take from the enemy. These
attempts of Alfred to build and man a fleet are considered the first
rude beginnings from which the present vast edifice of British naval
power took its origin. When the fleet was ready to put to sea, the
people thronged the shores, watching its movements with the utmost
curiosity and interest, earnestly hoping that it might be successful
in its contests with the more tried and experienced armaments with
which it would have to contend.

Alfred was, in fact, successful in the first enterprises which he
undertook with his ships. He encountered a fleet of the Danish ships
in the Channel, and defeated them. His fleet captured, moreover, one
of the largest of the vessels of the enemy; and, with what would be
thought in our day unpardonable cruelty, they threw the sailors and
soldiers whom they found on board into the sea, and kept the vessel.

After all, however, Alfred gained no conclusive and decisive victory
over his foes. They were too numerous, too scattered, and too firmly
seated in the various districts of the island, of some of which they
had been in possession for many years. Time passed on, battles were
fought, treaties of peace were made, oaths were taken, hostages
were exchanged, and then, after a very brief interval of repose,
hostilities would break out again, each party bitterly accusing the
other of treachery. Then the poor hostages would be slain, first by
one party, and afterward, in retaliation, by the other.

In one of these temporary and illusive pacifications, Alfred attempted
to bind the Danes by Christian oaths. Their customary mode of binding
themselves, in cases where they wished to impose a solemn religious
obligation, was to swear by a certain ornament which they wore upon
their arms, which is called in the chronicles of those times a
_bracelet_. What its form and fashion was we can not now precisely
know; but it is plain that they attached some superstitious, and
perhaps idolatrous associations of sacredness to it. To swear by this
bracelet was to place themselves under the most solemn obligation that
they could assume. Alfred, however, not satisfied with this pagan
sanction, made them, in confirming one treaty, swear by the Christian
relics, which were certain supposed memorials of our Saviour's
crucifixion, or portions of the bodies of dead saints miraculously
preserved, and to which the credulous Christians of that day attached
an idea of sacredness and awe, scarc