now in common use for attaching a pencil to a notebook must, I think, be felt to add a certain persuasive concreteness to his suggestion. Only then, if the ‘æstel’ was a book-pointer with a costly handle, that handle was certainly not fashioned after the manner of the Alfred Jewel, or of its natural associate the minor jewel of Minster Lovel—it was not fashioned with obverse and reverse.

A subsequent interpretation by Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., appeared in the _Reliquary_ for October, 1879, vol. xx, p. 66:—‘Many, and very curious as well as various, have been the conjectures as to the use or origin of this remarkable jewel, and of the figure intended to be represented upon it, but it is not worth while to here repeat them. The probability, to my mind, is that it simply formed the head of a sceptre, and that just possibly it might have been ultimately given by Alfred to the head of the monastery founded by himself, to be used as a pastoral staff or staff of office, as was the crosier in later days. The design and the workmanship are of exquisite beauty, and in all respects the jewel is unsurpassed by any other existing example of Anglo-Saxon art.’ Again, this interpretation, like that of Hearne and others, appears to be excluded by the formation of the Jewel with a front and a back.

By the rejection of so many hypotheses the field of choice is narrowed, and our path should be so much the clearer to find the true design and use of the Alfred Jewel.

[10] William Joseph Hugh Clifford, second son of the seventh Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, was the Roman Catholic bishop of Clifton from 1857 to 1888. He was a member of the Somerset Archæological and Natural History Society, and for many years a constant attendant at the yearly meetings. In 1877 he was President of the Society. His obituary, by Canon Holmes, is in vol. xxxix of the Society’s Proceedings.

[11] This machinery for bringing the _baculus cantoris_ to Athelney was first employed in the interest of the stylus theory. See S. Pegge in _Archæologia_ ii, quoted above in chapter iii.

Chapter V

A Jewel In The Crown

The Alfred Jewel is so made as to require a small stem or ‘stert’ for its fixture when in use. It tapers off to a socket, which is adapted to receive a small stem, and it is only when erected on such a stem that the Figure in enamel will appear in a natural position. How can we accommodate it with such a function as will correspond to these indications of design? Evidently not on the top of a standard-bearer’s pole, nor on the top of a stilus, nor at the butt-end of a music-master’s wand. It is moreover evident that the stem was a permanent fixture in the socket, for although the socket is now empty, this is due to the perishing of the stem, as appears from the fact that the cross-pin is riveted. The stem was therefore not metallic, but of some hard organic substance, perhaps walrus ivory. Our problem then is to discover a place in which this Jewel, permanently furnished with such a stem, could be so erected as to discharge some appropriate function. That function can hardly be other than personal decoration, and the place in which it might be erected is the helmet of the warrior.

I imagine then that a hollow bead ran round the king’s helmet, along the rim next the forehead, and that over the very centre of the brow there was a round orifice in the upper slope of the bead, fitted to receive the ivory stem of the Jewel, and that when fixed in this position it would have minor jewels similarly fixed on either side, but that this one would be the central piece and the richest jewel in the crown or coronet. For this magnificent Jewel would have the effect of converting the helmet into a crown, transforming the most vital piece of defensive armour into the chief of royal insignia for public occasions of state.

That the rudiment of the crown was derived from the helmet, at least among our people, seems to be indicated by the Anglo-Saxon word that preceded ‘crown,’ namely, CYNE-HELM, which means Regal Helmet. This word is the only English representative of the idea before the Romanic word was domesticated among us. The term ‘crown’ made its entrance after the Norman Conquest, at first in its original Latin form CORONA, as may be seen in the contemporary _Chronicle of Peterborough_. Thus we read under the date 1085: Her se cyng bær his CORONA and heold his hired on Winceastre to þam Eastran, ‘This year the king wore his Crown and held his Court at Winchester for the Eastertide.’ But the native word was not quickly superseded. In the next annal, 1086, we are informed that the king wore his Crown three times every year:—‘þriwa he bær his CYNE-HELM ælce geare.’

[Illustration: THE MINSTER LOVEL JEWEL]

The explanation now offered of the use and function of the Alfred Jewel is confirmed by comparison with a minor jewel in the same glass case, which for its illustrative value has been placed by the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum near the Alfred Jewel. In workmanship it is so similar that it might well be (as Bp. Clifford said) from the hand of the same maker. In design it is as much alike as it is possible for a simple and rudimentary pattern to resemble one that is highly elaborate and developed. No one can doubt that these two objects are fully analogous to each other, and that the service for which they were intended was of the same nature. This minor jewel has, like the Alfred Jewel, an obverse and a reverse; the obverse presents a Cross in opaque enamel _cloisonnée_; the reverse has a gold plate, not engraved—as in the greater work—but equally with it suggestive of the back of a framed picture which is to lean against a vertical surface of some kind. As in the other, the area of the obverse is more contracted than the reverse, and the sloping sides are covered with a delicate filigree of gold. Lastly, this also has its projecting socket, with a cross-pin in its place riveted. It is in all respects adapted to be either the front and central jewel of a minor coronet, or else a lateral and subordinate jewel in the circlet whose front place was filled by a superior piece such as the Alfred Jewel.

This minor jewel was found at Minster Lovel in Oxfordshire about the middle of the present century. The finder brought it to a jeweller in Oxford, who, apprehending that the object was one of more than ordinary curiosity, carried it to Dr. Wilson, then President of Trinity College, an eminent archæologist, and the man who of all men in Oxford at that time was the most capable of estimating a find of this nature[12]. The interest which he took in it was shared with Dr. Griffiths, who was afterwards Warden of Wadham College, and (whether by one or both) it was presented to the Ashmolean Museum. The date of this event does not appear to be recorded, but I suppose it must have happened in the fifties.

That gold ornaments were proper for the helmet, we gather from a passage in the _Beowulf_, a poem which is now, I think, among critics of proved competency, allowed to belong to the eighth century. When Beowulf, after slaying the Dragon, lies fatally wounded, he puts off the chief pieces of his armour with the insignia of royalty, and bestows them upon Wiglaf, his faithful Thane and the natural heir to his throne. In the poetic description we perceive that the insignia are largely blended with the body-armour, and that the helmet is characterized by its golden decoration:

2810 2810

Dyde him of healse Ungearing his neck hring gyldenne of the golden ring þióden þrîst-hŷdig the courageous Captain þegne gesealde, on his Thane conferred it, geongum gâr-wigan; on the gallant youth; gold-fâhne helm, the gold-prankt helm also, beáh ond byrnan; the collar and the byrnie; hêt hine brûcan well. saying: ‘Brook them well!’

It would be easy to collect examples from later romances, but I will add only one, taken from Laȝamon’s description (A.D. 1200) of king Arthur putting his armour on:

Helm he set on hafde Helm he set on head, hæh of stele: high of steel: þær on wes moni ȝimston, thereon was many a gem-stone al mid golde bigon. all encircled with gold[13].

The position which I have imagined for the Alfred Jewel would represent the cumulative effect of the two chief and central gems in the Crown of Queen VICTORIA, namely, the great Sapphire of Charles II and the great Ruby of Edward the Black Prince[14].

[12] Speaking of the archæologists in Oxford fifty years ago, I am not forgetting, indeed I could not forget, John Henry Parker, C.B., the guide and teacher of his time in much antiquarian knowledge of great value to the historian; more especially in whatever concerned ecclesiastical or domestic architecture. He was for many years Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.

[13] Laȝamon’s _Brut_, ed. Madden, vol. ii, p. 464.

[14] _The English Regalia_, by Cyril Davenport, p. 51.

Chapter VI

The Boar’S Head

There is a feature in the Alfred Jewel which appears to support the theory propounded in the last chapter. I mean the Boar’s Head, which is so wrought into the composition of the piece as to represent a subordinate, or even a servile, relation to the saintly Figure which is seen through the window of crystal.

About the creature indicated by this head there has been some diversity of opinion. It has been spoken of as the head of a serpent, of a fish, of a dolphin, and strangest of all, it has been called the head of a griffin. Of these notions the last is the one that has been oftenest repeated, and yet it is the most absurd. No doubt the griffin has been variously described, nevertheless it is generally agreed that the head of this fabulous animal is either that of an eagle or that of a lion.

