Note 249 — Chapter VIII

Bede says that he was "learned in Holy Scriptures." Dr. Henry mentions this anecdote in his Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 287, 8vo. ed. which has led many secondary compilers into a curious blunder, by mistaking the king here alluded to for Alfred the Great: even Didbin, in his Bibliomania, falls into the same error although he suspected some mistake; he calls him our immortal Alfrid, p. 219, and seems puzzled to account for the anachronism, but does not take the trouble to enquire into the matter; Heylin's little Help to History would have set him right, and shown that while Alfrede king of Northumberland reigned in 680, Alfred king of England lived more than two centuries afterwards, pp. 25 and 29.