The Rest Is History - 192. Robin Hood

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Join Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook as they uncover the origins of Robin Hood. What was the earliest mention of Robin Hood in text? How has Robin Hood evolved through time to become the legend that he is today? Did he have a real-life counterpart? Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Editor: Scarlett Murray Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Lithe and liston, gentlemen, that be of free-bore blood, I shall you tell of a good ye man, his name was Robin Hood. Robin was a proud outlaw, whiles he walked on groaned, so courteous an outlaw as he was one, was never non-found. Robin stood in Bernersdale, and lended him to a tree, and by him stood little John, a good ye man was he, and also did good Scarlock, and much the miller's son. There was none inch of his body, but it was worth a grum.

That was Kevin Costner reading A Jest of Robin Hood. I thought it was Sean Bean. No, it's Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner's a master of accents. Did you not know, Tom? So that was written sometime between probably 1450 and 1500, and it's not the earliest, but one of the earliest and probably the most important

of all the ballads in which the story of Robin Hood first entered the English and then the world's imagination. Tom, are you a big Robin Hood fan? I love Robin Hood. I absolutely adore Robin Hood. Do you? That's good to hear. I've watched all the TV shows. I've watched all the films. I absolutely love him. And have you ever heard a Robin Hood reading as powerful and moving as that one? No, never. No, I think that was your best. So that was your, yeah. No, because it felt that it came from the heart.

It was an English yeoman. Yes, it was. It was. I mean, are you a Robin Hood fan? Robin Hood and King Arthur are the reasons I got interested in history when I was about four. I still, I feel very, very sentimental about Robin Hood because I had these Lady Bird books about his adventures fighting Guy of Gisborne or whatever. And I still have them. And actually, my son, when he went to his first World Book Day at his nursery, he went as Robin Hood.

Oh, that's fantastic. I would have had you down as a bigger fan of Robin Hood than King Arthur, because you're on the side of the yeoman, aren't you? Yeah, I think fighting with staffs over streams is very much the way I like to see myself. Yes. yes though i fear i may now i before i'm going to say it before you do um i fear now if i was cut a casting agency would see me would see me more as friar tuck but friar tuck i mean friar tuck is a dab hand with the staff isn't he he is he is of course and he's a cunning man they're all a dab hand with yeah staff the friar tuck is i i think he's quite a quite a smart fellow actually i'd happily play him so dominic you mentioned kevin costner there who apparently was meant to speak in an english accent and the director heard

his accent and said no on twitter we had there's no question that kevin costner prince of thieves seems to be viewed as the worst and simultaneously the best film that's interesting it's because of canonical it's become canonical hasn't it so uh toad was was kevin costner's american robin hood the worst ever portrayal richard slade how did robin hood prince of thieves walk from dover to northumberland in one day kerry shields tips in and via hadrian's wall so the lack of geography in that yeah he comes back from the crusades and he lands at dover goes to hadrian's wall but don't you remember tom there's a bit of a bit of a theme here because we are going to skip over Russell Crowe's Robin Hood. Russell Crowe walked out of an interview with the BBC

when they challenged his accent and Mark Lawson said, there's a little bit of Irish there, there's a little bit of South Yorkshire and Russell Crowe was outraged at this because he thought he'd been doing my accent. He actually responded on Twitter as well saying that his accent had been... Russell Crowe? Yes, had been... he'd been doing my accent. He actually responded on Twitter as well, saying that his accent had been... Russell Crowe. Yes, had been... Not to us, obviously. That was a while back when the film came out.

But saying that he was a Yorkshireman who'd been in the Middle East for 20 years. Right. That's what it was. It was the same attention to detail as your Liam Neeson, in other words. Exactly. It was a kind of... of yes it was a cocktail of accents um anyway the reason for mentioning uh i think uh robin hood prince of thieves yeah right at the beginning is that in many ways it is canonical i think because it reproduces all the elements of the legend that that are you know have been reproduced in children's stories and so on as to be honest

does the um the dis Disney film as well, in which Robin Hood is a fox and Maid Marian is literally a fox. Yeah, well, Peter Ustinov is Prince John, isn't he? Is he Prince John? Yes, he is Prince John. And Sir Hiss, Terry Thomas is Sir Hiss, who is a snake who is a psychic. Yeah, so that's an innovation. But all the sort of, I mean, we all know, I guess, Robin Hood, Maid Marian,

Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Much the Miller's Son. Alan O'Dale. Alan O'Dale, Guy of Gisborne, Prince John, obviously, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and a returning Sean Connery, or King Richard the Lionheart. In Prince of Thieves, as in lots of other ones, Robin himself is a returning crusader.

Yes, that's right, which is a very interesting innovation in the story as we shall discover it. So the elements of the story, he robs from the rich, he gives to the poor. He rides through a glen. Yes. Sherwood Forest. Yeah. The sheriff. Yes, of course.

Archery, a lot of archery. Archery contests. Yeah. So all that stuff. Oh, and also, of course, a lot of archery. Archery contests. Yeah. So all that stuff. Oh, and also, of course, he is of noble birth. Well, that's really important that you said about being a yeoman. I mean, Robin Hood, well, we will discuss yeomanry, but in the Costner and similar versions, he is absolutely not a yeoman.

He is nobly born, isn't he? He is. So I thought it would be interesting to look at the the oldest known ballad that mentions robin hood and go through and see what elements of it you know are being reproduced in prince of thieves and all that kind of stuff so this is robin hood and the and the monk is that the oldest uh so yeah so just to give people a sense, so these ballads are from the 15th century, aren't they? 15th century. These are the first sort of written, there are trace references to Robin Hoods in other sources, but the ballads are the real.

Well, so the earliest mention of Robin Hood as a hero is in Piers Plowman, the great medieval alliterative poem by William Langland, from your neck of the woods Dominic? A Midlander. Yeah, a Midlander. And Robin Hood is mentioned in that and the implication is that everyone is familiar with the stories of Robin Hood.

