“They haunted about Barnsdale forrest, Compton [r. Plompton] parke,[15] and such other places” (MS. Sloane).
“His principal residence,” says Fuller, “was in Shirewood forrest in this county [Notts], though he had another haunt (he is no fox that hath but one hole) near the sea in the North Riding in Yorkshire, where Robin Hood’s Bay still retaineth his name: not that he was any pirat, but a land-thief, who retreated to those unsuspected parts for his security” (Worthies of England, p. 320). {xxv}
In Thoroton’s Nottinghamshire, p. 505, is some account of the ancient and present state of Sherwood forest; but one looks in vain through that dry detail of land-owners for any particulars relating to our hero. “In anno domini 1194, King Richard the First, being a hunting in the forrest of Sherwood, did chase a hart out of the forrest of Sherwood into Barnesdale in Yorkshire, and because he could not there recover him, he made proclamation at Tickill in Yorkshire, and at divers other places there, that no person should kill, hurt, or chase the said hart, but that he might safely retorne into forrest againe, which hart was afterwards called a hart-royall proclaimed” (Manwood’s Forest Laws, 1598, p. 25, from “an auncient recorde” found by him in the tower of Nottingham Castle).[16]
(8) “Here he either found,” &c.] After being outlawed, Grafton tells us, “for a lewde shift, as his last refuge, [he] gathered together a companye of roysters and cutters, and practised robberyes and spoyling of the kinges subjects, and occupied and frequented the forestes or wild countries.” See also the following note.
(9) “Little John, William Scadlock, George a Green, pinder of Wakefield, Much a miller’s son, and a certain monk or frier named Tuck.”] Of these, the pre-eminence is incontestably due to Little John, whose name is almost constantly coupled with that of his gallant leader. “Robertus Hode & littill Johanne,” are mentioned together by Fordun as early as 1341; and later instances of the connection would be almost endless. After the words, “for debt became an {xxvi} outlaw,” the Sloane MS. adds: “then joyninge to him many stout fellowes of lyke disposition, amongst whom one called Little John was principal or next to him, they haunted about Barnsdale forrest,” &c. See Notes 39, 40.
With respect to Frier Tuck, “thogh some say he was an other kynd of religious man, for that the order of freyrs was not yet sprung up” (MS. Sloan.), yet as the Dominican friers (or friers preachers) came into England in the year 1221, upward of twenty years before the death of Robin Hood, and several orders of these religious had flourished abroad for some time, there does not seem much weight in that objection: nor, in fact, can one pay much regard to the term frier, as it seems to have been the common title given by the vulgar (more especially after the Reformation) to all the regular clergy, of which the friers were at once the lowest and most numerous. If Frier Tuck be the same person who, in one of the oldest songs, is called the curtail frier of Fountains-dale, he must necessarily have been one of the monks of that abbey, which was of the Cistercian order. However this may be, Frier Tuck is frequently noticed by old writers as one of the companions of Robin Hood, and as such was an essential character in the morris-dance (see Note [34]). He is thus mentioned by Skelton, laureat, in his “goodly interlude” of Magnificence, written about the year 1500, and with an evident allusion to some game or practice now totally forgotten and inexplicable:
“Another bade shave halfe my berde,
And boyes to the pylery gan me plucke,
And wolde have made me freer Tucke,
To preche oute of the pylery hole.”
In the year 1417, as Stow relates, “one, by his counterfeite name, called Frier Tucke, with manie other malefactors, committed many robberies in the counties of Surrey & Sussex, whereupon the king sent out his writs for their apprehension” (Annales, 1592).
George a Green is George o’ the green, meaning perhaps the town-green, in which the pound or pinfold stood of which he had the care. He has been particularly celebrated, and {xxvii} “As good as George a Green” is still a common saying.[17] Drayton, describing the progress of the river Calder, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, has the following lines:
“It chanc’d she in her course on ‘Kirkley’ cast her eye,
Where merry Robin Hood, that honest thief, doth lie;
Beholding fitly too before how Wakefield stood,
She doth not only think of lusty Robin Hood,
But of his merry man, the pindar of the town
Of Wakefield, George a Green, whose fames so far are blown
For their so valiant fight, that every freeman’s song
Can tell you of the same; quoth she, be talk’d on long,
For ye were merry lads, and those were merry days.”