The second period of the reign, the period of more peaceful reconstruction and consolidation, for plenty of fighting still remained to be done, centres largely round Winchester, and it is more particularly round Wolvesey and the scanty remains of Hyde Abbey that the memory of Alfred still most closely lingers. Wolvesey was the royal seat. Here he formed his court; here he inaugurated his reforms; here he laboured, studied, deliberated. The defence of his kingdom, the repair of the material ruin caused by foreign invasion, the construction of a fleet of ships, the promulgation of wise laws, the promotion of education, the encouragement of literature and travel, the actual founding of a national English literature and an English historical record, which no other nation can find a parallel to, the endowment of religious worship--all these in turn occupied his attention while he dwelt at Wolvesey. The command of the seas he early recognized to be the real defence of the land, and as soon as opportunity served he set himself to build a fleet. The Chronicle tells us that he commanded long ships (_aescas_) to be built against them (_the Danes, that is_) which were full nigh twice as long as the others. Some had sixty oars, some more; they were both swifter and steadier, and also higher than the others. They were shaped neither like the Frisian nor the Danish, but as it seemed to him they could be most useful. The Chronicle gives us also a stirring account of a sea-fight in one of the Hampshire harbours between Alfred’s vessels and three Danish long ships. It is a graphic and well-told narrative, too long to be quoted here. The crews of two of the pirates were captured, and brought to the king at Winchester. The king, who was then at Wolvesey, commanded them to be hanged, very likely above those very walls of Wolvesey, grey and weather-beaten, which we see now, and which in their “herring-bone” masonry still show the hand of the Saxon builder who erected them. In the bed of the Hamble River there lies still embedded the keel of a ‘long ship.’ One would dearly like to believe that it was one of those very pirate vessels which were driven aground, and whose crews were captured as related above, and the fact is not indeed impossible. Some planks and portions of this vessel may be seen in the Westgate Museum in Winchester, and various mementoes, such as the ceremonial casket presented to Lord Roberts with the freedom of the city on his return from South Africa, have in recent times been made from it.