Many years ago, as I happened, in company with Dr. Liddon, to be passing the entrance of the Ashmolean Museum—the old original building by the Sheldonian Theatre—I asked him whether he had ever seen the Alfred Jewel. He had not, and he manifested some alacrity and we went in. It was naturally my part to act the showman, and I did it with a will, which was quickened by an interested motive. I set forth all my best exegesis of every part, except one—I left the animal’s head unnoticed. The old doubt about the nature of this head had been recently revived, and I lay in wait for testimony undesigned. I had the satisfaction of hearing my companion remark interrogatively, ‘That appears to be a boar’s head?’

Between the wild boar and the helmet there existed a close and recognized association, as is well attested by the _Beowulf_, which is our chief voice from the heroic age of Teutonic antiquity. In the course of that poem there are no less than five passages in which this habitual association of ideas stands out prominently. The first passage is where Beowulf and his companions have reached the Danish coast and stepped ashore and parleyed with the coast-warden, and obtained his approval of their visit and his offer of guidance to Hrothgar’s Court. As they set forth on their march inland, the poet notices the play of the sunlight glancing from the boar-figures on their helmets:

301 301

Gewiton him þâ fêran Forth on the march they fared —flota stille bâd, —the floater reposing, seomode on sæ̂le, wearing on her cable, sîd-fæðmed scip, the wide-bosomed ship, on ancre fæst. at anchor fast. Eoferlic scionon Boar-figures shone ofer hleor-bergan; over the cheek-plates; gehroden golde as chequered with gold fâh and fŷr-heard defiant and fire-hard ferh wearde heold. the farrow kept ward.

The second passage occurs in the course of the Lay of Hnæf, which is inserted among the festivities that follow Beowulf’s success against Grendel, as being sung by the minstrel in Hrothgar’s hall. In the story of the Lay there is a fight, and that is followed by the burning of the dead, and here the poet notices the arms which are consumed with their owners. In the short quotation which follows, the coat of mail is called a sark, and the helmet is indicated by its crest, which was a boar of hard iron plated with gold:

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æt þæm âde wæs At the place of the pile êð-gesŷne was plain to behold swât-fâh syrce, the sark blood-stained, swîn eal-gylden, the gilded swine-crest, eofer îren-heard. the boar of hard iron.

The third passage presents us with an incidental description of the terrors of a hand-to-hand fight between armed champions, and it pictures a trial of strength between the tough steel of the flashing sword and the hard iron of the boar on the helmet:

1286 1286

þonne heoru bunden When the hafted halberd hamere geþuren, hammer-toughened, sweord swâte fâh, the sword battle-spotted, swîn ofer helme at the swine on the helmet ecgum dyhtig with urgent edge andweard scîreð. smites importunate.

The first success of Beowulf having left an avenger alive, it becomes necessary for the hero, in pursuance of his pledged war against the monster brood, to dive all-armed to the bottom of an awful mere. In our fourth quotation he is seen arming himself and preparing to plunge into the abyss; the main pieces of his armour are described, and of his helmet it is said as follows:—

1449 1449

ac se hwîta helm But the burnished helmet hafelan werede, his head to protect, se þe mere-grundas in the murky mere mengan scolde, was now to be merged, sêcan sund-gebland in the swirl of the swimmer since geweorðad, all its sumptuous array, befangen frea-wrasnum fringed with lordly filigree swa hine fyrn-dagum as in far-away days worhte wæpna-smið, by weapon-smith ’twas wrought, wundrum teode and wondrously dight, besette swîn-lîcum beset with figures swine-like þæ̂t hine siððan nô that on it ever since brond nê beado-mêcas no brand or blade of war bîtan ne meahton. had any power to bite.

These closing lines recall the remarkable passage of Tacitus, where he says that the Æstii (Esthonians) venerate the mother of the gods, and that they wear figures of the wild boar as the emblem of her cult, and that this observance alone suffices without arms offensive or defensive to make her votary feel secure even in the midst of enemies[15].

The mother of the gods may be identified, or at least proximately equated, with FRIGE, the consort of Woden, whose name survives in the sixth day of the week, Friday; FRIGE-DÆG. A survival of her cult is seen in the festive ceremony of the Boar’s Head, which is kept up in Queen’s College, Oxford, adding a mystic incident to the mirth of Christmas.

Caput apri defero, Reddens laudes Domino. The boar’s head in hand bring I, With garlands gay and rosemary.

Our fifth example occurs in a passage eminently characteristic of the heroic age, when the institutions of monarchy rested upon the personal devotion of the thane to the king. This relation is one of great historical consequence; it was to grow into the later institution of knighthood; it had been matured by that immemorial tradition of sacred confidence and fidelity between the war-chief and his companion in arms, which is signalized by Tacitus in words familiar to the modern historian. The passage which I am about to quote exhibits this devotion in concrete act. Beowulf, the hero of the poem, has returned successful from his adventure, and he is fulfilling his first duty by rendering a report to Hygelac his king. His speech is closing with mention of rich guerdon he had received from the king whom he had delivered, namely, Hrothgar, son of Halfdan; and then he produces the noblest of these prizes as a dutiful offering to his lord. This scene constitutes a frame to our last instance of the boar-figure as the most signal feature in a warrior’s headgear:

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“Swa se þeod kyning “So in fair customs lived þeawum lyfde; the imperial king; nealles ic þam leanum nor of fitting guerdon I forloren hæfde, was aught forlorn, mægnes mêde— of meed for service— ac he me mâdmas geaf, yea, mighty things he gave, sunu Healfdenes, did Halfdan’s son, on minne sylfes dôm; myself withal to please; þâ ic þê, beorn-cyning, which I to thee, brave prince, bringan wylle, by choice do bring, êstum geŷwan. in willing homage. Gên is eall æt þê All my wealth proceeds lissa gelong: of thy good lordship: ic lŷt hafo nor is my lot to have heafod-mâga, kinsman of chief account, nefne Hygelâc þec!” king Hygelac, but thee!”

Hêt þa in beran Then bade he in to bear eafor heafod-segn, the wild-boar crest, heaðo-steapne helm, the helm in fight so high, hâre byrnan, the hoary mail-coat gray, gûð-sweord geatolic— the sword seigneurial— gyd æfter wræc: and he said withal:

“Mê þis hilde-sceorp “To me this battle-harness Hrôðgâr sealde, Hrothgar gave, snotra fengel...” the sapient monarch” &c.

In the evidence above given we see indications that this traditional choice of the wild boar for a crest was of high antiquity, and had its origin in a religious sentiment, and our fourth passage (1449 ff.) certainly conveys the idea that the armourer who wrought at the furniture of the helmet did so with a mind still under the spell of the old persuasion that a mystic sanction clung to the figure of the wild boar, and qualified it for its time-honoured post as guardian of the warrior’s head.

In the Alfred Jewel the Boar’s Head appears to discharge a double function: one subservient, as affording a base or pedestal to the frame of the sacred effigy; the other servile, as a socket for the shaft whereby the elaborate and composite design is to be fixed in its destined place.

[15] ‘Matrem deûm venerantur. Insigne superstitionis formas aprorum gestant: id pro armis omnique tutelâ securum deæ cultorem etiam inter hostes præstat.’ _Germania_, 45.

Chapter VII

The Figure In Enamel And The Engraved Plate At The Back Of It

But the vital problem of the Alfred Jewel is in the enamelled Figure. Of its meaning there have been guesses and suggestions, some reasonable, some wild; M. Labarte could only say, ‘it represents a figure hard to characterize.’ This Figure is manifestly of a religious character, and it is the centre and focus of the whole. All the other parts are relative and subordinate to this, and the entire Jewel is in fact a setting and a shrine for this sacred object. We must endeavour to ascertain its intention and significance, but before attempting this interpretation we must consider the Enamel as a work of art.

For this venerable relic, even if regarded only in its material aspect as an ingenious mechanical product, and as a specimen of a once flourishing art, is rare and curious to so high a degree as to confer rank upon any Museum (however otherwise rich) that is so fortunate as to possess it.

