SYMHC Classics: Who was the Real Robin Hood?

This 2013 episode examines the real Robin Hood - and the question of whether there ever really was one.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. This week we talked about Eustace the Monk,
and we mentioned that he's been cited as one of
the possible inspirations for the character of Robin Hood. We
did an episode called Who Was the Real Robin Hood
years ago, and in that episode I said I might
want to do an episode on Eustace the Monk one day,
and then I completely forgot about it. Yay brains. That episode, though,

(00:27):
is Today's Saturday Classic, and it originally came out on
June fifth, twenty thirteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I am Tracy B. Wilson and I'm

(00:49):
Holly Frye. And today we have a listener request. Hooray.
We have many who was the real Bloody blog? Yeah?
So we have who was the real Moriarty kind of thing? Yeah.
And one of our off requested things, in this case
by Michael and many other listeners, is who was the
real Robin Hood? Yeah? Yeah, Which is a tricky question.

(01:10):
In point of fact, it kind of is. Robinhood style
characters have been showing up in literature since the fourteenth century,
but as a concept. He's kind of been around longer
than that, at least seven hundred years, but his earliest
appearance in literature was in English ballads that were singing
the tales of a Sherwood Forest criminal who squared off

(01:31):
against the Sheriff of Nottingham. Maid Marian and Friar Tuck
came on later, but Sherwood Forest and the Sheriff and
Little John and will Scarlett are all there pretty early on,
along with the idea of robbing rich people, but not
necessarily giving that up to the poor Adams long later too.
Historians who actually lived during the medieval period seem to

(01:54):
have assumed that Robin Hood was actually a real person
who lived in the twelfth or thirteenth century, but their
accounts aren't consistent at all, and modern historians aren't so
sure about any of that. There's just not evidence to
support it necessarily. There's a lot of question marks, and
some of the grander elements of the Robin Hood lore
are also pretty tricky when you get into the logic

(02:16):
of them seven score merrymen may have been able to
feed and clothe themselves just working with the spoils of
their robbing, but surviving the winter, and staying warm without
shelter would have been a little bit trickier. Yeah, it's
not a very warm part of the world without some
kind of permanent structure to take some kind of refuge

(02:36):
from the climate, in which then would have been easily rated.
So that brings it to the question of is robinhood
a fictional blend of outlawed daring do and some wish
fulfillment because lots of people like to see other people
get their come upance? Oh yeah? Or was he a
real person or a combination of both? A great question

(02:56):
that might not be one hundred percent answered ever. Nope,
but we're going to examine all of the various possibilities. Yeah. So,
in the Middle Ages, places like Sherwood Forest weren't just
vast landscapes of tree cover like we might think of
the word forest today. They were kind of a hodgepodge
of wooded areas and cultivated ground, so the nobility could
use them to hunt and to grow food, and there

(03:19):
are also laws about how everyone else was allowed to
use the forest. But the places that were best for
game hunting were also great for hiding, So places like
Sherwood Forest were perfect for outlaws to call home. It
was a great place to hide out, and it was
extra great because it was illegal for them to even
be doing that, so it was a perfect setting for

(03:41):
these robin Hood style adventure stories that have persisted throughout
the ages. The earliest known written reference to robin Hood
is a passing reference in William Langlan's allegorical poem The
Vision of Pierce Plowman, which was written in the late
thirteen seventies. He says, I don't know perfectly our father,
as the priest sings it. I know rhymes of Robin

(04:03):
Hood and Randolph, Earl of Chester, but neither of our
Lord nor of our Lady. The least that ever was written,
So he's basically saying, I don't really know my prayers,
but I do know robin Hood. And after that there's
a series of ballads and stories that came along throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, great hits like robin Hood

(04:24):
and the Monk, The Little Jest of robin Hood, Robin
Hood his Death, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, and
robin Hood and the Kurtle Friar. So there's not so
much of a really noble rob from the rich give
to the poor focus and a lot of these older
stories there is definitely a lot of robbing, not necessarily

(04:46):
a lot of giving, and some of the early stories
Robin is just really violent, and he's not a fallen
noble in these stories, which is an idea that was
attributed to him later. He's a commoner, a peasant, or
at the highest a yeoman, which was kind of a
middle class situation. The king mentioned in these early works

(05:07):
is Edward, probably meaning Edward the Second, while a lot
of the more modern portrayals talk about a Prince John
or a King John. And Little John and Will Scarlett
are also early names that show up in the context
of being Robin's mary men. But as we said before,
there was no made Marian in these early ballads or
Friar Tuck. Those really got added in later. In the

