for a considerable period. It is to the architectural antiquaries who accompany us we must chiefly look for information on this part of the subject. We are here to investigate to inquire-to learn. We are not so presumptuous as to attempt to teach without first acquiring some personal knowledge of the objects it is our ambition eventually to illustrate. It is most important for the success of our labours that our position should be justly considered. That we should not be expected, on a first visit-in the brief space of a week-to pronounce, ex cathedrá, our opinions on points which have been subjects of controversy or speculation for centuries. In warning you of the errors of our predecessors, we must be careful not to mislead you ourselves. It is in the future pages of our Journal we hope to supply the information which may partly requite the obligations conferred upon the Association by your flattering and friendly reception of us to-day. ON THE VERITABLE EXISTENCE OF ROBIN HOOD; AND ON THE BALLADS RELATIVE TO HIM. BY J. M. GUTCH, ESQ. THERE are two remarkable coincidences connected with the place at which our Association is this year assembled, which make the subject of the paper I have been requested to read peculiarly appropriate. The first is our vicinity to the ancient woods, the sylvan glades, and rural scenery of what has hitherto been considered the habitation and retreat of the celebrated English yeoman, ROBIN HOOD. Secondly, so lasting has been the reputation of the hero, the subject of so many ballads and songs, and so great the anxiety to ascertain his real personage and haunts, not withstanding all the imaginary and fabulous histories of him, and the lapse of upwards of five centuries, that I am enabled at this meeting, in my humble judgment, to assert that his veritable existence, both in name and county, has at length been accurately developed. After a brief recital of the previous fictitious parentage, location, and character of Robin Hood, advanced by so many inquirers of eminence into the histories and traditions of the medieval ages, I shall endeavour to lay before the meeting the recent singular discovery made by that eminent antiquary and critic the rev. Joseph Hunter, in his researches into our ancient records. I proceed first to notice a few opinions of those antiquaries who, about a century ago, took an interest in the life and character of Robin Hood, and, in my opinion, misapplied their time and talents in fanciful conjectures and ingenious theories into his genealogy and history. Of these, Dr. Stukeley stands foremost in the list. In his Palæographia Britannica, he gives a regular pedigree of Robin Hood, and ventures an extraordinary opinion upon the causes which led him into his predatory life. "Robin Hood," he states, "took to his wild way of life, in imitation of his grandfather, Geoffrey de Mandeville, who being a favourite of Maude, empress, king Stephen took him prisoner at St. Alban's, and made him give up the Tower of London, Walden, Plessis, etc., upon which he lived on plunder."1 Could the inventive flight of an antiquary exceed such an improbability as this? And yet the credulous doctor, in another work (vol. ii of his Itinerarium Curiosum), inserts an engraving of a ground-plan of Kirklees abbey, where Robin Hood is supposed to have died, and delineates the very trees among which he was buried!! Several other ingenious conjectures have been recorded respecting Robin Hood's death and burial. A manuscript in the Sloane collection states, that the prioress of Kirklees abbey, after "Letting him bleed to death, buryed him under a great stone by the 1 This pedigree forms a note in an interleaved copy of Robin Hood's ballads, which has Dr. Stukeley's autograph in it, was afterwards in the possession of Mr. Douce, and is now deposited in the Bodleian Library. "I bought this book," says Mr. Douce, "at Mr. Bartlett's sale, the 4th of May 1787. It belonged to Dr. Stukeley." hye wayes syde"; [which agrees with a passage in Grafton's Chronicle, in which it is recorded, that after his death] "the prioresse of the same place caused him to be buryed by the highway side, where he had used to rob and spoyle those that passed that way; and upon his grave the said prioresse did lay a very fayre stone, wherein the names of Robert Hood, William of Goldesborough, and others, were graven; and the reason why she buried him there was, that the common passengers and travilers, knowyng and seeyng him there buryed, might more safely and without feare take their jorneys that way, which they durst not do in the life of the sayd outlaws. And at the eyther end of the sayde tombe was erected a cross stone, which is to be seen there at this present." Another of our antiquaries, Thoresby, in his Ducatus Leodiensis, p. 91, says: "Near unto Kirklees, the noted Robin Hood lies under a grave-stone, that yet remains near the park; but the inscription is scarce legible." But in the Appendix to the work, p. 576, is this note, with a reference to p. 91: Among the papers of the learned Dr. Gale, late dean of York, was found this epitaph of 'Robin Hood':: "Here undernead dis laitl stean laiz robert earl of Huntingtun sich utlawz az hi an iz men vil england nior se agen obiit 24 (v. 14) kal. dekembris 1247.'" Mr. Ritson took a prominent part in this fray; and by no means exhibited his usual research and