Behind the Enamel, in the position of a backboard to a picture-frame, is a separate gold plate bearing a significant device which is certainly intended as a counterpart to the Figure of the obverse. From the relation observable between these two representations we may gather a constructive inference. Thus we have three subjects for our consideration in the present chapter, and it will be convenient to give to each of them a separate section by itself. Accordingly, the plan of this chapter will be as follows:—I. The Enamel as an artistic product; II. The inward signification of the enamelled Figure, and of the Engraving at the back of it; III. A Constructive Inference.

I

The Enamel As An Artistic Product

Of enamels we may say that they are a sort of paintings or embroideries;—only not made with liquid pigments nor with variegated threads, but with molten glass diversely tinted by means of metallic oxides[16]. On the one hand they are the precursors of our painted windows, and on the other they are the parents of the famous works of the artists of Limoges. Of this artistic industry the Alfred Jewel preserves a specimen of the rarest kind. It belongs to the type which is designated _cloisonnée_, because the outlines of the design have first been made by little slender barriers of gold which serve as fences between the colours. Into the compartments so enclosed the material of the enamel is deposited in the form of a vitreous paste, that is, glass ground to a fine powder, and mixed with the colouring material and moistened. So prepared, the work is passed into an oven, with a heat to melt the glass, but not the metal plate upon which the design has been laid. If the process is successful, the work is substantially achieved when it comes out of the oven, and nothing remains to be done but the dressing and finishing of the surface. Of this _cloisonnée_ type M. Labarte, in enumerating nine examples, as being the chief works of this kind now extant, gives to all of them the title ‘Byzantine.’

_The chief extant Monuments in Byzantine Enamel Cloisonnée, according to Labarte._

1. The celebrated crown of gold, which goes by the name of the Iron Crown, is the oldest extant jewel that is enriched with enamel. It was given to the cathedral at Monza by Theodelinda, the Lombard queen, who died in 625[17].

2. The enamels in the altar of St. Ambrose of Milan, executed in 835, must have been executed by Greek artists, who were numerous in Italy at that time. It is to be noted that the flesh tints are rendered by opaque white.

3. The enamels in the cross called the Cross of Lothaire in the treasury of the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle, which we hold to be Byzantine work.

4. “A jewel preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It was discovered in 1696 (_sic_), near the Abbey of Athelney, in which Alfred the Great took refuge when he was defeated by the Danes in 878. Mr. Albert Way has given a description of it, with engravings of front and back, and in section (_The Archæological Journal_, vol. ii, p. 164). The inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEVYRCAN (_Alfred ordonna que je fusse fait_) which stands in the thickness of the piece, is thought to leave small room for doubt as to the origin which is attributed to it. The enamel of the obverse is executed by the process of _cloisonnage_; it represents a figure hard to characterize (_il reproduit une figure dont il est difficile de déterminer le caractère_). The flesh portions are in whitish enamel; the colours employed in the drapery are pale green and ruddy brown semi-transparent; the ground is blue. The jewel terminates in the head of an animal, in golden filigree, with all the characteristics of the oriental style.

“Admitting that the inscription may apply to Alfred the Great, this jewel would not by itself be sufficient to prove that the art of enamelling was practised in England in the ninth century. The inscription might have been engraved after the king had purchased it (possibly) of a merchant from the East.”

5. The enamels which environ the gold crown preserved in the treasury of St. Mark’s, at Venice. We see there a bust of the Emperor Leo the Philosopher (886–911), who was probably the donor of this votive crown, which was made to be suspended over an altar.

6. The enamels on a chalice in the same treasury; it appears by the inscription to have been executed for an emperor who died in 944.

7. The enamels on the reliquary of Limburg. This magnificent piece was executed before 976.

8. The enamels upon eight gold plates which were found at Nyitra, in Hungary. Seven of them are in the Museum at Pesth. These eight plates unite to form a crown, one in front and one at back, and three on either side. Each has its enamelled picture. The front piece has a portrait of Constantinus Monomachus (1042). The pieces to right and left of this represent the Empresses Theodora and Zoe; the next two on either side represent actresses; the third on either side contains an allegorical figure of a woman, the one being Humility, with hands crossed in front, the other Truth, bearing a cross. The eighth, which is the hindmost, is circular, and represents St. Andrew[18].

9. The enamels which decorate the royal crown of Hungary, which was sent as a present to Geysa I, king of Hungary, who died in 1077.

In this list the famous ‘iron’ crown of Monza holds the first place, being, in fact, an ample golden fillet richly decorated with enamels, and containing within it a narrow hoop of iron, which is reputed to have been made of a nail from the Cross.

The fourth place in this catalogue is assigned by M. Labarte to the Alfred Jewel, and by this classification it is referred to a Byzantine source. But as it is plain from the matter as well as the manner of his description that his acquaintance with the Jewel is second-hand, we pass over this local element, while we accept his classification so far as it refers to structural affinities.

In the spring of 1839, during some excavations in Thames Street, was discovered a fibula which happily passed straightway into the hands of Mr. Roach Smith, and he wrote a memoir upon it which may be seen in the _Archæologia_ for 1840, accompanied with a splendid illustration in colour and gold. It contains a bust in cloison-work enamel, and invites comparison with our Jewel more than any of those in the above list, probably more than any other extant specimen. It is now in the British Museum. Both the figure and the filigree are of superior workmanship to the Alfred Jewel, as if it were a later and more refined product of the same school. A French critic calls it Byzantine, and assigns it to the eleventh century[19].

So far about other extant specimens of enamel _cloisonnée_. This species of enamel rises like an island out of the broad level of the enamel _champlevée_, in which the plate was prepared for the vitreous deposit by scooping the pattern upon it. To this common method belong the older and more rudimentary enamels of the British horse-gear, correctly described by Philostratus, who will be quoted below. To this belong also the late enamels, for which during the thirteenth century Limoges was famous.

The history of the art of enamelling is very imperfectly known, and the paucity of extant specimens makes the investigation the more difficult. The canvas upon which these pictures were laid consisted of plates of the precious metals, the smaller works being laid upon gold or silver, the larger on copper. As a natural consequence it happened that as soon as they were antiquated or had served their turn, they were lightly cast into the melting-pot, save where they were protected by some peculiar veneration.

Hence it has come to pass that a favourite art of the Dark and Middle Ages, which we have reason to believe was for centuries very prolific (until it was superseded by the increased vigour of painting and sculpture in the fourteenth century), is now represented by a few specimens only, and its history is hard to retrace. I shall make no attempt to supply this want, and shall only rehearse a few interesting facts which the present investigation has brought to my knowledge. Origins I leave to specialists: but this I may say, that such evidence as the present enquiry has brought within the circle of my observation seems to suggest a Keltic source for the Enamel in our Jewel.

The earliest mention of enamel to which we can confidently point is found in the book of Philostratus entitled _Pictures_ (Icones, Εἰκόνες). This author was a Greek rhetorician and connoisseur in Art, who came to Rome (A.D. 200) in the reign of Severus, attracted by the Court of Julia Domna, who (in the words of Gibbon) was the patroness of every art and the friend of every man of genius. In his _Icones_ he makes pictures the text of his elegant and fashionable discourse. Whether his pictures were real or imaginary is a matter of no consequence to our present purpose. The picture in which we are interested is one that represents a Meet for a Boar-hunt. The writer comments upon the well-equipped company, the horses and their riders, in the splendour of their get-up for the sport, drawing special attention to the curiosity and costliness of their horse-trappings. Their bits are silvern, and their head-stalls are decorated with gold and enamelled colours. For the production of these colours it is said that ‘the barbarians who dwell in the ocean do smelt them upon heated copper, and that in cooling they do set and harden and keep the design[20].’

It has been questioned who are meant by the barbarians in the ocean. Modern French writers have generally applied it to the Gauls; but Olearius, the editor of Philostratus (1709), understood the Keltic peoples; and certainly the expression appears more applicable to the British Isles than to Gaul. Moreover, it is in Britain, and not in Gaul, that enamelled horse-trappings have been found. Some of these may be seen in the Ashmolean, and more in the British Museum.

‘The antiquities discovered at Stanwick in Yorkshire, Polden Hill in Somersetshire, Saham Toney in Norfolk, Westhall in Suffolk, and at Middleby in Annandale, Scotland, which are all of Celtic workmanship, consist principally of bits and portions of horse-furniture of various kinds which have preserved, in many cases, the enamel with which they were decorated[21].’

