KING ALFRED, 871-901. Space will not allow many details of his reign, but he was a patron of the town and according to the late Mr. W. Bernard Farraday, the acknowledged expert of English and Welsh Boroughs, Alfred gave the original Charter to Malmesbury in 88o, but the known and accepted date is 924 in the reign of his son, Edward the Elder.

Two events of note however occurred. In the seventh year of his reign, Malmesbury had its first sacking and was practically destroyed by the Danes, but the original wooden Abbey was apparently spared.

DUNS SCOTUS, or JOHANNES SCOTUS, was a very unpopular master at the Abbey School and must have been a dictatorial type. His enraged pupils stabbed him to death sometime during Alfred's reign, with their "styles", a form of slate pencil then used for writing. He must have been the origin of the "black-board jungle."

EDWARD THE ELDER, 901-925. After his father's long struggle with the Danes, Edward tried to keep the peace and succeeded for nine years, when, incensed by repeated piratical raids he re-opened the war in 910. His sister, the widowed Aethelflaed, the formidable "Lady of the Mercians" joined with Wessex and together they proved more than a match for the Danes. They invented a new form of war, that of Fortifications, throughout the land, with regular garrisons instead of the previous "open" warfare battles. Many of the towns in the Midlands started as forts of this period. On the death of his sister, Edward promptly annexed Mercia and got away with it, thus owning a large portion of England as it now is.

Malmesbury was always noted for fighting men, and must have taken some very active part in these campaigns for Edward to have either given the Charter in 924 (a highly signal honour, and the first bestowed on any town) or re-confirmed that of his father Alfred as Mr. Farraday affirms.