Forest robber Robin Hood: from fugitive to national hero

Outlaw

Exactly eight centuries ago, in 1226, the king’s judges ordered the sheriff of Yorkshire to deposit into the treasury 32 shillings and 6 pence, proceeds from the sale of the property of Robert Hod – such a document exists in reality. It is unknown what crime Mr. Hod committed. From the documents it only follows that he went on the run, was declared an outlaw, and his property was confiscated. In subsequent years, his name appeared more than once in financial records and changed in spelling, including being rendered as Robert Hood. The fact that it was the story of this fugitive that became the starting point of the myth of the noble robber is the most popular version among researchers.

In general, in court and government documents of the 13th–14th centuries, Robert (and abbreviated Robin) Hoods appear dozens of times, and those always mentioned somehow violated the law. Thus, in 1225, a group of men, among whom was Robert Hood, was tried in Buckinghamshire for destroying the abbey’s sheepfold. In 1266, during the Second Barons’ War, chroniclers mention Robert Hood among the rebels who advocated limiting the power of Henry III and fled to the Isle of Ely. And in 1354, Robert Hood, who had previously been detained “for encroaching on the plants and deer” of the royal forest, was released on bail in Rockingham.

But no matter where the forest robber came from, by the end of the 14th century he was already a real star of English popular culture, so much so that his first appearance in literature was associated not with his adventures, but with his popularity. In William Langland’s poem “The Vision of Peter the Plowman” (1377), dedicated to the moral and social crisis of English society, the hero admits that he does not know the Lord’s Prayer by heart, but he perfectly remembers the stories of Robin Hood.

Freelover

Robin Hood misses communion and church services and decides to leave the forest and attend mass. Friends are trying to stop him: the city is full of enemies, and the sheriff is just waiting for an opportunity to capture him. But Robin does not listen to advice and, of course, ends up captured. This is the plot of the first surviving ballad about a forest bandit – “Robin Hood and the Monk,” recorded around 1450. The main feature of Robin Hood in the early texts is his stubborn desire to live by his own rules. It is not surprising that such a freedom-loving hero became a favorite of the people.

Medieval England was a country with one of the strongest and most organized royal administrations in Europe. The power of the king and the nobility was supported by sheriffs, judges, foresters, church officials and tax collectors, who never tired of reminding their subjects of their many responsibilities and the need to obey the laws. Robin Hood ignored everyone and everything. He fought with government officials who interfered with him. He valued his gang, but he didn’t even allow his friends to dictate the rules to himself. He violated the laws on royal forests, limiting hunting and economic activity, and considered the thicket to be his personal freedom. In a word, Robin Hood time after time put his own will above other people’s rules, state laws and even good advice.

Intercessor

Robin Hood was not allowed to live solely by his own interests for long. “He did not allow injustice to be done against women or to rob the poor, but, on the contrary, he endowed them with what he took from the abbots. The robbery deeds of this man are worthy of condemnation, but of all the robbers he was the most humane and noble.” This is what the Scottish humanist philosopher John Major wrote about Robin Hood. In 1521 he completed his History of Great Britain, which looked at the country’s recent medieval past from the Renaissance.

But Major did not come up with his Robin Hood out of nowhere. His birth as an intercessor happened earlier and came at a troubling time for England. The second half of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century were an era of discontent with the authorities. The country was continually shaken by popular protests against corruption, abuses of officials and unfair governance. The leaders of such riots often took the nickname Robin Hood or declared themselves one of his men. And in the ballads, the forest robber increasingly found himself on the side of those who were oppressed – peasants, artisans and ruined knights. Greedy officials and clergy became his opponents, and he endlessly entered into confrontation with them to protect the weak. However, he did not help everyone, but only those who, in his opinion, deserved support.

Conciliator

At the beginning of the 19th century, European thinkers from different countries were passionate about the search for national identity, their own historical canon and local heroes. In Great Britain, the main myth-maker of this process was Walter Scott. In 1819, his “Ivanhoe” was published – a romantic chronicle of the birth of the English nation. And, of course, it could not have happened without the active participation of the forest robber.

In Ivanhoe, Robin Hood appeared under the name Loxley. He commands a gang of robbers, which is more like a partisan detachment. While the rightful king, Richard the Lionheart, is in captivity, his brother Prince John and his supporters are plunging the country into chaos of lawlessness. Locksley and his men side with Richard, helping him regain power and restore order. This union is actually not easy. Loxley is a Saxon, a representative of old England, conquered by the Normans during the conquest of the 11th century. Richard is a descendant of those same conquerors. By uniting them against a common enemy, Scott turned the forest robber into one of the figures of symbolic national reconciliation – the Saxons and Normans no longer fight each other, but together defend the well-being of a common country.

Socialist

“In education it is now common to focus on the story of Robin Hood. This is a communist attitude. He robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Such an idea undermines respect for law and order,” Ada White, a member of the textbook commission for the American state of Indiana, demanded that stories about the forest bandit be thrown out of the school curriculum. This happened in 1953, in the eighth year of the Cold War. The story quickly became an anecdote on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Soviet press laughed at the prospect of accepting Robin Hood into the Communist Party. And the Sheriff of Nottingham assured the public that the forest bandit was not a communist.

But no matter how curious this story may seem, White was right – Robin Hood has long become a member of the left. In 1934, Geoffrey Treese’s book Bows Against the Barons was published. Trees, who was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, turned the story of a medieval teenager who joined Robin Hood’s gang into full-fledged propaganda material for recruiting young socialists. The novel had it all: oppressed peasants, depictions of inequality, speeches about comradeship and equality, and a popular uprising modeled on the revolt from Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. Robin Hood appeared in the novel as the leader of the popular movement against the feudal lords, and his political program was the formula “take from the rich and give to the poor.”

In this role, Robin Hood spent most of the 20th century, appearing in books, comics, films and cartoons as a defender of the poor and an opponent of rich oppressors. He also became the mascot of the American Green Feather movement, which used him in protests against the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era, and later appeared every now and then in campaigns for higher taxes on luxury and capital. He also made his way into the 21st century, giving his name to the Robin Hood Tax initiative, which calls for imposing an additional tax on financiers to combat poverty and social inequality.

Libertarian

“You may have heard that Robin Hood took from the rich and gave to the poor. So it was just liberal propaganda. Now Robin is not a socialist robber who earns money by redistributing wealth, but a courageous libertarian rebel,” this is how The New York Times ironically reacted in 2010 to the release of Ridley Scott’s film “Robin Hood.” In the new version of the legend, the robber turned out to be an opponent of taxes and an excessive state, passionately talking about personal freedoms and resistance to arbitrary government.

The theme of the conflict between man and a powerful system was not new for Ridley Scott. In Blade Runner, its heroes resisted corporations that had effectively turned into states and gained almost unlimited power over human destinies. In “Alien” – a ruthless bureaucratic machine, ready to sacrifice lives for its own goals. And now the director’s pantheon of rebels has been replenished by the main robber of English history. After centuries spent in various social and political roles, Robin Hood rose above the debate about a better way of life and demanded that the state simply leave people, their money and the right to dispose of themselves alone.