Pod Insights Gone Medieval Legends of Robin Hood About this episode Was Robin Hood a symbol of justice? A challenge to authority? Or simply a folk hero offering a fantasy of freedom? Whether or not he truly existed, Robin Hood is one of the most enduring figures from medieval England—so beloved that by the 15th century, churchmen complained their congregations liked stories of the outlaw more than sermons. But how did Robin Hood capture the medieval imagination so powerfully?
Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Stephen H. Rigby to explore how Robin Hood’s legend took shape through ballads and dramas from as early as the 14th century, and how these tales evolved to reflect the social struggles, political anxieties, and popular culture of the time.
MORE
Defending a Castle:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Ij54WeWRYBbcaIbRjrcVU
Movie Knight (Robin Hood):
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5uGVOS5S2Iz2Z23rtt3Od4
Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producers are Rob Weinberg and Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
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0:01 Matt Lewis? From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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1:15 Speaker 02 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.O.gle/workspacewithGemini. This is Nick and Jack from The Best One Yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations
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2:29 Matt Lewis? Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.
3:10 Matt Lewis? Whether he ever really existed or not, Robin Hood is one of the most important and enduring characters from medieval England, who also possibly became even more popular in Scotland and Wales. By the 15th century, churchmen were even complaining that their congregations preferred to hear stories about Robin Hood rather than listen to the word of God. Robin Hood's adventures can be traced to ballads and dramas that reach back as far as the 14th century and perhaps even further. Here's my telling of one such story that was documented around 1450, but maybe from even earlier than that.
4:03 Matt Lewis? The forest awakens to the gentle whisper of a May morning, but Robin Hood is heavy-hearted. Devoted to the Virgin Mary, Robin's spirit is yearning for the solace of attending Mass and matins, but he is a wanted man everywhere. Suddenly struck with inspiration, he declares his intention to attend a service in Nottingham. Ever cautious, much the miller's son implores Robin to take a dozen men for protection. But Robin, stubborn and proud, brushes off the warning, setting off through the forest with only little John by his side. As they journey, the companions have a bet with each other. Fate favours Little John, and a heated argument erupts.
4:48 Matt Lewis? Robin's pride is wounded, and he refuses to pay up. Betrayed and furious, Little John storms off, leaving Robin to go to Nottingham alone. Undeterred, he enters the hallowed precincts of St Mary's, his heart swelling with reverence as he kneels in prayer. But this moment of peace is short-lived. A monk, once a victim of Robin's outlawry, spies him and hastily informs the sheriff of Nottingham. In a flurry of activity, a small army is rallied to apprehend the legendary outlaw. Robin is surrounded. Chaos erupts, but with the grace of a dancer and the ferocity of a cornered wolf,
5:31 Matt Lewis? Robin takes hold of his two-handed sword. The cries of the wounded ring out as Robin's blade finds its mark again and again. Twelve of the sheriff's men fall before his might. But even legends can falter. As Robin crosses blades with the sheriff himself, his trusty sword shatters. Panic grips him as he dashes into the church, desperately seeking sanctuary. And then, silence. Robin's whereabouts are unknown, presumed, captured. When news of the confrontation reaches his loyal band, shock paralyzes all but Little John.
6:15 Matt Lewis? With steely resolve, he vows to rescue their leader. Little John and Much the Miller's son ambush a monk and his page, silencing them forever, and head into Nottingham, wearing their clothes. Robin's cell is found, and swiftly Little John and Much dispatch the jailer. Robin emerges, blinking in disbelief, but his heart swells with gratitude. He offers to serve Little John, but his loyal friend insists their roles remain unchanged. When word reaches the royal court, the king's fury gives way to reluctant admiration for Little John's unwavering loyalty. With a magnanimous gesture, the king lets the matter rest,
7:00 Matt Lewis? and the legend of Robin Hood grows ever greater.
7:07 Matt Lewis? So what was the attraction of Robin Hood and his antics to the medieval mind? How did people know about him and spread his stories? And how did the different versions reflect the concerns and issues of the time? To find out, I'm joined by Stephen H. Rigby, emeritus professor of medieval social and economic history at the University of Manchester, who edited the book Historians on Robin Hood, which offers an introduction to a wide range of medieval writings about Robin Hood from different historical perspectives.
7:41 Matt Lewis? Welcome to Gone Medieval, Stephen. Thank you for joining us.
7:44 Speaker 03 Right, yes, it's great to be here.
7:46 Matt Lewis? Yeah, can't wait to try and get to grips with the legend of Robin Hood. But we're going to steer pretty clear of questioning whether he really existed or not. And we really want to get into the mindset of those who are writing these legends and those who are listening to these stories a little bit more to understand kind of what Robin Hood meant, rather than who he might or might not have been. And I thought we could start off with, the book draws out some interesting facets of place names that bear the name Robin Hood. So we've got things like Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire, Robin Hood's Stoop in Derbyshire. We've got some examples of people who use the name too. Do those place names come before Robin Hood? Or are they drawn from the legend of Robin Hood?