The Romans or Romanized populations continued the practice of this art, and from the evidence of the finds that occur from time to time it appears probable that some of the finest specimens were made in Britain. A large flat plate, representing an altar, which was found in London and is now in the British Museum, has all the appearance of being unfinished. A curious cup, which was found at Rudge in Wiltshire, has round it the names of five of the towns on the Roman Wall. And this specimen appears, by peculiarities of workmanship, to be nearly related to the beautiful vase which was found in a tumulus on the Bartlow Hills, in Essex, where it seems to have been deposited after the time of Hadrian. And if the Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries did, as it is thought, obliterate all traces of this art in the other parts of the west, this could only have had the effect of making the practice of it peculiar to Ireland; and the Irish were not a stay-at-home race, neither did they hide their gifts from other people.

There is a Keltic aspect in the enamelled designs which was remarked by Franks, and which may have accompanied the tradition of this art even when it passed out of Keltic hands[22].

In short, all the indications which this enquiry has brought to my notice concerning the technical history of our Enamel do seem to localize it in the British Isles. At a later stage of this chapter we shall be met by evidence of a different kind, tending in the same direction.

II

The Inward Signification Of The Figure, And Of The Engraving At The Back Of It

About the signification of this Figure the conjectures have been diverse, but they have all agreed in recognizing the two sceptres as the characterizing attribute. Hickes, in his first interpretation, thought that the _icuncula_ represented the glorified Saviour with a lily sceptre in either hand, denoting his twofold realm of heaven and earth: or else the pontiff of Rome as his vicegerent wielding both the temporal and the spiritual power. Afterwards, however, when he had read in pseudo-Ingulph the story of St. Cuthbert’s appearance to Alfred, and had contemplated in the Lichfield Book the figure of St. Luke (seemingly, but not really two-sceptered), he was moved to think that the _icuncula_ represented a saint, and was, perhaps, meant for St. Cuthbert[23].

I think Hickes was right in his first interpretation, and especially in the second member of his alternative, wherein he referred it to the pope. In the ninth century the thought of Christ was easily blended with that of his vicegerent upon earth: and it is plain that the Figure is arrayed in precisely those insignia which best represent the dominant thought of the papacy at that epoch. The two sceptres aptly symbolize the claim and aspiration of the Western hierarchy during those very years which Alfred spent in Rome.

Leo IV, the pontiff who welcomed the princely boy to Rome, had already, as the organizer of victory over the Saracens, done much to prepare the exaltation of the Roman See. Many causes conspired to the same result. This was just the moment when the famous Decretals were ready to start upon their triumphant career. A first display of their working was seen in 858, when the novel solemnity of coronation was added to the consecration of Nicholas I. And, as I apprehend the course of events, this falls within the period of Alfred’s sojourn at Rome.

Not long after this the surprizing spectacle was seen of the pope on horseback, and the emperor on foot walking by his side and holding his bridle as he rode. This pontiff gave commands to kings and ruled over them as lord of the whole world; and he actually realized his ambition of making all secular power subject to the papacy.

He claimed the subjection of all national churches to the bishop of Rome. He decreed, in 866, that no archbishop might be enthroned or might consecrate the eucharist, until he had received the _pallium_ from the Roman pontiff.

There was much in the conditions of the time and in his own experience to cause Alfred to view these things wholly on their favourable side. The enamelled head is probably not meant for a portrait of Leo IV or any particular pope, but we can hardly be mistaken if we interpret it as a symbolical figure to represent the papal authority as the vicar and vicegerent of Christ.

And if this be a true solution of the problematical _icuncula_, there is yet something more which we naturally desire to know. We naturally inquire about the composition of the symbol, of what elements is it made up, and from what source did the suggestion come?

[Illustration: ILLUMINATION FROM THE ‘BOOK OF KELLS.’]

In the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, is preserved a very famous book, known as the _Book of Kells_, a monument of Irish learning and art in that period when Ireland most justly earned the glorious title of ‘Insula Sanctorum.’ One of the full-page illuminations which adorn that book represents a scene of the Temptation, in which Jesus is on the pinnacle and Satan is near. Such is the action represented: but besides the action the same picture conveys also a reflection or comment upon the action. Lower down, and more in the body of the building, there is a window at which is seen a majestic personage holding a sceptre in either hand, which leans and rests on either shoulder. At first sight the effect is quaint, bizarre, and puzzling; but a little attention makes all plain. It becomes clear that a contrast is intended between the humiliation and the triumph of the Christ; and perhaps also, by the association of ideas which the last two verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel have made familiar, to suggest the duty (zealously discharged by the early Irish Church) of missionary devotion. No one who has given time and thought to this picture can doubt that the two-sceptered figure is Christ. Here is no question of the pontiff of Rome. In the seventh century, to which the _Book of Kells_ is assigned, the papal claims were not admitted, much less glorified, by those of the Scotian rite. Therefore the interpretation of that Irish picture is quite simple, and it represents the glorified Christ inhabiting his temple and looking out over his Church as Lord of heaven and earth[24].

Though we know only of a single extant copy of this picture, we may confidently assume that among the manifold activities of the monks and hermits and missionaries and pilgrims from Ireland it was multiplied and disseminated. It is (I think) impossible to compare our Figure of the ninth century with that of the seventh, without coming to the conclusion that the one is a descendant of the other. We need not be incredulous about the chance of Alfred’s being acquainted with Irish iconography. The narrative in the Chronicle (Ā. 891) of three Irish exiles who found their way to king Alfred, reflects a valuable light on his kindly relations with the learned and pious from the sister island. This connexion was neither new nor immature. When they found themselves ashore on the coast of Cornwall they set out ‘at once’—such is the effect of SONA—for king Alfred[25].

Moreover, the Irish picture furnishes a welcome light upon an obscure detail of our enamelled Figure. How are the heads of the sceptres to be explained? Some have taken them for palms, and others for lilies, but the Irish drawing shows them rather as plumes. And this finds support in a singular passage of Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_. Speaking of Oswald the Bretwalda, Bede describes him as a prince who carefully upheld his imperial dignity, insomuch that, not only when he rode through his provinces did his standard go before him, but even when he walked forth in the streets he was always preceded by an apparitor bearing the Tufa, which (he adds) was in the vernacular called Tuuf. We learn from Du Cange that the Tufa was a wand with a head of plumes, and this is what we see in the sceptres of the Irish drawing. Sir Francis Palgrave divined that the Saxon Bretwaldadom had inherited this emblem of authority from the provincial dignitaries of the empire.

From these data the natural conclusion is that the Figure in this Jewel was derived from an Irish, and not from an Oriental, nor from any continental source. It was taken from an Irish symbolical drawing of Christ triumphant and reigning over his Church, and it was adapted by the king in a sense which his experience had made real and concrete and practical. As Chaucer was called ‘grand translateur,’ so we may call Alfred a grand adapter. Whoever has been drawn in to study both Alfred and Dante may have observed this in common to the two, that what they borrow they transfigure, their touch imparts to it the colour of their mind. King Alfred in early youth was tied by every thread of religious conviction and political interest and personal sentiment to the See of Rome, and he meant this Jewel to enshrine the frontispiece of his profession and the ensign of his creed ecclesiastical, political, and personal.

At the close of the former section I said that the conclusion there arrived at would be confirmed by another kind of evidence in the sequel. Up to that point the argument had run upon the technical aspects of our enamelled Figure, and these had seemed to indicate the British Isles as its native region. Since that stage our argument has turned upon the conception and pedigree of the device; and here again we find that an insular rather than a foreign source is indicated. Further evidence, pointing in the same direction, will be advanced before the close of the present chapter[26].

* * * * *

At the back of this Enamel there is a gold plate which serves the same purpose as a backboard to a picture, and it is secured by an overlapping undulating border of gold. In the Minster Lovel jewel this member consists of a blank gold plate, but in the Alfred Jewel this surface is occupied with an engraving which is certainly allegorical. At first sight it seems to be no more than a decorated pattern made upon the idea of a tree with branches and blossoms and fruit[27]. But upon closer inspection this tree appears to be a sword with its point buried in a human heart, and when this is discovered it becomes plain that the branches and blossoms must be allegorical.

