Among other cares of the first ten or eleven years of his reign, he turned his attention to the English school in Rome, and persuaded Pope Martin to free it from tribute and tax. This is the Pope who absolved Bishop Formosus from his excommunication by Pope John VIII. and from his vow not to return to Rome; a reversal which led to the trial and condemnation of the dead body of Formosus, mentioned on a later page. Alfred was now free to devote himself to the restoration of religion and learning. His own family management was a pattern to all. His youngest son, Ethelwerd, was sent to the schools which Alfred had by that time established. Here he was taught in company with the children of almost all the nobility of the kingdom, and many that were not noble. They learned to read both Latin and Saxon books, and they learned to write; so that by the time they were ready to practise the manly arts—hunting and such pursuits as befitted noblemen—they had become studious and clever in the liberal arts. His older children had been taught at home, and no less carefully. They learned the Psalms and read Saxon books, especially Saxon poems; at the time when Asser wrote, Edward and Ethelswith[11] were continually in the habit of making use of books. The king himself led a laborious life. Invasions by pagans, and his constantly recurring and disabling bodily pain, did not prevent his carrying on the government with vigour. And he was full of other occupations. Hunting in all its branches he continued to practise. He taught his workers of gold,[12] one of whom no doubt had made in the earlier years of his reign the ornament of gold and enamel found at Athelney in 1693 and now in the Bodleian, with its legend speaking of his personal care, _Alfred had me made_. He trained artificers of all kinds; he trained his falconers, hawkers, and kennel-men. By his own mechanical inventions he was able to build houses beyond all precedent of his ancestors. He learned by heart the Saxon poems and made others learn them; he recited Saxon books; he alone never desisted from studying most diligently to the best of his ability. He attended mass and the other daily religious services; he was frequent in singing psalms and in prayer, at the day hours and the night hours; he went to the churches at night to pray secretly, unknown to his courtiers. He was in the habit of hearing the Divine Scriptures read by his own countrymen, or, if it so happened, in the company of foreigners. His bishops, too, and all ecclesiastics, his earls and nobles, his officers and friends, were loved by him with wonderful affection; their sons who were bred up in the royal household were as dear to him as his own; he had them instructed in all good morals, and never ceased to teach them letters day and night. And yet he complained to God, and to all who were admitted to intimacy with him, that the Almighty had made him ignorant of divine wisdom and of the liberal arts.