In seeking materials for the answer to this question, I will first consider the probabilities of the case, which are suggested by the course of public events: and then, secondly, I will come to the indications which are personal to Alfred himself. This plan may tend to clearness, though it be not feasible to keep the two aspects quite apart. For a basis to this enquiry, we must take the year 878, as being that in which the Jewel disappeared. This is now an established point in our argument. To this we were led both by history and by tradition: and it is only by keeping as close as possible to these that we can shun the proclivities of arbitrary hypothesis. 1. Taking then the year 878 as that in which Alfred saw the Jewel for the last time, how far back must we recede to come to the most probable time for his inventing it? Our first step must be to skip the seven years since his accession in 871. A glimpse at the events of that period may suffice to assure us that the constant pressure of sterner duties would have left him in no mood to amuse himself with enamel and filigree. And even if for the sake of winter relaxation he had done so, I think he would not have designated himself as plain Ælfred, when he was king. During his reign his constant style was ÆLFRED CYNING, and it would have been quite easy to have added the letter R to his name, as his father did when he ordered the fashion of his ring. For these reasons (among others), I think the Jewel was made before 871. We may still recede another long step, and say that the date we seek was probably before 866. That is the year in which Alfred began to share the burden of reigning without the title, the year in which the common danger entered upon a new and more menacing phase, as the heathen invasion began to be more systematically conducted. Wessex was not indeed attacked until the last of these five years, but the whole period must have been passed in apprehension and intense preparation. Accordingly, this process of reasoning back from the year 878 by the light of public events brings us to the result that the design and execution of the Jewel is probably to be dated before A.D. 866, that is to say, it must belong to the reign of king Æthelberht. 2. Coming now to the second process, we have to consider at what time it appears likely that Alfred might have been in the mood for such a work as this, and also in circumstances (as to his immediate surroundings) favourable for artistic and allegorical meditation. When does it appear likely that he had leisure for thinking out these details, while at the same time his mind was exercised with the themes represented in the Jewel? It was certainly subsequent to his return from Rome; not immediately, but after an interval, when the first agitation of his mind had subsided, and he had become reconciled to his lot.