Over the last few years I set out to research the legend of Robin Hood. Why? Well, in part because the myth has always been close to my heart. Growing up in the midlands, with a surname derived from archery, and at a time when Robin of Sherwood was on TV, I guess somewhere along the way this just became an important story for me.
I’m mostly known as a crime writer and would argue that Robin Hood is medieval crime fiction. We can broadly say the genre is broken down into stories told from the establishment/law point of view, and stories told from the outsider/criminal point of view, and my tastes have always skewed towards the latter. I find it strange that the nation that gave birth to this legend -and other great rebel cycles like Hereward and Adam Bell- should now have the default setting of churning out establishment heroes. Do we need another cop story? Why do we now focus so much on the sheriff rather than the outlaw? That’s a question for another time.
The main reason for the research was to prepare for a novel. I have a take on Robin Hood that – I believe- feels both fresh and familiar at the same time. I don’t know when I’ll get to it, and it may have to be self-published, but I’m definitely writing the book at some point. In order to write anything mythical – as with my Marah Chase books- I like to have a thorough grounding in the subject.
I don’t hold all that much loyalty to the results of my research. I’m a teller of tall, dark and funny tales, not a historian. I don’t believe any of the things I’ve had Chase ‘find’ in the books. It’s ALL. MADE. UP. Book three would likely be Excalibur, and I have zero belief that King Arthur is anything more than a collection of old Celtic myths gathered together and converted to Christianity. Book four would either be the Exodus or Atlantis and, while I’m very open to the idea the former may be based on real events, the latter is pure fiction. It was clearly fiction when Plato wrote it, and was accepted as such for over a thousand years before it became a propaganda tool for nations settling in the Americas. And therein lies the trap for writers like me; All of these myths and fictions come wrapped up a history of colonialism and racism. It’s important to know where the problems lie, even if my work isn’t concerned with accuracy.
In the case of Robin Hood, I already know what my take is. I know what my book would be about, and which decade it would be set in. I know who the King would be, and what my Robin’s real identity is. But it still serves to do the work, and to see if there’s anything interesting I should know, and any traps I need to avoid.
I do still believe the version we have today owes a lot to composite factors. Borrowing a little from Hereward here, a lot from Willikin of the Weald there, adapted by gentrifying playwrights a few centuries later. But beneath it all, digging away at the layers, I now believe we are looking at a real moment in history.
PREVIOUSLY, ON JAY’S POINTLESS RAMBLINGS…
In previous entries I’ve talked about the tensions over the location of the story, the ancient tug of war between Nottingham and Barnsdale, and also suggested a third location that could easily tie everything together if you were looking for a new place to set the tale. I’ve talked about the Kings and princes, and why the first thing to do when looking for either a fresh or accurate take is to throw out Richard and John. I’ve highlighted a few contenders for the ‘real’ Robin, along with someone who may well have inspired Will Scarlett. And I’ve pointed to a time in history when the forests of England were full of rebels against the crown, many of whom were pardoned and returned to royal favour.
And before I get down to naming names, I need to return to that period…
THE ONE WITH THE WRONG NAME
During the 1260’s there was a long-running rebellion against the crown. The early period of this uprising has been given a lot of attention over the years, with Simon de Montford the subject of endless documentaries, biographies, and critical reassessments. But less coverage is given to the fact the rebellion didn’t end with de Montford. The following decade saw rolling disturbances led by his supporters, all of them living as outlaws, some of them, receiving pardons and returning to favour. In 1446 Walter Bower claimed that Robin Hood was among those people outlawed during the rebellion. It’s from this time that we see one of the modern favourites for the real Robin. Roger Godberd.
Roger was relatively old by this point. Possibly in his forties. He was a (yeoman) farmer from the Leicestershire area, and there is evidence he also served in the garrison at Nottingham Castle and was wanted for poaching in either Sherwood or Charnwood. When his feudal lord joined de Montford’s uprising, Roger joined the battle. Whether he did this out of belief in the cause, or out of feudal loyalty, will never be known. But over the decade that followed he was involved in many criminal disturbances. There is record of him being imprisoned in Nottingham Castle before appearing to escape, being hunted by the High Sheriff of Nottingham and also of being sheltered by a Knight, which is a key element of the Robin Hood myth. Another key factor is that he appears to have been pardoned before later returning to crime. Roger Godberd’s story has so many parallels to the adventures of Robin Hood that, for many, the search has ended with him.
