Source Problems in English History
career the Chronicle is far from satisfactory. Three years (892, 899, 900) have no record at all. “Eight have merely brief entries of a line or two regarding the movements of the Danish army, or here; and of these eight entries the last three have nothing to do with England, being concerned with the doings of the here on the Continent. Two other very brief entries deal with the sending of couriers to Rome, and with certain obits.”[1] After Alfred, the Chronicle ceased to be a unit, records being kept more or less independently at about five different religious houses. Hence it is correct to speak of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles. But the national idea remained, and Alfred’s historical impulse showed extraordinary vitality. It had not spent itself at the Conquest, and this first and great English history did not end until the middle of the twelfth century.
2. Asser’s Life of King Alfred.
It is now generally believed that this work was written by a contemporary of Alfred and probably by the man under whose name it has passed. Asser, bishop of St. David’s and later bishop of Sherborne, appears to have spent several years about the middle of the reign at Alfred’s court. Judging from his own account, he was aiding the king in his studies and in his literary undertakings. The Latin “Life” which he has left us follows a most unusual plan. Its foundation is a series of annals covering the years 851–887; and in these annals are inserted at various places sections of personal comment and anecdote relative to Alfred. These latter seem to be entirely original with Asser, while the annalistic portions clearly bear a close relation to the corresponding entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Plummer remarks that the biographical sections were inserted in a way “so in-
- ↑ Plummer, Alfred, p. 12.
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