Book Review: The White Horse King by Benjamin Merkle
Benjamin Merkle, The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great. Thomas Nelson, 2009. 272 pp.
Contrary to what the spicier corners of Roman Catholic Twitter insist, the English Church did not begin in 1534, and Anglicanism did not spring fully formed from the head of Henry VIII like some Tudor Athena. Long before Thomas Cranmer prayed in English, before Richard Hooker wove reason into the fabric of theology, before Lancelot Andrewes knelt in candlelight and J. I. Packer wrote catechisms for modernity, there was Alfred. He was King of Wessex, defender of a ravaged land, and pious shepherd of a people not yet called Anglican but already walking the pilgrim path that would one day become Anglicanism’s story.
Sponsored
Benjamin Merkle’s The White Horse King is, in truth, the prologue to Anglicanism’s story—even if it first presents itself as a rousing historical biography. It has Vikings and battles, betrayals and rebuilding, law codes and Latin primers. It does not pretend to be an exhaustive analysis of Anglo-Saxon England or delve into the nitty-gritty specifics of Alfred’s life. That restraint is both its strength and its limitation. What it does do, however, is introduce us to the only English king who has ever been granted the title of “the Great.”
Beneath the swords and smoke, Merkle introduces us to something deep: a portrait of a man whose rule fused crown and cross thoroughly. He relies heavily on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser’s Life of King Alfred, weaving them into a brisk narrative rather than a scholarly apparatus. Readers seeking footnoted depth will not find it here, but his accessible style makes the story breathe. To understand Alfred is to understand something of the Anglican soul itself. For those of us who pray with Cranmer and think with Packer, Alfred’s story is not merely ancient history; it is memory.
The Making of a Christian King
Merkle’s book reads like a medieval saga laced with devotional commentary. It begins in the ninth century, when England was not a single realm but a patchwork of petty kingdoms beset by a common enemy: the infamous Vikings. By the 860s, the so-called “Great Heathen Army” was sweeping across the island, toppling Anglo-Saxon kings like dominoes. Into this chaos steps Alfred, the youngest son of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. More groomed more for books and pilgrimages than for battle or rule, he never expected a crown. But as his elder brothers fell in war or in succession, one after another, the line narrowed until, in 871, the 22-year-old Alfred found himself king.
Trials by Fire
The first years of Alfred’s reign were a trial by fire, marked by defeat. Merkle recounts the humiliations vividly. Alfred driven into the marshes of Somerset, his forces scattered, his crown nearly lost. Yet those dark days forged his character. Like David fleeing Saul and like the eventual legends of Robin Hood, Merkle recounts how Alfred learned that kingship is not about comfort but about a calling. Out of that crucible came one of the most remarkable comebacks in English history.
Defending Christendom
In 878, at the Battle of Edington, Alfred rallied a ragtag band of men and crushed the Viking warlord Guthrum, compelling him to accept baptism. This is, without a doubt, the point at which many readers may cease to track. We find the idea of evangelism at sword’s point unsettling, but Merkle does not offer a modern critic’s opinion. He shows us, instead, the view of the time: Alfred understood that Vikings respected strength, and he had shown them that his God was stronger. Beyond that, Alfred did not see himself as a mere war-chief defending acreage; he saw himself as a Christian king defending Christendom. The rest of his reign, for roughly two more decades, was spent not merely on fortifications and treaties but on something more ambitious: the renewal of a people.
Cultural Transformation
Merkle’s portrait of this work is compelling. Alfred built a network of fortified towns (burhs), reformed the fyrd (militia), and reorganized the navy to counter the Norsemen. He also turned his attention inward. Education had collapsed in the wake of Viking raids; literacy among clergy was abysmal. Alfred launched a renaissance. He invited scholars from across Europe, founded schools, and personally translated key Latin texts, including Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and parts of Augustine’s Soliloquies, into Old English so that his people might learn.
He even prefaced his translations with pastoral exhortations, lamenting the clergy’s ignorance and urging a return to wisdom rooted in Scripture. Alfred’s court became not just a royal administration but a monastic classroom. As Merkle repeatedly shows, his kingship was inseparable from his faith: a fact that has far more relevance for Anglicans than they might first suspect.
Piety with a Sword
Alfred’s piety was not the sentimental sort so often marketed to modern readers. It was muscular, deliberate, and comprehensive. It was the piety of a man who believed that the fate of a nation and the health of its soul were bound together. Merkle scatters examples throughout his narrative, and they are worth pausing over.
First, there is Alfred the translator. He did not merely delegate spiritual reform; he embodied it. His decision to translate Pastoral Care was not an antiquarian project. It was a practical pastoral one. Gregory’s book was a manual for bishops on how to shepherd souls. Alfred believed his land needed not just warriors but pastors, and he sought to equip them. In an age when kings built monuments, strikingly, Alfred built libraries.
Alfred was also a legislator. He codified laws, but unlike secular rulers, he began them with the Ten Commandments and excerpts from Mosaic law. To modern sensibilities, this seems quaint, but to Alfred it was essential. God’s law was the foundation of justice, and his kingdom was to mirror divine order. Richard Hooker would later write that “law has her seat in the bosom of God,” but Alfred was already governing by that conviction six centuries earlier.
Finally, there is Alfred the penitent. Merkle recounts how Alfred, plagued by illness throughout his life, often interpreted his suffering as a divine chastisement—not in the Medieval self-flagellating sense, but as a call to holiness. He fasted, prayed, and gave alms. His humility before God was not performative; it was the anchor of his strength. Alfred was no saint in the modern, sanitized sense. Of course, he could be politically ruthless when needed. But beneath the steel was a man who knew he was dust and in need of grace.
“Imperfect” Saints and the Anglican Memory
At this point, some modern Reformed-minded Anglicans may raise a hand in protest: “Alfred was pre-Reformation! He prayed to saints, revered relics, funded monasteries, and his theology would never survive a Cranmerian visitation!” All true, and that is precisely why he is worth remembering. Alfred reminds us that Anglicanism did not descend from the ceiling tiles of 1549 as a pristine, confessionally mature system, but grew out of a much older, thicker Christian inheritance. His world was not yet Reformation England, but it was the soil from which Reformation England eventually emerged. To forget figures like Alfred because they are not already Anglicans in our image is to sever the taproot of the very tree we claim to inhabit.
Alfred and Our Anglican Roots
Anglicanism has never claimed to be a new church. As Richard Hooker argued in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the English Reformation was not about creating novelty but about pruning corruption so that the Church might flourish as it had from the beginning. Hooker called it a “reforming,” not a “founding.” To know Alfred, therefore, is to know our pre-Reformation roots, roots that were imperfect yet sincere, flawed yet faithful. As one author notes, “Where was your face before you washed it?” The answer: present, but a little dirty.
Lancelot Andrewes, one of the great Caroline Divines, famously said that Anglicanism holds to “one canon, two testaments, three creeds, four councils, and five centuries.” That last phrase—five centuries—is key. It is a reminder that our tradition claims continuity with the faith of the undivided Church, including the saints and scholars of the early medieval world. Alfred stands within that five-century inheritance. He prayed, legislated, taught, and ruled as a Christian before Anselm penned scholastic arguments and long before Cranmer penned collects.
Of course, his piety is not to be imitated in every detail, but it is to be honored as part of the family story. Alfred’s story offers a theological lesson: God works through imperfect instruments. J. I. Packer once observed that the Reformers were “men of their time” whose theology, while profound, bore the marks of their context. The same is true of Alfred. His faith had blemishes by our standards, but so did David’s, Constantine’s, and Augustine’s. To reject him because he was “unreformed” is to forget that God’s providence is not bound by our confessional lines.
Lessons for the Anglican Church Today
What, then, does Alfred have to teach Anglicans in the twenty-first century? More than we might think.
A Public Faith
Alfred did not see faith as a private matter. It shaped his laws, his diplomacy, his education policy—everything. In an age when Christianity is increasingly relegated to the “spiritual” sphere, Alfred reminds us that the lordship of Christ is public. Anglican social teaching has always affirmed this. Hooker wrote that the end of civil society is not merely order but “the good life.” Alfred pursued precisely that vision—a society ordered toward righteousness.
The Value of Education
Alfred also believed ignorance was a national crisis. He poured resources into schools, promoted literacy, and made theology accessible in the vernacular. Does that not sound suspiciously like Cranmer’s logic in giving the English people a prayer book and Bible they could understand? In a time when biblical literacy is collapsing, the Church would do well to recover Alfred’s zeal for teaching—not just in pulpits, but in homes, schools, and workplaces.
Likewise, Alfred’s faith was not an escape from the world; it was a means of transforming it. He built burhs and monasteries, libraries and legal codes—artifacts of a culture shaped by Christian vision. Anglicanism at its best has done likewise, from cathedral choirs to parish schools to social reforms. Alfred’s example urges us not to retreat from culture wars but to create a culture worth defending.
A Servant of God
Finally, Alfred’s humility should chasten a Church tempted by either triumphalism or despair. Here was a king who won battles and passed laws—yet saw himself chiefly as a servant of God. Andrewes captured the Anglican ethos when he described the Christian life as “a posture of kneeling.” Alfred knelt — in sickness, in defeat, even in victory. And it was that humility that gave his power legitimacy.
Remembering the White Horse
Merkle ends his book by noting the deep mark Alfred left on England. He was called “England’s Darling” by his people and “the most perfect man who ever sat on a throne” by G. K. Chesterton. But perhaps the most telling tribute came from a monk who simply wrote that Alfred “ruled wisely and worthily, more than any man before him.”
For Anglicans, the memory of Alfred should not be consigned to dusty history. It should be reclaimed as part of our spiritual heritage. Afred’s was a Christianity before the Reformation, yes, but one that prepared the ground for the Reformation to flourish later. His love for Scripture anticipated Cranmer’s collects, his integration of law and faith foreshadowed Hooker’s synthesis of reason and revelation, and his humility before God mirrored Andrewes’ liturgical piety.
To read The White Horse King is to remember that our tradition is older and sturdier than we think. It is to be remembered that Anglicanism did not spring from a royal divorce or a political crisis, but from a centuries-long story of English Christians striving—imperfectly, faithfully—to order their common life under the reign of Christ.
The Imperfect Ancestors
And perhaps that is the ultimate lesson for the Church today: that holiness does not require historical perfection, only persistent fidelity. Alfred was no perfect prophet. He was, however, a Christian king whose love of God and neighbor shaped a people and a culture. If Anglicans can learn from him—if we can once more wed piety to courage, learning to leadership, humility to mission—then perhaps we, too, might leave something behind that future saints will remember.
We live in a restless age, always tempted to sever ourselves from the past. But the Anglican way has always been to stand with our fathers and mothers in the faith—not because they were flawless, but because they are family. Alfred is part of that family. His story is our story. And in recovering it, we recover not just history, but hope. To read The White Horse King is to remember not only Alfred’s greatness, but the greatness of a God who works through flawed men to build enduring kingdoms.
Image: The White Horse King cover art © Thomas Nelson.
Book Review: Maiden, Mother and Queen by Roger Greenacre
Maiden, Mother, & Queen: Mary in the Anglican Tradition is an editorial compilation of works and homilies by the Rev. Canon Dr. Roger Greenacre (1931–2011), a leading Anglican ecumenist and liturgical scholar.
Book Review: A Walk Through the Prayer Book
Klukas, Arnold W. A Walk Through the Prayer Book: The 2019 Book of Common Prayer Explained. Anglican House, 2023. 118 pp. As the Anglican Church in North America celebrates its fifteenth year, its 2019 edition of the Book of Common Prayer likewise celebrates five years of use. Fittingly, Anglican House Publishers has released a helpful…
