Alfred was six years old and had lost his mother, when his father, wishing to make the pilgrimage to Rome in his turn, took his youngest son with him: the Saxon king spent a year with the Pope, carrying from church to church his sumptuous devotion. On his return journey, he stopped at the court of Charles the Bold, a court elegant and polite in comparison with the still rude customs of the Saxons; and, attracted by the beauty as well as the arts of Princess Judith, daughter of Charles, Ethelwulf married her, notwithstanding the disparity in their ages, and brought her in triumph into his kingdom. But the two persons whom the old king loved best, his young wife and his youngest son, were distrusted by the rest of his family, as well as by his people; Judith claimed a share of the sovereign power, according to the old custom in Britain and Germany, which had become odious to the Saxons by reason of the crimes of several queens; the elder sons of Ethelwulf feared that their young brother, so dear to their father, might be raised above themselves; the eldest, Ethelbald, revolted, and his father found a general rising against him when he returned to England. {40} The old king did not resist: he ceded to his son the greater portion of his states and died at the end of two years, having shared equally between his sons his kingdom of Wessex, previously enlarged by the addition of Kent and Sussex. The tributary states of Northumbria and Mercia had shaken off the feeble authority of Ethelwulf and had recommenced their internal wars. The Danes profited by these disputes, and had taken up with renewed ardor their terrible incursions upon the English coasts.