8:23 Speaker 03 Probably the first reference to the legend of Robin Hood comes in 1262. We've got a man there who's called William Rob Hood or Rope Hood. These sort of compound surnames made up of a first name and a surname are quite unusual. So people have seen this surname in 1262 as a reference to the legend of Robin Hood already being in existence. After this day, they've become quite common, these surnames. In 1296, in Sussex, there's a taxpayer, he's called Gilbert Robin Hood. So the Robin Hood surnames seem to suggest that the legend is there at quite an early date, from the mid 13th century onwards. Robin Hood place names are slightly later.
9:05 Speaker 03 We've got some early 14th century references. The most famous one is Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire. That's definitely in existence by 1377. In the 15th century, we've got a few references, there's Robin Hood's Stone in Barnsdale in Yorkshire. A couple of places in Nottingham are called Robin Hood's Close, Robin Hood's Well. Most of the Robin Hood's place names are 16th, 17th century onwards. Sometimes there are places called, say in Bradwell in Derbyshire, there's a place called Robin's Cross, which eventually becomes Robin Hood's Cross. Some of the places, we only know very late on. You mentioned Robin Hood's Stoop, which is just outside Havasage in Derbyshire.
9:48 Speaker 03 The earliest reference for that is late 19th century. So lots of the surnames exist at an early date. The place names are often later.
9:57 Matt Lewis? And with the use of the surname, if people are adopting this kind of compound surname of Rob Hood or Robin Hood or anything like that, why would someone do that? If it is attached to the legend of this notorious outlaw, why would someone choose to attach that to themselves?
10:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, that isn't clear. David Crook, he's identified what he calls celebrity surnames. And we find people who often have the name of romance heroes or historical heroes. So in the 13th, 14th century, you get people call things like John Jesus Christ or John Saladin or Richard Charlemagne. So it seems to fit in with the so-called celebrity surnames. So it probably implies that person had a particular interest. Because particularly in the 13th century, surnames aren't yet hereditary. Eventually, you do get whole families of people with Robin Hood as a surname. In the 14th century, has surnames gradually become hereditary?
10:56 Speaker 03 It's been suggested that it might be people who were playing Robin Hood in parish revels and games. The problem is that the first reference to the parish revels and games are 1427. And yet we've got references to Robin Hood surnames as early as 1262.
11:14 Matt Lewis? Yeah, interesting one to try to get to the bottom of. And I guess there are more obvious parallels that are drawn by the time we get to kind of the Wars of the Roses, a kind of bit of medieval history I'm more familiar with, where you get rebels like Robin of Reidsdale emerging in the North, who are kind of latching on to that Robin name as a kind of anti-establishment, rebelling against the government kind of business. Are they trying to also tap into something like the Robin Hood myths?
11:39 Speaker 03 The most famous example is probably in 1450, where there's a Rising in Kent, and one of the leaders of the Rising actually calls himself Robin Hood. So there is a very clear link. I mean, the problem is that Robert, or the diminutive form, Robin, is a very common name in medieval England. One interesting link of a name with Robin Hood was found by Andrew Ayton. In the Isle of Wight in 1338, there's a list of soldiers in the garrison in the Isle of Wight. There's 25 men called Robert, but as it's in Latin, 24 of them are called Robertus. But one man whose surname was Hood, he's referred to in the documents as Robin Hood. It doesn't mean that he was actually Robin Hood the outlaw, probably the
12:24 Speaker 03 clerk or the archer concerned was probably having a laugh. But it does imply, again, that there is a knowledge by 1338 of the legend.
12:34 Matt Lewis? Yeah, and then it means something enough for people to be given that kind of nickname, or to have it attached to them, either voluntarily, or perhaps as a joke at their expense. But it must have meant something by that point to have been in use.
12:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, it implies a familiarity with stories about the outlaw, yeah.
12:51 Matt Lewis? Yeah. So could you talk us through some of the earliest surviving medieval manuscript ballads of Robin Hood? When do they come into existence? And what kind of stories do they tell us?
13:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've mentioned that probably the legend might be in existence by 1262. In 1377, in the very famous medieval poem, Piers Plowman, by William Langland. There's a character called Sloth, he represents the sin of Sloth, and he's a priest. And it's said that he doesn't know the Lord's Prayer, the Paternoster, but he does know the rhymes of Robin Hood. So this is the first explicit reference to rhymes of Robin Hood. The problem is then that the earliest stories, actual stories we've got of Robin Hood are mid 15th century onwards. So there's a very long gap between the legend being in existence, let's say in the mid 13th century, and the actual surviving stories, which are mid 15th century.
13:46 Speaker 03 There are three definite medieval stories of Robin Hood. They're called ballads, but they weren't necessarily sung. They could have been chanted or recited. One of them, Robin Hood and the Monk, it refers to itself as a talking. So it's quite likely that these weren't literally sung. There are references to songs of Robin Hood, but song in Middle English could also mean a poem. And so these ballads are in verse, poetic form. So the three medieval ballads, there's Robin Hood and the Monk, which is a story of how Robin Hood goes to Nottingham. He's recognised by a monk as the outlaw, and he's captured by the Sheriff of Nottingham,
14:29 Speaker 03 and eventually Little John comes to his rescue. The second one is Robin Hood and the Potter, which again is probably late 15th century. It's a story of how Robin disguises himself as a potter. He goes to Nottingham, he ends up having dinner with the Sheriff of Nottingham and his wife. He lures the sheriff into the greenwood, but eventually, out of love for the sheriff's wife, he sends the sheriff back to Nottingham. He sends him packing, and the sheriff is greeted by the mocking laughter of his wife. So it's a story there of how the sheriff is humiliated. The most famous one is called The Jest of Robin Hood. It doesn't actually survive as a manuscript. There are various printed editions from the 1490s onwards.
15:15 Speaker 03 Through to the end of the 16th century. And it's quite a complicated story with a number of different plots and subplots. It's basically the story of how Robin comes to the help of a poor knight who's in debt to the wealthy abbot of Saint Mary's in York. Robin lends the knight the money so that the knight can repay the abbot. And the knight offers the Virgin Mary as a surety that he will repay the debt. Eventually, the knight is delayed and he can't repay the debt. But in the meantime, one of the monks of Saint Mary's Abbey turns up. And of course, Robin then takes the money off him and the Virgin Mary has provided Robin.
15:59 Speaker 03 She's been the surety for the debt. So there's one whole subplot about Robin, the knight and the abbot. There's another subplot about Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham. At one point, little John lures the sheriff into the greenwood. And they eventually allow him to go if he promises never to harm Robin and his men. But the sheriff then organizes an archery contest. And of course, it's supposed to be a trap for Robin and his men. Eventually, Robin returns to Nottingham and the Sheriff of Nottingham is killed. And then eventually, King Edward, we're not told which King Edward, turns up. And in order to find Robin, he has to disguise himself as a wealthy abbot himself. And eventually, his identity is revealed.
16:44 Speaker 03 Robin is pardoned. He goes off to the royal court. He doesn't like life at the royal court. And eventually, he returns to the greenwood and continues for another 20 years. And at the end of the jest, we're briefly referred to the death of Robin Hood. Where he goes to the priory of Kirklees, a nunnery. Where his kinswoman lets his blood and weakens him. Which allows him to be defeated by her lover, Sir Roger of Doncaster.
17:15 Speaker 03 Finally, there's three more ballads, but they all survive in a 17th century manuscript. There's, for instance, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. But it's a bit of a problem because they're seen as having 15th century origins, but they only exist in a mid 17th century form in the so-called Percy Folio. So we've got three definite medieval stories and three possible other ones.
17:40 Matt Lewis? It's interesting then that we kind of get these different versions of Robin Hood stories, which by the time they're being set down in sort of mid to late 15th century, have been in existence for a couple of hundred years or more, if we rely on the use of the name Robin Hood. And I guess that's suggestive of oral tradition, that there were probably lots of these stories of Robin Hood doing the rounds that eventually begin to be set down. So we have odd snippets of that kind of, that are captured and frozen in amber for us in those manuscripts. But there might well have been, do you think, lots and lots of other stories of Robin Hood doing the rounds for centuries in the medieval period?
18:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's very likely. For instance, I mentioned at the end of the jest of Robin Hood, there's a sort of allusion, a brief allusion to the death of Robin Hood. But it's just assumed that the audience already know about it, basically. And it's only because of the chance survival of the mid 17th century ballad of Robin Hood that we can actually see it. So it's likely that there were far more stories. I've mentioned these ballads of Robin Hood. The other form of existence of the legend is Robin Hood plays and games. So for instance, from around 1470, we've got a scripted drama called Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, probably linked with the Paston family, the Gentry family of Norfolk.
18:59 Speaker 03 And that tells a story of a bounty hunter who comes to look for Robin Hood. It's rather like the story of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. So another way that people would have been familiar with Robin Hood isn't just these ballads, but also with dramas. And linked with the drama are games of Robin Hood, in a way like Robin Hood Revels. And the earliest existence of these is fourteen twenty seven. By the late fifteenth century, we've got lots of parish churchwardens accounts, which mention they put on church ales, church games to raise money. And Robin Hood is often part of these games. And probably there would have been a procession, there would have been perhaps sporting contests, there would have been a feast.
19:43 Speaker 03 So people would have been familiar with Robin Hood through this way as well.
19:47 Matt Lewis? It's fascinating. I was going to ask about that connection to the church. So the church is willing to use some of these revels and these plays and these games as a way to raise money, to build churches, to maintain churches and things like that. Do they struggle with any idea that this is sort of morally dubious, that you're tapping into the idea of this outlawed criminal and celebrating him? Does the church have an attitude to Robin Hood? Is I guess what I'm asking.
20:10 Speaker 03 It's true. Lots of things about the medieval churches, they don't have a single attitude to anything. There's lots of different potentials. In the ballads, Robin himself is quite devout. And I mentioned that he's devoted to the Virgin Mary. We're told he won't attack any company, which includes women, because of his devotion to the Virgin Mary. And we're told at various points when he's in danger that the Virgin Mary comes to his aid. So he himself is quite sort of orthodox in his devotion. Secondly, as I've said, it's quite normal for Robin Hood to be used as a parish fundraiser. Particularly, people have argued that when there's a particular church building project,
20:50 Speaker 03 let's say a new chapel or whatever, that then they turn to Robin Hood, that he's successful as a fundraiser. On the other hand, there are the more moralistic writers, I've mentioned Langland already, who disapproves of this priest who knows the stories of Robin Hood, even though he doesn't know the Lord's Prayer. And from the fifteenth century, there's a number of sermon writers, churchmen, who disapprove of Robin Hood. They say, why do people listen to stories of Robin Hood? They should be listening to stories from the Bible or about saints. And he's associated with drunkenness, with lechery. So there's a whole range of different attitudes. Even Lollard writers in the early 15th century, Lollards are sort
21:35 Speaker 03 of early Protestants, they too took the same attitude to Robin Hood. And in the early 16th century, early Protestant writers also adopt this. They say, why does the church allow people to hear stories of Robin Hood in English, and yet they won't allow people to have access to the Bible in English? So Robin Hood could be used for lots of different purposes.
21:58 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating facet of his story. Because I was going to ask as well, kind of, what do we know about who these stories are being created and eventually written down for? What are they meant to tell an audience? What is an audience meant to get from these stories?
22:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, this has been a controversial issue amongst historians and literary scholars. But basically, there's two ways of looking at who the ballads were aimed at and what their social message is. One way is to look at the content of the ballads and then try to deduce who would have found it attractive. So, for instance, one of the very early interpretations of Robin Hood was that Robin Hood was a sort of peasant hero. He was linked to peasant resistance to landlords, to the peasants revolt of 1381. And so, for instance, his hostility to the Sheriff of Nottingham was said to be linked to the sheriff's role in forcing
22:56 Speaker 03 peasants to pay rents, to pay their labour services to their lords. Now, the problem is that virtually every class in medieval England seems to have found sheriffs to be rather unpopular. There are constant complaints about them. I mentioned the Pastons, John Paston, he was actually involved in a fight with the local sheriff. One of the sheriff's men stabbed him at one point. He was outlawed. Three years later, again, he appeared in the sheriff's court. So it's hard to say that it's particularly aimed at peasants.
23:28 Matt Lewis? But interesting then that the Pastons would become linked to a version of a Robin Hood story, when they've kind of got almost their own little Robin Hood story going on of resistance and issues with the sheriff. And it almost looks like they could be trying to justify their own relationship with the sheriff, that the sheriff is the bad guy.
23:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've mentioned the play Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, which seems to be owned by the Pastons. There's a famous letter from 1473 where John Paston refers to one of his servants who's left his service. And he says that his servant has left him and gone into Barnsdale. Barnsdale was one of the places associated with Robin Hood. So it's quite hard to pin down the ideology of the ballads as being linked to any one class. For instance, people have said, oh, King Edward in The Jest of Robin Hood, he's probably supposed to be Edward III. And Edward III was a great defender of English trade and industry. So this would have been popular with merchants, which perhaps it's true.
24:27 Speaker 03 But the king in the ballad, The Jest of Robin Hood, he doesn't do anything in relation to trade and industry. So I think lots of these attempts to link it to a particular social group have been challenged by historians and literary scholars. And the emphasis much more now is on how lots of different social groups found it attractive. So if we look at the actual people we know who are linked with Robin Hood, we find Robin Hood at the Royal Court, the Court of Henry VIII in the early 16th century. We can find the Prior of Worcester paying people to do plays of Robin Hood. I've mentioned the manuscript of Robin Hood and the Monk. That was actually owned by a mid 15th century cleric, Gilbert Pilkington.
25:12 Speaker 03 And then Robin Hood is put on in towns like Exeter, Shrewsbury, the sink ports. We find him in small villages. Lots of different groups all seem to have found something attractive about Robin Hood.
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27:12 Speaker 02 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at G O O dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini. That's G O O dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini.
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29:05 Matt Lewis? I guess it's easy for us to think of him being this anti-establishment figure, but it's clear that the establishment were equally happy to use him. You know, if he's appearing in the courts, he's being used by the church, he's being used by parish churches and towns. He's clearly not really that kind of anti-establishment figure that we might have thought of him as.
29:23 Speaker 03 Problem is, the pastors part of the establishment, they're gentry, they're landlords, but they themselves might have problems with authority. I think Robin often becomes associated with sort of fellowship, with freedom, with abundance, with resistance to injustice. Well, lots of different classes and groups might find that attractive. As early as 1357, there's an interesting incident. It's not specifically Robin Hood, but in 1357, the French king had been captured after the Battle of Poitiers. He's brought to England. En route to London, the king lays on a sort of drama in which yeomen dressed in green appear and they play out the role of outlaws. The King of France is a bit surprised by this. He says, what's going on?
30:08 Speaker 03 And it's explained, oh, these are sort of yeomen of the forest here. And so even the royal court itself seems to have adopted these stories. Of course, in the jest of Robin Hood, Robin is said to be loyal to the king. He says, I love no man so much as the king. Although even at the end of the ballad, he ends up defying the king. He leaves the royal court and goes back to a life of crime in the Greenwood.
30:32 Matt Lewis? Yeah, I was going to come back a little bit to kind of when Robin Hood might have generally been considered, but I wanted to just touch on the supporting cast. We've mentioned a couple of names that people will associate with the Robin Hood legend, particularly we mentioned the Sheriff of Nottingham, we've mentioned Little John. I wondered when they become attached to the stories of Robin Hood. So how many of those familiar figures like Little John are there from the beginning and how many kind of get tacked on over the centuries that follow?
31:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, Little John is certainly very prominent in the stories. We're told in The Jester Robin Hood that Robin Hood had 140 outlaws. It's very unlikely that any robber gang would be 140 strong. But anyway, he's supposed to have 140 outlaws. Various of them are named. There's Little John, we've mentioned already. There's a character called William Scavilock, who eventually in the later stories becomes Will Scarlet. There's a character called Gilbert of the White Hand, who doesn't, probably not so familiar to modern people. William Scavilock, Gilbert of the White Hand, probably the two most famous ones are Maid Marian and Friar
31:38 Speaker 03 Tuck. In 1417, there was an actual real life robber called Friar Tuck in Surrey and Sussex. And it's not clear if Friar Tuck was already part of the Robin Hood story, whether this character had taken the name because he was part of the Robin Hood legend. Certainly by the time of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, the play of 1470, Friar Tuck is part of that story. And then in, it seems likely that the Friar really becomes part of the legend through these Robin Hood plays and games. We have references to the Friars and eventually to Friar Tuck in these parish revels of the early 16th century.
32:21 Speaker 03 Maid Marian is interesting. From the late 12th century in France, there were stories of these rustic lovers, Robin and Marian, but they're nothing to do with the outlaws. They're shepherds and peasants. John Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer here in the 1370s, he refers to Robin and Marian, but again, they're rustic lovers. They're not actually outlaws.
32:45 Speaker 03 The earliest reference to Maid Marian comes in 1509 in one of these Robin Hood revels. There's payment for the costume of Maid Marian in the Kingston churchwardens' accounts. And it then seems that she becomes central to the legend. It's only in the 17th century that there's a ballad of Robin and Marian. And really, she's only become central to the Robin Hood legend in the 19th century in novels, particularly in the 20th century in the films of Robin Hood. In the medieval stories themselves, there's no mention of Maid Marian. Robin's only devotion is to the Virgin Mary rather than to Maid Marian.
33:29 Speaker 03 As Catherine Lewis has shown, women have quite a minor role in the ballads. There's the poor knight in the jest, his wife comes to his rescue at one point. She goes to fetch Robin when the knight's captured by the sheriff. There's the sheriff's wife in Robin Hood and the potter. And then there's the treacherous priress of Kirkleys in The Death of Robin Hood. So this romance element is a later addition to the story.
33:55 Matt Lewis? But fascinating that they might have picked up on an existing sort of romantic older story about characters named Robin and Marian. And so if you're looking for a love interest for Robin, is Marian a good fit? Because somewhere in the medieval consciousness and a little bit later, there is a connection between a Robin and a Marian.
34:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, in a way that I think the names are familiar, but the stories about them were very different.
34:17 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah. Is the Sheriff of Nottingham always Robin's enemy? Is it specifically Nottingham and its sheriff that is always his main enemy?
34:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, in nearly all of the ballads, I mean, we think of Robin Hood as robbing from the rich to give to the poor. In some of the stories, he does that, particularly the jest where he comes to the aid of the poor knight. But in lots of the stories, the story is actually about the hostility between Robin and the Sheriff of Nottingham, rather than Robin coming to the aid of poor people. This hostility is never explained. Often in stories about outlaws, at the beginning of the story, the outlaw will suffer an injustice. And this then makes us sympathise with him, even though he might become a criminal, a robber, even a murderer, we're on his side because he's suffered an injustice. But in the Robin Hood stories, it's simply taken as a given that he's an outlaw.
35:10 Speaker 03 It's never really explained why he's an outlaw. And the hostility to the sheriff is never explained. There's a problem in the stories in that we now associate Robin with Nottingham and with Sherwood Forest. But in lots of the early stories, particularly the jest, Robin is said to be based in Barnsdale in the west riding of Yorkshire. And certainly the author of the jest seems to have a knowledge of the local geography. He refers to various places in Barnsdale. I've mentioned in fourteen twenty two, there was a stone called Robin Hood's Stone in Barnsdale. It's this area near Pontefract and Doncaster. By thirteen oh six, it was famous as a haunt of robbers.
35:54 Speaker 03 So in the stories, Robin is sometimes based in Sherwood Forest, as Robin Hood and the Monk, sometimes in Barnsdale. And sometimes he seems to flit between the two different places. One problem is that even when he's based in Barnsdale, which is in Yorkshire, his enemy is the Sheriff of Nottingham rather than the Sheriff of York. So this might perhaps explain different strands of the story which predate the surviving forms of the ballads.
36:23 Matt Lewis? Yeah, and I wonder how much there's a temptation for those telling the stories in particular to kind of localize it. You know, everyone wants a local hero or something that they can recognize. So does Robin move around to fit in with sort of local concerns? And is he sort of a local hero wherever you happen to live?
36:43 Speaker 03 Not really, because he's only really linked with these two places, Barnsdale and Sherwood. But what's interesting is that Robin Hood seems to be popular all over the country. Particularly these Robin Hood surnames are found in the south of England. The Robin Hood plays and games, they seem to be particularly based in the south of England, particularly southwest and in the Thames Valley as well. Although we had more evidence for the south than for the north. It's been suggested that southern audiences might have seen these stories as being about the sort of wild and woolly north, a sort of place of criminality and outlaws. So even though Robin isn't specifically linked with these other places, he is found,
37:26 Speaker 03 the legend and references to the legend that are found all over the country. I mentioned the Prior of Worcester in the South West, even further in Devon, that various parishes have these Robin Hood games, in East Anglia, the Pastons. So he does seem to be a national figure.
37:44 Matt Lewis? And I guess alongside the question of where Robin Hood might be, is the question of when Robin Hood might be. We tend to associate him now in the more modern legends with the reign of Richard I, particularly while he's away on crusade and issues around King John. You mentioned that we get a non-specific King Edward. Do we get any sense of when the medieval setting was for Robin Hood in terms of his time, or did he move around, or did it not matter what time he existed in?
38:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, most of these stories are not specific to, in terms of that period in which the stories are located. In the jest, we've got this unspecified King Edward. Well, that could be Edward I, II or III, between 1272, 1377. It's even been suggested that it's a reference to Edward IV in the 15th century. In Robin Hood and the Monk, there is a king, but we're not even told his name. And in the other stories, it's not really specific historically. There were various attempts by medieval writers to link him with a particular historical period. In the 1480s, there's a document called the Rouse Roll, which is a history of the Earls of Warwick. And there's a mention of the Earl of Warwick from 1298 to 1315.
38:59 Speaker 03 And Rouse suggested that this was the time when Robin Hood was in existence. We've got a chronicle in England from the 1460s. This refers to Robin Hood in the 1290s.
39:13 Speaker 03 So it's a very different period from the one we associate with Richard and the Lionheart. There's three Scottish writers and they all see Robin as a genuine historical figure, but none of them can agree on when Robin was. The first one is Andrew Winton. He links Robin with the early 1280s. He's writing in the 1420s. About 20 years later, Walter Bower, he said Robin and Little John were followers of Simon de Montfort, the Baronial leader. And after de Montfort's defeat, his followers become the disinherited. And so Bower sees Robin and Little John as being amongst the disinherited.
39:55 Speaker 03 Finally, around 1500, the Scottish scholar John Major or John Mayer, he locates Robin for the first time at the time of the transition from Richard I to King John in that period, around the later 1190s, early 13th century. And after that date, it becomes much more standard to link Robin with Richard I's absence on crusade. In Anthony Mundis' plays about Robin Hood in the late 16th century, it's this period which becomes the period for Robin Hood. So we now associate Robin with Richard the Lionheart. The actual medieval ballads make no such connection.
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42:15 Matt Lewis? Fascinating that he can move across such a broad span of time, sort of almost from the reign of Richard I all the way through the 13th century and Simon de Montfort into one of the three Edwards that follows, potentially stretching even to Edward IV. And it almost doesn't seem to matter to the audience precisely when he is. It seems like he fits into moments almost of crisis. So you've got a king absent on crusade, the transition to John, who will lead on to Magna Carta, Simon de Montfort and his opposition to Henry III, Edward I, you've got the Scottish Wars, Edward II, obviously the problems that come along with Edward II, and Edward IV, you know, Wars of the Roses. It almost seems like he fits into
42:55 Matt Lewis? moments of national crisis. Is that relevant at all? Is he telling a story about a country in crisis?
43:03 Speaker 03 No, I don't think that it's linked to those specific types of events. The stories are much, hit away, much more moralistic. They're quite vague. They're about, lots of them, the opposition between Robin and the sheriff. So the theme is, as Stephen Knight has argued, resistance to wrongful authority. At the end of the jest, it's not just even wrongful authority, it's resistance to authority as Richard defies the king and goes back to the Creme Wood. And in a sense, I think if they were just about one particular period, perhaps they wouldn't be so flexible. They wouldn't appeal to such different audiences across centuries. Yeah, so there's not really a historical Robin Hood in the early ballads.
43:48 Speaker 03 Later on, of course, it becomes standard to link him with the king's absence in the crusade, things like Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and so on.
43:56 Matt Lewis? What then does the emergence of these Robin Hood stories, their popularity that leads to them being written down in several cases? And also their malleability, the way that they change across time and place and subject matter. What does that tell us about the audiences that they're created for? What are they interested in? What are they concerned by? What are they entertained by?
44:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've mentioned that the audience seems to be very varied socially. An interesting way of thinking about the nature of Robin Hood is Eric Hobbs' idea of the social bandit. Hobbs' born basically created the study of banditry as an academic subject. And he came up with the idea of the social bandit. And the social bandit isn't just a criminal who might go around killing or robbing. They're a criminal who is in some way admired by the community. They might be supported by the community or they might see themselves as robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, even in some cases. Their deeds might be celebrated in song and stories.
45:00 Speaker 03 Characters like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, often the stories that were told about them were very different from the realities or romanticised stories about them coming to the aid of poor widows or this kind of thing. And Hobbs' born distinguished three types of social bandit. One, he calls the Avenger. And the Avenger is often very sadistic. What you admire about the Avenger is the power and the violence of them. The stories about Brazilian Avengers who make their victims dance with a cactus or eat a barrel of soul, this kind of thing. Secondly, this what Hobbs' born calls the Hayduke. So it's a Balkan word, meaning a robber.
45:41 Speaker 03 And what people admire about the robber is that they've chosen a life of robbery over a life of poverty. But thirdly, the main type of social bandit, always the most popular, is the so-called noble robber. And they're not necessarily noble in their birth, because in fact we're told Robin Hood in the medieval stories wasn't a nobleman, he was a yeoman. They're noble in their deeds. So for instance, they right wrongs, as Robin does with the poor knight, or they rob from the rich and give to the poor. We're told in the jest of Robin Hood, Robin did poor men much good. They're very skilled, marshally, they're great archers, great swordsmen.
46:26 Speaker 03 They're basically invulnerable. In Robin Hood and the Monk, for instance, Robin kills twelve people before he's eventually captured. He's only captured because his sword breaks in two. Often they're masters of disguise, like when Robin Hood disguises himself as a potter and tricks the Sheriff of Nottingham. So in lots of these ways, we admire them. Their enemies are often not the central authority, the king or the emperor, but some local figure like the clergy, like the abbot of St Mary's, the Sheriff of Nottingham. So although Robin, or the social bandit, might be a criminal, he's not actually a traitor. Eventually, at the end of these stories, the social bandit, the noble robber, is often reintegrated back into society.
47:11 Speaker 03 As Robin is when he's pardoned by the king at the end of the jest. Alternatively, as also happens at the end of the jest, the bandit can be killed, but he's only ever killed by treachery. In Robin's case, he's weakened by having his blood let, and even then, he dies a brave death. He manages to kill Sir Roger, or Red Roger, as he's also called, before he himself dies. So these kind of stories, they seem to exist in lots of different societies, across lots of different places all over the world, right from antiquity through to the modern day. We still find stories of Robin Hood interesting, appealing even now. So I think it's this, in a sense, a very general attraction.
47:56 Speaker 03 In the 18th century, there were stories about pirate ships and pirate communities. And in a sense, the pirates were romanticised. They were said to sort of represent liberty, equality, fraternity, these 18th century ideals. So Robin Hood, he represents fellowship, freedom, abundance. It's sort of utopian vision of life in the Greenwood, free of responsibility, free of labour, defying authority. Who wouldn't find that attractive?
48:25 Matt Lewis? Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting when you talk about the noble criminal and not necessarily coming from a socially noble background, because again, we have this weird tag on to Robin's story about being Earl of Loxley or potentially Earl of Loxley. So there is at some points an effort to make him a nobleman. But actually, the more attractive part of the story is that he's noble despite not being born a nobleman in the medieval mind.
48:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, from the 16th century, Robin becomes sort of gentrified or he's made into a nobleman. Often he's said to be the Earl of Huntington, as in those Antony Monday plays I mentioned in the late 16th century. In the medieval stories, they always insist that Robin and the other members of his band, the Merry Men, are yeoman. As Louisa Ferrughi has shown, yeoman means a lot of different things in the Middle Ages. In the context of the stories of Robin Hood, it seems to mean someone who is respectable and virtuous and admirable. And yet who isn't actually part of the of the upper class or of the nobility.
49:29 Speaker 03 We're told that Robin is the most courteous of outlaws and there's quite a lot of emphasis on his courtesy. Now, in lots of medieval stories, courtesy was associated with the nobility. In fact, the very word courtesy was linked with the court. Because at the court, noblemen will want to impress the other noblemen by their virtue. They'll want to emulate their peers and so on.
49:56 Speaker 03 Courtesy could be seen as specifically a noble virtue. What's interesting is that Robin has lots of the attributes of courtesy. Now courtesy in the Middle Ages had two senses. One is courtesy as we think of it, meaning good manners. So Robin, for instance, knows to doff his hood when he meets the knight. He always washes his hands before they have the feast, which was a great ritual part of medieval feasting. So he has these good manners. But in the Middle Ages, courtesy was seen as the basis of virtue itself. All the virtues were embodied in courtesy. So for instance, when the knight goes to the abbot of Saint Mary's, he begs for mercy.
50:40 Speaker 03 He says, will you give me longer to repay my debt? And he says, will you be courteous to me? And similarly, when the knight eventually turns up to repay Robin, although Robin's already been repaid by the Virgin Mary. He says, I'm going to repay you for the courtesy you showed me in giving me the money to repay the abbot. So courtesy has got this wider moral sense. So Robin is courteous in both ways. And there's a great insistence then that he can be courteous, even though he's not actually part of an ability.
51:13 Matt Lewis? How close do you think we can get to understanding what Robin Hood really meant to the medieval mind? Because he seems like he's, what I'm getting from what we've been discussing is that he's very much a bucket character. He's like a lucky dip, you know, you can almost take whatever you want from the story of Robin Hood. He can be the noble criminal. He can be the rough and ready outlaw. He can be this pious man who is doing God's work. He has an enemy in authority, but it's almost entirely the Sheriff of Nottingham for, as you said, unspecified reasons. He's courteous. He has this band of men around him. He represents resistance to authority. But he's not always kind of cruel and brutal and that kind of thing. So is he just someone that you can draw almost anything that you want from a story of Robin Hood?
51:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, Robin is very flexible. I mean, we're most familiar with this with how he varies over time. For instance, how he becomes a nobleman, or how Maid Marian becomes part of the story, or how, you know, the story of Richard the First and the bad Prince John, so on, that these different aspects are introduced over the time. But what's interesting is that even in the medieval period, Robin's got these different facets. So for instance, in the story Robin and Guy of Gisborne, it's quite a violent, dark story, as Robin takes his revenge on this bounty hunter. On the other hand, in Robin Hood and the Potter, it's a funny story. Robin becomes there the trickster. In lots of the stories, it's
52:40 Speaker 03 just Robin versus the sheriff. In the Jest of Robin Hood, it's much more about Robin as the noble robber who right wrongs and who rob from the rich, gives to the poor. So he means lots of different things. We've mentioned as well the Revels there, where he becomes this sort of a character in the Revels. Interestingly, in the Revels, although there's mentions of Friar Tuck, Little John, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, there's no reference to the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Revels before 1572. So it seems there that it's a more sort of, it's the May games Robin Hood, the pleasant Robin Hood, rather than the anti-authority or violent Robin Hood. So it seems like Robin, well, he becomes
53:25 Speaker 03 all things to all people, as Pollard put it.
53:28 Matt Lewis? Yeah, and so there's clearly something in his story, or the various stories that exist of him, that really appeals to people at a really basic level, across time and across societal structures and all of those kinds of things. Robin Hood can mean something to anybody.
53:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, he even is perhaps associated with stories for young people. One of the very early references to Robin Hood rhymes we've got is from the early 15th century, a manuscript that's now in Lincoln, which seems to be a schoolboy translation exercise from Latin into, well, from English, rather, into Latin. There's four lines about Robin Hood there. One of the things that the moralists complained about was that stories of Robin Hood corrupt the youth, these stories of someone who's a robber, disloyal to the king, who's violent. So it seems that everybody had to find something in Robin Hood.
54:27 Speaker 03 I mentioned the jest of Robin Hood, the printed editions. The first owner that we know of this is a woman called Aldry Holman, late 16th century. So it seems it could be female audience for Robin Hood as well. So in a sense, because they're quite vague, the stories, they're about injustice, they're about resistance to authority. In a sense, anyone can identify with those ideals.
54:52 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's been absolutely fascinating to try and get a little bit closer to the origins of the legends and the stories about Robin Hood and interesting to discover just how malleable he is and how wide and broad his appeal across the centuries has been. And probably how unfamiliar a medieval audience would be with what we would say is the legend of Robin Hood today. It's obviously changed and maybe will continue to change over time, but seems to appeal to something very basic in all of us as human beings. We have an interest in some aspect of the story. It's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much for joining us, Stephen.
55:26 Speaker 03 Right, thanks a lot.
55:28 Matt Lewis? If you're keen to find out more, you can get the book Stephen has edited, Historians on Robin Hood now. We've got episodes in our back catalogue too, on the discovery of what amounts to a medieval stand-up routine and an episode on Carlisle Castle called Defending a Castle, that has a section on a story not dissimilar to Robin Hood, which we explore the meanings of. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries
56:13 Matt Lewis? with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free. Sign up now at historyhit.com/subscribe. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.
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