Now Robin wondered at this, and said to Sir Richard:
“Surely thou must have been made a knight against thy will, if thou art so poor; or else thou hast been a bad husbandman, or a usurer, of hast done some evil or other.”
But the knight replied:
“I am none of these. My ancestors have been knights before me for a hundred years. But it has often happened that a knight has been disgraced through no fault of his own. Two years ago, Robin, I could spend four hundred pounds yearly, and my neighbors will bear me witness of this. But now, alas! it has come to pass that I have no property whatsoever.”
“And in what manner,” asked Robin, “didst thou lose thy riches?”
Then Sir Richard told Robin how his son had slain a knight in a joust, and how to save him he had put his lands in pawn to a rich abbot whose abbey was near at hand. The sum he had to pay to redeem them was four hundred pounds, and since he could not pay it, there was nothing left for him to do but to forfeit his lands and go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For the men who had boasted of their friendship towards him when he was rich had now deserted him, so that he could find no one who was now willing to lend him any money.
Robin and his followers were moved to great pity by this tale, and Robin sent Little John to his treasury to fetch four hundred pounds to give to the knight. Then Little John cried:
“Master, his apparel is full thin. Ye must give the knight a suit of clothes, for ye have scarlet and green-colored cloth in plenty, and there is no merchant in merry England so rich as ye are!”
“Give him three yards of each color,” said Robin, “and see you measure it fairly.”