Scientists Find Remains of Alfred The Great Or King Edward The Elder

[onehandle]

Source: The Daily Beast

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When Viking invaders tore through 9th-century Europe, only one Anglo-Saxon leader was able to withstand their ferocious onslaught. King Alfred of Wessex repelled the attacks and laid the foundations for a kingdom that would become known as England. More than a millennium later, archeologists in Hampshire believe they may have discovered his remains—inside a cardboard box.

For a nation identified so strongly by its rich history of empire, kings and queens, recent years have exposed a decidedly absent-minded approach to royal burials. The latest collection of mislaid remains was discovered 12 months after confirmation that Richard III had been interred beneath a parking lot in Leicester.

Alfred The Great, who was described by historians as “the most perfect character in history,” died in Winchester in 899 AD. He was the only monarch in British history whose name was granted the “Great” sobriquet, and he was the first man referred to as “king of the English,” but after several re-burials after the 16th century it was believed he had been lost in some unmarked grave.

After the shock results of routine carbon dating analysis, it is now thought Alfred, or his son, has spent the last 20 years in a storage box inside the little-known Winchester City Museum. Amateur archeologists dug up the ancient remains in the late 1990s but it was assumed that they belonged to someone who was far more recently deceased.

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/17/scientists-find-remains-of-alfred-the-great-or-king-edward-the-elder.html

[SleeplessinSoCal]

1. cool. n/t

[KoKo]

2. Thanks...can't wait to read this.!

[Benton D Struckcheon]

3. In the middle of reading Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Tales,

a series of historical novels about this time. Great stuff.
In one of the Historical Notes at the back of one of the books, it says there are still property lines drawn that date back to Alfred and the forts he established to repel the Danes.

[Historic NY]

4. They keep finding dead Kings while we hope to win dead Presidents.

[HooptieWagon]

5. Alfred put in place....

.... much of the beaureacracy and govt organization later adpted by William the Conqueror because it was so efficient. And land units and mapping, plus values for tax appraisals was also kept. Alfred had a keen mind for organization.

[Lithos]

6. Whoa...

Not a perfect character, but definitely one of those watershed people whose impact on history was both immediate and long-lasting...

Not only did he help establish the English "state", he was responsible for much of the bureaucracy and infrastructure which defined "England" for centuries thereafter. Not the father of the Engiish Navy, but still one of the main reasons England became the seapower and empire it is known for.

L-

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. Europe has a rich history of assholes deciding to wipe whole groups from history.

[JackintheGreen]

9. Um...HISTORY has a rich history of that kind of asshole

Europe isn't special in that regard.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. Yeah,...but that's why England has myths about Arthur.

[grasswire]

8. my ancestor!

This is cool news.

[historylovr]

16. Mine too.

[grasswire]

17. hello cousin!

Happy to see you..

[jwirr]

18. My families also. There are many of us but considering how long ago he lived that is no surprise.

[dipsydoodle]

11. No cakes ?

You might need to be English to grasp that.

Some video clips here on the UK's BBC home site - not sure if they play abroad or not : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03sbp73/clips

General BBC link to subject here : Bone fragment 'could be King Alfred or son Edward' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-25760383

Extensive background history on Alfred here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Even better background history on Alfred:

CHAPTER 5

Alfred the Cake

KING ALFRED was the first Good King, with the exception of Good King Wenceslas, who, though he looked 4th, really came first (it is not known, however, what King Wenceslas was King of). Alfred ought never to be confused with King Arthur, equally memorable but probably non-existent and therefore perhaps less important historically (unless he did exist).

There is a story that King Arthur once burnt some cakes belonging to Mrs Girth, a great lady of the time, at a place called Atheling. As, however, Alfred could not have been an Incendiary King and a Good King, we may dismiss the story as absurd, and in any case the event is supposed to have occurred in a marsh where the cakes would not have burnt properly. Cf. the famous lines of poetry about King Arthur and the cakes:

`Then slowly answered Alfred from the marsh '

Arthur, Lord Tennyson.

CHAPTER 6

Exgalahad and the British Navy

KING ARTHUR invented Conferences because he was secretly a Weak King and liked to know what his memorable thousand and one Knights wanted to do next. As they were all parfitly jealous Knights he had to have the Memorable Round Table made to have the Conferences at, so that it was impossible to say which was top knight. He had a miraculous sword called Exgalahad with which he defeated the Danes in numerous battles. In this he was also much assisted by his marine inventions, including the water-dock and the British Navy. The latter invention occurred as follows.

Alfred noticed that the Danes had very long ships, so he built a great many more much longer ones, thus cleverly founding the British Navy. From that time onwards foreigners, who, unlike the English, do not prefer to fight against long odds, seldom attacked the British Navy. Hence the important International Law called the Rule Britannia, technically known as the Freedom of the Seas.

