Robin Hood FAQ Backwing Preview

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Robin Hood FAQ
(property) to the not-inconsiderable value of one pound, twelve shillings,
and sixpence, in partial payment of a debt to the Liberty of St. Peter’s York.
There is also a strong body of opinion that then links the unfortunate
“Robert Hod, fugitive” to another local criminal, Robert of Wetherby
“outlaw and evildoer of our land”—a man whose capture and execution
ultimately cost the local judiciary some six pounds, ten shillings, or four
times the value of the confiscated chattels.
We know not precisely from what, aside from debt, Robert Hod may have
been a fugitive. Nor of what evil doings the evildoer Robert of Wetherby
might have been guilty. But one fact is assured. Leading the hunt for this
miscreant was Eustace of Lowdham, now the Sheriff of Yorkshire but,
hitherto, the deputy sheriff of the neighboring county of Nottinghamshire.
Robert Hod? The sheriff of Nottinghamshire? It’s almost too good to
be true.
And so it is. Robert Hod is revealed as the historical record’s first possible
Robin Hood. But he is not its last.
The View from North of the Border
In court documents dating from half a century later, in 1262, one William
le Fevre, an outlaw in the county of Berkshire, was named as William
Robehod; while another candidate (or, as the law might put it, suspect) for
the role of the real-life Robin is found lurking within that vast historical
tract known today as Wyntoun’s Chronicle of Scotland, written around 1420.
Andrew of Wyntoun was both a poet and a holy man, a canon of St.
Andrews, near Dundee in Scotland. Written largely, and most impressively,
in eight-syllable couplets, his Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland is the oldest history
of that land known to survive today, its span reaching from the earliest
days of myth and fable to what Andrew knew as “the present day,” the death
of the Duke of Albany, Robert Stewart, in 1420.
Scrupulously dated, it covers, also, noteworthy events taking place south
of the border in northern England and, for 1283, Andrew writes
Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude
Waythmen ware commendyd gude;
In Yngilwode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale
—meaning that the two men, Little John and Robin Hood, were widely
regarded as “wight yeomen” or good hunters, and were familiar sights
around Inglewood and Barnsdale, in the bordering county of Cumberland.