A consecration of ALFRED the Great, which is by many writers regarded as "regal," took place at Rome, A.D. 754, when that prince was but five years of age; and was performed by Pope Leo IV. at the request of his father. Mr. Turner supposes that AEthelwulf thus intended to designate him for his heir in preference to his elder brothers: and Mr. Lingard, that it was to secure his succession to the crown _after_ his brothers, to the exclusion of their children; a conjecture that is strongly supported by the subsequent arrangements of the will of AEthelwulf, by which the minor kingdom of Kent was left to his second son, Ethelbert; and the kingdom of Wessex to Ethelbald, Ethelred, and Alfred, in order of seniority. "If there be room here for conjecture, I rather think," says Selden, "that as the unction used in the baptism of king Clovis was among the French made also by tradition to be an anointing him for king, so here the use of chrisme in confirmation (for it appears that at the same time Pope Leo confirmed king Alured,) was afterward, by mistaking, accounted for the royal unction[71]." Malmsbury says expressly that the pope gave him "the regal unction _and_ the crown;" and Robert of Gloucester --Pope Leon h[.y]m blessede že he žuder com, And že k[.y]nges crowne of ž[.y]s lond.-- It is also to be observed that no one of his brothers, Ethelbert, Ethelbald, or Ethelred, seem to have received a regal consecration, and that we do not read of a repetition of that ceremony when Alfred himself was crowned at Winchester;--and here we leave the solution of the meaning of this ceremony to the reader.