Dan Snow's History Hit - Robin Hood

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Robin Hood is one of the most famous legends of British history, but did he exist and if so who was he? Gareth Morgan, Learning Development Officer at Nottingham Castle, is just the man to help separate fact from fiction when it comes to this archetypal hero who robbed the rich to give to the poor. Gareth helps Dan discover some of the real-life figures which might have inspired Robin, what the story means both now and then and why it still remains so popular. They also talk about Robin's home Sherwood Forest, which may not be quite what many imagine it to be, and the newly renovated Nottingham Castle home of Robin's arch-nemesis the Sheriff of Nottingham.This episode was first released on July 18th 2021.The audio editor for this episode was Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Robin Hood. Robin Hood. One of the most famous legends of English history. Did he exist? Who was he? Did he take the form of a fox to try and outsmart the feline sheriff of Nottingham? Or did he have such a bad sense of geography, like Kevin Costner, who landed at the Wycliffe's River, landed on the south coast of England, and suggested walking inland and being in Nottingham by nightfall? Well, we're about to find out, folks. This episode is all about the legend of Robin Hood. Who was he? Did he exist? What does it mean? And why is it so enduringly popular? I'm joined by Gareth Morgan. Gareth Morgan should know because

he is the Learning Development Officer at Nottingham Castle. So the HQ of the Sheriff of Nottingham. He's born and raised in Nottingham. He knows everything there is to know about Sherwood Forest, the Sheriff and Robin Hood. It's a great pleasure having him on the pod. Here is Gareth Morgan talking to us about Robin Hood. Gareth, thank you so much for coming to the pod. It's lovely to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Well, let's get down to business here, because when I go to York, you know what they say to me up in York? Robin Hood is from Yorkshire. Now, what does Team Nottingham have to say about that? Well, Team Nottingham can commend york on their research obviously in the mid 12 20s there is a man listed as having lived in york in the assizes and was brought under the bishopric and declared an outlaw up there but we know that the justicar for that portion would have been anywhere north of the trent so they could have been at the assizes of

york but living in sherwood Forest, which is what we like to believe. And obviously, the one location that gets mentioned the most is the Sheriff, and that being the basis for the idea of it being Nottingham. So we're very proud of our outlaw, and we'd take on anybody from Yorkshire who'd like to claim otherwise. Right. So yeah, you mentioned Sherwood Forest, you mentioned the Sheriff. Mentioned where? Where does the story come from? There's a huge range of sources. The earliest written reference we have is 1377. It's in William Langland's Piers Plowman. And you hear a character saying that they do not know their

Lord's Prayer, but they know the rhymes of Robin Hood. In that scene, they're talking in a pub. So we believe that the Robin Hood is passed on through the balladic tradition, people singing those great wassails in pubs around the country. So we think that Robin Hood is part of that semi-mythical balladic tradition, but based on an amalgamation of different characters who've existed right from the mid-10th century onwards, really. And so semi-mythical, I mean, is there any evidence for him? What do we think about the historicity of Robin Hood? There's so many different claimants I've got several that we often talk about Obviously there's the Robert Hood

who is listed in the Assizes at York in 1224 But we also have various others We've got people like William Robe Hood and the Prior of Sandalford That's in 1262 A personal favourite is Robert Godbird, who again was living in Sherwood Forest under the reign of Henry III. And then there is a Robertus Robin Hood of Wakefield. So again, it's that Yorkshire

connection, but again, living in Sherwood Forest and pardoned by Edward II. So there's a huge range of different characters and many other people will have ideas that could be that Robin Hood character as well. When was it kind of made canonical? When was it standardised into a story that we all sort of recognise? Is that very recent? That's probably more likely to be around the 15th and 16th centuries. So the earliest rhymes and ballads that we have written down from the 15th century. We have Robin Hood and the Monk, which is quite a famous but quite a bloodthirsty thriller of a tale. And Robin Hood and the Potter

which is a bit more comedic and Robin being the trickster and dressing up and those are probably my two favourite ballads and two that people will understand those stories of ones that have been adapted into the Hollywood Robin Hood that we now know today. My kids and I love Robin Hood we are heavy users of Robin Hood content. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Is that an enduring feature of ballads and myth in this period? Or was there something about the early 13th century, something about the rapacious taxation claims of King John? I mean, how centred do you think we have to be in the particular century that he is usually sent to? My feeling is actually he's more linked to what comes after. And we're talking about Henry

