CHAPTER XVI 

 SHERWOOD FOREST 



THE old ballads of Robin Hood, which were popular 

 rhymes as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, 

 as we know from the Vision of Piers Ploughman, have 

 probably been the chief cause of the undying fame of Sherwood 

 Forest. But these pages have to deal with historic facts, and 

 not with traditions, however substantial may be their basis. 

 The fascinating subject of outlaw life under the greenwood 

 tree of this celebrated forest must, therefore, be passed by ; 

 those who desire to know all that can be known of Robin 

 Hood and his ballads had better consult the five scholarly 

 volumes of Mr. F. J. Child, of Boston, Mass., published in 

 1882, entitled English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The 

 delightful modern ballads of the Rev. R. H. Whitworth, who 

 has for forty years resided, as vicar of Blidworth, in the very 

 centre of ancient Sherwood, are saturated with the true forest 

 spirit, and are eminently worthy of collective publication. 



The celebrated forest of Sherwood included within its bounds 

 most of the central part of the county of Nottingham. Its 

 exact bounds were laid down in a perambulation of 1232. 

 Roughly speaking, it was twenty-five miles one way, by nine 

 or ten the other ; at one extremity was the county town of 

 Nottingham, and at another was Mansfield, whilst Worksop 

 was close to the northern boundary. 



Many of the places afterwards within the forest are named in 

 the Domesday Survey as members of the king's great manor of 

 Mansfield, so that the amount of royal demesne in the district 

 made its conversion by the early Norman kings into a large 

 forest a comparatively easy matter. The first exact notice 

 of the forest occurs in the year 1154, when William Peverel, 



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