Saxon Significance

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, the Annual Register remarked that the feeling of forlorn-ness which swept the country had no parallel since the death of King Alfred. The men of the new century were driven to seek a Saxon parallel. So too were men at the beginning of the Queen's reign. Last week I looked at a William IV plate which had the King's head on it and the inscription "The first radical monarch since Alfred".

Clearly in 1837, as in 1901, you could find a popular view of the Saxons which had little to do with the facts of history...