Beacon Lights of History, Volume 08 | Page 5

of the sees, and arranged them on the basis which was
maintained for a thousand years. The subordination of priest to bishop
and bishop to primate was more clearly defined by him. He also
assembled councils for general legislation, which perhaps led the way
to national parliaments. He not only organized the episcopate, but the
parish system, and even the system of tithes has been by some
attributed to him. The missionary who had been merely the chaplain of
a nobleman became the priest of the manor or parish.
The second memorable man was born a cowherd; encouraged to sing
his songs by the abbess Hilda, a "Northumbrian Deborah." When
advanced in life he entered through her patronage a convent, and sang
the marvellous and touching stories of the Hebrew Scriptures, fixing
their truths on the mind of the nation, and becoming the father of
English poetry.
The third of these great men was the greatest, Baeda,--or Bede, as the
name is usually spelled. He was a priest of the great abbey church of
Weremouth, in Northumbria, and was a master of all the learning then
known. He was the life of the famous school of Jarrow, and it is said
that six hundred monks, besides strangers, listened to his teachings. His
greatest work was an "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,"
which extends from the landing of Julius Caesar to the year 731. He
was the first English historian, and the founder of mediaeval history,
and all we know of the one hundred and fifty years after the landing of
Augustin the missionary is drawn from him. He was not only historian,

but theologian,--the father of the education of the English nation.
It was one hundred and fourteen years after the death of the "venerable
Bede" before Alfred was born, A.D. 849, the youngest son of
Aethelwulf, king of Wessex, who united under his rule all the Saxon
kingdoms. The mother of Alfred was Osburgha, a German princess of
extraordinary force of character. From her he received, at the age of
four, the first rudiments of education, and learned to sing those Saxon
ballads which he afterwards recited with so much effect in the Danish
camp. At the age of five Alfred was sent to Rome, probably to be
educated, where he remained two years, visiting on his return the court
of Charles the Bald,--the centre of culture in Western Europe. The
celebrated Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims,--the greatest churchman of
the age,--was the most influential minister of the king; at whose table
also sat John Erigena, then engaged in a controversy with Gotteschalk,
the German monk, about the presence of Christ in the eucharist,--the
earliest notable theological controversy after the Patristic age. Alfred
was too young to take an interest in this profound discussion; but he
may perhaps have received an intellectual impulse from his visit to
Rome and Paris, which affected his whole subsequent life.
About this time his father, over sixty years of age, married a French
princess of the name of Judith, only fourteen years of age,--even in that
rude age a great scandal, which nearly resulted in his dethronement. He
lived but two years longer; and his youthful widow, to the still greater
scandal of the realm and Church, married her late husband's eldest son,
Ethelbald, who inherited the crown. It was through this woman, and her
subsequent husband Baldwin, called Bras de Fer, Count of Flanders,
that the English kings, since the Conqueror, trace their descent from
Alfred and Charlemagne; for her son, the second Count of Flanders,
married Elfrida, the daughter of Alfred. From this union descended the
Conqueror's wife Matilda. Thus the present royal family of England
can trace a direct descent through William the Conqueror, Alfred, and
Charlemagne, and is allied by blood, remotely indeed, with most of the
reigning princes of Europe.
The three elder brothers of Alfred reigned successively over

Wessex,--to whom all England owned allegiance. It was during their
short reigns that the great invasion of the Danes took place, which
reduced the whole island to desolation and misery. These Danes were
of the same stock as the Saxons, but more enterprising and bold. It
seems that they drove the Saxons before them, as the Saxons, three
hundred years before, had driven the Britons. In their destructive
ravages they sacked and burned Croyland, Peterborough, Huntington,
Ely, and other wealthy abbeys,--the glory of the kingdom,--together
with their valuable libraries.
It was then that Alfred (already the king's most capable general) began
his reign, A.D. 871, at the age of twenty-three, on the death of his
brother Ethelred,--a brave and pious prince, mortally wounded at the
battle of Merton.
It was Alfred's memorable struggle with the Danes which gave to him
his military fame. When he ascended the throne these barbarians had