"Capture of the Five Boroughs" (also "Redemption of the Five Boroughs") is an

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

chronicle poem that commemorates the capture by King Edmund I of the so-called

Five Boroughs of the Danelaw The Five Boroughs or The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw were the five main towns of Danish Mercia (what is now the East Midlands). These were Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. The first four later became county towns. Establis ...

in 942. The seven-line long poem is one of the five so-called "chronicle poems" found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; it is preceded by "

The Battle of Brunanburh The Battle of Brunanburh was fought in 937 between Æthelstan, King of England, and an alliance of Olaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, Constantine II, King of Scotland, and Owain, King of Strathclyde. The battle is often cited as the point ...

" (937) and followed by the two poems on King Edgar. In the Parker MS, the text of "Brunanburh" is written by the same scribe as "Capture", which starts on the line for 941 but has the correct date added by another hand.

Frank Stenton Sir Frank Merry Stenton, FBA (17 May 1880 – 15 September 1967) was an English historian of Anglo-Saxon England, and president of the Royal Historical Society (1937–1945). The son of Henry Stenton of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, he was edu ...

comments that the poem "is overloaded with cliches", but also packs a lot of historical information, recording how the conquest of Mercia by King Edmund liberated, in 942, the people of the Five Boroughs ( Leicester,

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...

Nottingham Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...

, Stamford) from the

Norsemen The Norsemen (or Norse people) were a North Germanic ethnolinguistic group of the Early Middle Ages, during which they spoke the Old Norse language. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages and is the pr ...

under

Olaf Guthfrithson Olaf Guthfrithson or Anlaf Guthfrithson ( non, Óláfr Guðrøðsson ; oe, Ánláf; sga, Amlaíb mac Gofraid; died 941) was a Hiberno-Scandinavian (Irish-Viking) leader who ruled Dublin and Viking Northumbria in the 10th century. He was th ...

and Amlaíb Cuarán. These people were not English—rather, they were Danes, who by this time considered themselves so English that they preferred King Edmund over their Norse overlords who had invaded their territory from Viking York. According to Sarah Foot, these "anglicised" Danes, liberated by Edmund, must thus have been Christian as well, and the poem aids in the construction of an English identity out of different ethnic groups united in their opposition to outside, pagan forces.

References

Editions

"The Capture of the Five Boroughs" is edited, annotated and linked to digital images of all six of its manuscript witnesses, with modern translation, in the ''Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project'': https://oepoetryfacsimile.org/ {{Old English poetry Old English poems