following on from John, because we get the Charter of the Forest in 1226, following on to, I think, the third signing of Magna Carta, of the way that that places restrictions on the forest. Robin Hood being that semi-mythical character that picks up on many of those green man myths and those myths that we have dotted around across British culture in Celtic culture as well. He becomes emblematic of that. One of the great lines in The Jest, which is a collection of early stories, again, from the 15th century. And the final line is, was he was a good outlaw and he did poor men much good. And I think that's real overarching claim for Robin that every time he's reinvented or they are reinvented,

we've had various different genders of Robin Hood in modern interpretations, that that is an underlying feature that they lived outside of the bounds of law, which is quite interesting for me as a learning officer and trying to teach the British values curriculum, which preaches very strongly the rule of law. But where can we subvert that? But also that they are charitable, they are philanthropic in that, and like thumbing their nose to the authority and supporting those who don't have so much. I always think there's a really interesting theme around Robin Hood is living sort of beyond the state. And I remember growing up and thinking

that Robin Hood was incredibly glamorous because he was not subject to the kind of petty bureaucracy of the modern state that I saw around me, you know, queuing up for getting on the bus and in those days, like milkmen coming along on floats. Everything was really organized and felt a bit stifling when you're a little kid. And as I've traveled the rest of the world, like places like Mali, you realize how many people are still live beyond the state. And I think it's a story for me about that battle, which is kind of a long human one that many of us have forgotten in the modern global North, but where you don't wish to be incorporated in this thing called a state by this group of male knights who charge around

saying, well, this is England and you're a subject of mine. You've got to pay tax. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what outlawry was in terms of you lived outside of the protection of the law. So anybody was able to do whatever they liked to. You'd been declared outside of society's norms and society's protection. So that Robin Hood was able to do this with impunity or appear to do this with impunity and to have the support of those less fortunate within the bounds of society, I think creates him as a really interesting character, as one who is forever foiling the sheriff and Sir Guy and whomever they are placed up against,

but has the support of the local populace because they give, they are philanthropic, they share what they have. And I think that's an abiding part of Robin Hood. And that's, I think, what keeps them alive, especially in Britain, where we find ourselves sometimes being quite compliant with things and yes as you say traveling around the world and seeing other cultures where there may be people who choose to step outside of that that those rebels still continue across the world those fighters for social justice. Talk to me about Sherwood Forest this exists it's a little bit of a disappointment

when you go there now it's a bit smaller than maybe it would have been in the 13th century. What is it and what was it? So Sherwood Forest was a royal hunting grounds. It would have stretched all the way right to the outskirts of Nottingham city centre now. There's a road in Nottingham called Forest Road, which would have been the boundary of the forest, which is up on the crest of the hill. And you can see it from the roof of the castle. That would have stretched all the way up to just south of sheffield so it was a huge swath of land but what we imagine a forest to be is also slightly different so we imagine it being these great old oaks and totally over covered area but the forest was more a depiction of that land as something that belonged to the king and it was the king's space as a royal forest so perhaps the idea that we get they often shoot Robin Hood films over in Hungary now and

that idea of these great kind of European forests probably wouldn't have been the landscape that we would be understanding if there would have been open expanses spaces where people had carved out a space to farm or to have their wood cutting business for example there are ideas that I think we've romanticized in the ideas of people like Walter Scott writing Ivanhoe that really colour our understanding and our ideas around Robin Hood. If you're listening to Dan Snow's History, we're talking about Robin Hood more after this. I'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr Ele Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends.

Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so that's the forest. What about the castle?

The other great physical backdrop to this story? These Norman castles, in a way, they weren't actually built against sort of foreign invasion. Sometimes they were, but it was pacifying the countryside. It was the kind of job that the sheriff ends up performing in the Robin Hood stories, isn't it? It's counterinsurgency. Absolutely, and Nottingham Castle is a key castle for this kind of form of insurrection, rebellion, counterinsurgency, as you phrased it. It was built in 1068 by William Peverell, who was one of William the Conqueror's great supporters

and knights at Hastings. And it survives within his family for several generations. It was captured after the Battle of Lincoln. So obviously it gets caught up in the anarchy, but also is besieged again in 1153 by Henry of Anjou, who goes on to become King Henry II, following on from his cousin Stephen of Blois. And yes, it's one of those castles that gets fought over a great deal. The strongest association we have with good King Richard and bad King John is it's one of the few castles that was besieged by Richard I in England. In 1194, it's besieged by Richard and he begins to construct his great trebuchet outside the walls of Nottingham Castle and uses Greek fire on the old gatehouse into the Middle Bailey. So it's an oft fought over castle. Our big problem was that Nottingham Castle was a great

