Item, i hatte for Robin Hoode, i hobihorse.
Item, Roben Hoodes sewtte.
Item, the fryers trusse in Roben Hoode.”
Malone’s Shak. II. ii. (Emen. & ad.)
[44] George a Greene and Wakefield’s pinner were one and the same person. The shoemaker of Bradford is anonymous.
[45] Which, by the way, was termed a hempen caudle. See the Second Part of K. H. VI., act iv. scene 7. Lord-Chancellor Jeffries, at the revolution, was treated much in the same manner. One day, during his confinement in the Tower, he received a barrel of oysters, upon which he observed to his keeper, “Well, you see, I have yet some friends left:” at the bottom of the barrel, however, he found a halter; which changed his countenance, and is even thought to have hastened his death.
[46] See the ballad of “The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield,” part ii. num. iii.
[47] Fitzwater confounds one man with another; Harold Harefoot was the son and successor of Canute the great.
[48] This tradition is referred to, and the inscription given, in Ray’s Itineraries, 1760, p. 153:—“We rode through a bushet or common called Rodwell-hake, two miles from Leeds, where (according to the vulgar tradition) was once found a stag, with a ring of brass about its neck, having this inscription:
When Julius Cæsar here was king,