The modern reader is familiar with the Robin Hood story’s setting in Sherwood Forest around the year 1190, while King Richard I was king, but away in the Crusades. Back in England, the villainous Prince John ravages the land and the noble, betrayed nobleman, Robin Hood, fights to protect the poor from injustice and keep England safe for the day King Richard returns home. Not one of these themes or settings is in the early tales and that brings up the question of what was the setting for the tales and when were they created? Not only is it difficult to date the earliest written tales; many manuscripts have been destroyed over the centuries. It is also difficult to date the creation of the tales, as many early ballads were passed along through minstrels and oral tradition, long before they were physically recorded.
The first recorded mention of Robin Hood, of which we currently know, was in William Langland’s Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman was estimated to been written between 1370 and 1385:
“I kan noght parfitly my Paternoster as the preest it syngeth,
But I ken rymes of Robyn hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre.” (5.395-5.396)As early as the fourteenth century we have evidence of the knowledge of the Robin Hood poems. Yet even with this early written acknowledgement of Robin Hood, it is very difficult to figure out just how old the tales are.
The earliest recorded tale of Robin Hood is Robin Hood and the Monk, which is estimated to been written between 1450 and 1460. There is no king mentioned in the story, so it is difficult to place based on the politics of the time. In A Gest of Robyn Hode (Gest) however, a king finally is mentioned. Originally the tale assumed written around 1400 or even earlier, yet it was eventually decided that it was written some time after 1450. In line 1412 there is the first instance of a king, named, in a Robin Hood tale, “Of Edwarde, our comly kynge.” Again, this doesn’t fully date the actual tale; in England between 1272 and 1377 there were three King Edwards. Stephen Knight explains the difficulty of deciphering which King Edward, “though a king appears several times, he is named only in one early text and only as Edward, without any defining number. […] the best candidate is Edward III, who reigned from 1327 to 1377.” (Knight 2) Based on the fact that a number was not used to determine which king, it is probably safer to assume that the king was Edward I, as he would not have a number after his name until a successor followed with the same name. Subsequent Edwards would already have distinguishing numerals in their title.
In 1852, antiquarian Joseph Hunter surmised that the ruler in Gest was Edward II. As J.C. Holt reveals:
“Hunter established, first, that the circuit of ‘Edwards our comely king’ through the royal forests of Yorkshire and Lancashire and thence to Nottingham, as described in Gest, fitted only one known royal progress, namely that made by Edward II between April and November 1323; secondly, that subsequently to this journey, between 24 March and 22 November 1324, a Robyn or Robert Hood appeared in royal service as one of the porters of the Chamber; and thirdly, that a Robert Hood with his wife Matilda figured in the court rolls of the manor Wakefield in 1316 and 1317.” (Holt 45-46)
It is interesting to note that Hunter connected the listed name of a “Robyn or Robert Hood,” in service to the crown, to back up his claim that the king in Gest was Edward II. It is not uncommon for scholars to search for men with the same name as the legendary hero and date the tales in that fashion. However, Robert is and was a common name and cannot support such claims alone. The coincidence that the aforementioned Robyn’s surname was also Hood is also not strong enough to support Hunter’s connection.
If the tales were already in circulation long enough, it is very possible that a person could change their name to associate themselves with the hero. Such is the case proposed by David Crook in his article. Crook states other scholars cited historical Robin Hoods in the thirteenth century as possible influences for the tales. One such man was a Gilbert Robynhod who appeared on the rolls in 1296. (Crook 530) This shows that long before Hunter’s Robyn Hood, the name was combined as a surname and not so rare as to only belong to one or two possible candidates.
David Crook also points out that Dr. J.R. Maddicott suggested the tales first came about in the 1330s, “a generation or so before the unequivocal reference to ‘rymes of Robin hood’ in the B-text of Piers Plowman in 1377.” (Crook 530) This assumes that the tales could not have been popular much before their first recorded mention of them. This also presumes that the earliest mention of the tales still survives. What Maddicott does not take into consideration is that many of the early ballads and texts of the Middle Ages did not survive time and there could easily have been earlier references.