favourite of the Yorkists. Richard III called it his castle of care, and Edward IV built great new state apartments and a large tower on the Middle Bailey as well, which caused it to fall into decay and ruin under the Tudors. It garrisoned during the Civil War and then slighted in 1651 rather speedily, so it cannot be used against the people of Britain ever after. So we then are given our fantastic ducal mansion, but it's not quite the turrets and crenellations that people often crave for if they're coming visiting specifically for Robin Hood, though I think it's a very,

very special building. I mean, King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham. He did. It starts that small. So yeah, there's a mix in there of kind of intermagnate or inter-princely contenders fighting for the throne, fighting for power. But there is this sense, is there, that the rest of the time it would have dispensed the king's justice. Like British American force in Afghanistan, it would have been a protective base from which you could sortie out into the countryside to do what? Collect your tax, to manage the people that live there and about? to manage the people that live there and about. Absolutely. It was often used as a sortie point for expeditions against the Northern Welsh as well, which with my name as Gareth, I sometimes find a little smarting.

But yes, it was a base that kings and magnates, as you say, could sortie out from and go and put down usurpacious plots. It's the space which Richard III departs from Bosworth for. So obviously he's trying to put down what he would see as a usurpacious plot and comes off worse than wear for it. We've got some interpretation in the museum which says he is the last king to die in battle. And sadly they turned down my proposed amend of he's the last king to die in battle so far.

I love it. Occasionally you get a situation, I think it's one at Pevensey, the Tower of London weirdly stormed by a kind of mob. We get Robin Hood in some of the stories actually successfully attacking Nottingham Castle. Have you got anything like that happening in the historical record there? Surely you've got to be Richard I with a big trebuchet to break through those walls. Well, actually the most successful raid on Nottingham Castle was in 1831 in the aftermath of the second reading of the reform bill of that year. The man raid on Nottingham Castle was in 1831, in the aftermath of the second reading of the Reform Bill of that year. The man who owned Nottingham Castle at the time was the 4th Duke of Newcastle, the leader of the faction of ultra-Tories within the House of Lords, who had quashed that second reading. And when that news came across to the people in Nottingham, they rioted for three nights, the final act of that being them taking on the castle itself and setting fires in the caves beneath Nottingham Castle.

Those fires were ripped up through the building, leaving it as a scorched ruin, and the lead of the roof was running off in rivers, as sources from the time would tell you. So it's been an oft-attacked site, though I think my favourite anecdote around this is obviously reaching back to probably our most famous incident at the castle in 1330 and the capture of Roger Mortimer by the supporters of King Edward III. Right, well, yeah, his mum's boyfriend. Absolutely. Like, who hasn't been 17 and been sick with your mum and your stepdad, so you've plotted a bloody coup against them? Yeah, I think Edward II facing invasion on the famous occasion in which he did so, when the army was led by his wife. I mean, that's got to be smart.

You mentioned taking things personally. I mean, that's got to be pretty bad for him. So Nottingham Castle, one of the great castles of England, is, you think, as 1831 shows and other castles around the place show, it's not impossible that a kind of a force locally raised, a peasant force, a country people could have penetrated its walls. The Robin Hood story is not totally fanciful. I don't think so, no. We have so many different stories about Robin attacking various places,

but he's much more associated with that idea of being the outlaw in the Greenwood and holding people up on the King's Road to up towards York. Though should push come to shove, famously in Robin Hood and the Mon monk little john and much the miller's son enter the castle through subterfuge to free robin who has been captured um though it's quite bloody subterfuge various people get murdered but looked upon in a well it was all right because we were doing it for robin sort of way why do you think that robin hood has proved so enduringly fascinating in In fact, of course, his appeal changes, doesn't it? As you mentioned, there's been different depictions, genders of Robin Hood. But I was really struck by the recent one with Russell Crowe. It wasn't just philanthropic, but there was a strong proto-democratic message there as well.

