The burnt and wasted country saw its towns built again, forts erected in positions of danger, new abbeys founded, the machinery of justice and government restored, the laws codified and amended.

Still more strenuous were AElfred's efforts for its moral and intellectual restoration.

Even in Mercia and Northumbria the pirates' sword had left few survivors of the schools of Ecgberht or Baeda, and matters were even worse in Wessex which had been as yet the most ignorant of the English kingdoms.

"When I began to reign," said AElfred, "I cannot remember one priest south of the Thames who could render his service-book into English." For instructors indeed he could find only a few Mercian prelates and priests with one Welsh bishop, Asser.

"In old times," the King writes sadly, "men came hither from foreign lands to seek for instruction, and now if we are to have it we can only get it from abroad." But his mind was far from being prisoned within his own island.