119 



ROBIN HOOD. 



ROBIN HOOD. 



120 



which Robespierre, Couthou, and St. Just became the triumvirate. 

 Their schemes for a moral regeneration will be found in all the his- 

 tories of the time, and also an account of Robespierre's presidency at 

 the great public acknowledgment of the existence of a Deity. This 

 took place when his career was nearly run, when there were divisions 

 in the Montague, where he had lost the support of many who, though 

 they had been rivals, had been likewise powerful allies, when Marat 

 had been assassinated, when he had sanctioned the execution of 

 Pe"thion and Danton and Desmoulins, when he had put a countless 

 host of victims to death, and raised a proportionate number of enemies. 

 In July 1794, his adversaries became too strong for him : Billaud- 

 Varennes, one of his own party, jointly with the remnant of the 

 Dantonists, who still were furious because of the execution of their 

 leader, accused Robespierre of seeking his own aggrandisement by the 

 sacrifice of his colleagues. In vain Robespierre retired, in vain he took 

 forty days to prepare his defence, in vain he strained every nerve to 

 refute their charges. After a scene of frightful excitement, he was 

 condemned to death, his brother, Couthon, St. Just, and Lebas being 

 included in the same condemnation. Robespierre was separated from 

 the other prisoners, and led to the gaol at the Luxembourg. Here 

 accident gave him a chance of escape. The gaoler, who was his friend, 

 released him ; he marched against* the Convention with a number of 

 soldiers and partisans, and it is not impossible that he might have re- 

 established his power, if he had possessed courage, and his allies' 

 dexterity. As it was, he was again seized, and having blown his jaw 

 to pieces, in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy himself, was dragged 

 groaning to the guillotine, amidst the taunts and acclamations of the 

 people. 



The characters of few men have been more deservedly decried than 

 that of Robespierre. He was totally without any great quality ; he 

 was cowardly, cruel, and vain ; but he was circumspect, self-reliant, 

 and determined, and above all he was honest in his efforts for the 

 democratic cause, he never sought money, and he well deserved the 

 name of ' Incorruptible.' He long depended on his sister for support, 

 and died worth fifty francs. The powers of his mind, his judgment, 

 and his oratory have been frequently underrated ; he must have been 

 at least plausibly eloquent ; he chose with adroitness the topics upon 

 which he spoke ; he was acute, and had considerable foresight. But on 

 the whole, his low and vile qualities so greatly predominated, that he 

 was not only the terror of the monarchical and aristocratic party, but 

 he likewise injured the democratic cause, for he was guilty of no small 

 portion of that violence and cruelty which rendered a reaction inevi- 

 table. 



ROBIN HOOD, a personage very famous in our popular poetry. 

 According to what until within these few years may be taken as the 

 received view, he was supposed to have lived in the reign of Richard I. 

 The epitaph, which was said to have been found inscribed on his tomb- 

 stone near the nunnery of Kirklees in Yorkshire, and first printed in 

 Thoresby's 'Ducatus Leodensis' (1714), makes him to have died "24 

 Kal. Dekembris" (perhaps meaning the 24th of December) 1247. 

 Other copies have " 14 Kal. Dekembris," which would be properly the 

 18th of November. But this pretended epitaph is now generally 

 regarded as a mere fabrication. The Robin Hood of the ballads would 

 appear to have been the most distinguished in his time of those 

 numerous outlaws who under the tyrannical government of the early 

 Norman kings lived in bands in all the great forests, and combined a 

 sort of championship of the cause of the old national independence 

 with the practice of deer-shooting and robbery. The chief residence 

 of Robin Hood and his followers, as is well known, was the forest of 

 Shirewood, or Sherwood, in Nottinghamshire ; but he is said to have 

 also frequented Barnsdale in Yorkshire, and, according to some 

 accounts', Plumpton Park in Cumberland. " The said Robert," says 

 Stow, " entertained an hundred tall men and good archers with such 

 spoils and thefts as he got, upon whom four hundred (were they 

 never so strong) durst not give the onset. He suffered no woman to 

 be oppressed, violated, or otherwise molested; poor men's goods he 

 spared, abundantly relieving them with that which by theft he got 

 from abbeys and the houses of rich carles : whom Major (the Scottish 

 historian) blameth for his rapine and theft ; but of all thieves he 

 affirmeth him to be the prince, and the most gentle thief." He seems 

 to have been as famous in Scotland as in England, as is evinced by the 

 honourable mention made of him both by Major and by his predecessor 

 Fordun. " The personal courage of this celebrated outlaw,'' Bishop 

 Percy observes, " his skill in archery, his humanity, and especially his 

 levelling principle of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, have 

 in all ages rendered him the favourite of the common people." His 

 exploits appear to have been a common subject of popular song at 

 least from the time of Edward III., though most of the numerous 

 ballads still extant in which he is celebrated are probably of more 

 recent origin, and, at least hi the shape in which we now possess them, 

 are certainly comparatively modern. The 'Lytel Geate of Robin 

 Hood ' was printed by Winkyn de Worde about 1495. Of these pieces 

 a complete collection was published by Ritson under the title of ' Robin 

 Hood, a Collection of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads now 

 extant, relating to that celebrated English Outlaw,' 8vo, London, 1795. 

