The Kings Sons

The King's Sons, by George
Manville Fenn

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The King's Sons, by George Manville
Fenn This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The King's Sons
Author: George Manville Fenn
Illustrator: T.H. Robinson
Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21315]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
KING'S SONS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The King's Sons, by George Manville Fenn.
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This is a very short book, and it does not contain any of the usual
nail-biting Fenn-style situations. But it is very good at what it does,
which is to tell a story about King Ethelwulf of Wessex and his four
sons, each of whom in turn became King.
The story concentrates on the youngest of the sons, Alfred, who became
known as Alfred the Great during his reign. The four boys have a tutor,
Father Swythe, but only Alfred is interested in what the monk has to
teach. At this point we get a very interesting lesson on how the great
illustrated manuscripts were made, how the ink and the colours were
made, and how the pens and brushes were made.
Father Swythe later became Bishop of Winchester, and was known as
Swithun. He was canonised, and somehow there has grown a legend
that if it rains on Saint Swithun's day it will rain for forty days after
that. He is portrayed as rather a portly monk in this story, but his effigy
in Winchester Cathedral shows him as a very slight man. There is
another story about him which makes him out to be rather a small man,
who couldn't reach the key-hole of the cathedral, which obligingly slid
down for him. Anyway, the story is a good one, and you will enjoy it.
This website is called Athelstane, after Alfred's grandson, so we were
interested to transcribe this story. NH
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THE KING'S SONS, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
SONS OF THE KING.
The sun shone down hotly on the hill-side, and that hill was one of a
range of smooth rolling downs that ought to have been called ups and
downs, from the way they seemed to rise and fall like the sea on a fine

calm day.
Not quite, for at such a time the sea looks as blue as the sky above it,
while here on this particular hot day, though the sky was as blue as a
sapphire stone, the hills were of a beautiful soft green, the grass being
short and soft, and as velvety as if Nature had been all over it regularly
with her own particular mowing-machine.
But the only mowing that had been done to that grass was by the
cropping teeth of the many flocks of sheep whose fleeces dotted the
downs with soft white where they nibbled away, watched by the
shepherds in their long smock frocks with turn-down collars and
pleatings and gatherings on breast and back, and slit up at the sides
from the bottom so as to give the men's legs room to move freely when
they ran after a restive sheep to hook him with the long crook they
carried and bring him kicking and struggling by hook or by crook to the
grass.
It was just over a thousand years ago, and, in spite of all the changes
fashion has made, plenty of shepherds and farm labourers still wear the
simple old Saxon dress then worn by King Ethelwulf's serfs, though
without the girdle worn then.
There were four boys on the steepest slope of that hill-side--four
fair-haired, sun-browned, hearty-looking boys--and they wore smock
frocks, belted in at the waist, of fine, soft, woollen material, woven out
of the fleeces of the sheep; for they were King's sons, the sons of the
King whose flocks were feeding on the hill-side in Berkshire, where he
had his Court.
It was as peaceful there as it was soft and beautiful; for though news
came from time to time of the cruel acts of the fierce Norsemen who
had come across the sea in their great row and sailing galleys full of
fighting-men, they were far away from the King's home, so that Queen
Osburga felt no anxiety about her boys being out on the downs at play,
enjoying themselves and growing strong. This she loved to see; though,
being a very learned woman herself in days when noble people thought
no shame to have to say: "I cannot read or write," she sighed to find

how very little her