The Real Robin Hood

The outlaw of Sherwood Forest

0:00A young man runs through the forest at top speed. He's trying hard not to stumble over the roots as he's gasping for breasts. His hands are still bloody because he'd been in the middle of butchering a deer that he'd just shot when he was interrupted by the patrol. The patrol is in there to catch poachers just like him, and he knows the penalty for hunting in these woods is death. But his family is starving. He'd been willing to dare the patrols in the hope of bringing home some meat.

0:30But he can hear them gaining on him, the horse's hooves thudding into the earth, the men shouting to each other. He stumbles, he falls, and in a moment they are on him. They seize him, they bind him, and they carry him off to prison, where he's going to spend a long and sleepless night. There will be no trial. His crime had eyewitnesses. And so very early in the morning, the guards come to lead him toward the gallows. He can feel his knees shaking under him as he approaches the platform. And there is a man, the executioner, in a long cloak with a hood that hides his face.

1:08The young man is led up onto the platform with his hands bound behind him, and the executioner approaches. The young man can feel his heart thudding in his chest. And suddenly the executioner looks up at him from under the hood and winks. He leans in and quietly cuts the rope around the young man's wrists. When I blow my horn, he whispers, run. This was no executioner. This was Robin Hood.

Podcast preview and Patreon

1:36You are listening to Villains and Virgins Podcast, and this is an episode on Robin Hood. Now before we get into today's episode, I want to give you a little bit of a preview. Villains and Virgins Podcast is about to take a long turn into pirate territory, which means you can expect swashbuckling episodes about your favorite sea dogs from history and their deeds on the high seas. There are going to be multiple podcast episodes on this, but the very first story in the pirate series is available exclusively on Patreon.

2:13What did Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great have in common, you might ask? It wasn't just that they were both great Roman generals who fought each other. What they have in common is experience with pirates. And so the incredible story of how a young Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates, and how Pompey the Great made his career and became the first man of the Roman Republic by eliminating them is an amazing story all on its own. And you can get access to that exclusively on Patreon.

2:46So head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert for exclusive access to that story and an ever-growing library of monthly bonus episodes just like it. As a Patreon member, you also have access to live history conversations hosted by me. And this is an opportunity to ask me all your burning history questions and get into the nitty-gritty of stories that I didn't have time to talk about on the main episodes. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, or perhaps you'd prefer ad-free access to regular episodes just like this one, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert.

3:26And finally, a huge word of thank you to the wonderful people who do support this podcast on Patreon. Episodes like this would not be possible without you.

The enduring Robin Hood legend

3:36Today's story is about Robin Hood, and you've almost certainly heard of him. The outlaw who lived in Sherwood Forest, who robbed the rich to feed the poor, and had a penchant for wearing a lot of green and possibly green tights. His story has been retold countless times. It's been the subject of multiple Hollywood films. There's a Disney-fied version of Robin Hood. And this story has had a remarkable resilience. It has endured for centuries. But the question is, is there anything historical behind it?

4:12Is the story of Robin Hood and his merry band of outlaws in Sherwood Forest just a legend? Is he perhaps a figure of mythology? Or is there any actual historical evidence for the existence of such a person? In order to answer this question, we're going to have to look at legends and traditions, as well as historical records. And it's impossible to examine the story of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws without a close look at the economic and political context of England in the Middle Ages.

4:45Because this is the context that provides the conditions, the features, and the circumstances in which the action of Robin Hood's life takes place. So we're going to be looking at all of these things and trying to separate myth and legend from historical fact.

Norman conquest and forest laws

5:02So let's set the stage for our story. Let's look at England in the year 1066. Now, this year is significant because this is the year that an army of Normans invade England and take over, led by a guy who will become known to history as William the Conqueror. Now, the Normans are a fascinating group of people. They come from the region in France called Normandy, but many of them were originally Norsemen or Vikings who settled there in the 900s, about 150 years prior.

5:33And they intermarried with local women. They now speak French, but they retain an incredibly militaristic attitude. They are very effective warriors. And Normans are busy leaving Normandy and building their own kingdoms all over the place, not just in England. Some of them went down to southern Italy and Sicily and built kingdoms over there. Some of them headed over to Constantinople to serve in the Varangian Guard. You can find Normans renowned for their fighting ability all over Europe in the Middle Ages at this time.

6:05But what this means for England is a massive displacement of the existing population, and especially their nobles and leaders, who were predominantly Anglo-Saxon. So the Normans come in, the Norman king is now running England, and that means his personal retinue of Norman knights and nobles are going to be landowners. And that means land that used to be owned by Anglo-Saxons is taken and awarded to Norman nobles. So you're going to have a lot of disenfranchised and angry Anglo-Saxons as a result.

6:38And one of the significant things about Norman rule is that the Norman kings were absolutely mad about hunting. It was their favorite sport. And what they do when they take over England is they bring with them this concept of forest law. The idea here is that there are going to be large chunks of land that are reserved exclusively for the use of the king, so that only he is allowed to hunt animals in those chunks of land. And this land was not just land that belonged specifically to the king.

7:12It was also land that was found all over England that the Norman kings basically roped off and said, we'll take this, this, this, this, this. These pieces of land are all covered by forest law, and therefore only the king can use this land. So wild animals, specifically things like deer, boar, and even hares or wild rabbits, were protected by forest law. It was illegal for anybody else to hunt and kill these animals. This meant that if you were a farmer or a peasant,

7:44the little bit of protein that you might have been able to acquire by killing a hare to add to your turnip stew was now off the menu. And that's because the penalty for poaching animals in the king's forests was incredibly high. So William the Conqueror made blinding a punishment for poaching during his rule. His successors only increased the severity of punishment. So one Norman king upped it to castration, and another one decided that the death penalty was the appropriate punishment for poaching on the king's land.

8:19Ordinary people didn't just lose access to hunting wild animals in the king's forests. They also lost any access to using any resource on that land whatsoever. So for example, you couldn't gather firewood in the king's forests. And that was pretty important in an age when there was no such thing as central heating, and English winters were long, wet, and cold. So for people living on the edge of the forest, being able to pick up dead wood and use that to keep themselves warm in the winter was pretty important.

8:52But this was now forbidden. Similarly, you couldn't graze your animals in any part of the king's forests, nor could you clear any part of that land and plant anything or build anything there. So all of the resources and all of the uses that could have been made of that land were now effectively cut off from pretty much everyone in the country except the king. The effect of all these laws was to make the average English peasant poorer, hungrier, and colder.

9:24But even the nobles resented it, because they couldn't hunt on the king's land either. So forest laws brought in by the Normans were incredibly unpopular across social levels. You couldn't even carry bow and arrow through any part of the king's forest, because it was assumed that if you were in there with a bow and arrow, you were there to be poaching. So that itself was an infraction. And some of the Norman kings went so far as to insist that dogs belonging to everyone else

9:54be mutilated by cutting their claws so that these dogs would be unable to chase wild animals and assist in the hunt. So this was a very thorough, very determined attempt to prevent anybody else from hunting in these lands. The land that was included under forest law and belonged to the king continued to expand in the century after the Normans took over. And you would think that forest law just included places that were densely populated with trees,

10:26but you'd be wrong. A lot of the land that then began to be included under the forest law included things like heaths, moors, and even fields. So again, you can imagine the resentment of ordinary people looking at a field that they could very well make use of for planting and being told, oh no, this field is covered by forest law. You can't touch it. How much land are we talking about exactly? Well, by the late 1100s, as much as a third of the land in England

10:57was covered by this forest law and effectively untouchable by anybody else who lived there. So this was a huge imposition in terms of removing access to resources for everybody else. The king would even employ men known as foresters, and their whole job was to protect the king's forests from everybody else. So these guys would be patrolling that land, and their job was to arrest and imprison poachers so that they could be punished.

11:29And again, it wasn't just hunting. Anyone found gathering firewood, planting anything, building anything, or even fishing was subject to arrest and punishment. Now, if the foresters found a dead animal, but they didn't see the hunter, or they found signs that animals were being taken or other resources were being used, then there would be pressure on the community to come up with the person responsible. And if the culprit couldn't be located, then the entire community could be punished by the levying of a fine that everyone would have to contribute to.

12:03So this system of collective punishment was designed to create incentives for self-policing, that people in the towns and villages would be watching each other. You don't want to see your neighbor go poaching, because that could mean that everybody is financially vulnerable as a result. All of this continues through the mid and late 1100s, during the reign of Henry II, or Henry Plantagenet, and his sons, Richard the Lionheart and John. In fact, by the time Prince John becomes King John,

12:36he's hit on the strategy of making an already heavily taxed population pay a fee to access some of the perimeter of the king's forests. So he's actually turned it into another taxation opportunity to sell back to people the opportunity to use some of the resources that have been taken away from them.

Magna Carta and church tithes

12:58This was such a major issue that by the time we get to 1215, the English barons and nobles force King John to sign a document called the Magna Carta. Now, you've probably heard of this somewhere in your political science or history classes back in high school. It's the moment at Runnymede when King John is forced by his barons to sign this document. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time talking about the Magna Carta because there were many grievances that English nobles had at this point,

13:29including being thrown into jail arbitrarily, if the king wanted to do that, or the idea that the king could do whatever he wanted. They had a problem with this. So Magna Carta was a document that was intended to limit the power of the king and say that he too had to observe older customs or traditions or laws. He couldn't just do anything he wanted. And forest laws were part of the long list of grievances that the nobles had at this point,

14:00and they were trying to limit what the king could do. The forest law issue was so significant that two years later, it was actually separated out from the Magna Carta and made its own document. It was called the Charter of the Forest. And that laid out specifically the limits and the grievances that English nobles had with the king's forest laws. And the Charter of the Forest isn't just about the nobles of England. Essentially, what they're saying is that land that doesn't specifically belong to the king

14:31needs to be removed from forest law so that ordinary people can fish, forage, or hunt in these lands. And that the penalty for poaching in forbidden areas needs to be reduced. So no more blinding, castration, or execution. Just perhaps a reasonable fine. So a payment that you could make in the event that you hunted somewhere where you're not supposed to be hunting. Now, by the way, if you were an English peasant in this period, it wasn't just the overreach of the king and his removal of forests and excessive taxation you needed to worry about.

15:07You also owed taxes to the church. They were called tithes. Tithing in the Middle Ages didn't look like it does today, where if you go to a church service, there's an offering plate that gets passed around and you do what you feel. You can put some amount in there or you can do nothing and just pass the plate. That's not how tithes were collected in the Middle Ages. They weren't voluntary. Every community was subject to them and they were payable directly to your local church official, your local priest or bishop.

15:38Sometimes you even had church officials or institutions who were also landlords. And so you were paying the same guy both your rental rate for the land you were working as well as your tithe. And this was particularly the case with abbots. So men who were managing monasteries. So here you would have a large chunk of land that would be owned by that monastery. And in many cases, you would have peasants who were working that land, doing the farming.

16:09So those peasants are paying rent to the abbot for the farm fields that they're working on, but they also have to pay tithes. And some of these abbots, just like unscrupulous landlords today, would be looking for ways to make a little bit extra. So telling their tenant farmers, for example, that they couldn't use firewood on monastery land unless they paid a fee for it. Or perhaps that they were required to do a few extra hours of labor during the week to satisfy what the landlord demanded of them.

16:41And so for ordinary people, they were being pressed from a number of different directions, finding access to resources scarcer and the taxation rates incredibly high. The image of a greedy, overfed abbot who's clad in expensive garments and obviously eats rich food on a regular basis is almost a trope in the Middle Ages. And it's very much a figure that recurs in many of the Robin Hood stories. Rich abbots on their mules wandering through the forest

17:13are exactly the kind of target that Robin Hood and his outlaws love to shoot for. And there was a very good contextual reason for this. Now, if you remember anything about the Robin Hood stories, you will know that his archenemy was the Sheriff of Nottingham. So this was not a made-up title. What exactly is a sheriff? This word has survived even to our own day. In parts of the United States and in certain Western films, you'll have the local sheriff. And what it meant was local law enforcement.

17:45And this is exactly what it meant in medieval England as well. The sheriff was an agent of the crown, and his job was to ensure that people in his region paid their taxes and followed the laws. So the sheriff of Nottingham was an actual job description, and Nottingham is a region in England. And so the Robin Hood stories that have Robin and his band of outlaws continuously coming to blows with the sheriff is a very realistic scenario. So with all this in mind, it becomes easier to understand many of the stories that are told

18:20about Robin Hood.

Violent origins in early ballads

18:22And these stories come down to us largely in the form of ballads. So songs written in poetic verses that are being written down round about the mid-1400s. But of course, the tradition was much older. And we have references to Robin Hood and his outlaws from other kinds of historical documents, sometimes letters, sometimes court records, which indicate that the name Robin Hood and the association of Robin Hood with the legend of an outlaw is much older than the mid-1400s.

18:54But a lot of the stories about him are finely written down round about that time. The story of how Robin Hood becomes an outlaw in the first place is shockingly violent. So it goes like this. Robin Hood is very young. He's a 15-year-old boy, and he's wandering through the forest with bow and arrow when he runs into a patrol of foresters. Now you know what foresters are. And Robin Hood standing there with his bow and arrow is already a problem. But this patrol of foresters was about 15 men, and apparently they'd been drinking fairly heavily.

19:28So they say to this teenage boy, we are going to challenge you to an archery competition. So we're going to lay money on the idea that you can't hit that target over there. So they make this bet. And 15-year-old Robin Hood pulls up his bow, looks at the target, takes aim, and hits it. But he doesn't get paid. The foresters apparently laugh, they refuse to pay him, and they wander on. And Robin Hood goes a little bit farther down the path, and this is where the story takes

19:59a shocking turn. Apparently he turns around, pulls up his bow, and takes aim at the foresters, and shoots every single one of them. All 15 of them. Dead. When word of this reaches the town, pretty soon there are other people coming into the woods to find the bodies and to look for this forest killer. And the story says that Robin Hood shoots many of them as well. So the forest floor is littered with dead bodies. Some people lost their lives, others eventually lost their limbs, which had to be amputated

20:31because they'd been shot. And it's this horrendously bloody scene. Now if you're reading this story and you don't understand the historical context, it just seems like a vengeful killing spree perpetrated by a teenager who's possibly annoyed that he didn't get paid the wager money. But when you understand the historical context, the story takes on a very different color. Robin Hood had been caught by the king's men, the foresters, with a bow and arrow in the forest. That's already an offense.

21:01If he were then accused of being responsible for killing any of the king's deer, or even the king's wild rabbits, well the penalty for that could be blinding, castration, or even death. Small wonder then, under those circumstances, that Robin Hood decides that the best possible option is to kill every single forester who's laid eyes on him in the woods that day. Now once he's done that, it's in for a penny, in for a pound. Now you've killed foresters who are working for the king, so the penalty for that will certainly

21:36be death, which is why when other villagers are entering the forest looking for what's happened and who's responsible, any one of them that lay eyes on Robin Hood will have to die as well. So this is how a teenage boy becomes an outlaw. He can't possibly go back home to the village and ever show his face again. It will be certain death. From now on, he's going to have to spend his life in the woods, outside the law, the only place where he has any chance of survival.

22:09Now there's another very violent story about Robin Hood, which comes from these ballads. And this story takes place later on in Robin Hood's life. So at this point, he's an established outlaw. He's kind of a notorious criminal who lives in the forest. And he's out with his right-hand man, or his best friend, Little John. And the two of them have a little argument, and they get separated. So Robin Hood decides to go off into the forest by himself, and Little John takes another route.

22:39Now Robin encounters a man who's dressed in horsehide. And carrying a bow and arrow. And remember, we now know that people carrying bows and arrows in the woods are already very likely to be engaged in criminal activity, right? You're already taking a large risk just being there with those weapons. So you're either a poacher, who's just opportunistically going in and trying not to be caught, or you're a regular criminal. You're an outlaw. So Robin Hood approaches this guy and engages him in conversation and says, wow, with a bow

23:10like that, you must be a very good archer. And the man says, well, I'm in here looking for that outlaw, Robin Hood. And Robin Hood says, oh, really? That's interesting. Well, I'm pretty sure I can help you find him. I'll walk through the woods and lead you in the right direction. And so the two men start going through the forest, and they're engaging in this casual conversation. And they're engaging in some target practice for fun. But eventually, it emerges in conversation that the man wearing horsehide is called Guy of Gisborne. And his mission is to eliminate Robin Hood.

23:44He's a bounty hunter. So he's in here to hunt Robin Hood for a payment. And when that emerges, Robin Hood reveals his identity. And at this point, the bows are put down, and the two men grab their knives, and a desperate knife fight ensues. The story says that this vicious knife fight goes on for something like two hours, and Robin stumbles on a root. And this allows Guy to stab him in the left side. But Robin Hood manages to kill his opponent.

24:16So Guy of Gisborne is dead. And at this point, Robin Hood decides to change clothes with this bounty hunter. So he puts his own clothes on the corpse, and he takes this horsehide that Guy of Gisborne was wearing, and he puts it on himself. He also takes his knife and deliberately disfigures Guy's face so that this corpse is unrecognizable. And thus disguised, Robin Hood then leaves the forest. So Robin is disguised as this bounty hunter, Guy of Gisborne.

24:48And he's leaving the forest, hoping to encounter the Sheriff of Nottingham, and perhaps collect the bounty payment that Guy of Gisborne was in there to earn. But what he discovers is that the Sheriff of Nottingham has arrested Little John. And Little John is now tied up to a tree and waiting to be carried off to prison. And of course, he's going to be executed. He's known to be a member of the outlaw band. So Robin Hood, who looks a lot like Guy of Gisborne at this point, he's disguised as the bounty hunter, approaches the Sheriff of Nottingham, and he says that he's done the

25:23job. He's killed that outlaw, Robin Hood. And then he says, I would like to kill this knave over here, pointing at Little John. I've killed the really bad guy, Robin Hood, and I want to kill his sidekick as well. And the Sheriff kind of shrugs. Sure, whatever, what's it to me? And so Robin Hood goes over to where Little John is, and he tells the Sheriff's guards to back off because he's going to let Little John say his last prayers. But what he actually does is he cuts the ropes that are tying Little John to the tree, and he hands him Guy of Gisborne's bow.

25:56Little John is an excellent shot. And so the next thing that the Sheriff knows, Little John is untied. He's aiming that bow at the Sheriff. The Sheriff turns and gallops as fast as he can in the other direction. And Little John manages to fire a shot that hits the Sheriff in the backside. Now, these stories are very far from the Disney-fied version of Robin Hood. They're very violent. They're very gritty. There's a lot of dead bodies lying around the forest floor. And when you think of the picture of Robin Hood deliberately disfiguring the face of this

26:30guy that he's killed, it's a pretty disturbing scene. This is not a picture of Robin Hood as some sort of nobleman or knight or gentleman living by the laws of chivalry. This is much closer to the grittier version of Robin Hood in the recent Hugh Jackman film, The Death of Robin Hood, when he's portrayed as a murderous cutthroat, a thug, somebody who's just out there to make his own living, and who doesn't really care who he has to kill or maim along the way.

27:01Robin Hood knows that the rules of society, the rules of chivalry, and the rule of law will accord him no mercy. And so he pays no respect to them. In many of these stories, Robin Hood is primarily interested in his own survival and in protecting the men in the outlaw band with him. But then there are stories that show Robin Hood protecting people who look like the boy he used to be. Stories that might involve deception and rescue. And this next story I'm going to tell you gets very close to pointing us in the direction

27:35of the real, historical Robin Hood.

Rescues and royal encounters

27:37So the story goes that there's a mother who's weeping and she's in great distress, and she comes to Robin Hood to tell him that she's about to lose her three sons. They are going to be executed. Now you'll remember that the death penalty was in place for poaching in the king's woods at various times in England. So this woman is about to lose her three children because they've been hunting in the king's forests. So Robin Hood disguises himself, and he goes to the sheriff of Nottingham to apply for the job of executioner. Basically he's saying, hey, I'll do this job on the day.

28:10I'll dispatch these three young delinquents, no problem. So he gets the job. On the day of the execution, he approaches the platform where the hanging should take place. The three young men are waiting there, but he blows his horn. And at this signal, his band of outlaws suddenly emerges from the forest. They seize these young men, and they make off with them into the woods. So that is how the story that we began today's episode with sort of ends. It ends with a rescue by Robin Hood.

28:40Now this may sound really fanciful. You might think, sure, that sounds like, you know, a Hollywood escape. But actually, we have historical evidence of people doing things exactly like this. It isn't a made-up story at all. So we have a record of July 1276 in Sherwood Forest. And the sheriff apprehends a couple of men with bows and arrows in the king's woods. So obviously he arrests them, and he throws them into prison as poachers.

29:11But that night, some 20 men break into the prison and release these two guys. And they don't just break their friends out of prison. They also rough up the servant who's in charge of that prison, and they deliberately vandalize the sheriff's house before making off back to the woods. So this is not a story. This is a historical record. And you can see here a band of outlaws in Sherwood Forest doing exactly the kind of things

29:41that are reported in the stories of Robin Hood. And their tactics seem to be a way of discouraging this sheriff from looking very hard for poachers or arresting them if he finds them. I'm going to tell you one more Robin Hood adventure before I get around to trying to locate him as a particular historical person. It goes like this. There was an archery competition that was sponsored by the Sheriff of Nottingham. And the prize was going to be an arrow made of gold and silver for the best archer in the

30:12competition. So Robin Hood and a band of his men show up, in disguise, of course, and a few of them are going to compete, but the rest of them are there as protective cover. And sure enough, Robin Hood, who is an excellent shot, wins the competition, and he approaches the sheriff to claim the prize. But at this point, it emerges that the whole thing is an ambush. So the sheriff's men immediately encircle Robin Hood, and they try to seize him. And there's a fight that breaks out between Robin and his outlaws and the sheriff's

30:43men. And very quickly, Robin and his friends need to turn tail and head back to the woods as quickly as they can. But they're being pursued by the sheriff's men who are shooting at them. And so Robin is carrying a little John who's been shot. And some versions of the story have Robin Hood carrying him. And some have much the miller's son, who's another famous member of the outlaw band, doing it. But in all versions of the story, little John is injured, and he's slowing down the escape of these outlaws and endangering their lives.

31:15So little John begs Robin Hood to kill him. Why? Because he doesn't want to be arrested and tortured. So he's saying, listen, just kill me, and then you guys can escape faster and save your lives. And Robin laughs and swears he wouldn't do that for all the gold in merry England. And so he has this laborious escape where he's stopping regularly to turn around and shoot arrows at their pursuers. And then picking up little John and going as quickly as they can, and then repeating this process until they finally get to safety.

31:47And what safety looks like is a castle in the middle of the woods. And this wasn't unusual. A lot of noblemen had their castles in the middle of large parcels of land. It just so happens that this castle is owned by a knight who's friendly to Robin Hood and his men. So very gratefully, these outlaws take shelter inside the castle. The gate closes behind them, and they're safe. The sheriff of Nottingham's men arrive outside the castle, and they begin banging on the gate and demanding that the lord of the castle, the knight who owns it, turn over these outlaws

32:22to them. The knight refuses. He makes an excuse and says, well, until I know what the king's will is, I'm not going to do anything, so you're going to have to go talk to the king first and let me know what he thinks about this matter. But until that time, I'm not releasing anybody. So the sheriff is obviously very angry, and he goes off to London to find the king and report this insubordination. But that's going to take a few days. In the meantime, the outlaws are able to escape out of the castle and vanish into the woods. So they're safe for now.

32:54But the sheriff knows who helped them. And so he's got plans for this particular knight. So the sheriff waits for an afternoon when the knight leaves his castle to go hawking. So this was really very popular with nobles in the 1100s and 1200s. You would have a trained hawk or falcon, this bird of prey, and the knight would have a thick leather glove, and he would ride off with this bird of prey and then release that hawk to go after small prey, other little birds, sometimes rodents, sometimes rabbits.

33:26So this was a favorite pastime of the nobility. The knight goes off to do this, and the sheriff springs a trap on him. He arrests the knight, throws him into prison, and says, You've broken the king's law. You're going to be punished. Now, the knight's wife goes to find Robin Hood and his men and report in great distress what has happened to her husband. One thing that's consistent about Robin Hood in all the stories is that he doesn't leave his friends in the lurch. So Robin and his men go to find the sheriff of Nottingham, and Robin shoots the sheriff.

33:59Yes, he shot the sheriff, but not the deputy. So Robin and his men go off to find the sheriff of Nottingham. Robin shoots the sheriff, but he doesn't shoot any deputy. They manage to free the knight, and they go back off into the woods. So this knight is fortunate to have escaped custody, but he's not out of trouble yet. But this knight can't go home, right? Because you've eliminated the sheriff of Nottingham. Great. But now you've just brought upon you the wrath of the king, because that's who the sheriff

34:30works for. And so the king himself comes out to Nottingham, and he looks at the woods around the knight's castle and says, Well, clearly someone's been hunting here. There's not enough deer and wild boar and wild rabbit running around. So there's evidence of poaching, and I am going to seize this knight's land. So his estate, his castle, all this property he used to have, no more. It's going to be my property, says the king. Furthermore, the king puts a bounty on the head of this rebellious knight.

35:03He says, Listen, anyone who manages to kill this knight who's been busy helping outlaws and escaping into the woods, I will give that man all of this knight's property. So that's a very large prize. But instead of motivating anyone to go off into the woods, apparently people tell the king, You know what? No one is going into those woods looking for this knight, as long as Robin Hood and his men are operating in there. You're going to have to get him yourself. And the king is told that the best way to find Robin Hood is to go wander in the woods

35:36himself, but to go in disguise so that he's inviting a robbery. If you look like a victim, if you look like someone who's rich and you're wandering through the woods, then you are certain to meet Robin Hood and his outlaws. They will come for you. And so the king thinks, Well, this is a good plan. And so he disguises himself as an abbot. Remember what I said to you about rich and resented church landowners. This is who the king thinks will be a perfect attraction for Robin Hood.

36:07So he dresses himself in the robes of an abbot, and he takes five knights who are dressed as monks. And then they go off into the woods. Sure enough, this abbot and his monks are soon accosted by Robin Hood and his outlaws, who basically lay hold of the abbot's horse, surround the men, and say, Well, you're going to have to pay some of your money to us in exchange for the dinner we're going to give you. But this is not optional. You're going to be making some payments to us. And so the abbot and the monks, of course, have to agree.

36:39They hand over money. And Robin Hood and his men escort them to where they're going to be eating dinner with the outlaws in the woods. And this is a common repeating scene in many Robin Hood stories, this dinner in the woods. The abbot then tells Robin Hood that he brings a message that the king wants to speak with him. And Robin says, Excellent. Thank you for this news. I love the king most loyally, but let's first have dinner. And guess what dinner was? Dinner was, of course, venison. So this was deer that had been hunted in the king's woods.

37:14And so Robin Hood and his men are literally serving up this deer to the king himself. And they're all sitting around eating it together. And then they say, you know, let's have some friendly archery competitions after dinner. And at this point, Robin and his men have the money they want. So they're going to let these guys go later on. But in the meantime, seeing as they've secured the money, they're being friendly. So they engage in these games of archery. The game of archery that they're playing involves men trying to hit a target. And anyone who misses the target earns a blow.

37:46So someone else gets to hit him. So at some point, Robin Hood misses the target, perhaps intentionally, perhaps not. And he goes to the abbot and says, OK, I've earned a blow. You're the one who gets to hit me. And the abbot, who, remember, is the king in disguise, he says, well, the laws of my order as a churchman prevent me from hitting a good yeoman like yourself. Basically, a free man. And Robin says, no, no, no, I insist. And so the abbot strikes him such a blow that Robin Hood is knocked to the ground.

38:21And at this point, the brawniness of the abbot's arm is on full display. The physical strength that he has is not a level that anyone would have expected. And Robin takes a closer look at him. And so does the rebel knight. And they realize who he is. This is no abbot. This is the king. So at this point, Robin and the rebellious knight fall to their knees and they beg for the king's mercy because they've been caught red-handed eating the king's deer, not to

38:51mention, you know, robbing and extorting people coming through the woods like outlaws. And the king apparently agrees, but on one condition. He says, I will grant mercy to you and your men. I won't punish anyone for this, including the knight, on condition that you, Robin, come back to court and serve under me. And Robin Hood agrees to this. So we have this incredible story where Robin Hood, the leader of a band of outlaws in the forest, is going to go back with the king to the big city and wear livery and be a member

39:23of court. But of course, you know, Robin Hood isn't going to stay there for very long. So this story says that he lasts about 15 months in court before he slips away and vanishes back into the woods to rejoin his band of outlaws once again. Now, this story provides some tantalizing clues about where to locate Robin Hood in history.

Testing the King Richard timeline

39:45The most common version of Robin Hood's story, which you might have heard, locates his life during the reign of King Richard, also known as King Richard the Lionheart. And in that version of the story, Robin Hood is back in England during the reign of Prince John, King Richard's younger brother, who's busy extorting taxes and abusing people in England while Richard the Lionheart is off fighting the Third Crusade. And everyone is waiting for good King Richard to come home and set all to rights.

40:16That's the sort of traditional version of where Robin Hood lives in history. And King Richard does come back and supposedly he presides over Robin Hood's engagement to his lady love, Maid Marian, and everything is better after that. The problem is, none of that likely happened. We've covered the real King Richard the First in some detail on this podcast. During a multi-part series on the Third Crusade. Now, you'll remember that Richard was the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Henry II.

40:50Yes, the same King Henry who was busy dramatically expanding the land in England covered by forest law to be his private hunting zone. Richard himself spent precious little time in England, preferring to live in his family's properties in Normandy, which is now part of France, but at the time was controlled by Henry II of England and his family. So Richard is spending a lot of time over there, not in England. And then he goes off on the Third Crusade in the summer of 1190.

41:24And he's gone until the spring of 1194. Now, while he was away, his younger brother, John, was busy trying to position himself as the next King of England, and to prevent his older brother, Richard, from ever returning. So this part is accurate. King Richard was away. And during that time, Prince John was trying to become King John, and he was very widely hated. So the timeline for this version of Robin Hood's life places him as operating in England,

41:54in Sherwood Forest, during the time that Richard is gone and John is running England. This version of the story is popularized by Sir Walter Scott in his historical novel, Ivanhoe. And that was written in the 1800s. So Sir Walter Scott is in the Victorian era, when he's writing about events that supposedly occurred six centuries earlier. And the Ivanhoe story develops the character of Robin Hood in a very particular direction. In this story, Robin is called Robin of Loxley, and he's actually a Saxon yeoman.

42:28Now, a yeoman was better than a peasant, but not quite a nobleman. A yeoman would be a free man who owned some land. He was part of something that we would now call an emerging middle class. And Walter Scott's story really plays up the difference between the resident Anglo-Saxons and these Norman nobles who were newcomers and widely seen as oppressive. So Robin of Loxley, aka Robin Hood, in the Sir Walter Scott novel, is leading part of the

42:59Saxon resistance against oppressive Norman rule, specifically against rapacious guys like Prince John. Weirdly though, they're not against Richard, who's part of the same Norman nobility. But Richard is supposed to be fair and wise. So they're expecting that when he comes back, everything will be okay. In this Ivanhoe story, we have a version of King Richard who comes back to England in disguise as the Black Knight and is interacting with Robin Hood for quite some time in this

43:32disguise before Robin Hood realizes who he is. Now, there is an element of historical truth in this. The real King Richard I did assume a disguise on his way home from the Third Crusade because he was trying to evade some of his enemies. Unfortunately, his disguise didn't end up working and he was captured and became a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor and he was put into a castle in what is now Austria and kept for

44:02ransom. So he's finally freed when exorbitant amounts of money are raised from England and paid to the Holy Roman Emperor in exchange for his release. The irony of this story is that in the Ivanhoe version, the return of King Richard is going to bring an end to the extortion and taxation that everyone is suffering under John. But in reality, the amount of tax that had to be raised on everybody to secure Richard's release was itself experienced as a heavy form of economic oppression.

44:35And Richard returns to England in March of 1194 in the company of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. But by May of that same year, he's already gone from England. He's back in Normandy, busy fighting the King of France. So it doesn't leave a whole lot of time in there for King Richard to be operating in England. He really didn't spend a lot of time in that country at all. Another problem with locating the historical Robin Hood during the time of King Richard

45:06the Lionheart, which is the late 1100s, is Robin's weapon. We all know what that was. Robin Hood is renowned for his skill as an archer. He's using a bow. Now, the English longbow was a really important weapon, but it comes to prominence sometime later, during the reign of Edward Longshanks. And yes, you might remember, he's the evil English king in the film Braveheart. That Edward. But he lives about 80 years after Richard I.

45:41So Edward Longshanks rules from 1272 to 1307. And during his reign, there's a major emphasis on archery. Reportedly, he forbade any kind of sport on Sundays except archery. And this is because he wanted all the English practicing their archery on a weekly basis. The purpose of this was to develop the skills of English archers. And during his reign, the English longbow became a significant weapon. During the reigns of his successors, Edward II and Edward III, the longbow was increasingly

46:16prominent as an English weapon of war and became decisive during the Hundred Years' War that they were going to fight with France. So if you want to talk about the golden age of English archery, when there are archery competitions, like the one I told you in the story where the Sheriff of Nottingham is sponsoring an archery competition, that would make a lot of sense during the reign of Edward I or maybe Edward II or III. It doesn't really fit with things that were going on during the reign of Richard the Lionheart

46:47or even his younger brother, John. And the other interesting thing about the longbow was that it was the weapon of the English yeoman, the English free middle-class man. And Robin Hood is referred to as a yeoman in many, many ballots. So there's this association with who he's supposed to be and the weapon that he's using, which suggests a date much later than Richard the Lionheart.

Edward II and historical receipts

47:12A second strong possibility is that the historical Robin Hood may have lived during the reign of Edward II. Now, Edward II reigns from 1307 to 1327. And during his rule, he presides over a war with Scotland, including the famous Battle of Bannockburn with Robert the Bruce, and then turns around and starts fighting England's traditional sparring partner, France. So it wasn't really a great time to be a commoner in England because wars are really expensive, and that means more taxation for everybody.

47:46The emphasis on archery is very consistent with the reign of Edward II. So Robin Hood would then be placed in the golden era of the English longbow. But there are a number of other fascinating clues that suggest that Edward II is the king who best resembles some of the stories. So the story I told you about the archery competition with the Sheriff of Nottingham, and then the king who goes into Sherwood Forest in disguise, is actually quite consistent with things that Edward II would have done.

48:17He was young and athletic, he really enjoyed sports, and he had a penchant for surrounding himself with common people. He liked hanging out with tradesmen and working class individuals, and often put them in his personal retinue. And so the idea of a king like this, someone who's young enough and strong enough to deliver a blow that would knock Robin Hood over, but also is interested in inviting someone like Robin Hood to be part of his retinue, is entirely plausible if we're thinking about Edward II.

48:50And a third clue about this is that during Edward II's reign, the penalties for poaching the king's deer had been relaxed somewhat, so during this period, a hefty fine was what you could expect for being a poacher, rather than something like castration or death. And this too is consistent. You would hardly expect a death penalty offense to be rewarded with an invitation to join the king's retinue, but waiving a fine and bringing someone like this who showed sufficient spirit into the king's inner circle,

49:23that's not entirely improbable. But the evidence chain doesn't end there. We actually have receipts from the royal exchequer, so essentially palace financial records, that indicate that someone whose name was Robin Hood was being paid as a servant in the king's retinue. And we have actual receipts for months of the year when he was paid. The last one is in 1324, when he was let go because of an inability to work. This would entirely be consistent with a Robin Hood who slipped away and said,

49:58I've had enough of this king's retinue business. I'm tired of living at court and following people around in fine clothes. I am not available for this work anymore, and so he's off the payroll. The chain of clues doesn't end there. And some of these clues have to do with women who are part of the Robin Hood legend. Now, you've probably heard of Maid Marian, who's supposed to be Robin Hood's love interest, and she actually is the weakest link. Maid Marian doesn't enter the stories until much later. But the other key woman in the Robin Hood legend is the prioress who bleeds Robin nearly to death.

50:34And again, if you saw the most recent Robin Hood film, The Death of Robin Hood with Hugh Jackman, they did a nod to this part of the legend, because sure enough, there's a prioress who does open up Robin Hood's veins and keep them open a little bit longer than is healthy, resulting in his deliberate demise. Well, there was such a prioress, and her name was Elizabeth Stainton. She lived during the reign of Edward II in the early 1300s. So a prioress is a woman in charge of an independent nunnery. And

51:06legend says that this prioress opened Robin Hood's veins to bleed him. Now, bleeding was a very common medical treatment in the Middle Ages. It was used to try and improve all kinds of ailments, wounds, and illnesses. So the idea that Robin Hood would seek this medical treatment from a prioress is not outlandish. But the legends say that this prioress, under the pretext of medical treatment, kept Robin Hood's veins open for much longer with the intention of killing him. So we have records of a real historical person living in the 1300s during the reign of Edward II

51:40called Robin Hood. He's described as a yeoman from Wakefield, Yorkshire. And furthermore, there's a chain of evidence that indicates that there's a woman called Matilda who marries this yeoman, and changes her name to Marion when she goes to live with him in Barnsdale Forest. Even more fascinating, this same Marion was the cousin of Elizabeth Stainton, the prioress. So all of that fits very closely with the Robin Hood legend that says the prioress who bleeds him nearly to death

52:14is actually related to him. In this case, she would be the cousin of his wife. Here we have a lot of actual pieces of the historical record that seem to fit very neatly into the legends of Robin Hood that we get from the ballads. So that's case closed, right? We can locate Robin Hood with confidence in the early 1300s during the reign of Edward II. Well, it's not quite that simple. The problem is that if Robin Hood was a real historical figure who lived in the 1320s, he wasn't the only one of his type.

52:47I already told you a story from 1276 where you had outlaws from Sherwood Forest who are on record as breaking into a jail and breaking out poachers. That's a good 45 years before this particular Robin Hood in the 1320s, and that's not the only earlier evidence. There's a Scottish history called the Orgondale Chronicle, and it's written in the mid-1400s, but it was intended to be a complete history of many centuries past, and it has a note for the year 1283 where the chronicler notes that outlaws

53:24Robin Hood and Little John were in that year highly praised. Now presumably they were highly praised by ordinary people. One can hardly imagine that kings or nobles had a very enthusiastic view of forest outlaws. There's also a fascinating historical reference to Robin Hood from the year 1296, and it's a man called Gilbert Robin Hood. So Robin Hood is all one word, and it's being listed as a surname. The interesting thing about this period is that people didn't have fixed surnames. A surname was often

53:57a nickname or a tag that indicated something a person did, such as Smith or Miller. In this case, Robin Hood, Gilbert Robin Hood, was an indication of the fact that this particular Gilbert frequently played the character of Robin Hood in yearly pageants. And so if that's going on in the late 1200s, then the story of Robin Hood and the legend of Robin Hood must date to older than that. Even older than this, there's a 1226 court manuscript that mentions a Robin Hood who is an outlaw who had his possessions

54:34confiscated. So where does this leave us? If we want to locate Robin Hood in one period, such as the 1320s,

Multiple outlaws and the title theory

54:42what do we make of all of these other older references to different Robin Hoods who cannot possibly have been the same guy? Now this opens up a fascinating possibility. What if there was never a single Robin Hood? But always there were many Robin Hoods. What if Robin Hood wasn't the name of a particular person, but was more of a title or a job description? To give you an analogy, imagine some future chronicler puzzling over the number of times the name Jane Doe appears in criminal records from our

55:17own time. Or you can compare it to the confusion that your teenage history nerd experienced when reading heavily footnoted texts and wondering who was the mysterious scholar called Ibid who kept showing up in the footnotes of every few pages. Surely this Ibid was the most prolific author who ever existed in the ancient world, and why had I not heard of him before? The answer that I didn't know at the time was that Ibid wasn't the name of a particular person. It was just a shorthand to say the same author as the last

55:48two references on this page. So too, the term Robin Hood may actually be a title for a certain type of person, someone who was an outlaw. And if that's true, it would make perfect sense to attach that same name to many different people at many different times. Some scholars think that the name Robert could be related etymologically to the term robber or robbing. Indeed, robin and robbing sound very similar.

56:19And hood may also be related to hoodlum. So a robbing hoodlum may actually be the root of this phrase Robin Hood that could have been applied to many different people at various points in history. Historians have already tracked many similarities between things that happen in the Robin Hood stories and things that are part of the historical record for actual outlaws whose names might have been different. People like Falk Fitzwarren, who did live in the 1200s during the reign of the much-hated King

56:53John. And guys like Herbert the Wake, who lives in the late 10 hundreds and leads part of the Anglo-Saxon resistance in the forest to the newly invading Normans. This multiple Robin Hood theory also explains why some of the historical references, the court details and so on, mention that Robin Hood was associated with Barnsdale Woods and others that insist he was located in Sherwood Forest. These are different locations that actually exist, and both of them would be logical places for outlaw activity.

57:29So the story of Robin Hood then becomes an envelope for many stories. It becomes a way of remembering many real people who really did do things of the sort that are described in the Robin Hood ballads. Robin Hoods always lived in the woods. They poached the King's deer, they tried to look out for other outlaws, and sometimes they managed to get away with remarkable levels of resistance, like breaking people

57:59out of prisons or taking down nobles or oppressive landlords. And this is one reason why the Robin Hood name and the Robin Hood legend is so remarkably long-lasting. People did remember and celebrate Robin Hood for centuries. Because he was a people's hero, his songs were contained first and foremost in ballads. These are songs that can be sung. They have rhyming verses. They don't require you to be literate, to access, to understand, and to remember the story. The first literary mention we have of Robin Hood

58:35comes from 1377, and it's called The Ballad of Pierce Plowman, in which a character in that poem is described as a lazy priest who says he knows rhymes of Robin Hood. So there's a reference here to an oral tradition that is already much older by this period. In 1448 we have a manuscript that mentions a servant who is going off to play Robin Hood. And this is a reference to the many plays that happened every year around May Day, in which Robin Hood was a very popular character. And so someone needed to play

59:09the role of Robin Hood as part of these well-attended, very popular theatrical productions. These plays, in which Robin Hood is such a common character, were usually part of the May Day celebrations. And that's a fascinating thing in itself. May Day celebrations were folk festivals. They were for everyday people. And you might be familiar with things like the maypole, with garlands of flowers being wrapped around it, with remnants of pagan fertility rituals being part of this, with the

59:42mummers, the mummers dance. All of these are part of May Day traditions in England. And so the name of Robin Hood gets tossed into a rich mix of other cultural references as part of May Day that begins to actually change how people understood Robin Hood himself. This has led some later scholars to

Pagan roots and royal cosplay

1:00:03thinking that Robin Hood might be linked to a much older mythological figure called Robin Goodfellow. And you might be familiar with the name Robin Goodfellow because he was the mischievous fairy, also known as Puck, who shows up in Shakespeare's famous play A Midsummer Night's Dream. And Shakespeare doesn't invent Robin Goodfellow. He just brings in this well-known mythological fairy creature and gives him a role in the Midsummer Night's Dream. But the mischief, the wearing of green,

1:00:35being part of the fairy people, living in the woods, and the connection with May Day, which Robin Hood then became associated with, has led some scholars to wonder if Robin Hood wasn't just a mythological character who was a twisted version of Robin Goodfellow. Other scholars have wondered if he might not be linked to other older pagan figures like the Green Man. And this is an ancient pre-Christian figure, something to do with the spirit of the woods. However, the court records, the royal payment

1:01:06records, and the other documents we have from the 1200s and 1300s don't suggest that people at the time thought that the name Robin Hood referred to anything other than an actual flesh-and-blood person, someone whose property was confiscated, or who was living as an outlaw. So it seems that this mythological wrapping around Robin Hood is a much later development, as scholars found his name embedded in May Day celebrations where there were many other pagan references, and thought that perhaps

1:01:38he emerged from those. In fact, the Robin Hood stories and plays were so popular that even King Henry VIII wanted a piece of the action. So we have records from 1509 that indicate that shortly after his coronation, Henry VIII and many of his men dressed up as Robin Hood and the outlaws, all in green, and visited the queen and her ladies. And they pulled a similar stunt in 1516 when 200 green-clad men, intended to represent these famous outlaws of Sherwood Forest, accosted the ladies of the court and invited them to

1:02:15boldly enter the forest and dine with these alleged outlaws. There was an entire elaborate game in which these green-clad fake outlaws entertained the ladies of the court with venison, which was of course poached deer from the king's forests, and declared that this was standard outlaw food, and they engaged in songs and dances before finally escorting them out of the wood and back on the road to court. There is something deeply ironic about King Henry VIII, possibly England's most willful king, someone who was willing to turn the

1:02:50entire country upside down to get his way, cosplaying as an outlaw who was busy resisting oppressive kings. And this tells you that by the 1500s, the legend of Robin Hood had become so incredibly popular and also somewhat separated from its gritty, violent roots in actual resistance, that even the king and the court felt that they could safely play along. This whitewashing trend of the Robin Hood legend continues into the 19th century, when some Victorian retellings of his story make him out to be an

1:03:25impoverished nobleman, someone who was really a member of the aristocracy who had been unjustly forced off his land by a bad king and was meanwhile leading the resistance in the woods while waiting for the return of the good king to reinstate him and restore order and justice to the world. This version of Robin Hood makes a gentleman out of him, someone who's a knight and a member of the chivalric code. And some of these Victorian stories go so far as to say that he married Maid Marian, the lady that he

1:03:58was in love with, in a church, and then they resigned from outlaw life after the return of the good king and lived respectively in a settled town, beloved of all. This strains the limits of credibility, let's just say. That's not, generally, how real outlaws tended to end their stories. But this is congruent with Victorian priorities, the need to make Robin Hood fit the established ideals of their day, which privileged gentleman-like behavior, noble birth, and respectability.

1:04:30This is a far cry from the cutthroat knife fighter, the kid who was willing to shoot 15 of the king's men dead in the forest, the man who was willing to shoot the sheriff of Nottingham. Instead, they make him into a dispossessed nobleman, someone who's part of the existing order, rather than an everyday man, a yeoman, a commoner, who poses a threat to the God-given order in which the nobles and the king are on top, and everybody else is on the bottom, and that's how things are properly supposed to be.

The persistent appeal of outlaws

1:05:04The real Robin Hood, the actual people whose stories are remembered in all of these ballads and legends, were threats to that order. And that is why these stories have to be sanitized and whitewashed in order to make them safe. Because outlaws were anything but that. The power and the persistence of the Robin Hood story speaks to the very common desire to get back at the oppressive ruling class. Those landlords who are constantly raising the rents and pushing

1:05:37their tenants to the edges of desperation. Those people who are responsible for exorbitant tax rates, for continuously squeezing the everyday working man until he and his family can barely make ends meet. The stories of Robin Hood are a satisfying revenge story. They are stories of getting back at those bloated, overconfident rich who believe that they can get away with what they're doing indefinitely. So it's very likely true that there was a man by the name of Robin or Robert who originally

1:06:10gave his name to this legend. But it's equally true that there were many others like him. Men who were labeled Robin Hood, who lived as outlaws, who engaged in violence, and who struck back at the king, his taxes, his enforcers, and his oppression. There are those who want to suggest that Robin Hood was a myth, or a fairy, or a nobleman. But these are all ways of neutering the story of its most potent substance. The legend remains potent even today, some eight centuries after our first written references to it.

1:06:56And that is because this spirit of Robin Hood continues to live on in the hearts of ordinary people who find themselves oppressed by systems designed to keep them down and dream of stepping outside them altogether. The life of an outlaw is dangerous, to be sure. But it was also free. If you'd like to talk more about the details of Robin Hood, head on over to patreon.com slash Eva Schubert, because this month's Live History Chat will be all about this. And you can also get

1:07:28early access to a swashbuckling episode about Julius Caesar and Pompeii, the pirate fighters you never knew. Thank you so much for joining me in this episode, and I'll see you in the next one.

1:07:58Thank you. Thank you.