(05:30):
context of literature, Robin Hood got upgraded to a nobleman
in sixteen oh one, and Anthony Monday's plays The Downfall
of Robert Earl of Huntington and the Death of Robert
Robert Earl of Huntington around seventeen seventy. Robin Hood's Garland
being a complete history of all the notable and merry
exploits performed by him and his men on diverse occasions,

(05:52):
to which is added a preface giving a more full
and particular account of his birth, et cetera than here
any hitherto published came out. That's quite a title. I
love those extremely long titles. And this particular piece of
literature added more stories and more characters to the robin
Hood lore. So there was lots of robin Hood meeting
somebody in the woods, fighting with that person, and then

(06:15):
eventually inviting him to join him and the merry men
in their exploits. By the nineteenth century, Robinhood stories were everywhere.
Howard Pile's The Merry Adventures of Robinhood of Great Renown
in Nottinghamshire came out in eighteen eighty three. This gathered
lots of Robinhood stuff into one place and also adapted
it for children, and it became a source material for

(06:38):
a lot of the later robin Hood writing. This was
an illustrated book. It was really expensive for its time
compared to other books, and it was wildly successful. And
following that there were plays, operas, comic books, films, films, films,
films and more films. So many Robin Hood, movies, costumes, merchandise.

(07:00):
Robinhood was like a marketing JUGGERNAUTI yeah, he's become kind
of just an iconic figure, especially in the world of
English stories. So is there na truth to all of this?

(07:23):
The earliest One of the earliest historical notations of Robinhood
was from John Major, a Scottish historian who wrote his
Great His History of Greater Britain in fifteen twenty one.
He claims Robinhood did his criminal living in Sherwood Forest
in eleven ninety three. In eleven ninety four, Should I

(07:43):
read what he says about? Yes, give us a little passage. Hey,
he says about this time it was as I conceive
that they're flourished, those famous robbers, Robert Hood, an Englishman
and little John, who lay weight in the woods, but
spoiled of their goods those only that were wealthy. They
took the life of no man unless either he attacked
them or offered resistance in defense of his property. Robert,

(08:06):
supported by his plundering one hundred bowmen, ready fighters, everyone
with whom four hundred of the strongest would not dare
to engage in combat. The feats of this Robert are
told in Sons all over Britain. He would allow no
woman to suffer injustice, nor would he spoil the poor,
but rather enriched them from the plunder taken from abbots.

(08:26):
The robberies of this man I condemn, but of all robbers,
he was the humanist and the chief. So it's pretty
much solidly in favor of Robin Hood. Not cool for stealing,
but definitely cool for all that other stuff. Yeah, and
other historians of the time, including Andrew of Wyntune and
Walter Bauer, concurred that Robin Hood was active during the

(08:49):
middle and late twelve hundreds, so they all sort of
have this consensus about him being a real person, although
their dates are different. Yeah, much of today's historical writing
is not quite so sure that he was a real person,
and most of that research has involved sifting through old
court records, which is what we will talk about next.

(09:12):
But the court records, even though they're legal documents, don't
entirely support the literary and historical writings. So I'm sure
some people are not so enthused about no, because some
people want to believe, they want to find a true
Robinhood in the mix. Yeah, So the name Robert Hodd
appears in court documents in twelve twenty five, and this

(09:35):
is the earliest known record of a criminal's name that
may have morphed its way into robin Hood. There is
another man that appears in the court records from twelve
sixty one in twelve sixty two, and in the twelve
sixty one document he's named William son of Robert Lefeverre,
and in twelve sixty two he's William robhod suggesting that

(09:55):
the court transcriber knew of the Robinhood legend and possibly
ascribed his name to an outlaw. From there, there are
other robe Hoods and robin Hoods in legal records, including
people who deliberately took robe Hood or robin Hood as
their last names in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and
people who adopted Little John as pseudonyms. And so it's

(10:17):
basically people who heard this famous name and decided that
should be their name too, because they were outlaws. Yeah,
and all of these robe Hoods and robin Hood's muddy
the waters when you're actually trying to look for a
real source of the stories. It certainly makes it seem
like robin Hood was enough of a legend by the
thirteenth century that people wanted to adopt his name as theirs.

