Note 82 — 118 ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE

Formerly among Sir John Fenn’s papers (for the history of which see Gairdner, Paston Letters, I, vii. ff); now in the possession of Mr William Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge. The fragment, Mr Wright informs me, is written on a paper which was evidently the last half-leaf of a folio MS. On the back are various memoranda, and among them this: Itm. Rd of Rechard Wytway, penter [or peuter], for hes hosse rent, in full payment, lx [ix?] s’, the vij day of November, aº Ed. iiijti xv \[1475]. The grammatical forms of themselves warrant our putting the composition further back. This interesting relic has already been printed in Notes and Queries, First Series, XII, 321, from a very incorrect copy made by Dr Stukely. It is given here from a transcript made for me by Henry Bradshaw, of honored memory. Mr Wright has compared this with the original, and given me the history of the paper, so far as known.

This paper, as far as we can see, came into Sir John Fenn’s hands in company with the Paston Letters. In a letter of the date 1473, Sir John Paston writes: W. Woode, whyche promysed ... he wold never goo fro me, and ther uppon I have kepyd hym thys iii yer to pleye Seynt Jorge, and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham, and now, when I wolde have good horse, he is gone into Bernysdale, and I without a keeper. Fenn, Original Letters, etc., 1787, II, 134, cited by Ritson; Gairdner, Paston Letters, III, 89. The play cited above might be called one of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and may possibly have been the very one in which William Wood was used to perform, before he went “into Barnysdale,” that is, ran away from service.