the Danish invaders were so completely
triumphant as to force him to flee with a few followers to the forest
as a temporary refuge. He soon emerged, however, with the nucleus of
an army and, during his reign, which continued till 901, defeated the
Danes repeatedly, obtained their acceptance of Christianity, forced
upon them a treaty which restricted their rule to the northeastern
shires, and transmitted to his son a military and naval organization
which enabled him to win back much even of this part of England. He
introduced greater order, prosperity, and piety into the church, and
partly by his own writing, partly by his patronage of learned men,
reawakened an interest in Anglo-Saxon literature and in learning which
the ravages of the Danes and the demoralization of the country had
gone far to destroy. Alfred, besides his actual work as king,
impressed the recognition of his fine nature and strong character
deeply on the men of his time and the memory of all subsequent times.

The power of the kingship in the Anglo-Saxon system of government was
strengthened by the life and work of such kings as Alfred and some of
his successors. There were other causes also which were tending to
make the central government more of a reality. A national taxation,
the Danegeld, was introduced for the purpose of ransoming the country
from the Danes; the grant of lands by the king brought many persons
through the country into closer relations with him; the royal judicial
powers tended to increase with the development of law and
civilization; the work of government was carried on by better-trained
officials.

On the other hand, a custom grew up in the tenth and early eleventh
century of placing whole groups of shires under the government of
great earls or viceroys, whose subjection to the central government of
the king was but scant. Church bodies and others who had received
large grants of land from the king were also coming to exercise over
their tenants judicial, fiscal, and probably even military powers,
which would seem more properly to belong to government officials. The
result was that although the central government as compared with the
local government of shires and hundreds was growing more active, the
king's power as compared with the personal power of the great nobles
was becoming less strong. Violence was common, and there were but few
signs of advancing prosperity or civilization, when an entirely new
set of influences ca