However, it’s impossible to avoid the thorny issue of his name. It would be easy enough to argue that ‘Robin Hood’ is an alias Roger took, or one that was given to him over time. But why would that happen? If ‘Robin Hood’ was already a criminal alias by Roger’s time, does that not suggest the real Robin Hood had already been and gone? And surely, if it was a name that was in any way attached to Roger, we would have a record of it, since we have so many details of Rogers life. One of those records would surely comment that he was the famous Robin Hood.
LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION
One more brief digression. Robin Hood is traditionally linked with Locksley, usually taken to be Loxley in Yorkshire. The difference in spelling isn’t a big deal, these things change over time and all of the modern spellings we use in the Robin Hood stories are different to the ones that showed up in the original mentions. Loxley itself is not that far north from the ancient boundary of Sherwood and is in riding distance of the Yorkshire locations often linked to Robins adventures.
There is another Loxley that interests me, this time in Staffordshire. (Full disclosure….not that far from where I grew up. It is an interesting quirk of any fringe or alternative history investigation that the investigator always seems to find that the missing hero/artefact/civilisation can be found just down the road from them. See also Graham Phillips always managing to find the tombs of King Arthur, the Virgin Mary, Robin Hood, the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail all within an easy drive of Birmingham. Oh, and also the Staff of Moses….in Birmingham Museum.)
Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valor, and Marriage is a poem of unknown origin. It can be first dated to around 1800, but nothing is known about where it came from, or whether it belongs to an older cycle of ballads or poems. Steven Knight – one of the pre-eminent Robin Hood scholars- is fairly sure the poem is of no real historical merit. And indeed, the narrative does include Robin bringing Adam Bell and William Cloudesly to a market fair. Adam and William belong to a separate outlaw cycle from the north of England, suggesting this poem is an MCU-style composite bringing together a number of different traditions. With that important caveat out of the way, I would suggest those different traditions would have already existed in order for them to be brought together in this way, and that the stories contained in the poem are parts of older cycles. The poem makes a number of interesting links. Firstly, Wakefield is mentioned, which would tie the Robin of this narrative to the same cycle that has him active in Yorkshire and gives Sherwood as his outlaw home. The poem states he was born and bred in ‘Locksly Town,’ but the action of the story takes place in ‘Titbury’ (modern Tutbury, Burton-on Trent.) This was within riding distance of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. All if these areas were linked by a network of ancient forests. Needwood covered most of the ground between Loxley and Titbury, Charnwood in turn covered much of the land north of Leicester, between Burton and Loughborough. And from there Sherwood wasn’t much of a walk or ride to the north.
THE REAL DEAL
Okay. Here we go.
I mentioned that Roger Godberd was a yeoman, and that he got drawn into the rebellion due to the involvement of his feudal lord? Well, that lord was Robert de Ferrers. The Ferrers family were lord of much of Derby and Staffordshire, with lands also in Nottingham and Leicester. (Also, to tie back to a previous post, they had many connections to Rutland.) The family show up often in royal histories, taking part in both rebellions against, and defences of, the Kings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They seem to have been good at switching sides. Robert’s father, William, died when Robert was young. This meant the crown held the de Ferrers estate until Robert was old enough to claim his inheritance. The estate was given to Price Edward (of later Braveheart fame) and it’s clear this became the source of much animosity between Robert and the crown. By the time he was old enough to receive his inheritance, Robert found much of his wealth remained withheld, and Edward retained much if his land -including important castles. This grudge fuelled Robert’s motivation to join in the de Montford Rebellion.
Once the first wave of the rebellion was crushed at the Battle of Evesham, many of the revolting Barons were offered their lands and titles back in exchange for fealty. When it came to Robert de Ferrers, however, the feud between him and the Prince meant the terms of his restoration were steep. He would have little to no power, less land, and owe a debt he couldn’t afford to pay. This led to his second rebellion, in which he returned to the woods and waged a guerrilla war against the crown -mostly aimed at the Prince. De Ferrers wasn’t especially successful at this and was captured a second time. But he’d played a part in inspiring many others to continue this rolling uprising that would bubble on in fits and starts for the next decade.
