But besides appropriateness of design and workmanship, there is yet another condition to be satisfied, and one which this theory can only meet by means of a roundabout and arbitrary hypothesis. Any interpretation of the Jewel, to be satisfactory, must harmonize naturally and spontaneously with the Alfredian associations of the spot on which it was found. Bp. Clifford has felt this, and he has employed an elaborate machinery to meet it. The place of the find is one that naturally suggests direct and immediate connexion with the goings and comings of the king himself, for it lies near the centre of that region in which he spent some months of acute effort in the most critical juncture of his diversified and adventurous life. If our interpretation harmonize with the associations which are linked to the spot, and through the spot to the Jewel, probability is strengthened while the interest is heightened; but what possibility is there of bringing these associations to bear upon a costly book-pointer? If anything so extravagant existed, it might be preserved in the treasury of the minster or in the book-room of the cloister; but it could have no place about the person of a fugitive king and a struggling warrior. Accordingly the author of this theory is compelled to detach the interpretation from the personal history of the king, and to rest his solution of the problem upon a highly speculative assumption combined with the chances and vicissitudes of a later age. The author of this theory has to face the inevitable question—On the supposition that the Alfred Jewel is the handle of a book-pointer, how do you account for its being found in the neighbourhood of Athelney? In preparing to answer this question, he fetches a wide compass, enclosing in his sweep the literary achievements of the king, and seven centuries of the after-time. He begins by recalling Alfred’s acknowledgements to Plegmund, Asser, Grimbald, and John, for their help in his translation of Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_, and he recites the king’s statement that he would send a copy of the translation to each bishop’s see, and with each book an ‘æstel’ worth 50 mancusses. It is an essential part of his theory that the ‘æstel’ was a book-pointer with a costly handle, and moreover that the Alfred Jewel was one of these handles. But there was no bishop’s see at or near Athelney, the nearest being at Sherborne: how then did this relic find its way to Newton Park by Athelney? The answer is that John the Priest became abbot of Alfred’s foundation at Athelney, and that there can be no reasonable doubt that Alfred gave the book and ‘æstel’ not only to Plegmund and Asser, but that he also extended his bounty to Grimbald and John, his two other collaborators[11]. So the Alfred Jewel having thus arrived at Athelney as the handle of a book-pointer, was religiously preserved there until the time of Henry VIII, when it was buried to await better times, and in the course of nature forgotten.