But we don't have any earlier stories than say the early 15th century so i think this is robin hood and the monk it's 1420 okay so i'll go through and tell you the plot it opens with a description of the fair forest being very merry so everything being merry yeah is there right from the absolute beginning robin hood is walking through the forest with little john so he's there right from the beginning absolutely so. So also is much the Miller's son. So he's also part of the fun.

Elements that aren't there, but come in later. Robin has a deep devotion to the Virgin. He wants to go to Nottingham. So again, it's set in Nottingham. Yeah. And he wants to attend Mass and pay his devotion to the Virgin. Kevin Costner didn't do that. No, he didn't.

And he is absolutely, as you say, a yeoman. Little John and Robin Hood have a kind of a wager. Little John wins it. Robin refuses to pay. So Robin and Little John kind of go differently. Robin goes into Nottingham. He goes to St. Mary's Church. He's kneeling before the cross

and an evil monk spots him there and rushes off and tells on him to the Sheriff of Nottingham. So the Sheriff of Nottingham is there from the beginning. Men at arms come rushing in. They capture Robin. So that's another absolute theme, isn't it?

I mean, that's in the Walt Disney film. Yes. It's in the Doctor Who they're captured. He's captured with the Doctor in a story where they're fighting. The Sheriff of Nottingham is actually in league Walt Disney film. Yes. It's in the Doctor Who they're captured. He's captured with the Doctor in a story where they're fighting. The Sheriff of Nottingham is actually in league with some robots. Little John and Much the Miller, Much the Miller's son, are told, oh God, Robin's been captured. So now they have to go and rescue him.

And that's another absolute. That's always happening. Standard plot. They come across the monk and the monk has a servant and is heading off to see the king to say that Robin Hood has been captured. We now have, what happens next does not tend to feature, certainly in the children's books, because what happens is, little John cuts off the monk's head.

Children would love that though, I think, by and large. Just the parents who would be moaning. And much the miller cuts off the little page's head. Okay, that though i think by and large it's the parents who would who would be moaning and much the miller cuts off the little page's head okay that's harsh yes so the little boy dies as well okay little john and much the miller they they then take it's much the middle son by the way it's not much the middle son yes much the middle son sorry yes so it's actually child on child violence. Yes, exactly. They then go off and bring the news to the king. So that, I mean, we're not told who the king is,

but the fact that, you know, the king of England is a part of this story, that again is there from the beginning. The king of England is not in the Crusades or languishing in a German prison. No, no, it's just the king. They trick the king into thinking that the monk is still alive. And so the king gives them a reward.

They then go to the sheriff of Nottingham and again, trick the sheriff of Nottingham into thinking that the monk is still alive and that they've come from the king. It's a fantastic story. It's full of wiles and tricks and scams and much merriness. The sheriff of Nottingham gives them a slap up meal with the best wine in his cellar. So they're in disguise in the heart of the castle in Nottingham so that's again absolute classic isn't it yeah and they then free robin and there it is um so it's a brilliant story yeah so there it is but i mean that's quite

a good story well the thing that's interesting in that as in these early because there are a couple of other ballads aren't there's the one's the one that I mentioned, A Jest of Robin Hood. A Jest of Robin Hood. In those stories, they are tricksters, but they're not necessarily enormously, I mean, they're not benevolent figures at all, are they? I mean, cutting pages heads off. Yeah. They are definitely outlaws. Well, so there's another guy of Gisborne.

He's also right from the beginning. So that's another early of Gisborne. He's also right from the beginning. So that's another early 15th century romance. And in that, Robin cuts off Guy's head, sticks the head on the end of his bow and mutilates his face with a knife. And then there's another. So also another part of this swell, it's not just ballads. There are also plays that are being done. And one of the earliest script from a Robin Hood play comes from the Paston Letters,

I think we've mentioned before, this collection of letters and documents from landowners in East Anglia during the Wars of the Roses. And among all the kind of the collection of papers, there's a very short 21 line, 23 line, something like that, very short play. 23 line something like that very short play and in that robin cuts off the head and puts it in his hood so there's a lot of beheading going on yeah

but i mean people they weren't squeamish about such things and their stories were they but you mentioned the guest of robin hood that's probably the key one because that's the one with loads of elements archery contests archery contests hostility to greedy clerics because that's the one with loads of elements archery contests archery contest hostility to greedy clerics so that's you know it seems to be a running theme the king actually goes into the forest and he gets kind of kidnapped by robin and his merry men and they give him food so and then it ends with uh robin's death at the hands of his cousin the prioress of kirkley and we might come to that later on because it's a particularly fascinating aspect of the story. So all those kinds of elements are there.

But I think elements that are not there. Yeah, let's talk, because they're really interesting about the point at which they come in. I think that's fascinating. Elements that are not there. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Yeah. That is not really an rich to give to the poor.

Yeah. That is not really an element in any of the surviving kind of medieval Tudor. Well, do you know what? Do you know what I read about this? There was a historian called J.C. Holt. He was very keen on cricket, apparently, Tom, so should appeal to you. He wrote a book about Robin Hood in the 1980s. And he suggests in one of his articles about Robin Hood that these plays that you mentioned were put on by sort of ecclesiastical authorities

in the 16th century. And they would have, at the end, the people playing Robin and the other characters would have collections for the church. And often it was really sort of impressed upon you that you had to give. It was a lot of pressure. And that all this sort of stuff about taking from the rich and giving to the poor, there's a sort of hint that it was basically a massive wheeze to get to force, make people feel guilty and make them give money

to the church at the end of the performance. Yeah i think it's going with the grain of the stories so um the end of the guest uh it it said that robin did um he did poor men much good so it's not saying he's taken from the rich to give to the poor but he you know he's known as a friend of the poor he's known as a friend of women yeah um he he there's that sense of a kind of chivalry there um And there's a story in which in the guest, there is a poor knight who is down on his uppers, who's being kind of screwed out of his money by an evil band of monks in a monastery. And Robin comes to his rescue.