Maddicott also attempted to associate real authority figures with those mentioned in Gest. He connected the character of the Abbott of St. Mary’s with Thomas de Multon, who was the abbot of St. Mary’s York from 1332 to 1359. The chief justice he said was Geoffrey le Scrope, who was chief justice from 1324 to 1338 and John de Oxenford was the sheriff of Nottingham from 1334-1339. To place all three real men in their respective roles as mentioned in Gest, the tale must have been dated between 1334 and 1339, further confirming his belief that the tales originated in the 1330s. (Holt 59-60)
The idea is too speculative though. Oxenford was a corrupt sheriff, but the theme of a corrupt sheriff, whether true or not could easily fit into any time period, even if the current sheriff was incredibly honest. Positions of power are usually scorned, as many people feel those in charge are not doing enough for them or taking advantage of their position. Even those who do wrong may not see their actions as crimes and will scorn the law for punishing them. So once again, this connection to actual persons and dates is very difficult to prove, it only works in idealistic theory.
There is also the fact that law books in 1331 showed just how ingrained the Robin Hood myth already was. According to Holt in his article, The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood, “In the fourteenth century, indeed, rogues and thieves were sometimes colloquially described as “Robert’s men.” In 1331 the phrase was incorporated in an Act of Parliament […] (Holt 93) If such a phrase was already in the laws at this point, the myth of Robin Hood had to have already been around for a while, for it to be incorporated in the common vernacular.
Andrew McCall suggested a span of years in The Medieval Underworld, “[…] at some point between de Montfort’s rebellion in 1265 and the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. (McCall 100) The idea is that between the two rebellions, the poor had a hero that would provide them succor when they most needed it. According to Norman Cantor, the Peasant’s Revolt came about due to the Plague. In 1349 the Plague caused a shortage in labor and the peasant’s were in the position to demand the abolition of serfdom and the laws that fixed wages (ed. Cantor 418). After the Revolt and Plague, the peasants gained a voice and a character like Robin Hood would enable them to form a band to stand up for their assumed rights. The mention of the Plague brings up another chance to narrow the tales. In the early stories, not once is the Plague mentioned. This makes it difficult to believe that the tales came about after the epidemics hit. The knight in Gest, whom Robin aids talks of the Crusades, yet does not mention thousands of deaths from an unknown black plague. The eight major Crusades were the most important in history and were dated, between 1095 and 1270.The final clue in narrowing down the time period of the early Robin Hood tales is again, the mention of the Crusades. The last major Crusade was in 1270, led by St. Louis IX of France. (Cantor 140) Edward I returned from a Crusade when Henry III died and ascended the throne in 1272 (Grant 142) Therefore, in theory, the stories couldn’t have originated much later than the 1270s, otherwise the memories of the Crusades would not have been as strong to play as big a part in Gest.
In Gest, line 179 also talks of Robin’s visitor being a knight by force, “I trowe thou warte made a knight of force,” (179 Knight & Ohlgren 95) This refers to the practice put into effect by Henry III in 1224, “knight of force refers to the practice of “distraint of arms,” that is, “requiring military tenants who held £20 per annum to receive knighthoods or pay a compensation […]” After Henry III, Edward I continued this practice and ordered that those who either held lands that were worth twenty pounds a year, or held a knight’s fee of twenty pounds a year, were to become knights by Christmas 1278. (Knight and Ohlgren 152) This again helps narrow down the time period of Gest and the Robin Hood tales. More than likely, they came about between 1278 and 1370. While they may have originated earlier, the popularity of an Edward as king would have been odd.
In a desperate attempt, Holt discusses one scholar who went so far as to invent a complete pedigree for the outlaw. In 1746, Dr. William Stukeley, a Lincolnshire antiquary took random information out of William Dugdale’s Baronage, compiled in 1675. With the names Stukeley created false marriages, added false relatives and changed the land holdings of established families. He even changed the date of Robin Hood’s death to 1274, to suit his timeline. (Holt 42-43) This was all later proved fanciful, but by that time there was a blind following of Stukeley that had to be convinced.
All of this shows just how difficult it was to date the Robyn Hode tales, as there were numerous areas they could have originated from. Between the pastoral poem of Robyn and Marion from France, to the English tales of Gandelyn and Hereward the Wake, there were a variety of inspirations from different times and places.
Ed. Cantor, Norman. The Pimlico Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. London: Pimlico, 1999.
Crook, David. “Some Further Evidence Concerning the Dating of the Origins of the Robin Hood Legend” English Historical Review. 99 (1984): 530-534Grant,
Neil. Kings & Queens. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 1999.Holt, J.C. “The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood” Past and Present. 18 (1960): 89-110
Holt, J.C. Robin Hood. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989.
Knight, Stephen. Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism. Cambridge: Brewer, 1999.
Ed. Knight, Stephen and Ohlgren, Thomas H.. Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000.
