It is clear that in the course of the century which elapsed between the death of Bede and the birth of Alfred, the intellect of England had suffered a terrible relapse into ignorance and barbarism. It was not the inroads of the Northmen alone which had brought about this result, though, of course, the ruin of so many Northumbrian monasteries and the destruction of so many manuscripts were influences unfavourable to the cause of learning. But independently of Scandinavian ravages, England herself was becoming barbarised. In Northumbria the beacon light of Christianity and culture, which had once shone so brightly, was quenched in the blood of her kings, murdered and murderers. In Mercia there was a little more interest in literary pursuits, but apparently there only; East Anglia and Wessex were intellectually dead. As Alfred himself says, in the preface to his translation of Pope Gregory’s _Regula Pastoralis_: “Even before all this burning and ravaging [by the Danes in the reigns of Ethelwulf and his sons], when the churches were still filled with books and sacred vessels, and God’s servants abounded, yet they knew very little of the contents of their books, because they were not written in their own idiom”. “Formerly men came from beyond our borders, seeking wisdom in our own land; now, if we are to have it at all, we must look for it abroad. So great was the decay of learning among Englishmen that there were very few on this side Humber, and I ween not many north of it, who could understand the ritual [of Mass] or translate a letter from Latin into English. No, I cannot remember one such, south of the Thames, when I came to the throne.” To help him in the arduous task of once more bringing the English race under the influence of literary culture, nay, rather to teach him who yearned to be the teacher of his people, Alfred sought the aid of learned ecclesiastics beyond his own borders. With much earnestness he invited the Welshman Asser, his future biographer, to repair to his court. From Mercia he imported Plegmund, who became in 890 archbishop of Canterbury, and Werferth, who eventually returned to the midlands as bishop of Worcester. From St. Omer came Grimbald, who was consecrated abbot of the new minster founded by Alfred at Winchester; and from the lands near the mouth of the Elbe came John the Old Saxon, whose ancestors had probably fought hard for heathenism against Charlemagne, but who was himself a learned ecclesiastic. He helped Alfred much in his literary work, and was made by him abbot of his monastery at Athelney; an uneasy post, for two of his monks contrived a villainous plot against his life and his reputation, but were foiled by the vigorous resistance made by the stalwart Old Saxon, who had been a warrior in his youth, when the would-be murderers set upon him by night in the lonely convent church.