Robin from the rich to give to the distressed middle classes is not really. That's effectively what that story is. Yeah. Well, the same historian, J.C. Holt, we had a lot of questions saying, is Robin a proto-socialist? Richard Brabner said, is he a precursor to socialism or paternalistic Toryism? And I would say at first, the latter.

I mean, obviously, they're ridiculously sort of anachronistic concepts to be imposing on this because I don't i don't think i don't get a sense from those early ballads or the early plays particularly if they're being licensed by church authorities and used to drum up enthusiasm in collections i don't get a sense that they're terribly subversive do you tom do you think these are undermining the social order or are they having fun i mean that they go out of their way, even though Robin and his mates are cutting Paige's heads off. They're still, the ballads tell you that they're very courteous, don't they? I mean, that one that I read out at the beginning of the show said,

you know, as courteous a man you'll never find, or whatever words to that effect. So they're not threatening, are they? Well, there's a book came out a couple of years ago, Story Worlds of Robin Hood by Leslie Coote, who's kind of one of the great living experts on Robin Hood. not threatening are they well this book came out a couple of years ago uh story worlds of robin hood um by leslie coote who's kind of one of the great living experts on robin hood and she has an excellent theory about where robin hood comes from but i think we should save looking at that for the second half because i think the second half we should look at where do these stories

where where might these stories come from you know might there be a real robin hood and if not then where would the stories come from? I hope you'll say that there is a real Robin Hood. Well, you have to wait and see. You'll have to wait and see. But there were a couple of elements that we haven't got onto. So the robbing from the rich to give to the poor, okay, we've done. What about Maid Marian?

Where's Maid Marian come from? Let's park her for now. Maid Marian is a part of the kind of the mayday rituals that you get in the 16th century she's not necessarily associated with robin hood she's french isn't she there's an implication that that she belongs to a kind of different series of stories uh the made marion that we get you know as in films now i mean it's basically a 19th century invention yeah um so i think in the 17th century robin has a wife called clarinda which which is not something that's no it doesn't trip off the tongue so uh but another you know really fascinating example of perhaps of um the way that uh folk

stories work in britain is of course he because robin is a very upwardly mobile figure so we talked about how he's a yeoman and he ends up as a you know a member of the aristocracy robert of loxley or robert of loxley all that yeah um and this is um this seems to be an invention of a a tudor playwright called anthony monday who in the 1590s writes two apparently not very good plays i haven't read them oh yes the downfall of robert earl of huntingdon is that the play Anthony Munday, who in the 1590s writes two apparently not very good plays. I haven't read them. Oh, yes. The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon.

Is that the play? And The Death. I haven't seen it. And The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. Oh, right. And there's also a late 16th century biography, which identifies him as coming from Loxley. And that then gets picked up by Sir Walter Scott in the beginning of the 19th century in ivanhoe which is probably you know the key fictional work that helps to to

generate the myth and so this idea that robert is not actually a yeoman but that he is a dispossessed nobleman that he is earl of huntingdon or locksley or whatever. It seems to be something that gradually evolves over the course of... But to go back to the point where that comes in, so late 16th century. So the myth or the legend, the stories have been circulating, we know, for at least 150, 200 years, probably longer, probably much longer. There doesn't seem to be an obvious kind of ideological subtext to making him an aristocrat at this particular moment in time. It's just a riff on the story, isn't it? I mean, there's no reason for somebody in Elizabethan England to

think, oh, we need an aristocratic hero rather than a yeoman. Don't you think, Tom? One of the things is interesting uh about the ballads the early the kind of medieval ones is that there's no reason it's given why robin is an outlaw uh and in fact there's a question from josh wilcox on the discord why was robin an outlaw we're never told um in the early ballads the first person to mention why robin might be an outlaw is actually not English, but Scottish. So there's a whole series of, weirdly, of historians in Scotland,

again, writing in the 15th century. Well, they're the first non-fiction references. Yeah, so they're referring to him as a kind of historical figure. Yeah. And one of them, he's writing a kind of mid-15th century, a guy called Walter Bauer,

posits the idea that Robin had been fighting with Simon de Montfort against the armies of Henry III and Prince Edward, who will go on to become Edward I. And that you have the Battle of Evesham in which Simon de Montfort is killed and, of course, brutally gelded, his corpse is mutilated. And Walter B and um Walter Bower says well maybe Robin was uh you know he was fighting there and he had to then flee into the uh into into the woods and that's then followed up by another Scott um writing at the beginning of the 16th century a guy called John Mayer or John Major oh yeah John Major my friend John Major um who uh he is the first to suggest that Robin had lived in the time of Richard I, Richard the Lionheart. And he is the one who kind of casts him as, again, of being an overtly

aristocratic figure. And so I think there you get the kind of the germ of the idea that Robin has become an outlaw because he is facing evil times, but he is on the side of the king. Because if you're trying to, in a way, make Robin safe, to make him someone that decent people can identify with, you have to give him a reason for being an outlaw that isn't to do with, you know, chopping off people's heads or mutilating them with knives or whatever. And so the idea that he is a nobleman

who has been unjustly persecuted by bad Prince John or something like that, I mean, that's ideal. That's absolutely ideal because he's on the side of the king, but he also has a legitimate reason to be out in the Greenwood. But that obviously comes in later on, doesn't it? Because all the 20th century iterations or 19th century of robin hood he's a he's a nice fellow he's a you know he's as you say he's not a criminal but these early mentions of robin hood i mean they're generally talking about somebody who's perceived very much as a criminal aren't

