Robin Hood (Holt)

The legend of Robin Hood began more than 600 years ago. The man, if he existed at all, lived even earlier. Now Professor James Holt, one of Britain's premier historians and author of the standard work on Magna Carta, unravels pure invention from real possibility and offers the detailed fruits of more than twenty years' research. Whether he is revealing the results of the study by ultraviolet light of an obscure account of the royal household in order to dismantle a nineteenth-century theory on which most subsequent research has been based, or displaying his deep knowledge of the English landscape, he brings us closer than ever before to the significance—and centuries-long appeal—of the Robin Hood legend.

He roundly assesses the evidence for the historical "Robin Hood"—candidates include Hobbehod, tenant of the archbishopric of York and Robert Hood of Wakefield. His conclusion is more somber, but more fascinating, than popular imagination allows: he finds that the tale originated with the yeomen and hangers-on of the households of noblemen and gentry in the later Middle Ages, living in a society never far from violence and expressing through Robin Hood their love of adventure, their discontent and their readiness to idealize lawlessness. From there the tale was carried to tavern and market-place, and by the sixteenth century Robin could appear in the guise of noble, fictional earl of Huntington, King of May or gangleader. Parts of the story that we now take for granted—Maid Marian, Robin as robber of the rich and giver to the poor, even Sherwood Forest—played little or no part in the original tales.

Professor Holt's great achievement is not merely to reconstruct the historical basis of the stories, but never to lose sight of the human imagination that sustained them.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

1. Prologue
2. The Legend
3. Who Was Robin Hood?
4. The Original Robin Hood
5. The Physical Setting
6. The Audience
7. The Later Tradition
8. Epilogue
   Notes
   Sources and further reading
   List of illustrations
   Index