870-889 All England Except Wessex Conquered by Danes

This twenty year period covers the West Saxon King Ethelred I, king of the English, who died in 871 and was succeeded by Alfred (pictured), King Egbert's grandson.

At that time, only Wessex stood between the Danes and the conquest of the whole of England. The kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia and Mercia had already fallen.

A strong leader was needed, but Alfred had already been given the blessing of Pope Leo on a previous visit to Rome and that was more important than anything else to him.

In 878 Guthrum the Dane launched a surprise attack on Alfred's palace at Chippenham and he was able to escape with his family to the Isle of Athelney in Somerset, protected by swamps and fenland where he burnt cakes, saw a vision of St. Cuthbert prophesying victory and, disguised as a minstrel, he spied on the enemy camp.

As most of the Danes had settled down and merged with the local population there was not much the ordinary English man or woman had to fear from them, and nobody expected more invasions.

The Danish settlers were more antagonistic to the aristocrats like Alfred and the church leaders than to ordinary people.

Indeed, ordinary English men and women were also suspicious of Alfred's motives in taking power, but he proved them wrong and earned his title of Alfred the Great in the following period.

During this period, Norway had united under King Harald I by 870 and by 874 the Norsemen had settled in Iceland.

did islam prolong paganism in england?

Rome's grand plans for England in 597 - mass conversion to Christianity under rule of the Roman Pope - did not eventuate due to something entirely unexpected. The unexpected event was, of course, the birth in 622 of the new Moslem religion in the Middle East.

By 638, the Moslem Arabs had conquered Jerusalem and their impending conquest of Spain (achieved by 715) had so threatened Rome that many Roman priests fled to Ireland - an incredibly poor and backward country that had been thoroughly Christianized by St. Patrick 200 years before - and as a result of this Ireland, not England, became the cradle of western civilization and the safe haven for Roman Christianity.

Having been under Roman rule from 54BC to 407AD, England in 638 was a far more civilized country than Ireland. Also, as a result of invasions between 410-442 by fierce north European tribes - the Jutes, Angles and Saxons - England in 638 also had a far more polyglot ethnic mix than Ireland's Celts. England, of course, had its ancient Britons and Celts, but it now included Jutes, Angles and Saxons - most of whom, in 638, were fiercely Pagan - and after 787 it also included the Danes (who arrived on raids from north Europe and eventually settled in England).

Although Christianity eventually filtered through to England - and the knights of England made history in the Crusades against the Moslem Arabs - Christianity was not only never as strong in England as it was in Ireland but it was also never as Roman influenced as it was in Ireland. This is also true of the north European countries from whence a large part of both English ethnicity and the Protestant movement - which took hold in the 1500s, leading to the establishment of the Anglican Church in 1563 - is derived.

England did not reject Christianity, but it most certainly came to reject Roman rule of the new religion, especially the Pope's refusal to allow the English language to supplant Latin in services and literature.

The particular ethnicity of England - and its civilized state by 638 - may have mitigated against Roman Catholicism ever taking 100% control of England as it did in Ireland, but the threat to Rome of the Moslem Arabs that turned its attention away from England towards Ireland most definitely prolonged paganism in England and changed the course of English history.