they so those early ballads are in the long tradition of ballads that actually slightly sort of celebrate the kind of trickster figure, outwitting the authorities. But there's no sort of, I mean, there's no sense in those ballads that he's been unjustly accused, is there? He simply, there is no explanation given for why he's in the forest. Yeah. No explanation is given at all. But maybe there's no, I mean, maybe people wouldn't have needed an explanation well because especially if they're already familiar with the figure of if he has a kind of place in the folk memory already so everybody knows that robin hood is is merely an outlaw and isn't there some suggestion that to be a robin hood in this sort of period

that this is that this is a kind of generic name that is given to people who are you're just a robin hood yeah so this is all part of the swirl of of possible influences that might feed into the legend and i think we should look at them in the in the second half but looking at the way that the story evolves from the 16th century onwards yeah i think it's it's clear that a sense of why Robin is in the forest has been lost, or there is a feeling that some explanation needs to be provided as to why he's there. And the one that goes with the grain of acceptable opinion is that he's on the side of the rightful king. He is a rebel against unjust oppression. He's probably of aristocratic background. And that's why the idea of him as someone in the reign of Richard the Lionheart with bad Prince John as the regent.

That's why it kind of it suits it perfectly because it provides the absolutely kind of perfect context. So by, let's say, the 17th century, I mean, so Shakespeare mentions Robin Hood, doesn't he? Yeah, and you like it. And Two Gentlemen of Verona as well, I think. But that's just a sort of reference to, oh, Robin in the Greenwood. They're kind of passing references, aren't they? But then there's a, he sort of goes quiet, doesn't he, Robin Hood,

in the 17th, 18th century, would you say? Well, you have this, at the end of the 18th century, you have this guy called Joseph Ritson. Now, he's a very interesting man, I think. Yes. So he's very annoyed by the idea that Robin might be of an aristocratic background. Because Joseph Ritson is very much on the left. He's a great enthusiast for the French Revolution, all that kind of stuff he's also tom should i tell you something about joseph ritson yeah tell me um he has something in common with you or

something that you flirted with do you want to guess uh no i can't think so you had a period where you flirted with vegetarianism under domestic pressure. Have you formally abandoned that? Basically, I'm vegetarian. Okay. So he, like you, was vegetarian, but he largely seemed to eat muffins and cakes. Did he?

Dunking donuts. And do you know what happened? He went mad. He ended his days in a lunatic style. I thought you were going to say he got enormously fat. Well, maybe he did that too. I don't know. But yes, he was a great enthusiast for the French Revolution. So he brings together all the ballads for the first time.

But he also clearly thinks that Robin Hood was real. Yeah. And he sees him as a sort of proto-Jacobin, doesn't he? Yeah. So he celebrates him as a subversive, as a radical. Yeah. Absolutely robbing from the rich to give to the poor. And then the weird thing is that Walter Scott,

who absolutely is not a subversive or a radical, he's basically Joseph Ritson's only friend. Maybe because Ritson keeps serving muffins to other people. I don't know. Oh, no, not muffins again. Anyway, Walter Scott apparently gets some of the ideas for Ivanhoe from his friends, from the Robin Hood story in Ritson?

I mean, I think you can see that Ritson's collect, you know, he assembles all these ballads and it has a huge influence on all the kind of poets and novelists of the time. So Ivanhoe is the classic one. And that brings in famously, not just an archery contest, but splitting the arrow. The arrow hits the middle of the bull, and then Robin steps forward and splits the arrow that's hit the bull. So that's a famous part of the myth. But the other famous thing that Walter Scott introduces is the idea of a rivalry between Anglo-Saxons and Normans.

Yes. Yeah. So I think we have a question on that. Yeah. So Crowfoot, very much a friend of the show, how much of the legend and how much of the reality centred around the notion of the Anglo-Saxons rebelling against the Norman yoke, that is not in any way a part of any medieval. No, because surely the medieval 15th century, or indeed a couple of centuries earlier, they would have, I mean, that's just ancient history to them, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, they don't have a sense of that at all. No, of course not. But it's very important to Scots. Well, because people have rediscovered the idea of the anglo-saxons partly because of the norman yoke yeah they're obviously writing in the aftermath yeah of the 17th century and everybody cared about the norman yoke and um and that's i mean i remember reading ivanhoe when i was i don't know 12 or 13 or something and i found that stuff about saxons and normans, immensely persuasive.

Well, it's also, I mean, it's in the Errol Flynn Robin Hood. Yes, it is. You know, the famous line, it's not injustice, it's injustice I hate, not the Normans. But also the other, just in the kind of, say, the romantic period, the period of Walter Scott in the aftermath of Ritson's discoveries, The other big innovation that has a kind of momentous afterlife is a novel about Maid Marian written by Thomas Love Peacock, who was a friend of Shelley's and wrote satirical novels that are actually quite funny if you know about the period, but otherwise, I mean, absolutely nothing. So his novel about Robin Hood is quite hard to read because it's full of kind of in-jokes about politicians that nobody's heard of. But he introduces the idea of the love triangle between Robin Hood, Sheriff of Nottingham.

Oh, the Sheriff of Nottingham is involved in a love triangle with, oh, because of course he wants to marry. It's only a love triangle in the sense that the Sheriff of Nottingham wants Marion's money, isn't he? Isn't that the usual claim in the 20th century? That she's an heiress or something? Yes, that's usually how it's factored in. Maybe I'm just thinking of Alan Rickman kind of looking after Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, was it? That's right, yes.

Threatening to open up people's hearts with spoons. You know, apparently that film had to be re-edited and the director was removed from the edit because Alan Rickman was too prominent and he was threatening Kevin Costner's ego. You know, apparently that film had to be re-edited and the director was removed from the edit because Alan Rickman was too prominent and he was threatening Kevin Costner's ego. Yes. Well, it's like he's in a completely different film, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. He's brilliant in it. I remember it was one of those performances that just kind of left off the screen. Anyway, we should stop talking about Alan Rickman and talk more about the history of Robin Hood. So, Mary Marion has definitely entered the story by the early Victorian period. And you've also got, I mean, one other character we haven't massively talked about,

Friar Tuck has also entered the story. And he's a real person, isn't he, Friar Tuck? Yeah. So he's there from the beginning. But he seems to, he was a priest from Sussex, I think, who was around in the early 15th century. And then he enters the story. Yes. He comes in in 1475.

