History Cupboard #2 – 10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Know About Robin Hood
I’ve started a new YouTube channel, with the help of my very clever daughter Emma, 15, and this is the second short video that we have put up. It is called 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Robin Hood, and it is based on some old blogs I wrote back in the day. I posted it because I am writing another Robin Hood novel at the moment, with the working title of Robin Hood and the Heretic Prince (although that may change). It is about Robin and Alan, et al, going down to join in the Albigensian Crusade. Anyway here is the YouTube video of the 10 Things. I hope you enjoy it. Don’t forget to “like and subscribe”, as they say.
In case you prefer to read the list of 10 Things, here they are written out in full:
1 Outlaw of the pipe rolls
The very first mention of Robin Hood in history comes in the pipe rolls, the financial records of medieval local governments. A character called “Rob Hod” appears in the 1226-27 pipe rolls of the York Assizes, who has goods worth 32 shilling and 6 pence confiscated and who becomes a fugitive. The crime he is accused of is not recorded. He appears again in the rolls the very next year as “Hobbehod” and is still apparently an outlaw.
2 Smooth criminals
Between 1261 and 1300 there are eight malefactors called “Rabanhod” recorded in various local pipe rolls from Berkshire to Yorkshire. And still more in later centuries. It seems that, after the middle of the 13th century, criminals who came before the courts may have adopted the name Robin Hood to add a bit of glamour to their crimes. This means the stories about the legendary hero were circulating, probably sung in ale-houses, from the 1250s onwards.
3 Robber of the Woods
The name may even have been a sort of joke – or an amusing play on words. Robert pronounced in a French accent could be Robber. In some northern English medieval dialects the words “Hood” and “Wood” are pronounced exactly the same. So Robin Hood might simply mean the Robber of the Woods, ie, an outlaw.
4 Summer time and the stealing is easy
Being an outlaw might have been a seasonal occupation. It the early ballads it is always summer in the Greenwood, never winter. In summer the foliage hides you, facilitating ambushes of unwary travellers, and sleeping rough is feasible. There is evidence to suggest outlaws went home or stayed with friends or relatives in the freezing winter.
5 Was he from Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire?
Sherwood Forest was huge. It was 100,000 acres, extending from the town of Nottingham to the River Meden. In those days a “forest” was an administrative area owned by the King where special laws applied – it was his hunting preserve and not necessarily an area of woodland as we use the term today. There would be fields, meadows, commons, villages, etc in a “forest”. The northern tip of Sherwood was only thirty miles from Barnsdale, so Robin Hood could easily have operated in both areas. In 1194, King Richard chased a deer from Sherwood to Barnsdale. The Yorkshire/Nottinghamshire debatedoesn’t make much sense when you can travel between the two in one day.
6 Or a Man of Kent?
Robin Hood may have been from Kent. I say this as a man who grew up and still lives in Kent (and with my tongue slightly in my cheek). Some historians (eg, Sean McGlynn) suggest the Robin Hood legend may have been based on a real individual called Willikin of the Weald. He was a yeoman who raised a force of archers in the then thickly wooded Weald of Kent to fight off the invading French army of Prince Louis (son of Philip II of France) in 1216 (See my novel The Death of Robin Hood).
7 Don’t call him a peasant
Robin Hood was middle class. In the early ballads, Robin Hood is a yeoman – not the Earl of Locksley or Huntingdon. It was the Tudors who ennobled him in the 16th century. But as a yeoman, Robin is not particularly lowly: until 1300, the term is used, along with armiger and esquire, to describe the broad mass of lesser landowners. The Victorians invented the Saxon vs Norman trope, the peasants vs the aristocrats, which was continued into the 20th century.
8 Holier than thou
Actually, Robin Hood supports the status quo. The Robin Hood of the early ballads is not a revolutionary. He is anti-corruption, but in no sense does he want to change the social order, ordained by Almighty God. He did not think the peasants were being exploited, but believed each class must discharge its duties for the common good. He is also a devout worshipper of the Virgin Mary. He isn’t against the Christian Church – just corrupt and greedy churchmen.
9 Diversity, 16th-century style
Maid Marion may have been black originally. The name Maid Marion may have originated as Murrian – meaning the Moorish one. Marion comes late to the Robin Hood legends – she’s French – appearing as a regular character in the English May games only in the 1500s. These games featured Morris (Moorish) dancing and Marion was a bawdy, pantomime figure, a sort of Widow Twankey, played by a man. And she was associated with Friar Tuck, not Robin.
10 And call off Christmas!
There was no sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood’s time. The office of sheriff of the town of Nottingham was created in the 15th century (in 1449). The royal official in charge of tax collection (as well as oppressing the peasants and calling off Christmas) in the 12th and 13th centuries would have been properly titled the sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests.
My first Robin Hood book is Outlaw, which kicks off the Outlaw Chronicles series. More recently, I have self-published Robin Hood and the Caliph’s Gold, and Robin Hood and the Castle of Bones. The Robin Hood book I’m writing just now, the Heretic Prince, will be out in the spring of 2025.