familiar to all that he was enticed to a longing for knowledge by the promise of his stepmother Judith, daughter of the King of the Franks, who had been educated abroad, that she would give a book of Saxon poetry which she had shown to him and his brother to whichever of them could first learn to read it and repeat the poetry by heart. Alfred seems to have learned Latin from Asser, for he translated several famous books into Saxon, so that his people might attain a knowledge of their contents without the labour through which he himself had gone. When we consider that he was also, as William of Malmesbury tells us, “present in every action against the enemy even up to the end of his life, ever daunting the invaders, and inspiring his subjects with the signal display of his courage,” we may well admire the indomitable energy of this man. In his old age he caused candles to be made with twenty-four divisions, to keep him aware of the lapse of time and help him to allot it to special duties. One of his attendants was always at hand to warn him how his candle was burning, and to remind him of the special duty he was accustomed to perform at any particular hour of the day or night. The latter years of Alfred were comparatively free from incursions by the Danes or Norsemen; this was the period during which the attention of the Norse was attracted in other directions. The conquests of Rollo or Rolf the Ganger or “the Walker” in the North of France were attracting a large body of the more turbulent spirits to those shores which in after-times they were to call Normandy, or the land of the Northmen. After Gorm the Englishman’s submission to Alfred many of the Danes from England seem to have joined these fresh bands of marauders, advancing up the Seine to Paris, and devastating the country as far as the Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Marne on the east and Brittany on the west. In time to come, under Rollo’s descendant, William the Conqueror, these people were once more to pour down upon English shores and reconquer the land that their forefathers had lost through Alfred’s bravery and statesmanship. Rollo overran Normandy for the first time in the year 876,[11] and William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey in 1066, nearly two hundred years later. William’s genealogy was as follows:--He was son of Robert the Magnificent, second son of Richard the Good, son of Richard the Fearless, son of William Longsword, son of Rollo or Rolf the Walker--six generations. The direct connexion between the Anglo-Norman houses was through Emma, daughter of Richard the Fearless, who married first Ethelred the Unready, King of England, and afterwards his enemy and successor, Canute the Great. It was on account of this connexion that William the Conqueror laid claim to the Crown of England. Chapter V Harald Fairhair, First King of Norway, and the Settlements in the Orkneys