A sword with its point planted in a human heart may mean compunction for sin and mortification of the natural man; it may also mean resignation in adversity to the overruling providence of God. Such a disposition of mind is productive of flowers and fruit, that is, of conduct which is beautiful and profitable, and (on great occasions) of action which is heroic. This mode of symbolical expression may be seen in the figure of St. Luke in St. Chad’s Book at Lichfield. The Evangelist holds in his right hand a pen, the feathery part of which branches out into flowers and fruit, to signify the fruitful nature of the writings of St. Luke[28].

These are the obvious meanings of such a symbolical device, and this being so, it plainly results that the Figure and its back-plate are united by correlation of thought. The enamelled Figure is the symbol of religion in its ecclesiastical and political aspect; the engraved plate represents the inward disposition of the heart, the root and fount of personal religion. The former is of the nature of a public profession, and as such is openly displayed to view; the latter is reserved, out of sight, facing the wall.

III

A Constructive Inference

And this raises a consideration to which I invite careful attention. These two pictures, the one enamelled, the other engraved, are complementary the one to the other; they are two parts of one design, and as such they combine to declare the unity of thought which locks together the composition and fabric of this Jewel into one constructive whole. And this observation, once verified and clearly apprehended, must henceforth exclude the theory of Sir Francis Palgrave which explained this Jewel as being derived from two diverse sources in the following manner:—

‘Alfred’s Jewel, in the mechanical workmanship of the metallic portion, offers a close resemblance to the Icelandic ornaments, now made in the island, where the mode has probably continued by usage from the most remote periods. The enamel within, on the other hand, resembles some ornaments of the Carlovingian era now existing on the continent, which have been generally considered as Oriental. The head at the extremity of the ornament is extremely like what is found in those architectural ornaments usually called Saxon, e. g. the porch of St. Margaret’s at York. Whether St. Neot be the personage represented in the enamel I rather doubt; and I think it possible that the enamel itself was brought from the continent, and that the setting only was made in England. This would reconcile the two styles of workmanship; the metallic portion is unquestionably Anglo-Saxon, the enamel may be supposed to be from another country. But altogether it is one of the most curious relics of the kind; and no one, taking all the points of evidence together, can reasonably doubt but that it did belong to king Alfred.’

This is copied from the Ashmolean Catalogue, 1836 (p. 138), the work of Mr. Philip Duncan, or rather perhaps of the two brothers, John and Philip Duncan, both Fellows of New College, and successively Keepers of the Ashmolean Museum, men famous in their generation for their zeal in promoting all that was good and generous and beautiful; and graced, both of them, with a strong and manly beauty worthy to support the nobility of their character and set it forth to the best advantage.

I take the above to be an extract from a letter to one of the brothers in answer to enquiries addressed to Sir Francis Palgrave, asking his opinion about the Jewel, and especially whether he thought the evidence warranted the conclusion that it had really belonged to the great king of Wessex. The answer has a peculiar value, because of the firm judgement it supplies upon the main problem. The deliberate opinion of the most competent authority of the time upon this point is of permanent value. Of a different nature is the other part of his answer, in which he embarked upon a bold antiquarian diagnosis, and broached his dualistic theory. This solution was accepted at the time as furnishing a solid basis for the interpretation of the Jewel, and it has held its ground ever since.

This new hypothesis gave satisfaction on three grounds: first, in that it accounted for the quaintness of the Figure as being probably Byzantine or Oriental; secondly, in that it lightened the burden of credit demanded for our insular jewellers of the ninth century; and thirdly, because it squared so well with the accredited fact that Alfred did receive presents from foreign potentates. On all these grounds the dual hypothesis of Sir Francis Palgrave gave general satisfaction and seemed to be absolutely final.

For myself, I adopted it as the pivot of my interpretation, and as such I used it in the last lecture I gave on the subject, which was in May, 1899. But now at length, by the wider and more searching investigation which has been required in the preparation of this Essay, I have satisfied myself that all the parts of this composite work are bound together by a unity of thought which manifests the effort of a single mind.

All available testimony indicates that this was none other than the mind of king Alfred. In support of this broad assertion I will here bring forward a new illustration from the original writings of the king. When he had translated the _Pastoral Care_ he furnished it with a prologue and an epilogue, both in verse: the prologue is given above, in the second of these chapters; the epilogue is quoted here. It illustrates his love of figure and symbol, and his aptness for the development of a train of allegorical thought:

Ðis is nu se wæterscipe This is now the watering ðe us wereda God which the world’s Creator to frofre gehêt for refreshment promised fold buendum. us who till the field. He cwæð ðæt he wolde He said it was his will ðæt on worulde forð that in the world thenceforth of ðæm innoðum out of the inward soul â libbendu wætru fleowen waters aye enduring flow ðe wel ón hine gelifden under of loyal believers under heaven. lyfte. Is hit lytel tweo There is little doubt ðæt ðæs wæterscipes that of this watering welsprynge is the well-spring is on hefonrice; in the heavenly kingdom; ðæt is Halig Gast. for it is the Holy Ghost. Ðonan hine hlodan From that fountain fetched it halge and gecorene, faithful men elect, siððan hine gierdon and at length ’twas guided ða ðe Gode herdon by hearers of God ðurh halgan bêc through holy books hider on eorðan hither on earth geond manna môd men’s minds to pervade missenlice. in manners diverse.

Sume hine weriað on gewitlocan Some warily keep in memory’s ward wisdomes stream welerum wisdom’s stream with closed gehæftað lips ðæt he on unnyt so that it fruitlessly ût ne to fleoweð: flows not away: ac se wæl wunað but the brooklet bideth ón weres breostum in the man’s breast ðurh Dryhtnes giefe through divine grace diop and stille. deep and still. Sume hine lætað Some let it at large ofer landscare over the land riðum torinnan. in rillets wide-running. Nis ðæt rædlic ðing, Good rede is it not gif swa hlutor wæter if water so lucid hlud and undiop run shallow and loud tofloweð æfter foldum flowing free over fields oð hit to fenne werð. and turning to fen.

Ac hladað iow nu drincan But draw now for your drinking nu iow Dryhten now that your Lord geaf ðæt iow Gregorius Gregorius to you gave, gegiered hafað and he hath guided to durum iowrum to your doors Dryhtnes welle. the spring divine. Fylle nu his fætels, Fill each man now his vessel, se ðe fæstne heder if sound it be, kylle brohte: the pail he brought: cume eft hræðe. come back for more anon. Gif her ðegna hwelc If any lording here ðyrelne kylle a leaky pail brohte to ðys burnan, brought to this burn, bête hine georne, make boot with zealous fear, ðylæs he forsceade lest he should spill scirost wætra, the sparkling water, oððe him lifes drync or of life’s drink forloren weorðe. depart forlorn.

The diction of alliterative poetry has fallen out of use, and consequently this illustration must labour under the disadvantage of being in a form unfamiliar to the general reader. Nevertheless, with a little attention, the essential point will become plain. The royal translator had been refreshed and invigorated with the lucid stream of Gregory’s discourse, and at the moment of parting with a beloved task he sought to relieve his full-fraught soul with a grateful burst of eulogy. Out of all the topics that were appropriate to the occasion he chose the perennial water of life promised at the well of Samaria, and upon this noble theme he expatiated with a fertility of invention which makes it the easier for us to attribute to him the rich symbolism of the Alfred Jewel.

* * * * *

And now to gather up the results of this chapter. We have found more than one reason to think that our Enamel was an insular, and not a continental product. This conclusion was reached by two different paths, first when we were tracing the technical history of the fabrication, and again when we were seeking the spiritual meaning of the design; by these two widely different lines of evidence we were led severally and independently to infer a British rather than a foreign origin for the Figure[29].

This inference was further confirmed by a third evidential process, arising out of the sympathy of meaning which appears to unite the enamelled Figure with the engraved device upon its back-plate. This led us to question the long-established doctrine of duality of origin which rested upon the authority of Sir Francis Palgrave, and to infer that the whole composition of the Jewel had been projected and devised by a single mind.

Finally, we found reason to think that all these features harmonized well with the mind and character of a person with whose name the Jewel is already connected by the Epigraph; and if anything was yet wanting to complete the identification of that person, it seems to be supplied by certain traces of inward affinity between the symbolism of the Jewel and that of the epilogue to the translation of the _Pastoral Care_, one of the surest monuments of the mind of king ALFRED.

