Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/309

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S. I. APRIL 16, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

301

LONDON, SATURDAY, APE1L 16 t 1898.

CONTENTS. No. 16.

MOTES: King Alfred, 301 Fitzgerald's ' Euphranor,' 302 Cutting the Frog, 303 Sir W. Banister Gipsy Funeral- Thomas De Quincey " On his own," 304 Vowel Com- bination eo Eating of Seals Death of Chatham " Choriasmus," 305 Boulter Measurement ' Ivry ' Eighteenth-Century " Corner"" Whig," 306.

QUERIES : Transcripts of Parish Registers, 306 " Dar- gason " Mendoza Inscription in Dublin "All sorts and conditions of men " Odnell Hayborne Ormonde : Butler : Birch Value of Deed John Lilburne "Dean Snift" The Bhip Oxford, 307 Song Wanted " Shot " Hymn- Book Saying of a Jesuit Sentence in Westcott Gresham's Law Rev. C. B. Gibson H. Hunt French Titles of Nobility on Sale Melton Club Mr. J. Chapman English Grammar, 308 Seers Family, 309.

REPLIES : Smollett, 309" Mascot," 311" Her Majesty's Opposition" Grub Street Tennyson Family, 312 Lon- don Bridge A Settlement from the Pyrenees Old English Letters Sepoy Mutiny Poems Armorial, 313 Lin- wood's Picture Galleries The Golden Key Rotten Row, Nottingham, 314 Author of Book Verbs ending in " -ish " " Medicus et Pollinctor " " So pleased," 315" To Sue " " Jiv, jiv, koorllka ! " William Wentworth " Mela Britannicus" Works attributed to other Authors, 316 "Cross" vice " Kris "Registers of Guildhall Chapel- Alfred Wigan=Leonora Pincott Bath Apple Christen- ing New Vessels, 317" Katherine Kinrade" " Daimen" Robert Raikes, 318.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Historical English Dictionary ' Fenton's 'Certain Tragical Discourses of Bandello' Christy's ' Proverbs, Maxims, &c., of all Ages ' Macray's 'Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecse Bod- leianae.'

Notices to Correspondents.

KING ALFRED: ATHELSTAN OR ST. NEOT: OSBURGA AND JUDITH.

IN view of the proposal to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of the death of our great hero-king Alfred in some worthy way, may I put on record a theory which, as I submit, reconciles the puzzling difficulties in the story of his early years? Legend must be called to the aid of history, and gaps must be filled in by "guesses at truth," which, however, do not twist and contradict history, but simply supplement it by probable solu- tions of otherwise irreconcilable difficulties.

To do this it is necessary to go back to the days of Egbert. He, the great Bretwalda, it was who made Wessex the nucleus of the present wide- world British Empire; while the little kingdom of Kent, to preserve its dignity as the first of the Anglo-Saxon or Jutish kingdoms, was made the appanage of the heir to the throne. His eldest son was Athelstan, who became sub-regulus of Kent, died young, and was succeeded by his brother Ethelwulf, who, intended for the bishopric of Winchester then the capital of Wessex, and so of England had already taken minor orders. From these he obtained release and returned to a secular life. When he, on his

father's death, became King of Wessex, he resigned to his son Athelstan the small king- doms of Kent, Surrey, Essex, and Sussex. To defend these south-eastern kingdoms from the Danes, Athelstan (prince and sub-regulus) fought a great battle on shipboard, the first on record since the days of Carausius, in which he slew a great number of the enemy at Sandwich, took nine ships and put the others to flight, but, alas ! with the strange and disappointing result that for the first time the neathen wintered in Thanet. This was in the year 851. And from this date the brave sub-regulus drops out of history. Malmesbury only says it is not known how or in what manner he died; while the 'Anglo- Saxon Chronicle ' never mentions him again. Osburga too, the wife of Ethelwulf, in the same way disappears from view.

Now it was no rare thing in those days for a king, disgusted with the troubles of the world, to resign his crown and go on pilgrimage, as did the great King Ina in 688, or to retire into a monastery. Caedwalla also, who pre- ceded Ina, went to Rome, and changed his name t6 Peter. Prof. Burrows says that twenty Saxon kings did so.

Athelstan then, as I believe whom tradi- tion identifies with the famous St. Neot forsook his kingdom and betook himself first to Glastonbury, in Somerset, and later passed into Cornwall. When Osburga also elected to seek the religious life, and Ethelwulf went on pilgrimage to Rome, they parted, never more to meet in this world, Osburga having pro- bably joined her son Athelstan or Neotus in the West. Ethelwulf then started on his pilgrimage to Rome with, as I believe, the in- tention of resigning his crown and remaining there; but on his way he passed through France, and was bewitched by the forward young siren Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald. She was only fourteen, and naturally enough Ethelbald, the eldest son, was indignant at the insult offered to his mother, and pro- bably on his own account resented the idea of his father returning to claim the throne, which Ethelbald expected he would resign to him. He raised a rebellion against his father, in which he was joined by his father's greatest friend and counsellor Ealstan, Bishop of Sherborne. The foolish old king insisted on Judith's taking the royal title and sitting beside him on the throne, which was contrary to the customs of the kings of Wessex. The Earl of Somerset too joined the rebellion, and it ended by a compromise, Ethelwulf resigning the throne of Wessex to his rebellious son, and taking the lesser kingdom of Kent for himself. Strangely enough, the * Anglo-Saxon