But he had – he's called Robert Stafford. And he gathered around him, it says in the, it says J.C. Holt, a band of evildoers who committed murders and robberies and threatened the peace of Surrey and Sussex. So he's very much a, he's a Surrey and Sussex man. He's not a Yorkshireman or a man of Nottinghamshire. But he just gets kind of woven into the story. But as Friar Tuck, he's disguised as Friar Tuck. And then, interestingly, he must have been quite a malevolent figure at first if he's a real-life criminal.

But obviously, certainly by the 20th century, Friar Tuck is comic relief, really, isn't he? Well, but also, of course, if he gets back projected to the time of Richard the Lionheart, there were no friars at that point. Were there not? Why were there no friars? Because, you know, it's before...

Friaring was invented. Before St. Francis. I don't know anything about friars, Tom. To be honest with you, I know you'll say that you found this absolutely a shameful moment in the history of the podcast. I don't really know the difference between a monk and a friar. Well, a friar is itinerant. Okay.

Monks are generally monasteries okay well they now i know now yeah so so um the friars who are itinerant become robin's allies yeah the monks who are resident greedy a greedy kind of yeah that so that's how that's how it works basically by the beginning of the 19th century i think you've got all the elements in place yeah and there's one more sort of iteration isn't it that's really important which is so actually all the what's really interesting all these stories up to this point they're never for children i mean children might enjoy them but they but they're not written for children and then there's an american writer who i think is i mean he's not as well known as walter scott but arguably equally as important certainly in the

transition to america into cinema who is a guy called Howard Pyle. So I think we actually have some of Howard Pyle's children's books in our house because they're still being, they've never been out of print. And his version of, he's a man from Delaware. And his version of Robin Hood, he published in 1883 when he was 30. And he did the illustrations himself. So he also, interestingly, he also created the – he's a very influential illustrator because he created the illustrations for pirate stories that established the template for a pirate. So – and he does these beautiful illustrations.

You know, Robin is in kind of Lincoln Green or whatever. And the feather in the hat. The feathers in the hat. All of this sort of stuff he also invents the dialect that is the kind of faux medieval dialect so thou wilts you know all this sort of stuff yeah but also there's an enormous amount of merriness isn't there yeah merrily inordinately merry and philanthropy that it's just kind of larks it's yeah they're going around having romps nobody ever has their head cut off in these stories.

There's no mutilations or anything like that. And I think the success of Howard Pyle's version, so the tremendous success that had, I guess, with children in the 1880s, 1890s, probably explains why Hollywood come to... Absolutely it does. Because without Pyle, Robin would not have the resonance in the US.

No. So we talked in our 1922 podcast about Douglas Fairbanks' silent version of Robin Hood that later inspires Errol Flynn's version. In Douglas Fairbanks' version, that's the first film to have a Hollywood premiere. And I think both that and the um errol flynn version enormously successful very big budget you know robin hood is a hot hot intellectual kind of commercial property in early 20th century america and then one final twist on that theme is that the adventures of robin hood which becomes a kind of massive TV series in Britain and features Sid James.

Sid James was in it. Leslie Phillips was in it. Jane Asher was in it. Steptoe and some, you know, Wilfred Bramble and that thingy. They were, they were absolutely chock-a-block full of British character actors.

But, but the script for that was written by Americans who had fled the US because they were victims of McCarthyism. Of course it was, yes. And in fact, there's at least one school district in America where there was talk of banning stories of Robin Hood because they were seen as too communist, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Should we sing the song to see us out? I think you can sing it. So I think that... Because I've done my ballad for today, Tom. I think that we should end on this note. And then when we come back, we should ask the question, did Robin Hood really exist? The real Robin Hood.

Or where does the story come from? The mystery is solved at last. We're very good at solving mysteries. What was the last mystery we solved? The Princess and the Tower? The Princess and the Tower, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. So go on, sing a song, Tom.

Okay. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men. Robs from the rich, gives to the poor. No, it's not that, is it? It's feared by the bad. No, what is it? Feared by the bad.

Loved by the good. Robin Hood, Robin Hood. Robin Hood. That started too well, and I thought it wasn't going to be funny. But then when it degenerated when you forgot the words, it was very enjoyable. I think my version was better. We will see you after the break for more Robin Hood. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is history tom holland didn't sing us in after the break which i think we can all agree it was just as well but tom we are now i could do another song no don't well i mean maybe at the end maybe at the end or a poem if you have a poem i do have a poem. I do have a poem. Oh, that's exciting. So we have discussed in the first half how the legend began with ballads and then went through various iterations. It's actually a much more complicated story even than the one we've told,

isn't it? There's so much more stuff about ballads and folk stories and all this sort of stuff that we haven't had time to do. But let's now talk about historical reality. So Tom, we had a question from Aurelius and one of our members, one of the Rest Is History Club members on our Discord chat channel, which you can all sign up to if you go to restishistorypod.com. Brilliantly done. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Exactly. Now, Aurelius says, did Robin Hood really exist? What's the answer?

So essentially, there are three answers to the question of where does Robin Hood come from? Oh, this is disappointingly elusive. He's entirely fictional, product of ballads and literary traditions. Yeah. Or there's a real Robin Hood who actually existed. Or a theory that was very, very popular in the mid-20th century. He's the expression of some kind of ancient pagan figure, the Green Man or something like that. So that's the idea that's picked up on something we didn't mention at all in the first half, which is the 1980s TV series Robin of Sherwood.