[16] For the etymology: _enamel_ is a compound of the simple _amel_, which is now obsolete. This was an anglicized form of French _émail_, which in Old French was _esmal_, whose cognates were Provençal _esmalt_, Spanish and Portuguese _esmalte_, Italian _smalto_ (used by Dante), which, in medieval Latin, was _smaltum_. The source is Old High German *_smaltjan_, our verb _to smelt_, i.e. to fuse by heat (New English Dictionary, v. AMEL).

[17] It is figured in the _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, v. Crown.

[18] These eight plates have been reproduced by M. de Linas in his _Histoire du Travail à l’Exposition universelle de 1867_, p. 125.

[19] _Notice des Émaux, &c., du Musée du Louvre_, par M. de Laborde, 1857, p. 99.

[20] Philostratus, _Icones_, i. 28:—the horsemen are described as—ἀργυροχάλινοι καὶ στικτοὶ καὶ χρυσοῖ τὰ φάλαρα. Ταῦτά φασι τὰ χρώματα τοὺς ἐν ὠκεανῷ βαρβάρους ἐγχεῖν τῷ χαλκῷ διαπύρῳ, τὰ δὲ συνίστασθαι καὶ λιθοῦσθαι, καὶ σώζειν ἃ ἐγράφη.

[21] Augustus W. Franks, ‘Vitreous Art,’ p. 14 in _Art Treasures of the United Kingdom_, a book which was brought out in connexion with the Manchester Exhibition of 1857.

[22] Mr. Arthur Evans recognizes a Keltic physiognomy in the eyes of the _icuncula_; but for me the eyes are as if they were not, being so much sunk out of their place, that through infirmity of sight I am unable to verify them.

[23] Appendix B.

[24] Appendix C.

[25] And þa comon hi ymb vii niht to londe on Cornwalum, and foron þa sona to Ælfrede cyninge.

[26] For the Irish illumination above referred to I have relied upon _Facsimiles of Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts_. By J. O. Westwood. London, 1868. Plate XI.

[27] ‘The back, or reverse, is a plate of gold lying immediately upon the back of the miniature, and this is beautifully worked in foliage.’ Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., in the _Reliquary_ for October, 1878: vol. xx, p. 66.

[28] Here I follow the old copy of this drawing in Hickes’s _Thesaurus_ (1705) facing p. viij.

[29] Appendix D.

Chapter VIII

Alfred In Somerset Beyond Pedrida

When we have described the form and symbolism of the Alfred Jewel, and reviewed the various interpretations which it has evoked, and when we have moreover analyzed its design and considered each several feature, we have not as yet exhausted the matter of our theme. An important part of the problem remains to be discussed, and that is the place of its discovery, the how and the why of its deposit there, and the possibility of light to be derived from the historical associations of the locality. It was found near the Isle of Athelney. This looks like a piece of circumstantial evidence tending to identify the Alfred named in the Epigraph, and to associate the Jewel with the chief and central episode in the career of our national hero. The momentous crisis which is thus reflected in the Jewel seems to open a wider view, and to demand some enlargement of this Essay, so as to embrace a glimpse of that eventful story.

[Illustration: THE ISLE OF ATHELNEY.]

Of all this we now, after the lapse of a thousand years, speak as men who know the sequel, and (because we do know the sequel) it is the harder for us to appreciate the intensity of that crisis. We are helped by the occurrence of an opportune discovery. Just when our nation was beginning to be ripe for historical reflection and capable of entering into the struggles of our remote forefathers, there was ‘dug up’ in the locality where Alfred took refuge in the year 878, a personal ornament bearing his name in impressive characters. It is to us now as if the king himself had but recently passed that way under such stress of circumstances as constrained him to hide his royal insignia, and as if we somehow by this chance were brought nearer to the burden of his lot, and were made sharers not only in the fruits of his triumph, but also in the toil and the joy of his achievement.

* * * * *

By the sudden surprize with which the Danes had broken the peace and come upon him at Chippenham in the dead of winter, they had almost fulfilled their design and taken him captive. But he had fled, and they had Wessex at will, and were proceeding to divide and occupy the land. The king, with a few companions, had escaped into Selwood, and thence by wood and by fen, like hunted creatures, they eluded pursuit, but were never secure until they had passed beyond Pedrida.

What were his reflections on finding himself suddenly an outcast in the winter, a fugitive in the wild? He had experienced hair-breadth escapes, but none like this! He had trusted Guthrum’s oath, had thought him in earnest this time! And even now he was loth to charge this last perfidy upon him. No! this trick was not his, it came from those buccaneers in the Severn Sea. Mad at the defeat of last summer’s combined scheme, which they had come from far north to support, they had forced Guthrum’s hand, and compelled him to join them in this winter raid. And they would not stop there! Finding that he had given them the slip, they would certainly be down upon some part of the coast of Somerset or of Devon, and preparations must be made to receive them. Odda will surely be stirring: he is safe to be on the alert! I must find out what he is doing, and we must work on a plan; he in Devon, and I in Somerset!

It was now twelve years since he had come to the front, and had taken his stand by the side of his brother Æthered. The moment when he had begun to share in public affairs had coincided with a great change in the situation. That was the time when the invaders acquired a footing in East Anglia: they made there a centre of operations from which they went out and to which they came in—it had become the head quarters of an invading host which manifested a settled design of conquest. Previously the incursions of the Northmen had been desultory, but from that time they had become methodical. This change had coincided with the death of Æthelbriht in 866, and the accession of Æthered. In the following year had died Alhstan, that vigilant patriot, the old warlike bishop of Sherborne.

Æthered and I were the two youngest of the family, and our relations had been peculiarly close. Before we were united by public cares, we had been partners in our private concerns. Our several estates had been kept in one and worked in common, under agreed conditions, so that they had remained undivided. Our names had been coupled together by the common voice of the nation. The style was ever thus:—ÆÞERED CYNING AND ÆLFRED HIS BROÞUR.

Oh what a fearful time it was for ANGELCYNN, that five years of Æthered’s reign! Northumbria, that old imperial kingdom, was crushed; Mercia reduced to make a peace with the heathen, which was the best we could effect by marching in force to Nottingham to support Burgred and Æthelswith! And, worst of all, the East Angles defeated in battle, the good king Edmund slain (he fought like a hero, and died like a martyr); the land conquered, possessed, and turned from an Anglian into a Danish kingdom!

It was our turn next. All was at length ripe for the subjugation of Wessex, and on this aim they brought all their strength to bear. We made a gallant stand at Ashdown against overwhelming odds; we slew their kings and jarls, and made their practised braves fly before the rustic militia of Ecgberht. Eight pitched battles in that year, besides smaller fights without number. But Æthered died at Easter. Rightly the people revere him as a saint. So I was left to continue the struggle single-handed.

Since then they have established themselves in the possession of London, and they have banished Burgred and set up for king in Mercia a tool of their own; also Halfdan has abolished the kingdom of Northumbria and partitioned the land. And amidst all this, what a destruction of religious houses, seats of piety and learning and education—Lindisfarne, Wearmouth, Jarrow, York, Ripon, Bardney, Ely, Crowland, Medeshamstead, and many others.

They have destroyed the powers of Northumbria and Mercia; but there they had a point in their favour which is against them here. The Welsh at the back of those nations were always ready to co-operate with the invader, but that is not so here in the west. The Cornish have never made common cause with the heathen since the battle of Hingston Down, in which that coalition was quashed by Ecgberht. And we have a still better guarantee in the constant policy of Wessex ever since the days of Ina and Aldhelm. The territorial quarrel was then appeased, and the religious difference too. The West Welsh were conquered, but they were never wantonly humiliated, no man was ejected from his own. They appreciated the respect and even honour that was shown to their favourite church of Glastonbury. Therefore I have good hope of the support of the men of Somerset.

True, we have to count upon the hostility of the Welsh on the opposite shore of the Severn Sea, where the Danish fleets find harbour and all friendly countenance. Still, that is not quite the same thing as having an active enemy behind your back upon the same stretch of territory. Here in this west country the people differ only in degrees of allegiance, none are actively hostile. This is the weak point in the position of the invaders. This is the one little bit of advantage that still remains to us. I must improve it to the utmost!

