Did Robin Hood Exist?

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

This episode explores the historical reality behind the Robin Hood legend, featuring medieval expert Matt Lewis. The discussion traces the c

Key takeaways

• Legal records from 1226 mention a fugitive named Robert Hod in Yorkshire, which may be a phonetic precursor to 'Robin Hood'.
• The character appears in the 14th-century poem Piers Plowman as an established figure of oral tradition.

Main topics

• Historical existence of Robin Hood
• Medieval legal records and names

Notable quotes

The first written stories that we have about Robin Hood don't come till the 15th century.

Conclusion

The episode demonstrates how historical figures are often reshaped by

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Looking for more shady and sinister stories? Sign up to History Hit. You can join us to explore the tragic life of the Brontes or discover the chilling story of Burke and Hare. Plus, with your History Hit subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. Speaker 1 (0:31) These days, corporations and politicians using social media to weaponize division is downright common. Some of those techniques were first used 10 years ago to supercharge a backlash to the largest indigenous-led protest in recent history, Standing Rock. So it was basically, yes, I thought they were evil, now you've confirmed it for me. For the full story, listen to Drilled, The Propagandist, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (1:06) Robin Hood. The outlaw who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. It's one of the most famous stories from medieval England, but there's just one problem. We don't actually know if Robin Hood even existed. Medieval records give tantalising traces. Outlaws with his name appear in legal records, his story was sung in 14th century folk songs, and his life documented in chronicles written beyond his own lifetime. His story and heroism still lives with us today. But was it all just that? A story? Or, deep within the ancient oaks of Sherwood Forest, can we find traces of the real man they called Robin Hood? Welcome to After Dark. Speaker 4 (2:17) Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And Speaker 2 (2:20) I'm Anthony. Speaker 4 (2:20) In today's episode, we're going to be exploring whether the story of Robin Hood, which has been told for about 800 years, was based on any kind of real person. Joining us today is the co-host of our sister podcast here at History Hit, Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis. Welcome to After Dark, Matt. Speaker 3 (2:37) Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 4 (2:38) It's so nice to have you here. I feel like it's Speaker 3 (2:40) a sleepover. Speaker 4 (2:40) I know. Maybe that's because we're all so tired. We Speaker 3 (2:43) should Speaker 4 (2:43) have got dressed Speaker 3 (2:43) before we started. Yeah, Speaker 4 (2:45) we should be in pyjamas. Okay, before we get properly started into the history of this, because there is some history. There is proper solid history. Who's your favourite Robin Hood in popular culture, please? Speaker 3 (2:58) And Speaker 4 (2:58) why is it the fox from Disney? It has to be. There's no other answer. That's yours, Speaker 3 (3:01) definitely, right? Speaker 4 (3:02) 100%. Every millennial woman fancied him growing up. Speaker 3 (3:05) I don't know if it's just women. I mean, if ever there was a sexy fox. Speaker 4 (3:09) That was the one. It's Speaker 3 (3:09) the Speaker 4 (3:09) Disney Speaker 3 (3:10) Robin Hood. It Speaker 4 (3:10) really was. I don't know what it is about him. I think it's called, Speaker 3 (3:12) they've caused everyone to ask questions about themselves over the years, but probably going to have to really unfashionably go for Kevin Costner. Same. Speaker 4 (3:19) Yeah. Despite Speaker 3 (3:20) the accent, despite all of the flaws in the film, in no small part because of Alan Rickman's performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham as well. So camp. The campus Speaker 4 (3:28) Sheriff of Nottingham. Yeah. Brilliant. But he's Speaker 3 (3:30) perfect. And I struggle to get past that. I mean, Carrie Elway's in... Men in Speaker 2 (3:37) Tights also. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. Silly Robin Hood sequel. What was going on around that time? Because they're relatively close by, right? Yeah. And I definitely watched those a million times growing up as a kid. So I have never seen the Disney Fox thing. So it is Kevin Costner for me. Oh, Speaker 4 (3:52) we need to remedy that ASAP because you will prove it. Do we need to Speaker 2 (3:56) pause? Yeah. Thank you for coming, Matt. We're off to watch this. Join us after we've watched this. Speaker 4 (4:01) Thoughts on the Russell Crowe strange... not very Yorkshire-y Yorkshire accent version? Oh, Speaker 3 (4:07) I haven't seen that. I like the Russell Crowe film to a point, and then I don't like it anymore. Speaker 4 (4:12) What's the cutoff point for you? The Speaker 3 (4:15) shifting accent is tricky to deal with. I think the grittiness of the story as it