"Alfred the Great" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Danes, Warwick was restored by Ethelfreda, the daughter of Alfred the Great, who built a fort there, A.D. 913. At Domesday Survey it was a borough, and contained 261 houses, of which 126 belonged to the king. Members were sent to Parliament in the time of Edward I., when also the paving of the town and the erection of a wall round ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... commonwealth and a dependency of the Mercian kings. The Norsemen occasionally plundered and held it as a point d'appui for their pirate galleys. Its real epoch of greatness, however ancient its advantage as a port, commences with its re-conquest by Alfred the Great in 886. Henceforward, says that most reliable writer on this period, Mr. Freeman, we find it one of the firmest strongholds of English freedom, and one of the most efficient bulwarks of the realm. There the English character developed the highest civilisation ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Parliaments very shortly after his first unfavourable introduction into the House. It was long after midnight when he rose to speak. He began at the beginning and favoured us with an analysis of the characteristics of the first gathering of a representative assembly under Alfred the Great. Sir Wilfred Lawson almost immediately rose to inquire whether the hour were not somewhat too advanced for a disquisition on parliamentary history, the facts of which were available to everybody, and Kenealy passionately retorted that he was in ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... on the orders of King Alfred the Great, approximately A.D. 890, and subsequently maintained and added to by generations of anonymous scribes until the middle of the 12th Century. The original language is Anglo-Saxon (Old English), but later entries are essentially ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... Prince Edwin, were sons of King Edward, surnamed the Elder, the son and successor of Alfred the Great. After a glorious reign, Edward died in the year of our Lord 925, and at his death a great dispute arose among the nobles as to which of his sons should succeed him ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... monasteries remained desolate for 100 years. During that period the lands were constantly being seized by different intruders. It was not till the time of Alfred the Great, who came to the throne in 871, that the invasions of the Danes were finally checked, and tranquillity restored to the kingdom. Security being assured, the people began again to improve their public buildings and the religious houses. Crowland was the first in the neighbourhood ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... reputation. Heroes have often been harsh and even brutal, especially in the earliest times when humane feeling and a compassionate spirit had not been developed; Siegfried, Jason, Gustavas Adolphus and Von Tromp were often arbitrary and oppressive in their attitude toward men; and, in later times, Alfred the Great, William the Silent and Nelson were not without serious defects of temper and sometimes of character. Men are not great or heroic because they are faultless; they are great and heroic because they dare, suffer, achieve ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... These Methuselahs of the forest are at least 1,000 years old, according to the botanists. They are among the slowest growing of living things, and neither of them is much taller than a man. They were seedlings when Alfred the Great ruled England, and perhaps four feet high when Columbus first broke through the western seas. In the four centuries of Cuban history they have not grown so ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... must be allowed for in all this account of Alfred the Great. But the fact that he left a stamp in his age so deep,—that nothing except what was good and great has been ascribed to him,—that the very fictions told of him are of such vraisemblance and magnitude as to FIT IN to nothing ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the ninth century, it formed an essential part of the education of a young nobleman. Alfred the Great was an expert and successful hunter before he was twelve years of age. Among the tributes imposed by Athelstan, upon a victory over Constantine, King of Wales, were "hawks and sharp-scented dogs, fit for hunting of wild beasts." Edward ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... both sides of the Border, the status of the minstrel or ballad-maker—for in old times the two went together, or rather were blent in one, like the words and music—had suffered sad declension. There was no longer question of royal harpers or troubadours, as Alfred the Great and as Richard the Lion Heart had been in their hour of need; or even of bards and musicians held in high favour and honour by king and court, like Taillefer or Blondel. 'King's Minstrels' there were on both sides of Tweed, as is found from Exchequer and other records. But we suspect that ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... serfdom. (Muratori, Antt. Ital., I, 798.) In the canton of Berne, Switzerland, slavery was gradually abolished, the process commencing about the beginning of the fifteenth century. It continued, however, in the case of ordinary masters until 1798. Sugenheim, p. 530 seq. In England, Alfred the Great's efforts towards the gradual abolition of slavery (Wilkins, Leges, 29) remained without result. The steps taken by William I, towards a much narrower end, however, seem to have been more successful. (Leges Will. Conq., 225, 229; Turner, Hist. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... coast than he began building a fleet so strong that even the great Emperor Charlemagne, though ruling the half of Europe, treated him on equal terms. Here is Offa's good advice to all future kings of England: "He who would be safe on land must be supreme at sea." Alfred the Great (871-901) was more likely to have been thinking of the navy than of anything else when, as a young man hiding from the Danes, he forgot to turn the cakes which the housewife had left him to watch. Anyhow ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... without a sparrow flies into the hall, and fluttering hither and thither a little, in the warmth and light, passes out again into the storm and darkness. Such is man's life, but whence it cometh and whither it goeth we know not." "We ne kunnen," as Alfred the Great, its first translator, ends the passage. Who does not see—notwithstanding the difference of time, place, character, and all stage circumstance—who does not see rise before him the judgment-hall of Socrates, hear the solemn last words to his judges: "I go to death, and you ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English estates are immeasurably more important than those situated round Lismore. This picturesque town was once called the abode of saints, but only antiquarians remember that its university was once so important that Alfred the Great went there to study, and that in the old castle Henry II held a Parliament. The Cavendishs rebuilt the latter, and both in appearance and position it much resembles Warwick Castle. It has not very many bedrooms, and when the King was first expected, among various extensive alterations, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... brilliant executant, the less exquisitely refined artist. It is significant that these two types stand together on the threshold of clavier art." Bull had gained his degree at Oxford, the founding of whose chair of music is popularly attributed to Alfred the Great. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... "Of course, Alfred the Great, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Princess Elizabeth of France, and all the heroes and heroines of old time—all the people who did such great things and lived such wonderful lives —may be said to have had great minds; but I am not thinking about them. I want to ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... many others in the north of England, had suffered much in the time of the wars, and had had an eventful history, for after being burnt by the Danes it was restored by Alfred the Great in the year 860, only to be destroyed once more by William the Conqueror in his ruthless march through the northern counties. A survival of Alfred's wise government still existed in the "Wake-man," whose duty it ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... known to have been executed in England is that of the stole and maniple of St. Cuthbert, which is now treasured at Durham Cathedral. These were worked by Aelfled, the Queen of Edward the Elder, Alfred the Great's son. She worked them for Bishop Fridhestan in 905 A.D. Her son Athelstan, after her death, visited the shrine of St. Cuthbert, at Chester-le-street, and in an inventory of the rich gifts which he left there, there is recorded "one stole with ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... of Saxony, the Margraf of Brandenburg, and the three Archbishops of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne; of the independence of the great cities of northern Italy; of Otto the Great, whose first wife was a granddaughter of Alfred the Great, and who was the real founder of the Holy Roman Empire, in the sense that a German prince rules over both Germany and Italy with the approval of the Pope, and in the sense that he, a duke of Saxony, appropriates the western empire (962), goes to Rome, delivers the Pope, subdues Italy, and ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... hostility toward England than to France, although they were much more assimilated to the Saxons than to the French in language and customs. Ivar, after pillaging the kingdom, established his family in Northumberland. Alfred the Great, at first beaten by Ivar's successors, succeeded in regaining his throne and in compelling ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Victor from date to signature, I'll swear. Well, yes, Miss Darrell, I know the baronet, and he's a very heavy swell and a blue diamond of the first water. Talk of pedigree, there's a pedigree, if you like. A Catheron, of Catheron, was hand and glove with Alfred the Great. He's a very lucky young fellow, and why the gods should have singled him out as the recipient of their favors, and left me in the cold, is a problem I can't solve. He's a baronet, he has more thousands a year, and more houses in more counties than you, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... kindred tribes, who had poured into Saxon England to ravage and lay desolate, had no sooner obtained from Alfred the Great permanent homes, than they became perhaps the most powerful, and in a short time not the least patriotic, part of the Anglo-Saxon population [18]. At the time our story opens, these Northmen, under the common name of Danes, were peaceably settled ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... last, whose motives were constantly misunderstood), fools and astrologers, Gretchens, Claerchens, devils, Egmonts, Joans of Arc enough to have rescued France a dozen times, and peasants of every race: Turks and Finns; American Indians and Alfred the Great—it was tedious ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... southward, cruising at first along the coast of Scotland, and then of England. They made several fruitless attempts to land on the English shores, but were every where repulsed. The time when these events took place was during the reign of Alfred the Great. Through Alfred's wise and efficient measures the whole of his frontier had been put into a perfect state of defense, and Rollo found that there was no hope for him there. He accordingly moved on toward the Straits of Dover; but, before passing them, he made a descent upon the coast of Flanders. ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... suggested in the administration of penal justice among the Jews. Such trials came off publicly in the gates of the city, and their judges were elders and Levites, taken from the general mass of the citizens. "A part of the common law, as it now stands, was first collected by Alfred the Great, youngest son of Athelwolf, or Ethelwolf, King of the West Saxons, who took the crown in 871. It is asserted by Sismondi, in his history of the fall of the Roman Empire, that when the above named prince caused a republication of the Saxon laws he inserted ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... Webster, of Franklin. Every girl should know by heart brave Pocahontas, sympathetic Mrs. Stowe, queenly Frances Willard, and kind-hearted Victoria. No private library is complete without Plutarch's "Lives," the "Life of Alfred the Great," of Napoleon, Grant, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... passage in Asserius[11] which gives us the form Gwith—"Mater" (of Alfred the Great) "quoque ejusdem Osburgh nominabatur, religiosa nimium foemina, nobilis ingenio, nobilis et genere; quae erat filia Oslac famosi pincernae Aethelwulf regis; qui Oslac Gothus erat natione, ortus enim erat de Gothis et ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... steadily on. Typical is the fact that the Venerable Bede contributed to it the doctrine that, in the text mentioning Elkanah and his two wives, Elkanah means Christ and the two wives the Synagogue and the Church. Even such men as Alfred the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas were added to the forces at work in building above the sacred books this ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... grandson of that Prince Guthred who was once a slave at Whittingham, married a sister of King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great. When Sitric died, Athelstan came northward to claim Northumbria for himself. He captured Bamburgh—the first time that stronghold of the Bernician kings had ever been taken—and arranged for two earls to govern Northumbria for him. They attempted unsuccessfully to oppose a force of Scots ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry |
