Five Boroughs of Mercia

Derby Leicester Lincoln Nottingham Stamford

Location of the Five Boroughs

The Five Boroughs of Mercia or Five Boroughs des Danelag were the five most important Viking settlements of Mercia (today's East Midlands ). These are Derby , Leicester , Lincoln , Nottingham and Stamford . The first four later became capitals of counties.
The term borough comes from the Old English word burh and describes a fortified settlement. Burh is related to the German word Burg , which is more reminiscent of a fortress.

Origin and rule

The Viking raids on England began at the end of the 8th century, initially only as raids by smaller groups, which then retreated to their home countries. In the year 865, however, various, mostly Danish, Viking associations united and landed in East Anglia , not to invade the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but to conquer them. The annals called this combined force the Great Pagan Army . In 871 the campaign was reinforced by fresh forces from Scandinavia when the great summer army reached the island.

After a winter camp in Repton in 874, the Great Pagan Army drove the Mercian king Burgred into exile and conquered Mercia; the exiled Mercian king was replaced by the Ealdorman Ceolwulf of Mercia. Asser , the biographer of Alfred the Great, reports that the Vikings subsequently split into two groups. Halfdan led part of the army north to Northumbria, while Guthrum , who had arrived with the large summer army , remained in the south. Ceolwulf II was installed as King of Mercia by the Vikings who returned in 877 to divide Mercia. The west of the kingdom went to Ceolwulf II, while in the east the Five Boroughs emerged from the fortified burhs of five Viking armies who settled the area and introduced their local laws and customs .

Each of the Five Boroughs was ruled as a Danish Jarltum and controlled the land around a fortified burh , which served as a center of political power. These rulers were probably initially subordinate to their liege lords in the Viking kingdom of Jórvík and sometimes led their armies independently, but often in alliance with the rulers of the neighboring empires. In addition to the Five Boroughs, there were a number of very extensive Danish settlement areas in the south, including Northampton and Bedford , which were ruled in a similar manner.

The Five Boroughs and the English Midlands in the early 10th century

Derby

Old Norse: Djúra-bý . Although the area has been settled by Danes since 877, the English did not threaten its existence until Lady Aethelflaed of Mercia invaded deep into Danish territory on a campaign in 913 and had a burh built near Tamworth . In 917 Aethelflaed started their first campaign of conquest and chose the fortress of Derby as their destination. At that time the local ruler, possibly reinforced by the armies of Northampton and Leicester, had carried out a series of raids on Mercia. Aethelfled took advantage of the weakened condition of the Burh and successfully stormed the place in July 917. Then the whole region was integrated into the English Mercia.

The Danes may have established their military headquarters on the former Roman fort of Derventio (Little Chester) . This 8-acre, rectangular fort suggests that the burh was based on around 500 hides . In 874, the Vikings camped in nearby Repton and left it the following year after being significantly weakened by illness during their stay (which is evident from the discovery of a grave with 245 bodies).

Leicester

One of the more impressive Danish castles, the local ruler of which united his army with that of Northampton and raided the West Saxon territories of Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire in 913. He defied King Edward the Elder by besieging the West Saxon Burh of Hertford . This prompted Aethelflaed in 914 to move their army to the border area of ​​the Danish-occupied territory near Leicester and to have a burh built in Warwick . As part of a tripartite attack, the combined forces of Leicester and Northampton, and possibly Derby, besieged the Mercian Burh of Towcester in July 917 . With the country unprotected by the loss of Derby and, later that year, Northampton, the mercian army returned in the spring of 918 to devastate the area, whereupon the fortress surrendered to Aethelflaed's troops without a fight.

After Leicester was wrested from English rule by King Olaf of Jorvik in 941 , the English King Edmund I besieged the local Viking army in the same year. Olaf and his counselor Archbishop Wulfstan of York escaped and the siege was lifted after the Five Boroughs were ceded to the Kingdom of York in a peace treaty. Jarl Orm, at that time probably the ruler of Leicester (and documented between 930 and 958) gave his daughter to King Olaf at the end of the same year in order to cement the alliance. The Burh perhaps used the city wall of Roman Leicester ( Ratae Corieltavorum ), which had a length of approximately 2400 m (corresponds to approx. 1900 hides).

Lincoln

The Lincoln Burh watched over the road from Wessex to York and was protected from much of the Anglo-Danish fighting by its remote location. The Lincoln Danes settled the area of ​​the former Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey , in whose fortress Torksey they had already wintered from 873 to 874. Lincoln probably surrendered in 918 following the surrender of all Danish territories on the Mercia and Wessex borders. As a former Roman military camp , the burh may have served as the basis for the ramparts of the old fort with a size of around 16.6 hectares. (about 1300 hides)

Nottingham

The Viking army under Ivar the Boneless and Halfdan Ragnarsson occupied Nottingham for the first time in 868 and later made winter quarters here. Burgred and his West Saxon allies besieged the place, but made peace in 869 after only light fighting and let the Vikings withdraw. The Danish recapture and settlement began in 877 and lasted until the attack by Edward of Wessex in the summer of 918. In 920, Eduard built a second burh on the opposite bank of the Trent to help defend the area from Danish attacks. It is known that Anglo-Saxon Nottingham had a size of 15.8 hectares, which is why the Burh was able to rely on approx. 1300 hides.

Stamford

The area around Stamford was invaded by the West Saxon Ealdorman Aethelnoth in the summer of 894 , but the city was not besieged and Danish rule was not affected. The end came when King Edward attacked Stamford at the end of May 918, which shortly after surrendered to the army of Wessex. At the end of the year Eduard built a second burh on the south side of Welland . According to David Roffe, the ramparts of the northern Burh could have had a length of 945 m (equivalent to 750 hides), those of Eduards Burh about 825 m (equivalent to 650 hides).

The Danish burhs in the south

The following burhs were not part of the Five Boroughs, but places inhabited by Danes with large armies and ruled in a similar way. These Danes often operated under the leadership of the Five Boroughs and the Danish King of East Anglia.

Northampton

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports an invasion of the Danish armies from Northampton and Leicester into Mercian territory in 913. At first very successful, they were beaten on the way back by local mercian forces near Luton and lost "a large part of their horses and their weapons". In December 914 their fighting strength was further diminished when a number of northampton Danes submitted to King Edward at Bedford. After the loss of Derby and East Anglia and the increase in power of King Edward, Jarl Thurferth, their ruler, and the men of Northampton and Cambridge also submitted to the West Saxons in 917. Thurferth remained the local ruler and attested to four documents from King Æthelstan between 930 and 934 .

Later, in the 930s, Northampton was incorporated into the enlarged county of East Anglia under Count Æthelstan Halbkönig. In 941, now in the hands of the Mercier, Northampton faced an unsuccessful siege by King Olaf of York. Northampton's "army" was still in existence in 984 when records testified to the sale of land. The Anglo-Danish burh of Northampton was estimated to have a wall about 910 m long (equivalent to about 700 hides), which made it one of the smaller Danish burhs .

Bedford

The Danish burh was first threatened in 914 by an attack by the West Saxon army. In November of the same year Bedford was trapped in a pincer movement by Edward, whereupon the ruling Jarl Thurketel and all his followers submitted. Eduard returned to the fortress in November 915, which until then was still in Danish hands, and this time took direct control. In addition, he built a second burh on the south bank of the river Ouse . Thurketel became Eduard's subject until he allowed the Danish ruler to leave for France with his followers in the summer of 916. In July 917 the Danish army advanced East Anglias to Tempsford and launched an attack to recapture Bedford. The Danes were defeated and put to flight. Bedford was also incorporated into the enlarged county of East Anglia in the early 10th century.

Huntingdon

The Danes of Huntingdon were allies of the Danish East Anglia when they advanced to Tempsford in July 917 and built a new fortress. From here the united army tried to retake the recently fallen Burh of Bedford, but was badly beaten by the English garrison and driven to flight. A short time later the Burh was captured by Edward's West Saxon army.

Cambridge

Cambridge was conquered in 875 by the Danes under the kings Guthrum, Osketel and Verwaltung, whose armies set up their winter quarters there. In 911 it was threatened for the first time by Eduard, who built a burh opposite in Hertford . With the fall of Huntingdon, Cambridge was the last independent army on which the Danish East Anglia could rely. But the tide had turned and the Danes of Cambridge submitted to Eduard at the end of 917.

Anglo-Saxon and Danish recaptures

The Danish rule over the Five Boroughs was lost in the course of 916 and 917 as a result of the English recaptures under Aethelflaed of Mercia and Eduard the Elder of Wessex. The area was then ruled by the Mercian counts until King Olaf of York reoccupied the five earlier Danish burhs in 941 following a major offensive, possibly supported by local Danish leaders. Danish rule was not long restored when King Edmund regained the Five Boroughs in 942.

At that time the five boroughs are mentioned for the first time in an English poem as Redemption of the Five Boroughs (dt .: The liberation of the Five Boroughs is known). Even many years later, the Five Boroughs were a separate and clearly defined area, whose rulers sought the support of their leaders, such as: Take Sven Gabelbart , for example , who achieved submission to the Five Boroughs in 1013 before attempting to become King of England.

There is a single reference to the "Seven Boroughs" from 1015, which may have included Torksey and York.

The Five Boroughs as a county

After the Danish conquest in 1016, Count Sired took over the newly formed county of the Five Boroughs in 1019 as a feudal lord from King Canute . Around 1035 the county was united with that of Count Leofric of Mercia , but remained a formal administrative unit for a long time.

See also

• History of england
• Danelag

Individual evidence

1. ^ Peter Sawyer: The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings , 3rd. Edition, OUP, Oxford 2001, ISBN 0-19-285434-8 , pp. 2-3.
2. ^ English translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: project Gutenberg . Retrieved 30 July 2013
3. ^ Nicholas Hooper, Matthew Bennett: The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: the Middle Ages . Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-521-44049-1 , p. 22.
4. ↑ Asser : Life of King Alfred . In: Simon Keynes, Michael Lapidge (Eds.): Alfred the Great: Asser's Life of King Alfred & Other Contemporary Sources . Penguin Classics, 1983, ISBN 978-0-14-044409-4 , p. 82.
5. ^ Sawyer. Illustrated History of Viking. p. 55
6. ↑ Holman. The A to Z of the Vikings. p.117
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Walker, Ian W (2000). Mercia and the Making of England Sutton ISBN 0-7509-2131-5
8. ↑ Falkus & Gillingham and Hill
9. ^ Fellows-Jensen, Gillian (1994) The Vikings and their Victims: The Verdict of the Names Viking Society ISBN 0-903521-39-3 p19
10. ^ British History Online: Antiquities, Derbyshire. Retrieved January 15, 2008
11. ^ ^{A b} Anglo-Saxon Nobility: Danish Origin. Retrieved January 15, 2008
12. ↑ Roman-Britain.org: Lindum. ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 15, 2008  
13. ^ Nottingham Churches: City History. ( Memento of the original from February 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 15, 2008  
14. ↑ Roffe: Stamford Origins. Retrieved January 15, 2008
15. ↑ ^{a b c d} Stenton, FM (1971). Anglo-Saxon England Third Edition Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-280139-5
16. ↑ Blanchard, Ian (2007). The Twelfth-Century: A Neglected Epoch in British Economic and Social History, Chapter 8 Burhs and Borough Newlees p. 165
17. ↑ Falkus, Malcolm & Gillingham, John (1989). Historical Atlas of Britain Kingfisher ISBN 0-86272-295-0 . P. 52

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} An Anglo-Saxon document known as Burghal Hidage , written between 880 and 917, relates the size of a burh , the number of defenders required, and the care required: If every hide is represented by one man, then every pole of wall can be manned by four men. (German: "If every hide is represented by a man, every pole of the wall can be manned by four men.") The hide originally corresponded to a homestead and was later more of an area-based accounting unit for taxes and duties. The pole was a measure of length and corresponded to approx. 5.0 m. So one man was needed for each 1.25 m length of the castle wall and provided or taken care of by a hide.