Note 58 — 117 A GEST OF ROBYN HODE

I must invoke the spirit of Ritson to pardon the taking of no very serious notice of Robin Hood’s noble extraction. The first mention of this seems to be in Grafton’s Chronicle, 1569. Grafton says: In an olde and auncient pamphlet I finde this written of the sayd Robert Hood. This man, sayth he, discended of a noble parentage; or rather, beyng of a base stocke and linage, was for his manhoode and chiualry aduaunced to the noble dignitie of an erle.... But afterwardes he so prodigally exceeded in charges and expences that he fell into great debt, by reason whereof so many actions and sutes were commenced against him, wherevnto he aunswered not, that by order of lawe he was outlawed, etc.: I, 221, ed. 1809. (Some such account furnished a starting-point for Munday.) Leland also, Ritson adds, has expressly termed him “nobilis” (Ro: Hood, nobilis ille exlex), Collectanea, I, 54, ed. 1770, and Warner, in Albion’s England (1586), p. 132, ed. 1612, calls him a “county”:

Those daies begot some mal-contents, the principall of whom

A countie was, that with a troop of yeomandry did roam.

Ritson also cites the Sloane MS., 715, “written, as it seems, toward the end of the sixteenth century;” and Harleian MS., 1233, which he does not date, but which is of the middle of the seventeenth century. Against the sixteenth-century testimony, so to call it, we put in that of the early ballads, all of which describe Robin as a yeoman, the Gest emphasizing the point.