Robin Hood History of Robin Hood ballads

Early references

The oldest references to Robin Hood are not historical records, or even ballads recounting his exploits, but hints and allusions found in various works. From 1261 onward, the names "Robinhood", "Robehod", or "Robbehod" occur in the rolls of several English Justices as nicknames or descriptions of malefactors. The majority of these references date from the late 13th century. Between 1261 and 1300, there are at least eight references to "Rabunhod" in various regions across England, from Berkshire in the south to York in the north.
Leaving aside the reference to the "rhymes" of Robin Hood in Piers Plowman in the 1370s, and the scattered mentions of his "tales and songs" in various religious tracts dating to the early 1400s, the first mention of a quasi-historical Robin Hood is given in Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Chronicle, written in about 1420. The following lines occur with little contextualisation under the year 1283:
Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude
Wayth-men ware commendyd gude
In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.
In a petition presented to Parliament in 1439, the name is used to describe an itinerant felon. The petition cites one Piers Venables of Aston, Derbyshire, "who having no liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hude and his meyne."
The next historical description of Robin Hood is a statement in the Scotichronicon, composed by John of Fordun between 1377 and 1384, and revised by Walter Bower in about 1440. Among Bower's many interpolations is a passage that directly refers to Robin. It is inserted after Fordun's account of the defeat of Simon de Montfort and the punishment of his adherents, and is entered under the year 1266 in Bower's account. Robin is represented as a fighter for de Montfort's cause. This was in fact true of the historical outlaw of Sherwood Forest Roger Godberd, whose points of similarity to the Robin Hood of the ballads have often been noted.
The word translated here as 'murderer' is the Latin sicarius (literally 'dagger-man'), from the Latin sica for 'dagger', and descends from its use to describe the Sicarii, assassins operating in Roman Judea. Bower goes on to relate an anecdote about Robin Hood in which he refuses to flee from his enemies while hearing Mass in the greenwood, and then gains a surprise victory over them, apparently as a reward for his piety; the mention of "tragedies" suggests that some form of the tale relating his death, as per A Gest of Robyn Hode, might have been in currency already.
Another reference, discovered by Julian Luxford in 2009, appears in the margin of the "Polychronicon" in the Eton College library. Written around the year 1460 by a monk in Latin, it says:
Around this time [i.e., reign of Edward I], according to popular opinion, a certain outlaw named Robin Hood, with his accomplices, infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies.
Following this, John Major mentions Robin Hood within his Historia Majoris Britanniæ (1521), casting him in a positive light by mentioning his and his followers' aversion to bloodshed and ethos of only robbing the wealthy; Major also fixed his floruit not to the mid-13th century but the reigns of Richard I of England and his brother, King John. Richard Grafton, in his Chronicle at Large (1569) went further when discussing Major's description of "Robert Hood", identifying him for the first time as a member of the gentry, albeit possibly "being of a base stock and linaege, was for his manhood and chivalry advanced to the noble dignity of an Earl" and not the yeomanry, foreshadowing Anthony Munday's casting of him as the dispossed Earl of Huntingdon. The name nevertheless still had a reputation of sedition and treachery in 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his associates were branded "Robin Hoods" by Robert Cecil. In 1644, jurist Edward Coke described Robin Hood as a historical figure who had operated in the reign of King Richard I around Yorkshire; he interpreted the contemporary term "roberdsmen" (outlaws) as meaning followers of Robin Hood. ⁸