But securely established as Robin Hood is in popular esteem, his historical position is by no means well ascertained, and his actual existence has been a subject of shrewd doubt and discussion. "A tale of Robin Hood"[1] is an old proverb for the idlest of stories, yet all the materials at our command for making up an opinion on these questions are precisely of this description. They consist, that is to say, in a few ballads of unknown antiquity. These ballads, or others like them, are clearly the authority upon which the statements of the earlier chroniclers who take notice of Robin Hood are founded. They are also, to all appearances, the original source of the numerous and widespread traditions concerning him; which, unless the contrary can be shown, must be regarded, after what we have observed in similar cases, as having been suggested by the very legends to which, in the vulgar belief, they afford an irresistible confirmation.
Various periods, ranging from the time of Richard the First to near the end of the reign of Edward the Second, have been selected by different writers as the age of Robin Hood; but (excepting always the most ancient ballads, which may possibly be placed within these limits) no mention whatever is made of him in literature before the latter half of the reign of Edward the Third. "Rhymes of Robin Hood"[2] are then spoken of by the author of Piers Ploughman, (assigned to about 1362,) as better known to idle fellows than pious songs, and from the manner of the allusion it is a just inference that such rhymes were at that time no novelties. The next notice is in Wyntown's Scottish Chronicle, written about 1420, where the following lines occur—without any connection, and in the form of an entry—under the year 1283.
"Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude
Waythmen ware commendyd gude:
In Yngilwode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this time thare trawale."[3]
At last we encounter Robin Hood in what may be called history; first of all in a passage of the Scotichronicon, often quoted, and highly curious as containing the earliest theory upon this subject. The Scotichronicon was written partly by Fordun, canon of Aberdeen, between 1377 and 1384, and partly by his pupil Bower, abbot of St. Columba, about 1450. Fordun has the character of a man of judgment and research, and any statement or opinion delivered by him would be entitled to respect. Of Bower, not so much can be said. He largely interpolated the work of his master, and sometimes with the absurdest fictions.[4] Among his interpolations,[5] and forming, it is important to observe, no part of the original text, is a passage translated as follows.[6] It is inserted immediately after Fordun's account of the defeat of Simon de Montfort, and the punishments inflicted on his adherents.
"At this time, (sc. 1266,) from the number of those who had been deprived of their estates, arose the celebrated bandit Robert Hood (with Little John and their accomplices) whose achievements the foolish vulgar delight to celebrate in comedies and tragedies, while the ballads upon his adventures sung by the jesters and minstrels are preferred to all others.
"Some things to his honor are also related, as appears from this. Once on a time, when, having incurred the anger of the king and the prince, he could hear mass nowhere but in Barnsdale, while he was devoutly occupied with the service, (for this was his wont, nor would he ever suffer it to be interrupted for the most pressing occasion,) he was surprised by a certain sheriff and officers of the king, who had often troubled him before, in the secret place in the woods where he was engaged in worship as aforesaid. Some of his men, who had taken the alarm, came to him and begged him to fly with all speed. This, out of reverence for the host, which he was then most devoutly adoring, he positively refused to do. But while the rest of his followers were trembling for their lives, Robert, confiding in him whom he worshipped, fell on his enemies with a few who chanced to be with him, and easily got the better of them; and having enriched himself with their plunder and ransom, he was led from that time forth to hold ministers of the church and masses in greater veneration than ever, mindful of the common saying that
"God hears the man who often hears the mass."
In another place Bower writes to the same effect: "In this year (1266) the dispossessed barons of England and the royalists were engaged in fierce hostilities. Among the former, Roger Mortimer occupied the Welsh marches, and John Daynil the Isle of Ely. Robert Hood was now living in outlawry among the woodland copses and thickets."[7]
Mair, a Scottish writer of the first quarter of the 16th century, the next historian who takes cognizance of our hero, and the only other that requires any attention, has a passage which may be considered in connection with the foregoing. In his Historia Majoris Brittaniæ, he remarks, under the reign of Richard the First: "About this time [1189-99], as I conjecture, the notorious robbers Robert Hood of England and Little John lurked in the woods, spoiling the goods only of rich men. They slew nobody but those who attacked them, or offered resistance in defence of their property. Robert maintained by his plunder a hundred archers, so skilful in fight that four hundred brave men feared to attack them. He suffered no woman to be maltreated, and never robbed the poor, but assisted them abundantly with the wealth which he took from abbots."
It appears then that contemporaneous history is absolutely silent concerning Robin Hood; that, excepting the casual allusion in Piers Ploughman, he is first mentioned by a rhyming chronicler, who wrote one hundred years after the latest date at which he can possibly be supposed to have lived, and then by two prose chroniclers, who wrote about one hundred and twenty-five years and two hundred years respectively after that date; and it is further manifest that all three of these chroniclers had no other authority for their statements than traditional tales similar to those which have come down to our day.[8] When, therefore, Thierry, relying upon these chronicles and kindred popular legends, unhesitatingly adopts the conjecture of Mair, and describes Robin Hood as the hero of the Saxon serfs, the chief of a troop of Saxon banditti that continued, even to the reign of Coeur de Lion, a determined resistance against the Norman invaders,[9] and when another able and plausible writer accepts and maintains, with equal confidence, the hypothesis of Bower, and exhibits the renowned outlaw as an adherent of Simon de Montfort, who, after the fatal battle of Evesham, kept up a vigorous guerilla warfare against the officers of the tyrant Henry the Third, and of his successor,[10] we must regard these representations which were conjectural three or four centuries ago, as conjectures still, and even as arbitrary conjectures, unless one or the other can be proved from the only authorities we have, the ballads, to have a peculiar intrinsic probability. That neither of them possesses this intrinsic probability may easily be shown, but first it will be advisable to notice another theory, which is more plausibly founded on internal evidence, and claims to be confirmed by documents of unimpeachable validity.