An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood,
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
All clad in Lincoln green, with caps of red and blue,
His fellow’s winded horn not one of them knew…
All made of Spanish yew, their bows were wondrous strong;
They not an arrow drew but was a clothyard long.
MICHAEL DRAYTON: Polyolbion xxvi (1622)
Early next morning Sir Guy of Gisborne set out for Arlingford Castle, his guide being the fat friar called Brother Michael who had so disgraced himself on the previous night by praising the outlawed Robin Hood.
The friar rode at his side singing lustily – in spite of the fact that as they left the Abbey, the Abbot had banished him in no uncertain terms: ‘You go out, false and traitorous man, as you came in many years ago – plain Michael Tuck – no longer a Brother of this Order. If you show your face at my doors again, my doors will be shut in your face!’
‘Why then!’ cried the Friar gaily, ‘farewell to the Abbey of Fountains, and all hail to the jolly greenwood – and catch me again if you can!’
So he went on his way, singing:
For hark! hark! hark!
The dog doth bark,
That watches the wild deer’s lair,
The hunter awakes at the peep of the dawn,
But the lair it is empty, the deer it is gone,
And the hunter knows not where!
As they came in sight of Arlingford Castle the Friar ceased from his singing, and turning to Sir Guy, remarked:
‘You had best turn back, sir knight – or at the least lower that visor of yours!’
‘How?’ exclaimed Guy of Gisborne. ‘Surely Lord Fitzwalter is not in league with Robin Hood?’
‘Far from it!’ laughed the fat Friar, ‘but Lady Marian Fitzwalter assuredly is. And Lady Marian is as apt with an arrow as most damsels are with a needle!’
They reached the castle in safety, however, and Lord Fitzwalter welcomed them loudly, showing great eagerness to be on the side in power:
‘You have done me a wrong? How so? Would you have had me marry my daughter to an outlaw, a fly-by-night, a slayer of the King’s deer – and of the Prince’s followers? A man who flings away an earldom, broad lands and rich treasures to help a lot of miserable serfs and other riff-raff most justly persecuted by the laws of the land. No, sir, no: you have done me a service. A great service. I have finished with Fitzooth, or Robin Hood, or whatever that rascally beggar now calls himself. And so has my daughter.’
‘And yet she is half wedded to him by the dictates of the church,’ remarked the Friar, ‘and wholly his by the dictates of her heart.’
‘The marriage was not completed!’ shouted Lord Fitzwalter. ‘Therefore I care nothing for it. As for love – it is your business, as her confessor, to show her that her love for this traitor is sinful and to be stamped out!’
‘Marriages,’ quoth the Friar, ‘are made in Heaven. Love is God’s work – and it is not for me to meddle with it.’
‘The ceremony was cut short – sure proof that Heaven laid no blessing on it!’ roared Lord Fitzwalter. ‘Besides, I betrothed my daughter to the Earl of Huntingdon, not to the outlawed traitor Robin Hood.’
‘He may be pardoned,’ answered the Friar. ‘Cœur de Lion is a worthy king – and Fitzooth a worthy peer.’
‘There can be no pardon,’ said Sir Guy hastily. ‘He has killed the king’s subjects and defied the king’s sheriff.’
Lord Fitzwalter was growing more and more red in the face with fury, but at this moment the Lady Marian came suddenly into the room, clad in Lincoln green, with a quiver of arrows at her side and a bow in her hand.
‘How now?’ roared her father. ‘Where are you off to now, wench?’
‘To the greenwood,’ said Marian calmly.
‘That you shall not!’ bellowed Lord Fitzwalter.
‘But I am going,’ said Marian.
‘But I will have up the drawbridge.’
‘But I will swim the moat.’
‘But I will secure the gates.’
‘But I will leap from the battlement.’
‘But I will lock you in an upper chamber.’
‘But I will shred the tapestry and let myself down.’
‘But I will lock you in a turret where you shall only see light through a loophole.’
‘But I will find some way of escape. And, father, while I go freely, I shall return willingly. But once shut me up, and if I slip out then, I shall not return at all… Robin waits for me in the greenwood, and the knot half-tied yesterday can so easily be tied completely.’
‘Well spoken, lady,’ cried the Friar.
‘Ill spoken, Friar!’ thundered Lord Fitzwalter. ‘Get out of my castle this instant! You are in league with the traitor Robin Hood, I know it! If you come here again, I’ll have you whipped, monk or no monk!’
‘I go, I go!’ said the Friar calmly. ‘I know of a hermitage by the riverside where I may well take up my abode – and levy toll on all those who would pass by: payment, of course, for my prayers! Abbey and castle have cast me out, but not so easily shall Friar Tuck be cast down!’
And away he strode, singing blithely:
For I must seek some hermit cell,
Where I alone my beads may tell,
And on the wight who that way fares
Levy a toll for my ghostly pray’rs!
‘So much for an impudent friar!’ puffed Lord Fitzwalter. ‘Now for a wayward girl!’
‘A husband,’ said Sir Guy with meaning, ‘is the best curb for such as she.’
‘Aye, a husband – and of my choosing!’ agreed Lord Fitzwalter. ‘No more earls of doubtful earldoms, but, shall we say, a knight with definite lands and treasures, and definitely in favour with Prince John! Such a man, in fact, as – well, no matter!’