 Prefixed to this collection are 'Historical Anecdotes' of the life of Robin 

 Hood, which consist of an accumulation of all the notices respecting 

 the outlaw that the compiler's reading had discovered in manuscripts 



or printed books. It cannot be said however that much, or indeed 

 anything, was added to the real facts of his history by this investigation, 

 if it deserve that name. Nothing can be more uncritical than the 

 manner in which the writer jumbles together all sorts of relations about 

 his hero, and builds his chief conclusions on the most unauthoritative 

 testimonies. A source of information upon which he greatly relies is 

 a manuscript in the Sloane Collection in the British Museum, which 

 as evidence really cannot be considered to be entitled to more regard 

 than any other of the various traditionary histories of Robin Hood ; 

 all of which, as well as it, have indisputably been put together some 

 centuries after the date of the events which they profess to detail. 

 But even this manuscript does not contain what Ritson solemnly seta 

 down as an established fact in his opening paragraph, that Robin Hood's 

 true name was Robert Fitz-ooth, and that he had some claim by descent 

 to the earldom of Huntingdon. It is true ho is styled Earl of Hunt- 

 ingdon on the epitaph already mentioned, and some of the old Latin 

 chroniclers speak of him as of noble lineage; but the epitaph, as we 

 have said, is evidently a fabrication, and the account here gravely 

 given of his name and genealogy is founded -upon nothing better than a 

 pedigree drawn out by Stukeley, and published in the ' Palatographia 

 Britannica,' No. 2 (1746), which appears to be a mere joke of that 

 antiquary, or more probably was palmed upon him by some unscru- 

 pulous acquaintance a kind of trick to which his notorious credulity 

 made him peculiarly liable. At any rate the genealogy is as wholly 

 unsupported by any sort of evidence as any pedigree in the Greek or 

 Roman mythology. The ballads about Robin Hood usually describe 

 him as a yeoman. One of these ballads tells us that he was born in 

 the town of Locksley, or Laxley, in Nottinghamshire ; and such is also 

 the account of the Sloane manuscript, which moreover assigns his birth 

 to about the year 1160. Ritson therefore sets down this as an ascer- 

 tained fact ; but he at the same time admits that no place so named 

 is now known either in Nottinghamshire or Yorkshire. Of Robin 

 Hood's followers the most celebrated were Little John (whose sur- 

 name is traditionally said to have been Nailor) ; his chaplain, called 

 Friar Tuck, whom some will have to have been a real monk ; and his 

 paramour, named Marian. This famous outlaw and archer appears to 

 have been subsequent in date to his countrymen Adam Bell, Clym of 

 the Clough, and William of Cloudesly, who haunted Eaglewood Forest, 

 near Carlisle, and whose exploits, of the same description with his, 

 have been also a favourite theme of our ballad minstrelsy. 



Much attention has been drawn to the history of Robin Hood since 

 the publication of Thierry's ' Histoire de la Conquete de 1'Angleterre 

 par les Normands,' in which it was suggested that Robin Hood was in 

 truth the chief of one of the last remaining bands of Saxons who, after 

 the conquest had taken voluntarily to the woods, and there, preserving 

 a sort of military organisation, were able to maintain themselves in a 

 state of continual hostility against their Norman enemies ; that Robin, 

 by his superior skill and generous character, had come to be the hero 

 of the serfs and the poor in other words, of the whole Anglo-Saxon 

 race ; and that he flourished in the reign of Richard I., who was actually 

 induced to visit Sherwood Forest by the fame of the outlaw. The theory 

 of M. Thierry was received with some favour ; but further investigation 

 has led to wide differences of opinion. A writer in the ' Westminster 

 Review ' for February 1840, endeavoured to show that Robin Hood 

 was really one of the adherents of Simon de Montfort, and that, at the 

 head of a party of his followers who were reduced to extremities after 

 the battle of Evesham he took to the woods, and there led the life 

 described. This like the former theory found adherents, but it is, 

 like it, very difficult to harmonise with the whole of the known facts. 

 Widely different is another opinion, the first suggestion of which is 

 due to Germany, whence has come so many fatal blows to the heroes 

 of popular history. In his ' Deutsche Mythologie,' Grimm pointed out 

 certain coincidences between the English Robin Hood and the Robin 

 Goodfellow, Knecht Ruprecht, &c.,,of the Germans; and, following 

 out the hint, in vol. ii. of his ' Essays on subjects connected with the 

 Literature, Popular Superstitions, and History of England in the 

 Middle Ages,' Mr. Thomas Wright has sought to resolve our 'good 

 yeoman' into a mere mjth, "one among the personages of the early 

 mythology of the Teutonic peoples," and about whom, the popular 

 stories and fancies have accumulated. But the personality of Robin 

 has found a stout champion in the Rev. Joseph Hunter, the well- 

 known antiquary, who has, in a learned and elaborate dissertation, 

 not only sought to restore the belief that he was really " an outlaw 

 living in the woods and gaining a precarious subsistence there," him- 

 self uncommonly skilful in the use of the bow, " and at the head of a 

 company of persons who acknowledged him as their chief; " and that 

 " the whole system of the Robin Hood cycle rests upon a basis of fact 

 and reality, some part of it capable of being brought into light as 

 proved facts, and other parts as being placed among those occurrences 

 which are invested with more or less probability when looked at 

 through the mists which necessarily render obscure the minor tran- 

 sactions of periods BO remote, and compel us to be content with 

 having approximated to the true knowledge of them," but further 

 brings evidence to show that he has actually been able to identify the 

 popular hero with one Robert Hood, whose name occurs in the Court 

 Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield in the ninth year of the reign of 

 Edward II. He even goes BO far as to place the birth of Robin Hood 

 between 1285 and 1295 ; and thinks that he took to the forests of 



