‘A King Across the Sea’: Alfred in Continental Perspective

Abstract

I BEGIN with the quotation in my title: ‘Alfred, a king across the sea’. It is actually a tenth-century label rather than a strictly contemporary one: it was used by Flodoard of Rheims inc.960 when he summarized a letter sent to Alfred by Archbishop Fulk of Rheims inc.890. How Fulk himself had addressed Alfred we don't know. But, according to Flodoard, what he said was ‘amicable’: he ex-pressed satisfaction on hearing of the appointment of a good man, Plegmund, to the see of Canterbury, because he had heard that ‘a most perverse sect’ had spread among the English and Plegmund was the man to cut it down. This sect held that bishops and priests could have women secretly living with them and that anyone who wished could mate with kinswomen of his own family and have incestuous relations with women consecrated to God and have a wife and a concubine at the same time. Fulk ended by demonstrating to Alfred the error of such views.