begins is really nice and actually reflects much more the historical Robin Hood. But then when you start getting into early 13th century D-Day landings... fighting on the beaches. The Speaker 4 (4:34) beaches. It Speaker 3 (4:35) gets a little bit crazy when they feel the need for Robin Hood to only be important because his dad wrote Magna Carta. You've lost me. Speaker 4 (4:43) It's a wild ride. It's Speaker 3 (4:45) a Speaker 4 (4:45) wild ride. Okay. Well, you've mentioned some real history there, Matt. So let's get into some. The idea of Robin Hood, we can trace it back to legal records, right? There's some documentation relating to someone. vaguely called Robin Hood? Speaker 3 (5:03) There's a few people that begin to crop up in the 13th century. And what's interesting to wonder is, so the first written stories that we have about Robin Hood don't come till the 15th century. So right at the end of the medieval period. But that's got to be tapping into some kind of oral tradition that's been around for some time. The question we don't know is how long that oral tradition has been going. So we begin to get, early in the 13th century, we get people... using names that aren't dissimilar to Robin Hood. So in 1226, there's a guy in Yorkshire who was a fugitive named Robert Hod. So Robert can become Robin. Yeah. Hod could become Hood. Don't know. Maybe we're stretching it Speaker 4 (5:44) a Speaker 3 (5:44) little bit. I Speaker 4 (5:45) always think, and you might be able to speak to this a bit more, Matt, but I always think when you see sort of medieval names or medieval English written down sometimes, it makes you kind of think about the pronunciation actually. And Robin Hod could have been... what we would now say as Robin Hood. I mean, I'm not an expert in medieval pronunciation, but in terms of, I don't know, I think I was thinking if you try and travel back to the medieval period and you had to have a conversation with someone, you would be able to tell what they were saying, kind of, but it would also sound very odd to our ears and they were sort of doing a slightly odd... voice or something or pronouncing things for comic Speaker 3 (6:22) effect. Yeah, Speaker 4 (6:22) and Speaker 3 (6:22) probably quite close to something like a Yorkshire accent. So we're before the great vowel shift, before all of those sounds have changed. They pronounced the word light, L-I-G-H-T, as licht. They still said those letters in the middle. That's why we have those letters there. They did used to be pronounced. Speaker 4 (6:37) Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:38) So they would have perhaps pronounced that Hod as more like hood. Speaker 2 (6:42) And Speaker 3 (6:43) it might have sounded something more like Robert Speaker 2 (6:45) Hood becomes Robin. Hood. Yeah. I can get on board with that. I think like, yeah. And this is a legal document, right? This isn't a literary flourish. This is not a fiction. This is a real person doing a real thing. Yeah. This Speaker 3 (6:57) is the IRLs of the Yorker sizes. So court records, this guy has been proclaimed an outlaw and he's going by the name Robert Hood. Speaker 4 (7:07) Sidebar to this, when I was reading this script in preparation for this episode, I saw the eye rolls of the Yorker sizes and I misread it as eye rolls and I thought it was like some kind of quite sassy list of Speaker 5 (7:16) like Speaker 4 (7:16) these people again. Okay, so we have Robert Hodd potentially in 1226. In Berkshire as well, there are court records. We've got a man called William who's the son of Robert Smith who is outlawed for robbery and his kind of alias that he's given is Is it Robe Hod or something like that? Rob Hod? Robber Hood. Speaker 3 (7:38) So again, it could be something like Rob Hood, Robert Hood. I mean, people aren't using hereditary surnames by this point necessarily. So he's just given a name that reflects his status. But if people are giving you a name, something like that to reflect your status, perhaps as an outlaw, Speaker 4 (7:54) it Speaker 3 (7:54) speaks to perhaps a memory already or an association of Robin Hood Speaker 4 (7:59) with the Speaker 3 (8:00) idea of being an outlaw. living in the green forest. So, you know, he becomes William Robberhood. Speaker 2 (8:05) Yeah. Speaker 3 (8:06) Again, I'll buy it. Speaker 2 (8:07) I know you're doing the professional thing of couching it, but I'm fully sold on both of those, I'm afraid. Talk to me then about, God, the dire of my undergrad English life, Piers Plowman. We're in the 14th century now, and we're starting to get some literary allusions here. Yeah. So the first kind of written reference Speaker 3 (8:27) that we have to anything to do with Robin Hood, definitely as Robin Hood, the outlaw. Comes in Piers Plowman, so William Langland's famous poem that he writes about this plowman out in the field kind of daydreaming his life away and all of the visions that he has. And there is a character in that called Sloth who is a priest and Sloth is such an awful, lazy priest. He doesn't know how to say his paternoster. Can't recite the Lord's Prayer. Listen, we've all been there. Speaker 