Robin, the hooded man. Thanks for that, Tom. That was was clad that was really enjoyable in that version he is commissioned by her and the hunter that's right to be a sort of champion for the for the for deep england or something so uh that that was pushed by margaret murray who has cropped up occasionally on this podcast she was an egyptologist terrible theories. So she was the one who argued that witches were secret pagans and all that kind of stuff. And she argued that Robin Hood is the image of the devil. His hood is in some way associated with horns.

And this is Balderdash, isn't it, basically? But actually, the person who originally comes up with this theory is Jacob Grimm, as in the Brothers Grimm, who suggests that the name of Robin Hood comes from Woden. Right. That's not right either. No, it's not right. So I think we can basically park that theory. I don't think that's true. I don't think we can park it. I think we should just throw it in the gutter and trample it. Trample on it. Jump on it. Yes. Set it on fire. So that leaves two possibilities,

that there's a real Robin Hood, or he is the product of literary traditions. Or I suppose the third one, that he's a fusion of two, of both those. So as we said, the earliest mention of Robin Hood as Robin Hood, you know, an outlaw, who is the hero of first ballads, is in this poem, Piers Plowman, fast Middle English epic. Written in the 1370s.

In that, the way that he's described, it's clear that his legends are very, very popular, and that lots of people know him. And Langland, as we said, is writing in the West Midlands. So that's kind of evidence that his stories are known in that part of England, certainly, in the mid-14th century. So presumably, you can, at the very least, push it back several generations, probably to the beginning of the 14th century. So presumably you can at the very least push it back several generations, probably to the beginning of the 14th century. But how much further back than that can you go? And as you said in the first part, there is evidence that the name Robin Hood is being used as a kind of generic name for outlaws. And so there's an example of this from Berkshire in the

1260s. Yes, I've seen this. Yeah. That again must imply that the origins of this are earlier, because all the earliest references are to Robin being either in Sherwood or Yorkshire. So this is a man who, his name was William. He was the son of somebody called Robert Lefebvre, Robert the Smith. And he was part of a gang. And he was, there was a penalty imposed or something. There was, his chattels were meant to have been seized. The entry in the sort of the King's Remembrance's memoranda roll, I don't actually know what that is. But anyway, the entry, whoever wrote it,

wrote him down as William Robber Hood. But Robber Hood not being his name, but being a sort of, just what kind of a person he was. Yeah. So there is a guy, a man called Robin Hod, who in the Yorker sizes of 1225 to six is described as a fugitivus, so Latin for outlaw. So that is the only example we have of someone called Robert Robin Hood who appears in a legal record who is described as an outlaw. One of the things that's happened since the 19th century is that people have gone through all the medieval records, the court rolls and the Assizes and all that kind of stuff, looking for people called Robin Hood. A popular candidate is a guy called Robert Hood, who appears in the court rolls of Wakefield in 1316, 1317. Edward II is in the north around that region in 1323. We're told in

the guest that the name of the king is Edward, though not Richard, it's Edward. But this is pretty kind of desperate stuff, really. But there's also a man, have you not seen this man called Robert of Weatherby? Have we talked about him? So he was captured in 1225, his body suspended in chains by the Sheriff of Yorkshire. It's the sort of right place-ish, he's the right kind of, he's called Robert. There's a guy called Robertbert godbird who um served under simon de montfort at evesham that is quite an early tradition who becomes an outlaw so these are all kind of figures that are lurking around but none of them really fit what you do definitely

have is very ancient traditions of stories about outlaws seem to be quite popular so you've got hero of the wake would be a classic so lots of people asked about similar so hero of the wakes descendant tom is a listener to the rest is history yes you mentioned i told you i've mentioned him before because he was that family was also involved in murdering the princes in the tower he raised an eyebrow i think it's fair to say at me when i saw him after that podcast and he thought his family had been greatly introduced anyway hero of the wake was a tremendous fellow wasn't he because he was a saxon holding out against the normans yeah or was he are you going to tell me that's yeah no i think that's no i think that's true yes there's a tradition isn't there and it's

not just in england so no you know lots of countries have them of sort of bandit outlaw kind of hero of the commonwealth against the sort of the powerful and and do you think robin hood is is just part of that general sort of European tradition? The trickster hero, that kind of... I think the idea of outlaws as heroes is definitely... It's there with Hero of the Wake. It's there with a group of brothers called the Folevilles. The Folevilles?

The Folevilles, who are kind of basically delinquent members of the gentry who take to the woods. And who, again, Langland mentions, who are essentially seen as being more honest than the law enforcement agents. So that's a kind of key part of the appeal. Yeah, William Tell, obviously, in Switzerland. So yeah, so there are lots of examples of this across medieval Europe. I mean, I don't think that there is a smoking gun among any of these candidates. I think there's just a sense of this being a kind of popular tradition and that Robin Hood, for whatever reason, comes to be the generic name that is applied to the figure of outlaws. So that then

begs the question of how and why and when do these stories start to take the form that they do? And when do they start to be spoken and repeated and elaborated on? And I think the answer to that is focused on the fact that these stories are in English. The tradition of these stories of people going out into woods, of people having adventures, this is a French courtly tradition. So the stories of King Arthur's Knights, all that kind of stuff, but not just King Arthur's Knights. There are traditions of, you know, Fablo and all kinds of things like that, that are French. So English is not a language in which these are being reproduced at court or anything like that. What is the moment when this might change? And Leslie Coote, who's written this fantastic book, came out a couple

of years ago. She suggests that the obvious moment is in the reign of Edward I, who is fighting the French. He doesn't have lands on France anymore, and he's fighting the Welsh, and he's fighting the Scots. And he wants to emphasise Englishness and the role of English, and that he could speak English, that perhaps this is the point where French traditions start to be transliterated into English. And perhaps that is the moment. She also has a further fascinating thesis as to who Robin might be, and in particular, why he's in the wood and who his true lord might be. Oh, Tom, this is so exciting. And why he might be an outlaw. So we talked about Maid Marian, and I was kind of rather

mysterious about where she might come from and block down your inquiries about that. You did. I don't think you were mysterious. You were just rude. I was rude. What's another word for maid in the sense that it's used with Maid Marian? Oh, God almighty, you've turned it back to Christianity. Unbelievable. You're going to say Maid Marian is the Virgin Mary. Are you? I am. Yes, I am. It's textbook Tom Holland.

