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Alfred was a son of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, and his wife Osburh. [5] According to his biographer, Asser, writing in 893, "In the year of our Lord's Incarnation 849 Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons", was born at the royal estate called Wantage, in the district known as Berkshire [a] ("which is so called from Berroc Wood, where the box tree grows very abundantly").
The Christian theologian F. N. Lee extensively documented Alfred the Great's work of collecting the law codes from the three Christian Saxon kingdoms and compiling them into his Doom Book. [3] Lee details how Alfred incorporated the principles of the Mosaic law into his Code, and how this Code of Alfred became the foundation for the Common Law.
Shaftesbury Abbey, angel. Alfred the Great founded the convent in about 888 and installed his daughter Æthelgifu as the first abbess. [2] Ælfgifu, the wife of Alfred's grandson, King Edmund I, was buried at Shaftesbury and soon venerated as a saint, [3] and she came to be regarded by the house as its true founder.
A page from Alfred the Great's will. Osferth or Osferd or Osfrith [a] (fl. c. 885 to c. 934) was described by Alfred the Great in his will as a "kinsman". Osferth witnessed royal charters from 898 to 934, as an ealdorman between 926 and 934. In a charter of Edward the Elder, he was described as a brother of the king.
Psalterium Davidis latino-saxonicum vetus (1640), and wrote a Life of Alfred the Great which was translated into Latin and published in 1678. Whereas his father was a leading expositor of the idea of an "ancient constitution", John Spelman was a theorist of the Royalist cause.
Asser recorded that Alfred founded Shaftesbury Abbey for nuns. It is not known when the abbey was founded, but it must be by 893 when Asser was writing. Alfred appointed Æthelgifu as its first abbess and she was joined by "many other noble nuns". Alfred granted the abbey one sixteenth of his royal revenues.
In 893, Asser wrote a biography of Alfred entitled The Life of King Alfred; in the original Latin, the title is Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum. The date is known from Asser's mention of the king's age in the text. The work, which is less than twenty thousand words long, is one of the most important sources of information on Alfred the Great ...
Osburh's existence is known only from Asser's Life of King Alfred.She is not named as witness to any charters, nor is her death reported in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.So far as is known, she was the mother of all Æthelwulf's children, his five sons Æthelstan, Æthelbald, Æthelberht, Æthelred and Alfred, and his daughter Æthelswith, wife of King Burgred of Mercia.