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Alfred was the youngest 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").
Similar methods of measuring time were used in medieval churches. [citation needed] The invention of the candle clock was attributed by the Anglo-Saxons to Alfred the Great, king of Wessex. The story of how the clock was created was narrated by Asser, who lived at Alfred's court and became his close associate. [2]
England in 878 at the time of the Treaty of Wedmore. In the 850s, England faced a formidable threat as Viking invaders, led by their Great Heathen Army, conquered most Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. However, under the leadership of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899), Wessex successfully resisted the invaders.
He has been seen as a heroic figure, who centuries after his death inspired many artistic and cultural works. During this period, "Alfred" became a popular Christian name, with Queen Victoria in 1844 naming her second son Prince Alfred. In 1870, Edward Augustus Freeman called Alfred the Great "the most perfect character in history". [5] "
The House of Wessex became rulers of a unified English nation under the descendants of Alfred the Great (871–899). Edward the Elder, Alfred's son, united southern England under his rule by conquering the Viking occupied areas of Mercia and East Anglia.
Statue of Alfred the Great in Wantage, now in Oxfordshire, his birthplace. London suffered attacks from Vikings, which became increasingly common from around 830 onwards. It was attacked in 842 in a raid that was described by a chronicler as "the great slaughter". In 851, another raiding party, reputedly involving 350 ships, came to plunder the ...
The initial page of the Peterborough Chronicle [1]. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons.. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899).
West Saxon was the language of the kingdom of Wessex, and was the basis for successive widely used literary forms of Old English: the Early West Saxon of Alfred the Great's time, and the Late West Saxon of the late 10th and 11th centuries. Due to the Saxons' establishment as a politically dominant force in the Old English period, the West Saxon ...