King Alfred the Great: Warrior, Scholar, Saint

King Alfred of Wessex (849-899) is the only English monarch known as "the Great", a title he earned by uniting the Anglo Saxons against the Vikings and promoting learning in a mostly illiterate society. Sir Winston Churchill called Alfred "the greatest Englishman." Others have called him "the English David."
Alfred's statue in Wantage (shown in the picture) is inscribed with the following epitaph:
 
Alfred found learning dead
and he restored it.
Education neglected
and he revived it.
The laws powerless,
and he gave them force.
The Church debased,
and he raised it.
The land ravaged by a fearful enemy,
from which he delivered it.
Alfred's name will live as long
as mankind shall respect the past.

Coin of King Alfred

Where his remains lie has been a mystery until recently. Much was made of the discovery of the remains of King Richard III under a parking lot in Leicester, which inspired archaeologists to take a second look at finding Alfred's remains. They began their search at Hyde Abbey in Winchester, where the remains of pre-Conquest monarchs were moved by King Henry I in the 12th century. They took a second look at  a pelvic bone found in 1999 during an excavation of Hyde Abbey's high altar (destroyed during the Reformation). Anthropological analysis and radiocarbon dating showed that it belonged to a man older than 26, who lived in the late ninth or tenth century. The archaeologists suspect that the bone belonged to Alfred or to one of his sons (Edward and Aethelweard).
Alfred drove the Vikings back to the North and East of England (the "Danelaw"), promoted education, translated Latin works like Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy into English, and began the writing of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
 This video from the BBC tells his story far better than I can. A warrior, a scholar, a saint: this was Alfred the Great.

His war song, which he must have composed while battling the Vikings, is featured in this video: