Page 88 - All About History - Issue 09-14

The myths of Robin Hood

“ There are numerous accounts of outlaws
in the 13th and 14th centuries adopting

the name of Robin Hood and Little John”

Robin was embellished with details like so many angry that his would-be bride has been stolen from
layers of varnish. Word of the character had began him by an outlaw, pursues her in the second play
to spread beyond the counties of the midlands and and poisons her at Dunmow Priory.
in the late-15th century, he is referred to in plays The idea that Robin was a fallen noble and
written as far afield as Somerset and Reading. He some kind of love triangle existed between King
was well known even to the famous womanizing, John, Maid Marian and Robin still endures in
warmongering king of England, Henry VIII, and some stories today. But by introducing a lover and
his royal court. The young monarch’s idea of giving him blue blood, the Robin Hood of the
celebrating May Day involved walking into Queen 16th century makes the transition from a
Catherine of Aragon’s chambers with his nobles, brutal and often murderous outlaw
“apparelled in short cotes of Kentish Kendal, with in defiance of the monarchy to
hodes on their heddes, and hosen of the same, a more domesticated hero,
every one of them his bowe and arrowes, and a protagonist the ruling
a sworde and a bucklar, like outlawes, or Robyn classes could admire and
Hode’s men,” according to Hall’s Chronicle by relate to – someone with
Edward Hall, a 16th-century scholar. just cause against an
By the late-16th century, the Merry Men had evil ruler. His status as
acquired a friar, Robin had a love interest and he’d an outlaw had been
also gained nobility. Playwright Anthony Munday relegated to a trait that
wrote two plays on the outlaw, The Downfall of added an element of
Robert Earl of Huntington and The Death of Robert drama to the story,
Earl of Huntington, in which Robin (Robert) has rather than one that
clearly been lofted into high society. Or at least, defined it.
it was his position to lose: in the plays, Munday From the 16th
makes Robin an earl in the reign of Richard I century onward, with
who is disinherited by the king. Fleeing into the the advent of the printing
Greenwood, he is followed by the daughter of press, the story of Robin
Robert Fitzwalter, one of the leading barons who Hood becomes more refined
rallied against the king, where they fall in love and and much more familiar. Across
she changes her name to Maid Marian. King John, the next few centuries, the character Maid Marian being rescued by Robin Hood
and the stories would pick up traits

King John was a real person who raised taxes for
Richard’s foreign wars. Has history treated him unfairly?
King John was indeed a real person who lived at the same time Robin Hood
was purported to be in and around Nottinghamshire, shaking up the status
quo. By today’s standards, he was a decadent, warmongering, self-serving
tyrant who ruled over a turbulent period in British history. He is commonly
regarded as a cruel king but the truth of it is that he was a leader of his
generation. Him and his predecessors, the Angevin monarchs, operated with
relative impunity under the authority of divine majesty: the king was above the
law and could therefore do whatever pleased them. King John was a mercurial
chap with a penchant for electing men outside the ranks of his barons to the
royal court, favouring lesser nobles from the continent and spurning his own,
powerful English nobles closer to home, whom he eyed suspiciously for signs
of treachery. It was this, in part, that led to the signing of the Magna Carta,
the seminal charter that led to constitutional law in England. His barons were
sick of his arbitrary rule and insisted that, as a part of the Magna Carta, no free
man could be punished by any other law than the law of the land. Of course,
the Magna Carta never limited the king’s powers in practice and King John only
signed it to mollify his barons, but it remains the single most significant act of
his reign. But this would have been lost on Robin Hood, the common serfs and
farmers of these feudal times who as a general rule, would have feared the king
and hated likes of his Forest Law, which would have been mercilessly enforced.

88