Was King Alfred Great?

​The discovery of jewellery and silver ingots in a field in Oxfordshire in October of 2015 has put the Anglo-Saxon period under the microscope, historian's suggesting that we should look again at how Alfred is perceived and whether he is entitled to hold the title of great.

The above mentioned find is known as The Watlington Hoard and it contained rare Anglo-Saxon silver coins that were stamped with images of two Roman emperors along with the faces of Alfred and Ceolwulf, the last king of Mercia who died in 879.

These coins are evidence that both men worked together to rid the country of the Viking's, but the suggestion that Alfred wasn't as great as we have been led to believe I would have to disagree with. Alfred's double success at Edington are a case in point, they show his skill as a warrior and a diplomat. Under Alfred, England took the first tentative steps to becoming a civilised, literate and an united country.

As the old adage states, history is written by the victors, and Ceolwulf, who may well have been an effective leader, was not just out gunned, he was out shined. 

Alfred achievements were great, therefore, and in my opinion, it is a title deserved.

However, the Victorian cult of King Alfred is in part to blame for how we see Alfred today. To the Victorians, Alfred was a perfect symbol of their perfect nation, but this was a double edged sword, by glossing over their failings, (bad housing conditions, infectious diseases and the early deaths of the poor) with the use of paintings, poems and heroic stories to represent heroic kings, no only show how great was the divide between rich and poor it served to muddle our understanding of Alfred and the time he lived in.