Legend or
history?

Three labels

What the records actually show

History The earliest record Ibeji points to: at a royal court held at York on 25 July 1225, the goods of ‘Robert Hod, fugitive’ were valued at 32 shillings and 6 pence. The next year’s account calls him ‘Hobbehod’ and shows he had been a tenant of the Archbishop of York. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

History A royal account roll of Easter 1262 records that the Prior of Sandleford, in Berkshire, was pardoned for seizing without warrant the goods of ‘William Robehod, fugitive’. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

History The same case appears in the Berkshire court roll of 1261, where the outlawed man is called William son of Robert le Fevere. Ibeji argues that a clerk changed the name to ‘Robehod’, which shows the name Robin Hood already meant ‘outlaw’ by then. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

History Ibeji notes many cases in the 1200s and 1300s of outlaws deliberately using the names Robin Hood and Little John as aliases. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

History In 1439 a petition to Parliament complained that one Piers Venables had gathered men and gone into the woods ‘like as it hadde be Robyn-hode and his meynë’ (as if he were Robin Hood and his band). Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

Two men called Frere Tuk

History A royal commission dated 9 February 1417 ordered the arrest of ‘one assuming the name of Frere Tuk and other evildoers of his retinue’ in Surrey and Sussex. Reading the Rolls: Calendar of Patent Rolls entry, 9 February 1417 ↗

History A roll entry of 12 November 1429 names ‘Robert Stafford of Lyndefeld, chaplain, alias Frere Tuk’, summoned for failing to appear in court. (The online transcription of this entry is marked as machine-read and unverified.) Reading the Rolls: Calendar of Patent Rolls entry, 12 November 1429 (machine-read text) ↗

History Ibeji thinks it likely that the original Friar Tuck was this Robert Stafford, active in Sussex between 1417 and 1429. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

The chroniclers only had the ballads

History Medieval chroniclers who wrote about Robin had nothing to go on but the ballads themselves. Britannica (Scholars): Robin Hood ↗

History The Scottish chronicler Andrew of Wyntoun (about 1420) puts Robin Hood and Little John under the year 1283, in Inglewood and Barnsdale. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History Walter Bower (about 1437) called Robin ‘that most celebrated robber’ and made him a follower of Simon de Montfort. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History John Major’s history of Britain, published in 1521, places Robin in the reign of Richard I and calls him ‘the prince and the most gentle thief’ of all thieves. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History Ibeji calls Major’s dating ‘purely arbitrary’: two writers of Major’s own time dated Robin to 1283–85 or to 1266. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

Which king?

History The early ballads never name King John or King Richard. The only king they mention is ‘Edward our comely king’, which Ibeji thinks probably refers to Edward II’s visit to Nottingham in 1324. Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

Literature Pyle set his book ‘when good King Henry the Second ruled the land’, which no medieval ballad does. Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), Project Gutenberg ↗

History No claim that Robin was of noble birth has been found earlier than Grafton’s Chronicle of 1569. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History In 1746 the antiquary William Stukeley invented a noble family tree for ‘Robert Fitzooth, commonly called Robin Hood, pretended Earl of Huntingdon’. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History Britannica says the popular idea that Robin lived in the time of Richard I comes from that made-up pedigree. Britannica (Scholars): Robin Hood ↗

The earliest ballads

Literature The first known mention in literature is in William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman, written around 1377. The character Sloth admits he cannot say his Paternoster properly, ‘but I kan rymes of Robyn Hood’. William Langland, The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, vol. 1 (ed. Thomas Wright), Project Gutenberg ↗ Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

Literature Ibeji dates the main surviving tales: Robin Hood and the Monk (about 1450), and the Gest of Robyn Hode (written down about 1492 to 1510, but probably composed about 1400). Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

Literature Britannica names four medieval ballads as the core of the legend: Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, Robin Hood and the Potter, and the Lytyll Geste of Robin Hode. Britannica (Scholars): Robin Hood ↗

Literature Robin Hood and the Monk survives in a Cambridge University Library manuscript from the middle of the 1400s. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History Robin Hood is the outlaw hero of a series of English ballads. Britannica says some of them date from at least as early as the 1300s. Britannica (Scholars): Robin Hood ↗

So was Robin Hood real?

History Ibeji sketches one possible timeline (active in the 1190s, an outlaw by 1225, dead by 1247, a legend by 1261), then adds: ‘Quite frankly, I wouldn’t stake my reputation on it.’ Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

History Historian Mike Ibeji wrote in 2011: ‘It is simply not possible to locate the historical Robin Hood with any certainty.’ Dr Mike Ibeji, ‘Robin Hood and his Historical Context’ (2011, archived web article) ↗

History Britannica says none of the attempts to identify Robin Hood with a particular real person has gained much support. Britannica (Scholars): Robin Hood ↗

History The University of Nottingham’s library says the origins of the legend ‘owe more to folklore and literature than historical record’, and that other northern forests also claim to be his home. University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections: Focus on Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest ↗

History Frank Sidgwick, editing the ballads in 1912, concluded that ‘there are, then, four Robin Hoods’: the outlaw of the older ballads; the ‘quasi-historical’ Earl of Huntingdon; one of several real Robert Hoods found in records; and a figure some German scholars explained as a form of the god Woden. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗

History Sidgwick’s own verdict was that ‘Robin Hood the yeoman outlaw never existed in the flesh’. That is one editor’s opinion, not a settled fact. Frank Sidgwick (ed.), Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws (1912), Project Gutenberg ↗