Ethelwulf died in 858, and eight years later only two sons, Ethelred and Alfred, were left to cope with the Danish invaders.  They won victory after victory, upon which the old chroniclers love to dwell, pausing to describe wild frays among the chalk-hills and dense forests, which afforded convenient places to hide men and to bury spoils.

Ethelred died in 871, and the throne descended to Alfred.  His kingdom was in a terrible condition, for Wessex, Kent, Mercia, Sussex, and Surrey lay at the mercy of the marauding enemy.  “The land,” says an old writer, “was as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness.”  London was in ruins; the Danish standard, with its black Raven, fluttered everywhere; and the forests were filled with outposts and spies of the “pagan army.”  There was nothing for the King to do but gather his men and dash into the fray to “let the hard steel ring upon the high helmet.”  Time after time the Danes are overthrown, but, like the heads of the fabled Hydra, they grow and flourish after each attack.  They have one advantage:  they know how to command the sea, and numerous as the waves that their vessels ride so proudly and well, the invaders arrive and quickly land to plunder and slay.

Alfred, although but twenty-five, sees the need for a navy, and in 875 gathers a small fleet to meet the ships of the enemy, wins one prize, and puts the rest to flight.  The chroniclers now relate that he fell into disaster and became a fugitive in Selwood Forest, while Guthrum and his host were left free to ravage.  From this period date the legends of the King’s visit in disguise to the hut of the neat-herd, and his burning the bread he was set to watch; his penetrating into the camp of the Danes and entertaining Guthrum by his minstrelsy while discovering his plans and force; the vision of St. Cuthbert; and the fable of his calling five hundred men by the winding of his horn.

Not long after he was enabled to emerge from the trials of exile in Athelney; and according to Asser, “In the seventh week after Easter, he rode to Egbert’s Stone in the eastern part of Selwood or the Great Wood, called in the old British language Coit-mawr.  Here he was met by all the neighboring folk of Somersetshire, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, who had not for fear of the Pagans fled beyond the sea; and when they saw the king alive after such great tribulation, they received him, as he deserved, with joy and acclamations and all encamped there for the night.”  Soon afterward he made a treaty with the Danes, and became king of the whole of England south of the Thames.