or to rouse a proper spirit in his people.  Yielding himself wholly to speculative devotion, he entirely neglected his affairs, and, to complete the ruin of his kingdom, abandoned it, in such critical circumstances, to make a pilgrimage to Rome.  At Rome he behaved in the manner that suited his little genius, in making charitable foundations, and in extending the Rome-scot or Peter-pence, which the folly of some princes of the Heptarchy had granted for their particular dominions, over the whole Kingdom.  His shameful desertion of his country raised so general a discontent, that in his absence his own son, with the principal of his nobility and bishops, conspired against him.  At his return, he found, however, that several still adhered to him; but here, too, incapable of acting with rigor, he agreed to an accommodation, which placed the crown on the head of his rebellious son, and only left to himself a sphere of government as narrow as his genius,—­the district of Kent, whither he retired to enjoy an inglorious privacy with a wife whom he had married in France.

[Sidenote:  Ethelred, A.D. 866]

On his death, his son Ethelred still held the crown, which he had preoccupied by his rebellion, and which he polluted with a new stain.  He married his father’s widow.  The confused history of these times furnishes no clear account either of the successions of the kings or of their actions.  During the reign of this prince and his successors Ethelbert and Ethelred, the people in several parts of England seem to have withdrawn from the kingdom of Wessex, and to have revived their former independency.  This, added to the weakness of the government, made way for new swarms of Danes, who burst in upon this ill-governed and divided people, ravaging the whole country in a terrible manner, but principally directing their fury against every monument of civility or piety.  They had now formed a regular establishment in Northumberland, and gained a very considerable footing in Mercia and East Anglia; they hovered over every part of the kingdom with their fleets; and being established in many places in the heart of the country, nothing seemed able to resist them.

FOOTNOTES: 

[47] No Saxon monarch until Athelstan.

CHAPTER IV.

REIGN OF KING ALFRED.

[Sidenote:  A.D. 871]

[Sidenote:  A.D. 875]

It was in the midst of these distractions that Alfred succeeded to a sceptre which, was threatened every moment to be wrenched from his hands.  He was then only twenty-two years of age, but exercised from his infancy in troubles and in wars that formed and displayed his virtue.  Some of its best provinces were torn from his kingdom, which was shrunk to the ancient bounds of Wessex; and what remained was weakened by dissension, by a long war, by a raging pestilence, and surrounded by enemies whose numbers seemed inexhaustible,