Æthelbert succeeded to Æthelbald, Æthelred to Æthelbert, and ever the struggle increased in intensity. In the last year of Æthelred’s reign he and Alfred fought no less than nine pitched battles against the Danes. In the winter of 871 Æthelred died, as it would seem, mortally wounded in battle, and was buried at Wimborne, and Alfred, the last of the four brothers, became king. CHAPTER VI ALFRED A prince that draws By example more than others do by laws. That is so just, to his great act and thought To do, not what kings may, but what kings ought. BEN JONSON, _The Hue and Cry_. Alfred the Great belongs in a peculiar sense to Winchester; here he was proclaimed king; here he lived, and ruled, and made his laws; here he gathered round him that assemblage of divines and learned men with whose co-operation he gave the first great impetus to a national literature; here he commenced the English Chronicle; here he devised his plans for constructing a navy to defend the land against foreign foes; here he founded a monastery, the Newan Mynstre, destined to play a great and honourable part for some 600 years after him; here his queen founded a sister institution, the abbey of St. Mary; here he died and was buried, leaving behind him the savour of a life strenuous, blameless, and devoted, having shown his world that the fullest development of manly vigour was compatible both with the saintliness of the devotee and the culture of the book-lover and the student. It was a rude age, the age of Alfred, but nevertheless it was a great age, for it was, in spite of all its crudeness and brutality, an age in which ideals were sought after, and indeed worshipped. It was Alfred’s high distinction that he not only steered the ship of state successfully through seemingly overwhelming dangers, but that in his own life he exhibited to the world a realized ideal--an ideal that comparatively few monarchs have made any attempt to strive after, and which, it is safe to say, none ever achieved so completely. There have, indeed, been great empire builders like Charlemagne, great law-givers like our first Edward, saints with the spiritual elevation of St. Louis, scholars and patrons of learning like Henry VI., but none have combined these high qualities with such just balance and self-restraint as Alfred, who may be truly said to have embodied in his own life the earnest, long-continued prayer which his own words expressed: I have sought to live worthily while I lived, and after my death to leave to the men that should be after me my remembrance in good works.