(10:41):
There are also a couple of other examples of Robin
Hood who were definitely criminals, but there's some reason that
historians say he was not the right guy. He either
lived too far away, or he was just a straight
up murderer and you know, didn't do the kind of
thieving that Robin Hood was known for. And apart from that.
In eighteen fifty two, Joseph Hunter published a book citing

(11:04):
a Robin Hood who worked as a porter in the
King's court in thirteen twenty four, and he connected this
to a journey the king is described as taking in
the ballad a Jest of Robin Hoad. Hunter speculates that
this is the same person as a Robin Hood who
was outlawed in thirteen twenty two, but there's no proof
that these are actually the same person, and without the connection,

(11:25):
it doesn't really seem to add up or hold up.
Then we get into the suspects whose names do not
sound like the words Robin and Hood. Roger Godbird was
a thirteenth century farmer turned baron turned criminal who ambushed
rich travelers with his band of men the Sheriff of
Nottingham captured him and held him in Nottingham Castle, and

(11:46):
his criminal dealings went on from around twelve sixty seven
to twelve seventy two. A couple of writers have published
books claiming that Roger Goldbird was the real Robin Hood,
including David Baldwin and Brian Ben's. Baldwin also claims that
he discovered a thirteenth century grave belonging to Godbird. Baldwin's

(12:06):
book is Robin Hood the English Outlaw Unmasked, and Benson's
book is titled Robin Hood The Real Story. But Robahod
and other pseudonyms meaning Robin Hood were already in use
before Goldbird appeared in the historical record, so writing for
History Today, Sean McGlenn actually cites William of Kencham aka

(12:29):
Willikin of the Wild, and he was loyal to the
Crown and led a resistance band of about one thousand
archers against French invaders in twelve sixteen. His resistance was
quite successful and as a reward he was granted wardenship
of the seven hundreds of the Wild, a division of land,
with wild being a heavily wooded place McGlenn argues that

(12:51):
he has the right blend of hero and outlaw qualities
because the English would have viewed him as a hero
while the French would have viewed him as an outlaw.
And there are also some other real outlaws who aren't
that often cited as a real robin Hood, but whose
activities may have influenced some of the stories of robin
Hood shanigans that came along laterally. You don't really have

(13:15):
to look far during that period of history to find
people who were fighting in the woods using bows and arrows, right,
that was a pretty common thing. So what is folk Fitzwarren,
who spend some time living in the forest and fighting
against King John. Another is hero Ward the Wake, an
outlaw who fought the Normans not long after the Battle
of Hastings. And a third is Eustace the Monk, who

(13:37):
I think I might want to do an episode on
later on, because Eustace the Monk just sounds like a
delightful thing to talk about, and he's not really delightful
though he became a mercenary after leaving the monastic life
to avenge his murdered father. Even William Wallace fits this
very general description of guy who was an outlaw and

(13:57):
fought from the woods. Yeah, when Robinhood changes and evolves
with the times. So in his earliest incarnations he was
tied to the violence that was common in the Middle Ages.
But then, in a trend that is probably quite familiar
to modern audiences, public sentiment was beginning to see royalty
and wealthy people in general as a bunch of tyrants

(14:18):
who were abusing the law and making life harder for
the commoner. So that, you know, mindset was ripe for
criminals who would try to take these people down a
notch and stories that would celebrate that kind of activity.
And nowadays Robinhood is a challenger of authority and he
writes wrongs, and the people who do these kinds of
things are celebrated as Robinhood figures. So yeah, we don't.

(14:41):
Sometimes they're animated as cute little foxes. I know. I
was going to ask you if you had a favorite
robin Hood, and I thought that that might be the
one that you would say. It's high on the list.
Don't get me wrong, Yeah, but I don't. I have
a detested Robinhood. Oh no, who is it. It's the
Kevin Costner. Oh, Yeah, it's one of the movies I

(15:01):
just I had to leave. I couldn't make it through
the whole thing. Yeah, I think there are people this
is not about that comment. There are people who get
really angry about portrayals of robin Hood that they're like,
that's not how it was. When how it was we
don't know. Yeah, Well, the earliest depictions a lot of
the things that we just sort of assume have always

(15:23):
been the case about robin Hood weren't really so much there,
Like the giving to the poor part, Yeah, not always present.
A lot of times it was just robbing. I just
thought it was a poorly made movie that it could
have been about anything valid. But I do really like
the Disney version, even though of course it's completely manipulated

(15:43):
to be really cute. See and yeah, history kind of
gets tossed out the window a bit, mostly because Foxes
don't wear clothes. No, they typically do not do that.
I like robin Hood. I need too. It's such a
fun story, and I like that it is something that
evolves and kind of becomes what any part of history

(16:05):
and culture needs it to be. Yeah, and I would
kind of rather we never know if there was a
definite number one real person who was quoting the real Robinhood.
I like them to be kind of mythic in legendary. Well,
unless somebody discovers a magical historical artifact, you get your wish. Okay,
let's not ever do that. Thanks so much for joining

(16:33):
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(16:57):
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