But first of all we must provide against a sudden descent on the coast. For the last two years events have succeeded one another at a quickened pace: surprize on surprize! There, under the opposite coast, lies a heathen fleet, ready to be down upon us without notice! The coast-wardens must be kept up to the mark, and I not to be seen in it!

The mobility of these troopers defies calculation! How unexpected and startling was that occupation of Wareham last autumn! How daringly defiant of gods and men that breach of their most sacred oath! When by that perjury they had lulled our mistrust, they made a sudden rush for Exeter! Perfidy is part of their tactics. How wonderful, how divinely providential, that storm off Swanage, which wrecked the perfidious plan! And now, not to be baulked, they pounce upon Chippenham in time of truce and in mid-winter, thinking to capture me! How great in war is the unexpected! Without perfidy, I too must learn to meditate surprize; I must contrive how to distract their calculations, and strike where least expected.

With some such a strain of thought as this (if I have followed him aright) now ruminated the undaunted king, in whom thought was the spring of action. Moreover, he reasoned thus with himself: ‘So long as winter lasts, they cannot follow me with the host by the way that I have come, but if they learn my whereabouts, they may easily find adventurers who would undertake to kill me. Wherefore I must not make myself too freely known, but proceed cautiously, and make proof of men before I trust myself to them. To most I must appear like some mounted yeoman hunter who follows the high deer that abound in the forests about these hills. And as for this sacred toy, this personal enigma, this Jewel of ceremony, which many eyes have beheld, I must no longer carry it about me, lest peradventure it make me known unawares. I will bury it in some convenient spot!’

* * * * *

The western boundary of Wessex had for centuries been the Great Wood of which the ancient name still survives as a specific element in the historic designation of Frome Selwood.

This great wood was also called Wealwudu, a very natural and appropriate name, because it had long been the barrier between the Saxon and the Welsh populations. Here lies the most fitting scene for the story of Denewulf. In the time when the king was a fugitive, he found this man keeping swine in the forest, and he discovered in him a great natural capacity and aptness for good, and after his return to power he educated Denewulf, and made him bishop of Winchester. This story does not run on all fours, because according to the best authorities Denewulf became bishop of Winchester in 879, and if he was keeping swine in 878, being already of mature age, it smacks rather of hagiology than of history. But it may be that the marvel has been enhanced in transmission; or if we choose the lowest estimate and call it mere fiction, still it is worth while observing what manner of stories were invented about king Alfred.

Behind this barrier the Danes had never been able to get a footing. As if aware how greatly this was needed for the success of their designs upon Wessex, they had made several attempts. Two great efforts which imply this aim were made at the end of the reign of Ecgberht. The force of thirty-five ships which that king repelled at Charmouth, on the coast of Dorset, seems to indicate something more than merely a plundering incursion.

In 835, a great naval armament (_micel sciphere_) came to the Cornish coast and were joined by the West Welsh, and they gathered in force at Hingston Down, where they probably intended to fortify themselves; when Ecgberht appeared with an army, and dispersed them.

The next recorded attempt of the kind was in the year 845, in the reign of Æthelwulf, when the Wicengas entered the mouth of the Parret, and were met by the posse comitatus of the two shires, Somerset and Dorset, under their two ealdormen, and Alhstan the warlike bishop of Sherborne.

Only in the very last year (877) their land-force had, by a perfidious surprize, seized Exeter, acting in concert with a fleet of one hundred and twenty ships, which were to sail up the Exe and co-operate with them—but they were wrecked in a storm off Swanage[30]. This disaster, combined with the promptitude of the king in assault, had compelled them to capitulate, and had dislodged them from Exeter.

Of the same nature and motive was the attempt of this spring on the coast of Devon at a place which Asser calls Cynwit, with a force of twenty-three ships, which were wintering on the opposite coast of the Severn Sea. The repulse was complete and the blow decisive, but the name of the English leader is not given by the contemporary annalist. A hundred and twenty years later, Ethelwerd calls him Odda the ealdorman of Devonshire. The reticence of the Chronicle suggests that this achievement was conducted by Alfred while he was keeping in the background, lest the place of his retreat should become known.

* * * * *

Gradually and by the spontaneous action of natural causes, the western barrier of the Saxon was moved from the line of Selwood to the fenland of Pedrida. This barrier was deeper bedded in the soil, was harder to pass, and has left behind it memories more indelible. The first explicit notice of this virtual transfer of the western boundary meets us seventeen years later than the epoch with which we are now engaged, and it may be worth while to go so far out of our way in order the better to realize the import of Pedrida.

In the last decade of Alfred’s reign, when he was in the agony of that supreme crisis which tested the value of his institutions, a great muster of force was called for, and the extent of the contributing area is sketched by the annalist as matter of amazement. ‘There gathered Æthered aldorman and Æthelm aldorman and Æthelnoth aldorman, and the king’s Thanes who were then at home in the fortifications, from every garrison east of Pedrida (whether west of Selwood or east), likewise also north of Thames and west of Severn:—moreover some part of the Welsh nation[31].’

Here we mark the startling novelty that the Welsh in 894 are seen aiding the Saxon against the Dane; and we can hardly forgo a passing cry of wonder and pleasure at this signal token of the imperial success of Alfred’s policy. But our present concern is with the recognition of Pedrida as the westernmost limit of Wessex proper instead of Selwood, and the implication that the change was recent. We see that Selwoodshire (as the intervening district was popularly called) was by 894 quite assimilated and included in the military administration of Wessex, but that beyond Pedrida some other rule was operative at that time. Such a fact reflects back an illustrative light upon the year 878, and helps us to estimate the situation of Alfred when he was in Somerset beyond Pedrida.

The political division here indicated has left traces which may still be recognized, particularly in the dialect and in folk-lore. Of the dialect we have a remarkable monument in Mr. Elworthy’s works, _The Dialect of West Somerset_, and his _West Somerset Word-Book_. Especially to be noted is the ‘u’ of the West Country, which is radically one with the Welsh ‘u’ and with the French ‘u,’ while at the same time it has a very distinct local character of its own. Every Englishman who is conversant with the French language knows how hard it is to acquire the utterance of the French ‘u’ after the age of infancy. A like strangeness is experienced by English people born east of Pedrida, when they attempt to reproduce the western ‘u.’ In fact, this vowel-sound is Keltic; it is a legacy from our British predecessors.

Not that this British ‘u’ is absolutely confined to the western promontory: it may be occasionally heard in other parts of the country by a cultivated and observant ear. Mr. Mayhew once told me that he had heard it in the Corn Market at Oxford. But though not confined to the lands west of Pedrida, it is in a peculiar manner concentrated there. It is chiefly in Devonshire that this peculiar vowel has wakened wider attention, but this is simply because that county has been the most frequented as a place of holiday resort.

The so-called Devonian ‘u’ and its contiguous sounds have been described many times from first to last, but it has been mostly in that perfunctory vein which contents the summer tourist. It is rare to catch such a plain and solid illustration as the following, which is quoted from the preface to Mr. Elworthy’s _West Somerset Word-Book_:—‘I was a passive listener at Brandon’s while a bonnet was being discussed, and when making the payment ventured to remark to the young lady, “You must have been a long time in London.” “Oh yes, ten years; but why do you ask?” “Only for information,” said I. “And did you come straight from Teignmouth?” With much surprise at my supposing she came from Devonshire, she said at length that she was a native of Newton Abbott. I could not pretend to define the precise quality of her _two_, but it was only in that one word that I recognized her locality.’

If the vocabulary of this dialect were minutely examined by a competent Welsh scholar, some British words might be detected. Among those which would deserve early attention are _plum_ (soft, as a bed), _pilm_ or _pillum_ (dust), _welt_ (to beat, thrash).

Another local characteristic of the West Welsh promontory is this, that it is the peculiar haunt of a race of whimsical or mischievous sprites called Piskies or Pixies. In South Devon and Cornwall any one whose conduct is strange and unaccountable is said to be pisky-led. This is a branch of the numerous kindred of that versatile Puck, whose memory is kept fresh by the Midsummer Night’s Dream. In an Anglo-Saxon perambulation of land at Weston by Bath, we meet with a Pucan Wyl, Puck’s Well[32]. The _English Dialect Dictionary_ preserves the name of Aw-Puck for Will-o’-the-Wisp or _ignis fatuus_, a compound which imports that he is the most dangerous of the species. This name was current in Worcestershire, but is now obsolete[33].