Humiliation of the Danes

The English resisted the Danes heroically under Alfred, never fighting except against heavy odds, till at the memorable Peace of Wedmore Alfred compelled the Danes, who were now (of course) beaten, to stop being Danes and become English and therefore C. of E. and get properly married.

For this purpose they were made to go back and start again at Thanet, after which they were called in future Thanes instead of Danes and were on our side and in the right and very romantic.

CHAPTER 7

Lady Windermere. Age of Lake Dwellers

ALFRED had a very interesting wife called Lady Windermere (The Lady of the Lake), who was always clothed in the same white frock, and used to go bathing with Sir Launcelot (also of the Lake) and was thus a Bad Queen. It was also in King Arthur's time that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was published: this was the first English newspaper and had all the news about his victories, and Lady Windermere, and the Cakes, etc.

Syng a song of Saxons
In the Wapentake of Rye
Four and twenty eaoldormen
Too eaold to die....

When Cnut Cyng the Witan wold enfeoff
Of infangthief and outfangthief
Wonderlich were they enwraged
And wordwar waged
Sware Cnut great scot and lot
Swinge wold ich this illbegotten lot.

Wroth was Cnut and wrothword spake.
Well wold he win at wopantake.
Fain wold he brake frith and crake heads
And that they shold worshippe his redes.

Swinged Cnut Cyng with swung sword
Howled Witane helle but heakened his word
Murie sang Cnut Cyng
Outfangthief is Damgudthyng.

TEST PAPER I

Up to the End of 1066

1. Which do you consider were the more alike, Caesar or Pompey, or vice versa? (Be brief.)

2. 2. Discuss, in Latin or Gothic (but not both), whether the Northumbrian Bishops were more schismatical than the Cumbrian Abbots. (Be bright.)

3. Which came first, A.D. or B.C.? (Be careful.)

4. Has it never occurred to you that the Romans counted backwards? (Be honest.)

5. How angry would you be if it was suggested (1) That the XIth Chap. of the Consolations of Boethius was an interpolated palimpsest? (2) That an eisteddfod was an agricultural implement?

6. How would you have attempted to deal with (a) The Venomous Bead? (b) A Mabinogion or Wapentake? (Be quick.)

7. What would have happened if (a) Boadicea had been the daughter of Edward the Confessor? (b) Canute had succeeded in sitting on the waves? Does it matter?

8. Have you the faintest recollection of: (1) Ethelbreth? (2) Athelthral? (3) Thruthelthrolth?

9. What have you the faintest recollection of?

10. Estimate the average age of: (1) The Ancient Britons. (2) Ealdormen. (3) Old King Cole.

11. Why do you know nothing at all about (a) The Laws of Infangthief and Egg-seisin? (b) Saint Pancras?

12. Would you say that Ethelread the Unready was directly responsible for the French Revolution? If so, what would you say?

N.B. Do not attempt to answer more than one question at a time.

[dipsydoodle]

13. Where did you find that ?

And how is life in Wessex these days ?

We learned about Alfred at primary school which must've before I was 9 because by then we'd moved onto the Normans - in depth. I've no idea what kids learn at school these days

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. A Russian site with a possibly cavalier attitude to copyright:

http://hotgiraffe.narod.ru/books/1066.html

For those of us who spend weeks every year contemplating examination papers, the evidence of what students remember, Sellar's and Yeatman's satire is on one level an extended examination paper, a nightmare paper, brilliant in its awfulness. It never misses the point but caricatures it, turns it upside down or puts it in the wrong place. More worryingly, it exposes the thinness of so many of the concepts and devices of historical writing.

Consider this succinct summary of early Scottish history: "The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind and verse visa."

Though long books have been written on the subject, the following captures the gist of the Divine Right of Kings: &quot a) He was King and that was right; (b) Kings were divine, and that was right; (c) Kings were right, and that was right; (d) Everything was all right."

The book has a modern format and appends test questions to every chapter. I admire these because they give students a clear indication of the politically correct line to take as with "Outline joyfully (1) Henry VIII, (2) Stout Cortez". I wonder whether we at the Open University shouldn't give more of a hint and demand that students "Outline mournfully the position of 19th-century women".

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/speaking-volumes-wc-sellars-and-rj-yeatmans-1066-and-all-that/159911.article

If you haven't read 1066 And All That, you will, I think, love it. Anyone taught history in England before 1980 or so will, and probably everyone after too (the misremembered subjects may change in emphasis, but the spirit is the same).

[dipsydoodle]

15. One of those books I knew of but had not read

Now ordered through Amazon.

Thanks for the nod.

[colsohlibgal]

19. How Cool

We consider 100 year old buildings historical, that's nothing like old over the big pond where buildings are over a thousand years old. Now it seems like they are finding an old king or whatever monthly.