4 (8:55) Yeah. Speaker 3 (8:56) But... Speaker 4 (8:56) Not great for a medieval priest though. Speaker 3 (8:58) No. No. I mean, it should be basics for a medieval priest. Can't recite his Pater Noster, can't tell you a story about Robin Hood. Ah, Speaker 4 (9:05) okay. Speaker 3 (9:06) And so he's showing up there as someone who knows rhymes of Robin Hood. He knows stories of Robin Hood. So by the time we're in 1377 with Piers Plowman, Robin Hood is established as a folk story, a tale that people are telling to each other. They're not written down yet. But William Langland here is writing down the fact that people are telling stories about Robin Hood. And Speaker 4 (9:26) also that Robin Hood is already counterculture, right? The fact that he is positioned in the Piers Plowman poem as being kind of the opposite of like dutiful and religious and sort of moral, that he is like this outsider. And it's the last thing that a priest should know about. And the idea is there's something Speaker 3 (9:43) subverse about him. You know, he's off the curriculum. or at least should be. The church has a really, really interesting relationship with Robin Hood throughout the medieval period, because he flips from being this example of everything that's bad. You should know your paternoster, you shouldn't tell stories about Robin Hood. And he is, in lots of the early stories, he's famous for robbing from rich priors in particular, so attacking the wealth of the church. But the church is also very keen to adopt him when they want him. So in lots of the early stories, He's very, very devoted to the Virgin Mary. He's positioned as an incredibly pious man. He won't attack bands of women or bands in the forest that contain women because of his devotion to the Virgin Mary. And whenever churches are perhaps doing some building work or something like that, they'll put on some fairs that include allusions to Robin Hood and stories about Robin Hood because they're popular. And now they're generating wealth for the church, which is absolutely fine. Speaker 4 (10:41) So there's a kind of fluidity to him. He can be what people need him to be in that moment. There's a poem called Friar Dawes' Reply, which is kind of written around 1402. And in that, there's a quotation that sort of becomes later a bit of a common proverb, I think, which says, many men speak of Robin Hood and never shot his bow. I suppose the message of that is that plenty of people can kind of talk the talk, but Robin lived that life and also was robbing from the rich to feed the poor. So is that what that message is? That you can talk about doing good deeds or being heroic, but you actually, you need to have shot his bow. You need to have done what he did. I Speaker 3 (11:22) think that's it. I think it's talking about people who love to snipe at the government. the nobility and complain about the structures of society that are keeping everyone oppressed. By the time we're getting to the beginning of the 15th century here, you've had the Peasants' Revolt, you've had the Black Death all through the earlier century. You've seen people develop opportunities that have then been snatched away from them by the government. You've seen them crushed in the Peasants' Revolt by the power, the weight of the government. And I think what you develop is people who will talk about... those who complain but don't do anything. So the stories of Robin Hood are about taking on the establishment, about fighting back against wrongfully used power and authority, about standing up to corruption in a way that most people complain down the pub about it, but they don't actually do anything. I wouldn't risk anything for it. Speaker 2 (12:10) Yeah. We see this iconic status start to come in as we push into the early modern period then. And I think we have some reference to Henry VIII dressing as Robin Hood, which Talk about stealing from the church and perhaps not then passing it on to Speaker 4 (12:27) the Speaker 2 (12:27) poor. But like, is this, is he seeing himself in that kind of a guise? I think he is. So, I Speaker 3 (12:34) mean, Henry VIII is deluded in so many ways, it's hard to tell what's going on in his head. But he does put on one of his, he's Speaker 2 (12:41) fond Speaker 3 (12:41) of these pageants, fond of dressing up and putting on shows for people. And so he and a bunch of his men burst into... Catherine of Aragon's rooms. He's dressed as Robin Hood. He's brought a maid Marion with him. Might have been a signal to the future for Catherine of Aragon. He's brought his own girlfriend into the room to see his wife. But yeah, so he positions himself as Robin Hood. This isn't a Robin Hood that's necessarily standing up to the establishment who isn't robbing from the rich to give to the poor. And it's during this period that we begin to see a real shift in the societal background, the position, the rank of Robin Hood. So in those really early stories, he is a gritty, tough yeoman. And a yeoman is someone who isn't necessarily a peasant working on the field, but definitely isn't nobility or gentry either. They're somewhere in the middle. They're a respectable