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In April 871, King Aethelred died, leaving two under-age sons, Aethelheim and Aethelwold. However, on [[April 23]], 871, Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex, and the burden of its defense, in accordance with an agreement that Aethelred and Alfred had made earlier that year at an assembly at Swinbeorg. The Danes continued to press their attacks, forcing Alfred to ‘make peace’ with them, a peace that lasted for five years. In 876 under their new leader, [[w:Guthrum|Guthrum]], the Danes renewed their aggression. After a narrow escape from an attack on Chippenham in January 878, Alfred, mounted an effective resistance movement from a fort at Athelney on an island in the marshes of North Petherton, rallying the local militias from Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire. In mid 878, Alfred, backed by the people of Somerset and Wiltshire, emerged from his marshland stronghold to defeat the Danes at the Battle of Ethandun in a carefully planned offensive that pushed the Danes into their stronghold of Chippenham where they were starved into submission.
Among the terms of the surrender was that Guthrum [[conversion|converted]] to Christianity. Three weeks later King Guthrum and 29 of his chief men were [[baptism|baptized]] at Alfred's court at Aller, near Atheiney, with Alfred receiving Guthrum as his spiritual son with the name Athelstan.[<ref>Anglo Saxon Chronicle Trans. by M. J. Swanton (New York, Routledge: 1996)</ref> In the treaty negotiated in either 879 or 880 Alfred and Guthrum established the borders dividing their lands of which that part controlled by Guthrum became known as Danelaw. While the treaty with Guthrum brought an end to large scale conflicts, Alfred still had to deal with raids and incursions. During this period, Arthur reoccupied the city of London and initiated a program of restoring the city.
With the death of Guthrum in 889, a political vacuum was created in which revived attacks by Danes from the continent reopened war with the Vikings, thus ending these quiet years of Arthur's life. Against the traditionally organized Danish tactics Arthur counter with a restructured military organization that included a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons, and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries. Alfred's re-organization of the military defense system included the establishment of network of fortresses at strategic points in the kingdom. These ''burhs'' (later called boroughs) enabled his army to confront Viking attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a day, which formed significant obstacles to the Viking invaders.
In addition to his re-organization of the defense of his realm, Arthur initiated a new legal code that was based on the laws of his predecessors but mediated by his own standards. This code bore an introduction in which Alfred placed his laws in the context of Christian law as presented in the [[Decalogue]], chapters from the Book of [[Book of Exodus]], and the 'Apostolic Letter' from the [[Acts of the Apostles]] (15:23-29), thus giving his law-giving the sense of being a continuance of the holy past. Alfred also undertook the revival of scholarship in England that had been depressed during the Viking invasions. This was done through the recruitment of clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales, and abroad to enhance education at the court and of the Church episcopacy and, through the establishment of a court school, to educate his own children, the sons of his nobles, and intellectually promising boys of lesser birth.
By appointing pious, learned, and trustworthy bishops and [[abbot]]s, Albert initiated a spiritual revival among the monasteries. He also emphasized translation of books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know."<ref>Preface to Alfred's translation of Gregory the Great's ''Pastoral Care'', in Keynes & Lapidge 1983 p. 126.</ref> He himself contributed to the spiritual revival through his translations that included translation into English of [[Gregory the Great]]'s ''Pastoral Care'' , Boethius' ''Consolation of Philosophy'', St. [[Augustine of Hippo|Augustine]]'s ''Soliloquies'', and the first fifty psalms of the [[Psalter]].
==Family, death, and burial==
Alfred married Ealhswith in 868. She was the daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Aethelred Mucil the Ealdorman of the Gaini. Their children included Edward the Elder, who succeeded Arthur as king, Aetheflaed, who became Queen of Mercia, and Aelfthryth, who married Count Baldwin II of Flanders. Alfred died on October 26, most probably in 899. The cause of his death is unknown, but may be from Crohn's disease, as he suffered throughout his life with a painful and unpleasant illness. His body was temporarily buried in the Old Minster in Winchester before being moved to the New Minster. In 1110, his [[relics]] were [[translationTranslation (relics)|translated]] to Hyde Abbey along with those of his wife and children. After the dissolution of the abbey during the reign of Henry VIII in 1539, the church was demolished, but leaving the graves intact. In 1788, when a prison was being constructed by convicts on the site of the royal graves, and many others, they were probably rediscovered by chance. But, the coffins were stripped of lead, bones were scattered and lost, and subsequently no identifiable remains of Alfred have been found.
==References==