Absolutely. I think each generation reinvents its own Robin Hood. I'm very much the Kevin Cosner generation. But I think everybody you speak to who works here, who volunteers here, who comes here will have an image of Robin Hood in their mind. Be that the Disney Fox, be that Douglas Fairbank, be that Errol Flynn, be that many of the other more modern ones, Jonas Armstrong, for example. I think people attach to it the things that are found to be important. And in the Ridley Scott version I think the direction there is very much around the idea of Nottingham as a rebellious place of a place that strives and thrives on that fight for social justice we have a whole gallery of

rebellious stories from the civil war through to the Luddites to the reform bill rioters and then moving on into the Chartists and the Suffragettes. We pride ourselves on Nottingham being that rebel city and I think it works well in the way that Nottingham brands itself, prides itself and throughout the 18th and 19th centuries we had about 100 years of almost continuous annual rioting including the Great Cheese Riot of 1766 which I think is almost a podcast in itself. I think it is, buddy, but just give me a quick taster. So the annual goose fair, which has been going on since the 11th century. A famous goose fair. Anyone from Nottingham knows the goose fair, my goodness. The famous goose fair. The goose fair of 1766, there was a protest, mostly led by women and young children, over the prices of cheese.

And the stallholders were attacked and their large rounds of cheese were rolled down the hill towards where the fair was being opened and when trying to stop people rolling these cheeses towards him the Lord Mayor of Nottingham was actually hit by a cheese and bowled over and that was the great cheese riot of 1766. It doesn't have an especially happy ending as the Hussars were called in. It's almost a proto-Peterloo 40, 50 years beforehand. As you're talking, I'm thinking, trying to scan my memory now for other examples, it's kind of pacification, I guess. And there's so much, obviously in the immediate aftermath of the Norman conquest, you get East Anglia, the Hereward, the Wake stories. You get kind of local rebellions almost constantly throughout English and British history.

But are there some that you find analogous to the Robin Hood story, just persistent uprisings of local people in response to poor governance grasping tyrannical local rulers? I don't think that's unique to any one place. You look at the Great Revolt in 1381, and you look right through on past that. I think it's part of British culture. We've never obviously had a great revolution in the way that perhaps the French did in the 1780s, but we've had things that are very close. It's always interesting to consider the Civil War in that respect. It got so close, but then within 10, 15 years of it finishing, you've got the Restoration.

So I think that it's part of the British psyche. And I think Nottingham is a good lens to look at it through it in that it's so slap bang in the middle of the country. It was a key fortress between London and York that it often became somewhere that people focused upon and tried to fight over. Both ourselves and Lincoln are quite good for that. It was one of the key stop offs for Edward IV on the way up to Towton, for example. It was where he declared himself king ahead of that battle. It's very useful geographically, and I think that's why it's become so important in these stories of people trying to claim power, is that you take Nottingham, you've got a key linchpin in the centre of the country then. Great stuff, man. Thanks so much for talking

about Robin Hood. Just tell me, what's going on at Nottingham Castle you're open for business get everyone to come? Yeah so we reopened last Monday it feels very safe very secure our Covid situation is good at the moment we've got brand new galleries looking at the stories of Robin Hood and how that inspired that rebellious history for Nottingham plus our art galleries as well, plus our cave tours. So come and discover how Edward III and his conspirators led a raid upon Nottingham Castle to capture Roger Mortimer, the usurpacious Mortimer, and Isabella the She-Wolf of France, who I always think sounds a bit like a Marvel superhero when you describe her like that, and to become king in his own right, plus many other different elements as well, including perhaps the cell where King David II of Scotland was kept for 11 years after the Battle of Neville's Cross in the 1340s. Yeah, the caves of Nottingham are unbelievable, aren't they? And there's an amazing project which

is 3D mapping them all. It's one of the best things I've ever seen. Yeah, we've got one of those fly-throughs in our cave introduction room, so you can actually get a 3D fly-through of Mortimer's Hole, which is also great for visitors who may struggle with the 220 steps of that cave they can actually see it digitally but also my team and I we lead the cave tours so yes come and hear those stories with us but Nottingham's cave history is unparalleled across Europe there are 870 caves at the last count in Nottingham all hand dug and each one has its own special story from being dug out in the 1190s under the reins of Richard and John, right through to the Musiter's air raid shelters

and ARP stations in the Second World War. Brilliant. Gareth, thank you so much. I'm a Nottingham Forest fan. I've got lots of family connections in Nottingham, so I can't wait to get back there. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thanks very much, Dan, and come on you Reds. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. you