As a lad, he had visited Rome; and he retained throughout life a strong sense of his own and his people's barbarism, and a genuine desire to civilise himself and his subjects, so far as his limited lights could carry him.
He succeeded to a kingdom overrun from end to end by piratical hordes: and he did his best to restore peace and to promote order.

But his character was merely that of a practical, common-sense, fighting West Saxon, brought up in the camp of his father and brothers, and doing his rough work in life with the honest straightforwardness of a simple, hard-headed, religious, but only half-educated barbaric soldier.
The successful East Anglian wickings, under their chief Guthrum, turned at once to ravage Wessex.

They "harried the West Saxons' land, and settled there, and drove many of the folk over sea." For awhile it seemed as if Wessex too was to fall into their hands.

AElfred himself, with a little band, "withdrew to the woods and moor-fastnesses." He took refuge in the Somerset marshes, and there occupied a little island of dry land in the midst of the fens, by name Athelney.

Here he threw up a rude earthwork, from which he made raids against the Danes, with a petty levy of the nearest Somerset men.