Alfred the Great

According to Asser, who is supposed to have been bishop either of St. David's or of Sherborne or of Exeter in the time of King Alfred, the king of the Anglo-Saxons was born in the village of Wanating in Berkshire in the year 849. He was the son of King Ethelwulf. Alfred was king of Wessex from 871 to 899. He defended the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the south of England against the Vikings and cared for other benefits like the formulation of a code of laws or the promotion of religious and scholarly activity. The author Edward Vallance even claims the king to have been “The First British Radical” because he stresses radical movements, like, for example, Alfred's introduction of a code of laws which people were able to understand and which lead to just trials, as real changes affecting the government of the nation (Vallance 2009, 1, 4, 17).

Sources:

http://omacl.org/KingAlfred/introduction.html, 30.04.2010, 14:01.

http://omacl.org/KingAlfred/part1.html, 30.04.2010, 14:01.

http://www.mirror.org/ken.roberts/king.alfred.html, 30.04.2010, 14:015.

Vallance, Edward. A Radical History of Britain. Visionaries, Rebels and Revolutionaries – The Men and Women who Fought for Our Freedoms. London: Little Brown 2009, p.1-21.