It is very difficult to decide, at this late day how far this disposition to find fault with Alfred’s early administration of his government arose from, or was aggravated by, the misfortunes and calamities which befell him.  On the one hand, it would not be surprising if, young, and arduous, and impetuous as he was at this period of his life, he should have fallen into the errors and faults which youthful monarchs are very prone to commit on being suddenly raised to power.  But then, on the other hand, men are prone, in all ages of the world, and most especially in such rude and uncultivated times as these were, to judge military and governmental action by the sole criterion of success.  Thus, when they found that Alfred’s measures, one after another, failed in protecting his country, that the impending calamities burst successively upon them, notwithstanding all Alfred’s efforts to avert them, it was natural that they should look at and exaggerate his faults, and charge all their national misfortunes to the influence of them.

There was a certain Saint Neot, a kinsman and religious counselor of Alfred, the history of whose life was afterward written by the Abbot of Crowland, the monastery whose destruction by the Danes was described in a former chapter.  In this narrative it is said that Neot often rebuked Alfred in the severest terms for his sinful course of life, predicting the most fatal consequences if he did not reform, and using language which only a very culpable degree of remissness and irregularity could justify.  “You glory,” said he, one day, when addressing the king, “in your pride and power, and are determined and obdurate in your iniquity.  But there is a terrible retribution in store for you.  I entreat you to listen to my counsels, amend your life, and govern your people with moderation and justice, instead of tyranny and oppression, and thus avert if you can, before it is too late, the impending judgments of Heaven.”

Such language as this it is obvious that only a very serious dereliction of duty on Alfred’s part could call for or justify; but, whatever he may have done to deserve it, his offenses were so fully expiated by his subsequent sufferings, and he atoned for them so nobly, too, by the wisdom, the prudence, the faithful and devoted patriotism of his later career, that mankind have been disposed to pass by the faults of his early years without attempting to scrutinize them too closely.  The noblest human spirits are always, in some periods of their existence, or in some aspects of their characters, strangely weakened by infirmities and frailties, and deformed by sin.  This is human nature.  We like to imagine that we find exceptions, and to see specimens of moral perfection in our friends or in the historical characters whose general course of action we admire; but there are no exceptions.  To err and to sin, at some times and in some ways, is the common, universal, and inevitable lot of humanity.