Asser is not very clear in the sequence of his ideas. But we gather that the king’s desire to found monasteries was due to his own fixed purpose of holy meditation, to which he desired to invite others. But he could not find any one of his own nation, free by birth, who was willing to adopt the monastic life, except some who were mere children, too young to choose between good and evil. The love of the monastic life, once so strong in England, had died out. Asser theorises as to the reasons for this, and he produces two which seem to be mutually destructive: it was either because of the constant invasions by sea and land, or because people abounded in riches of every kind and so despised the monastic life. He had to get an old Saxon to act as Abbot of his new foundation of Athelney; and then some priests and deacons from across the seas; and then, as he had not nearly plenty of inmates, he got as many Gauls as he possibly could, including children, to be reared to the monastic life. Asser had himself seen a lad of pagan birth who was educated there, and who was by no means the hindmost of them all. The formation of King Alfred’s Manual, which is not known to exist, may best be told something as Asser tells it. He says that it was in 887 or 888 that the king first formed the desire to interpret passages of Scripture to those who did not know Latin. “We were talking together one day, and I read to him an extract from a certain book. He heard it with both his ears. He brought out his book with the daily courses and psalms and the prayers he had read in his youth, and commanded me to write there the quotation. I turned it over, and found it very nearly full. After some delay I said, had I not better find another sheet on which this might be entered apart; for perhaps some other quotation might occur, and if so we should be glad to have them kept together? ‘Your plan is good,’ he said. So I made haste and got a sheet and wrote the quotation. That same day no less than three other passages pleased him; and from that time we talked daily and wrote such things as pleased him till at last it was full, for he went on unceasingly collecting many flowers of Divine Scriptures. When the first quotation was copied onto the sheet, he at once became anxious to read and interpret it in Saxon, and to teach others. The book grew till it became almost as large as a Psalter. He called it his Manual, because he kept it carefully at hand day and night, and found, as he told me, no small consolation therein.”