During these skirmishes, Prince Edward destroyed the Ferrers family castle at Tutbury. There’s that connection again. Robert was fond of - and made several attempts to seize and occupy- another of his family’s castles in Chartley, the ruins of which still survive today, five miles from Loxley. Loxley Hall as it stands today is a 19th century mansion, but it was built on the remains of a medieval manor house belonging to the de Ferrers family. Robert de Ferrers could very well have also be seen as Robert of Loxley. Especially during his youth, growing up without the title and estates of his family.
Robert de Ferrers and Roger Godberd were both involved in the rebellion. One was a disinherited lord (and arguably had always been so), and the other was a yeoman and poacher. Both were outlawed before being offered a pardon and then returning to outlaw ways, and both of them have links to Royal forests in their native land (Needwood and Charnwood) in addition to Sherwood. Given their links, it’s reasonable (though cannot be absolutely confirmed) that they knew each other, and may well have co-ordinated activities, and be seen working together during their campaigns.
So here’s my case: If we’ve come to easily accept that Robin Hood is a composite across centuries, of real figures who never met each other and mythical figures who never existed, is it not just as easy to think he’s a composite of two people who worked together?
There are various tensions that exist in trying to find any kind of reality behind the myth. Do we look for the disinherited lord, or the yeoman poacher? Do we look for someone with the right name, or someone with the right record?
If we put Robert de Ferrers and Roger Godberd next to each other, and squint from a distance of time and place, we can see a figure merging together, who is both a lord and a yeoman, a man with a grudge against a prince but not necessarily a king, a man who covered ground ranging from Staffordshire to Yorkshire, with records of being active in Sherwood. A man who was offered a pardon by an Edward, and who later returned to being an outlaw, and a man who once escaped from Nottingham Castle and was sheltered by a sympathetic knight.
CONCLUSION
We’ll never know for sure who the real Robin Hood was. Or if there even was a real Robin. He could just be a myth. Pagan gods of the forest melded together over centuries, humanized during ballads before ascending to myth again during Mayday plays. Barring discovery of a document from the time that explicitly states “this fella was Robin Hood and looked nothing like Kevin Costner” we have no way of knowing. It’s a small non-religious article of faith, pick your version and believe it.
And of the real contenders, I’d like to know more about the Robert Hode of the 1225 court scrolls. I’d like to know more about the Robert le Fevre of the 1262 court scroll mention. But without having that information available to us, and judging by everything else we do have, I’m currently resting my own case on the conclusion that Robin Hood is a merger of two people who worked together, Robert de Ferrers and Roger Godberd.
If anyone out there is looking for a real-world candidate and setting for a gritty Game of Thrones-style Robin Hood retelling, aim there. You could start at the Battle of Evesham, as the sun rises of the hill and the Princes men hack Simon de Montford to pieces and follow the story through as de Ferrers is offered favour before rebelling again. Action. Drama. Political intrigue. Go for it.
I’m not touching it.
Why?
I’m not all that interested in writing a gritty re-telling. But If I was to do it, I’d need to do it all the way. And there’s no way to paint Robert de Ferrers in any way as a hero. One of the key features of the rebellion was anti-Semitism. De Ferrers (and de Montford) led numerous pogroms, raiding through Jewish settlements, stealing wealth, burning houses and massacring families. And while I think it’s vital that stories like that are told, and while I also think there’s room for the right person to do that through the lens of a Robin Hood story…that’s not what I want to do.
As one final fun aside, during the whole Brexit fiasco many people became familiar for the first time with the title Duchy of Lancaster. This is one of the main private estates owned by the crown, and managed by an appointed member of parliament. When Simon de Montfort rebelled and forfeited his rights to his estates, they reverted to the crown. When Robert de Ferrers rebelled, his own property was merged with de Montfords, and formed the Duchy of Lancaster. And so, even today, if I’m right about the identity of Robin Hood, it’s a cruel joke of history that the royal family continue to draw substantial income from the famous outlaw’s estate.