=25. Alfred’s Love of Learning.=[61]--This he would confess, with many lamentations and with sighs from the bottom of his heart, to have been one of his greatest difficulties and impediments in this present life, that when he was young and had leisure and capacity for learning, he had no masters; but when he was more advanced in years, he was continually occupied, not to say harassed, day and night, by so many diseases unknown to all the physicians of this island, as well as by internal and external anxieties of sovereignty, and by invasions of the heathen by sea and land, that though he then had some store of teachers and writers,[62] it was quite impossible for him to study. But yet among the impediments of this present life, from childhood to the present day [and, as I believe, even until his death],[63] he has continued to feel the same insatiable desire. =26. The Danes occupy York.=[64]--In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 867, which was the nineteenth of the aforesaid King Alfred’s life, the army of heathen before mentioned removed from East Anglia to the city of York, which is situated on the north bank of the river Humber. =27. Defeat of the Northumbrians.=[64]--At that time a violent discord arose, by the instigation of the devil, among the Northumbrians, as always is wont to happen to a people who have incurred the wrath of God. For the Northumbrians at that time, as I have said,[65] had expelled their lawful king Osbert from his realm, and appointed a certain tyrant named Ælla, not of royal birth, over the affairs of the kingdom. But when the heathen approached, by divine providence, and the furtherance of the common weal by the nobles, that discord was a little appeased, and Osbert and Ælla uniting their resources, and assembling an army, marched to the town of York. The heathen fled at their approach, and attempted to defend themselves within the walls of the city. The Christians, perceiving their flight and the terror they were in, determined to follow them within the very ramparts of the town, and to demolish the wall; and this they succeeded in doing, since the city at that time was not surrounded by firm or strong walls. When the Christians had made a breach, as they had purposed, and many of them had entered into the city along with the heathen, the latter, impelled by grief and necessity, made a fierce sally upon them, slew them, routed them, and cut them down, both within and without the walls. In that battle fell almost all the Northumbrian troops, and both the kings were slain; the remainder, who escaped, made peace with the heathen. =28. Death of Ealhstan.=[66]--In the same year, Ealhstan, Bishop of the church of Sherborne, went the way of all flesh, after he had honorably ruled his see fifty years; and in peace he was buried at Sherborne.