These are the more obvious extant traces of the long isolation of the trans-Pedridan world: others there are which have attracted inquiry, such as peculiar customs, implements, songs and song-tunes, which latter have been investigated by Dr. Bussell and the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.

* * * * *

The Somerset to which Alfred retired was widely unlike the Somerset of to-day. In this respect three points may be taken: (1) Differences in the distribution of land and water; (2) differences in the trees and woods and game; (3) differences in the political aspect of the population.

1. West Somerset was separated from East Somerset by wide inland waters: the beds of the Brue and Parret were lakes in the winter, and only passable in summer to those who knew the ground. Pedrida was regarded as a natural limit, like the sea itself, dividing nations; it was spoken of in like phraseology. Thus we read in 658 how Cenwalh warred against the Welsh and drave them even unto Pedrida[34]; and, in 682, how Centwine drave the Bret-Welsh even unto the sea[35].

The cause of that expanse of water and large area of fenland happened far back beyond historical chronology, and we can only date it by using the geological method of reckoning time. Far back in the sub-glacial era a subsidence of the land took place which affected the coast of Somerset and North Devon. Proof of this is found in a submarine forest extending along the south coast of the Severn Sea, which has long been known. ‘That portion of it visible at Porlock was described in 1839 by Sir Henry de la Beche, and more recently by Mr. Godwin Austen in an essay read before the Geological Society in 1865[36].’

Subsequently the Rev. H. H. Winwood and Professor Boyd Dawkins verified the discovery by a thorough examination of the forest-bed. Near Minehead the forest consists of oak, ash, alder, and hazel, which grew on a blue clay. An ancient growth of oak, ash, and yew is found everywhere underneath the peat or alluvium in the Somersetshire levels. Throughout this wide area the trees were destroyed by the growth of peat, or by the deposits of the floods, except at a few isolated spots, which stand at a higher level than usual, in the great flat extending between the Polden Hills and the Quantocks. One of these oases, a little distance to the west of Middlezoy, is termed the Oaks, because those trees form a marked contrast to the prevailing elms and willows of the district. In the neighbouring ditches, that gradually cut into peat, and then into silt, prostrate oaks are very abundant[37].

Subsidence of the land at a remote geological period was the cause of the impassable state of these levels in the time of king Alfred, and the modern system of drainage which was carried out at a later date has been the cause of the improved condition which we see now, and which has made the Vale of Taunton Dean proverbial as the Garden of England.

2. In Alfred’s time the eye was greeted by a variety of trees which are not observable now. The elm predominates all over the plain. I asked the occupier of Athelney Farm about the trees on his land, and he said there was hardly anything but elm. Of other kinds he had only two ash-trees and one beech; ‘but (he added) we find bog-oak in the moors, and it makes good gate-posts.’ The elms have driven out both oak and ash, and whatever other sorts they touched in their ‘wrastling’ progress. These sombre grenadiers dress up their lines so close as to leave little room for other trees. They suck the fruitful soil more than any other tree, and they repay their costly nurture with timber of inferior value. Introduced by the Romans to serve as stakes and props in the culture of the vine, they have overrun the land like the imported rabbits in some of our colonies. In Alfred’s day these hungry aliens had not yet usurped the field, and there was still room for the display of the rich variety of nature—oak, ash, beech, fir, maple, yew, sycamore, hornbeam, holly, poplar, aspen, alder, hazel, wych-elm, apple, cherry, juniper, elder, willow, mountain ash, spindle-tree, buckthorn, hawthorn, wild plum, wild pear, service-tree, &c. But now, the fair places of the field are encumbered by the tall cousins of the nettle, and the most diversified of English counties is muffled with a monotonous shroud of outlandish and weedy growth.

In the animal world, likewise, the lapse of a thousand years has brought change. In the pastures the most frequent animal is the cow, and only on rare occasions, as we view the moors from some elevated ‘tump,’ have we the chance to see a little company of antlered deer careering over the open plain, clearing the rhines with an airy bound. In Alfred’s time too, cow-keeping was a stock industry, and we read of the king as entertained _incognito_ by one of his own cowherds (_apud quendam suum vaccarium_).

But the proportion of wild to domesticated animals was far greater then than it is now. The whole stretch of country from Pedrida to the end of Exmoor, fifty miles long and twenty miles wide, was then almost a continuous forest, abounding with game of all kinds, but especially with red deer, which still continues, though in diminished numbers. This noble creature is thus described by Bewick:—

‘THE STAG OR RED DEER. This is the most beautiful animal of the deer kind. The elegance of his form, the lightness of his motions, the flexibility of his limbs, his bold, branching horns, which are annually renewed, his grandeur, strength, and swiftness, give him a decided pre-eminence over every other inhabitant of the forest[38].’

The red deer still lives and breeds along the southern coast of the Severn Sea, and this is I believe the only part of Great Britain in which this right royal animal still ranges at large in all the freedom of nature. I am informed by my friend Mr. Townshend that in Ireland they are kept as an ornament in some gentlemen’s parks, but that in a free state of nature they survive only in the mountains of Killarney.

Here it will be useful to read Leland’s notes of travel across the lowlands of Somerset, especially as they touch some places with which we are concerned. (I quote from the Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society, No. xxxiii, ‘Leland in Somersetshire, 1540–1542.’)

‘Thens to _Cury-Malet_ a 3. Miles, wher is a Parke longging to _Chambernoun_ of Devonshire.

I left this Parke a litle on the lift Hand, and sone after cam over a great Brook, that resith West South West, and rennith East North East into Ivel a 2. Miles above _Michelborow_ by Estimation.

(Here I cam from the Hilly Ground to the Low and Marschy Ground of _Somerseteshir_.)

Thens to _North Cury_ stille by low Ground aboute a 2. Miles or more. The Chirch of _Welles_ hath fair Landes here.

And hereabout is _Stoke Gregory_, wher the Chirch of _Welles_ hath Possessions.

Thens about a Mile to the Ripe of _Thone_ Ryver, by the which I passed by the space of half a Mile, and then I went over _Thone_ by a Wood Bridge.

Athelney lyith half a Mile lower on _Thon_, and ther is a Bridge of Wood to entre thabbay[39], and beneth that almost at the very Confluence of _Thone_ and _Ivel_ is another Wood Bridge over _Thone_.

_Thonetoun_ alias _Tawntoun_ is a 5. Miles by South West from _Athelney_.

Ther is a great Bridge on _Thone_ at _Basford_ a Mile lower then _Thonetoun_.

From this Bridge by _Athelney_ I rode by a low Marsch Ground a 2. Miles to _Pedertun Park_.

Here at _Pederton_ the soyle Westward and South West rysith agayn and ys not fenny.

There ys a great Numbre of Dere longging to this Park, yet hath it almost no other Enclosure but Dikes to let the Catelle of the Commune to cum yn.

The Dere trippe over these Dikes and feede al about the Fennes, and resort to the Park agayn. There is a praty Lodge moted yn the Parke.

There cummith a praty Broke thorough the Park, and half a Mile beneth the Park it goith ynto _Ivel_.

This Brooke is caullid _Peder_, and risith West South West yn the Hylles aboute a 2. Myles of. First it cummith by _Noth Pedreton_, a praty uplandisch Toun, wher is a fair Chirch, the Personage whereof was impropriate to _Mynchin bocland_.

Then it touchith on _South Pederton_, in the which Paroch the Parke standith, and so to the Ryver of _Ivel_.

From the Lodge in _Pederton_ Parke to Northpedertun a Mile.

From _Northpedertun_ to _Bridgewater_ 2. Miles. The way or I cam ynto _Bridgwater_ was caused with Stone more then half a Myle.’

Here we may observe that Leland appears to know of no river Parret; to him it was ‘Ivel.’ It would be curious to learn when and how a minor tributary gave its name of Parret to the lower waters of the Ivel. It may be surmised that Pedrida was never the name of a river, but of a belt