acumen. He insisted that Robin Hood was a descendant of Robert earl of Huntington; that his real name was Robert Fitzooth; and that he was born at Locksley in Northamptonshire, though no such town in that county is known to have existed. Mr. Ritson also positively declared, not only the time in which he lived, but the exact period of his death; that he died in 1204, aged 87, being therefore born in 1160. Others of these fanciful antiquaries maintained that he died in 1294, aged 69; while a French historian carries him more than a century farther back. Even the best historical authority, Fordun's Chronicle, is allowed by Mr. Wright and Mr. Halliwell on this head to be interpolated. Mr. Gough, also, in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1793, engaged in the controversy, which at this time was so rife among the antiquaries; and in the following account, which he gave in a volume of his Sepulchral Monuments, put the finishing stroke to their conjectures. "The stone," he says, "over the grave of Robin Hood, is a plain stone, with a cross, the inscription illegible. That printed in Thoresby WAS NEVER on it.” It is delightful to escape from these fanciful regions of conjecture into some more clear and better sustained historical narratives of more modern date; which, although they are likewise founded upon unsubstantiated theories, are grounded upon references to several periods in our early history, which bear a much more reasonable resemblance to truth. The first I shall allude to is contained in the work of a foreigner, who has thrown considerable light upon the early events in British history. M. Thierry carries the exploits of Robin Hood as far back as the reign of Richard I (1189 to 1199), and contends that he was of Saxon birth.1 "His French prenomen (he says, p. 236) proves nothing against this opinion; for the clergy of England, since the Conquest, had been accustomed to admit in baptism no names but those of saints in favour with the Normans. Hood is a Saxon name; and the most ancient ballads rank the ancestors of him who bore it, in the class of the English peasantry. Afterwards, when the remembrance of the Conquest was weakened, the village poets thought fit to deck out their favourite hero in the pomp of riches and greatness. They made him a count, or the son of a count,- —or at least, the bastard grandson of a count,—whose daughter, having been seduced, fled from home, and was delivered in a wood. The latter supposition gave rise to a popular romance full of interest and of graceful ideas, but unauthorised by any probability. Whether it be true or false that Robin Hood was born, as the romance tells us, 'in the green wood, among flowering lilies', he passed his life in the woods, at the head of several hundred archers, who became the dread of the counts, viscounts, bishops, and rich abbots of England; but dear to the farmer, the labourer, the widow, and the poor. They granted peace and protection to whosoever was weak and oppressed; shared, with them who had nothing, the spoils of those who fattened on the crop which others had sown; and, according to the old tradition, did good to every honest and laborious person: 1 History of the conquest of England by the Normans, vol. iii, pp. 233-250. VOL. VIII. 28 "From wealthy abbots' chest, and churches' abundant store, Robert Brunne's Chron., ii, p. 667; edit. Hearne." After the publication of M. Thierry's History of the Norman Conquest, it would have been strange if some writer amongst us on the subject of ballad literature had not availed himself of such a copious store of information, and produced therefrom what he conceived a more authentic narrative of the life and actions of Robin Hood and his companions. This has been done by a writer in the London and Westminster Review, vol. xxxiii, No. 65, under the signature of G. F., who assigns to our hero a higher station in society than his predecessors, Ritson and others, had given to him. After animadverting on M. Thierry's statements, and bringing the period of Robin Hood's life and exploits down to the time of Henry III, the writer quotes the Chronicon of Fordun, as an authority on which he much relies; and mentioning the passage which declares the outlaw as avoiding the wrath of the king and prince (" iram regis et fremitum principis declinans"), he connects the life and exploits of Robin Hood with Simon de Montfort and the battle of Evesham, and the events which followed. I must now allude to an essay by Mr. Wright, "On the popular Cycle of the Robin Hood Ballads", contained in the second volume of his work, On the Literature, Superstitions, and History of England in the Middle Ages. "In the semi-heroic period of the history of most people," he remarks, "the national poetry appears in the form of cycles, each having for its subject some grand national story, some tradition of times a little more ancient, which had been a subject of national exultation, or national sorrow." He mentions such cycles among the Greeks, in later times among the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, and then he observes,― "That the most extraordinary ballad cycle, indeed the only one which has preserved its popularity down to our times, and of which we have large remains, is that of Robin Hood." Mr. Wright then remarks, "That the only attempt to investigate the history of the popular cycle |