I'm so excited about this. I've been saving it up. Delayed gratification. Go on. So this, again, is a French tradition. They're called pastorelles. And this is a tradition of a shepherdess called Marion. And she has a lover or servant called Robin. It is clear that this is a kind of a metaphor for the relationship of

the individual Christian and his relationship to the Virgin Mary. The theory of Leslie Coote is that essentially this is the ultimate origin for the stories of Robin Hood. The reason that he is an outlaw is that his Lord is the Virgin Mary. And the Virgin Mary in these stories is basically a kind of trickster. Leslie Coote describes her in these popular tales as being tough, legalistic, sly, loud, practical, realistic, even apparently amoral and vengeful at times. Robin Hood serves a very unruly, dangerous female lord. And if you think of that story, Robin Hood and the Monk, the very earliest one, the whole plot revolves around him going into town to attend mass to pay his devotions to the Mary. And she says, Robin Hood is neither a

freedom fighter nor a social bandit, ways in which he's frequently interpreted today. Robin is just a servant. It is his lord, the Virgin Mary, who is potentially dangerous in a socio-political sense. Mary is the lord of a great household whose seat lies in or possibly just beyond the forest. Hold on. Mary is the lord. I mean, all that. That's all a bit weird, isn't it? It is weird. Is that a common motif in medieval tales that the Virgin Mary is actually a noble woman or man living in a big manor or something? All the early stories make it clear that Robin's devotion is to the Virgin. The reason why they don't give a backstory for him, he just is in the Greenwood because he is the servant of the

Virgin Mary. That's the thesis. And of course, what makes this occluded is the Reformation, because with the Reformation, this goes out of the window. And essentially the logic as to why Robin is in the Greenwood, the reason why he is particularly devoted to the Virgin, that has to be erased. But why isn't that in those ballads then, before the Reformation, the late 15th century ballads? That's pre-Reformation. Great deal of villainy from monks. It is there. But the Virgin Mary isn't there in the jest, is she? Iads, that's pre-Reformation. Monk, a great deal of villainy from monks. It is there. But the Virgin Mary isn't there in the jest, is she?

I mean, she's not, or at least not explicitly. Yeah, Robin's devotion is to the Virgin in all these stories. It's the kind of running theme that, of course, we tend not to notice because, you know, we just kind of see it as medieval window dressing. I think it is kind of interesting that if you think about the role that Robin Hood plays in kind of the imagination, there's a deep vein of nostalgia there. Definitely. I mean, he kind of embodies Mary England.

Mary England, exactly. You know, feasting on venison and, you know, merriness and waha and all that kind of stuff. And there is a sense, I think, in which Robin becomes the enemy of Protestant preachers. And one of the reasons why he starts to be phased out is because the association with the Virgin makes him awkward for Protestants to start to integrate into their idea. And there's also the association of him with these kind of mayday festivities yeah these are seen as kind of you know and and papist and all kinds of things basically over the course of the 16th century he becomes out of fashion he he becomes you know and this is where he starts

to become kind of a bit of class a uh he becomes associated with lower classes with the uneducated and that's when he's kind of backwards menvented at the end of the 16th century. As a nobleman. Yeah, exactly. So Tom, how does that thesis of yours, or indeed Leslie Coutts, how does that fit in with this stuff about Edward I?

So there are these French stories of him and Marianne, and Marianne being the Virgin Mary. Why do they become so deep rooted in the reign of Edward I when we're fighting the French? He is encouraging the transliteration of these various genres and verse styles into English. So he's trying to anglicise what are very popular.

Yeah. And so if they're in English, then they can start to be repeated in pubs, so that by the late 14th century, people in pubs are familiar with them. So when the stories first start, they're not being repeated in pubs. Is that the claim? That they're more upmarket than that? Yeah, so these are courtly traditions because they're in French. So, you know, it's only the upper classes who would be familiar with them.

So Robin Hood is actually fictional. So you've actually gone back on your previous... So you think deep down he's a literary construct. He's a French literary construct. Is that right? I think he's a literary construct who blends with a popular enthusiasm for outlaws so i think he's yeah he's a kind of anglo-french invention if you like is that a sort of french laugh i thought so so all these questions that we've got from listeners you know was he a yorkshireman was he this was he that was he a really a murderous brigand was he you would say all these questions that we've got from listeners, you know, was he a Yorkshireman? Was he this?

Was he that? Was he really a murderous brigand? You would say all these questions are completely beside the point because actually there is no, you know. Well, I don't think they're beside the point. I don't think they're beside the point because I think that all these questions are kind of battening onto the fact that there is an inherent fascination about the figure. The questions that you ask tend to generate further

traditions. One other book that I read in preparation for this is an absolutely brilliant, brilliant example of this. I commend it to you, Dominic, and I commend it to all the listeners. It's a book by Kai Roberts, who judging by his Twitter photo is very much not a Norman. He's a kind of jolly yeoman. And it's called Grave Concerns, the Follies and Folklore of Robin Hood's Final Resting Place. And this is focused on the idea of the story of Robin's death, which doesn't tend to feature very often in the film. So there is the Sean Connery one that does focus on his death. And the story, in fact, it's first mentioned in The Guest.

So very early, it describes how he was tricked by means of a wicked woman, the prioress of Kirklees. So Kirklees is an actual place, a nunnery in the Yorkshire side of the Pennines, that was his close kin for the love of a knight, Sir Roger of Doncaster, who was her lover. May evil befall them both.

