A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



of Robin Hood, with Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, and his other lawless associates, and 

 more particularly their various delightful adventures with the sheriff of Nottingham, and with 

 purse-proud travellers. Outlaw and robber that he was, the whole garland of Robin Hood ballads, 

 from the earliest to the latest, always represents him as an advocate of humane though levelling 

 principles, and a protector of the oppressed. 



From wealthy abbots' chests and churches' abundant store 



What oftentimes he took he shared among the poor ; 



No lordly bishop came in lusty Robin's way, 



To him, before he went, but for his pass must pay ; 



The widows in distress he graciously relieved 



And remedied the wrongs of many a virgin grieved. 1 



So dear were the stories of Robin Hood to our forefathers, that in the earliest days of English 

 printing a sheaf of ballads was issued from the press of Wynken de Worde, at the end of the 

 fifteenth century, under the title 'A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode.' No earlier mention of this 

 character has been found than that contained in the ' Vision of Piers Ploughman,' written about 

 1377, wherein the character of Sloth is introduced saying : 



I can noughte perfidy my paternoster, as the prest it syngeth ; 

 But I can rymes of Robyn hood and Randolf erle of Chestre. 



The references to this ballad hero are not infrequent in the following century. The most interesting 

 of these is a petition to Parliament of the year 1439, complaining that one Piers Venables of 

 Derbyshire rescued a prisoner, ' and after that tyme the same Piers, havynge no liflode ne sufficeante 

 of goodes, gaderied and assembled unto him many misdoers .... and in manere of insurrection, 

 weinte into the wodcs in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hode and his meyne.' 2 



The popularity of the ballads of Robin Hood, which mainly associate him with Sherwood 

 Forest, long before the age of printing, can be abundantly testified. It is difficult to believe that 

 the gallant outlaw and the leading men of the earlier ballads were mere characters of fiction. Some 

 have supposed that he was one of the proscribed followers of Simon de Montfort ; 3 Scott, in his 

 inimitable Ivanboe y has followed others who assign the time of Richard I to the hero, when, as 

 we have seen, there were certainly robbers in this forest ; whilst a third, the least possible but 

 perhaps the most plausible theory, is that Robin Hood was an adherent of the earl of Lancaster in 

 the ill-fated insurrection of 1322* The identity of Robin Hood with a pretended earl of 

 Huntington, who died in 1274, has no kind of substantial basis, and is a mere fond imagining of 

 comparatively late date. 5 



The attempts to turn Robin Hood into a mere mythical hero an ingenious German even 

 considering that Hood is but a corruption of Woden find no favour at the hands of the American 

 scholar who has devoted so much pains and learning to his edition of the ballads of the great forest 

 outlaw. 6 At the same time there are doubtless mythical elements in the traditions ; a genuine 

 character became the centre round which certain old popular legends and tales accumulated. 

 Randle, earl of Chester, with whom Langland associates the name of Robin Hood, did not lose his 

 identity as a real nobleman who flourished in the reigns of Richard I, John, and early in the time of 

 Henry III, because the common folk made half-fictitious rhymes about him. 7 



Robin Hood, like the third Randle, earl of Chester, was, it may be safely assumed, a real in- 

 dividual. Possibly Sir Walter Scott was right in regarding him as a Saxon holding out against the 

 Norman conquerors so late as the end of the twelfth century. 8 At any rate the time of Richard I 

 is the best authenticated period for the hero's existence. It is the time assigned to him by Major in 

 his history of Great Britain, which appeared in 1521, wherein he gives a brief but vivid account of 

 Robin and his lieutenant, 9 about whose deeds he states that all Britain rang with songs. This date 



1 Drayton, Polyolbion, song xxvi. * Parl. R. v, 1 1 6. 



s Land, and West. Review (1840), xxxiii, 424. 



1 This is Hunter's theory in The Ballad-Hero, Robin Hood (1854). Mr. Hunter's arguments are based 

 on finding the name Robin Hood as a porter of Nottingham Castle, temp. Edward II, but the name was 

 of common occurrence. 



5 Dr. Stukeley in his Paleographia Britanniae, invented for him a most elaborate pedigree as a descendant 

 of Judith, countess of Huntington, the Conqueror's niece ; it is given in Throsby's Thornton, ii, 165. 



6 English and Scotch Popular Ballads, 5 vols., edited by F. J. Child. The Robin Hood section is in vol. iii 

 (1888), pp. 39-237. 



Mr. Sidney Lee has a learned article in the Diet. Nat. Biog., wherein he strongly argues in favour of Robin 

 Hood being a ' mythical forest elf.' 



8 This is also the view accepted by Thierry in his Norman Conquest. A correspondent of Notes and 

 Queries (Ser. 7) ix, 226 suggested that Robertus Hod, who killed one Ralf in the abbot of Cencester's garden 

 in the days of King John, and was in consequence outlawed, was identical with Robin Hood ; but this is 

 highly improbable. 



' Robertus Hudus et Parvus Joannes latrones famatissimi.' 



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