They conspired together, Robin Hood to slay, and how they might best do that deed, his murderers to be. Then up spoke good Robin in the place where he stood. Tomorrow I must go to Kirklees to be skillfully let blood. Sir Roger of doncaster by the prioress he lay and there they betrayed good robin hood through their false play so that's the story of him going being bled by his by his cousin and robin thinks he's going to be cured and she isn't and blood pours away and in further elaborations of the story robin blows on his horn little comes, he wants to burn down the priory and

slaughter all the nuns. And Robin persuades him not to do that. But he reaches for his bow and fires the arrow. And that is where Robin is buried. And there is a stone in the grounds of Kirkley's Priory that is clearly very ancient. And with the dissolution of the monasteries, this stone becomes a kind of centre place of ornamental gardens and follies and so on in fact stanley baldwin gives a talk very much a friend of the rest of history yes in in in the grounds i've actually looked up that talk tom um is it good to the text it wasn't as robin hood themed as i'd hoped oh that's a shame it was mainly about um the empire and um the importance of sound. So great themes, but not relevant to this conversation. Kai Roberts gives a brilliant account of this.

I mean, he makes all this stuff incredibly interesting, the way in which these traditions have kind of gradually kind of accumulated over the centuries, the way that they've been questioned, the way they've been revised, the way that they grow. The best bit of all is that in the 1980s and 1990s, Robin Hood's, this stone that supposedly marks the grave of Robin Hood is in private land. The estate is owned by the family that got hold of it in the 17th century. So it is not accessible.

And a pressure group grew up in Yorkshire saying we should have access to it yeah and the um the owner of the estate refused to let them come in and there's kind of increasingly bad blood between them and i use the word blood advisedly because in the end they ended up getting as their president someone who had been involved in the 70s in highgate cemetery arguing that highgate cemetery had was haunted by a vampire. And he was terribly interested in it because of this idea of the prioress bleeding Robin Hood. And so he came up with the thesis that the prioress was actually a vampire and had turned Robin into a vampire, and that they were haunting the grounds of this estate. They kind of broke in and went to the site of the grave and saw the prioress.

I will read the description of it. A woman, her eyes dark mad, set in her pale face like a bat, her black nun's robes flapping eerily while her eyes flashed red and venomous, her teeth bared sharp and white between snarling blood red lips. Hold on, this was in the 1980s? Yeah. The prioress was still going. The prioress is still out there, apparently. And as presumably must Robin Hood be,

if he's a vampire as well. But it's a kind of brilliant example of the way in which these traditions are still generating new traditions. I was thinking while you were talking about a new tradition that Robin Hood has generated, Tom, one that's very close to your heart, as listeners may remember.

So Robin Hood is a man who has two identities. He dresses up in an outfit. He hangs out with other people who are dressing up in outfits who have two identities. So he's basically a superhero, isn't he? He is, in a way. He's the ancestor of Spider-Man. I suppose he is. Yeah, that's a nice thought. I'll tell you who he's also the ancestor of. I started laughing while you were talking. I had completely blanked from my mind that I once wrote a 2000 word essay

for a very popular newspaper comparing the lives of Robin Hood and Raoul Moat Oh, Moaty! I do remember Moaty So he was an example, now this will mean nothing to our overseas listeners there's no point even trying to explain it but Raoul Moat, if you remember when he was hiding out

he was hiding out in the ward or something, wasn't he? And Gaza visited him with some chicken and a fishing rod. Yeah, that's right. You could see how that could easily become a folk ballad in and of itself, couldn't it? And people – this obscure writer, Dominic Sandbrick. Yeah, right, exactly. Was there a real Raoul Moat?

Ye daily mail. Yeah, anyway. Did this man really exist? Right. Did any of man really exist? Right. Did any of them really exist? Who knows? So we haven't really solved. I thought we would solve the mystery.

I think we have. Well, I mean, I find your solution or the solution that he's actually a French. You don't like that? Literary formula. I don't like that at all. I feel that I've been cheated. I thought you were going to, you know, you're going to have found some butcher in Barnsley in, you know,

1215 or something that was definitely. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's a vampire. He might be a vampire. Yeah, that's exciting. I mean, that's quite good. Could I end with a poem? I think it would be entirely in keeping with the spirit of this podcast

if you did. Okay, so this is written by my friend Nicholas Hogg, and he's a very good poet and a very good cricketer, just how I know him. And it's called Longbow. First, we climbed the fence into the garden centre, above to our castle, before stealing six-foot lengths of cane and wading through the brook to the College Road Bridge,

where we'd set them tight with an island string and flex them into bows, strumming an instrument of violence and war once favoured by Stone Age nomads, Japanese horsemen and Robin Hood, who wore Lincoln Green on ITV. When the bow was sprung, we fletched arrows with dart flights and pigeon feathers before shaving down the points with pen knives. Needle-sharp splinter ends that could draw blood from fingertips will stand proud in the eye of a king. Needle-sharp splinter ends that could draw blood from fingertips will stand proud in the eye of a king. Then we stalk the woods for rabbits, burying the

shaft deep in a time-travelling Norman, falling from a battlement. Note the pierced armour as he paddles the air, the flight like a brooch pinned to his heart. It's good, isn't it? It's very good. Yeah. It's the perfect way I wish to end. Okay. The tradition lives on. Yeah. Okay. The tradition lives on. Yeah.

I think the tradition lives on. I don't think we've really solved the mystery, and nor have we really grappled with all the complexities of Robin Hood, because it's a subject that could take hours of podcasting. He's a vampire. We've solved it. But we have more than exceeded our time. Yeah, we're not Dan Carlin, so we can't.

No, exactly. So on that bombshell, we'll see you next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye. carl in so we can't no exactly so on that bombshell we'll see you next time goodbye bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad free listening Early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community. Please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets,

head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.