Lord Fitzwalter looked Guy of Gisborne up and down with approval, but Marian broke out:
‘No man of your choosing, father – unless he be my choice also. And my choice is and will ever be for brave Robin Hood!’
‘I’ll keep you in a dungeon and feed you on bread and water!’ thundered Lord Fitzwalter.
‘Robin will sack your castle to rescue me,’ said Marian gaily. Then suddenly serious, she exclaimed: ‘Father, you will let me go to the greenwood? You have my promise that I will return. And I promise also that Robin shall be nothing more to me than he is now, without your leave – or until King Richard return and give me to him in marriage with his own hand.’
Then, blowing a kiss to her father, and paying no attention whatsoever to Guy of Gisborne, Marian tripped gaily from the room and away into Sherwood Forest.
‘And now,’ said Lord Fitzwalter grimly, ‘it is for you to catch this outlaw and string him up to the highest gallows in Nottinghamshire. Until that is done, I fear there will be no use in your coming here to ask my daughter’s hand in marriage.’
Sir Guy rose and bowed to his host.
‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I am already on my way to Locksley Hall. The Sheriff’s men were to surround it last night, taking prisoner any who came in or out, and my followers do but await me at the Abbey. When I get there, it may well be to find Robin Hood already in their hands.’
But Robert Fitzooth had not been so unaware of the dangers into which his double life as Robin Hood was leading him as the Sheriff and Prince John had supposed. When he escaped from the chapel after the interrupted wedding, Robin and some twenty men at arms rode off into Sherwood Forest and continued on their way to within a mile or so of Locksley Hall. Here Robin halted and turning, spoke to his followers:
‘My friends, what I feared has befallen me. You all heard the mandate of outlawry read against me – and some of you may have incurred danger of the same by withstanding those men sent against me under Sir Guy of Gisborne. Well now, you may choose for yourselves: I set you all free from my service – but indeed as I am an outlaw, that sets you free whether I will or not. If you did not all know it already, you know now that I am that Robin Hood who, for several years now, has befriended all such as suffer under the cruelty and unjustness of lords, barons, bishops, abbots, and sheriffs. I have already a band of men sworn to follow me who await me in the greenwood: we are all comrades and brothers, though me they have chosen to be their leader and their king – not because I am by right an Earl, not merely because I have the gift of a steady hand and a clear eye and so can shoot an arrow further and straighter than most men, but because one must rule and I come of a race of rulers (though we are but slaves now to our Norman masters). I am no more Robert Fitzooth, Earl of Huntingdon, but the plain yeoman of Locksley whom men call Robin Hood: but my friends in Sherwood have chosen me king, and a king in Sherwood I shall be, my first care for my followers, but our first care for justice and mercy and the Love of God. And in this I hold that we commit no treason: when Richard comes home from the Crusade this reign of terror and of evil against which I fight will end. Cruel, lawless John will oppress us no longer, nor his friends and followers use us without right or justice, as slaves and not as free men.
‘Choose now, will you follow me into Sherwood, all such of you as have neither wife nor child – or, as you blamelessly may, go back to serve the new master of Locksley. Only, for the love and service that was between us, I charge you to betray neither me nor any who were your companions and are now mine.’
Then most of the men at arms cried aloud that they would follow Robin Hood through weal and woe, and all swore that they would die rather than betray him. Some then turned and with bent heads rode off towards Locksley – drawn thither by wife or child – and swore reluctantly to serve Sir Guy of Gisborne so long as he might be the master of Locksley.
‘And now,’ said Robin to those who remained with him, ‘let us away to our new home in the forest and see how many of us there be who stand loyally together for God, for His anointed servant Richard, King by right divine, and for justice and the righting of wrongs.’
Deep in the heart of Sherwood Forest, as the sun was setting behind them, Robin and his men came to a great glade where stood the greatest of all the forest oaks upon a stretch of open greensward with steep banks fencing it on either hand in which were caves both deep and dry. At either end of the shallow valley, and beyond the banks on each side, the forest hedged them in with its mighty trees, with oak and ash, with beech and elm and chestnut, and also with thick clumps of impassable thorns, with desolate marshes where an unwary step might catch a man or a horse and drag him down into the dark quagmire, and with brambles rising like high dykes and knolls through which even a man in armour could scarcely force his way.
For the last mile Robin led by narrow, winding paths, pointing out to his companions the secret, hidden signs by which they could find their way.
Once in the glade, Robin took the horn from his belt and blew on it a blast which echoed away and away into the distance. Already men dressed smartly in doublet and hose of Lincoln green, in hoods of green or russet and in knee-boots of soft brown leather, had come out from the caves to greet them.
At a few brief words, they set about lighting two great fires near the oak tree in the glade, and roasting great joints of venison before them. They also brought coarse loaves of brown bread, and rolled out two barrels of ale, setting up rough trestle tables with logs in lieu of stools.
As the darkness grew, men kept appearing silently in the glade and taking their place by the fires or at the tables until a company of fifty or sixty was gathered together.
Then Robin Hood rose up and addressed them. He began by telling them, as he had told the men at arms, of his banishment, and reminding them that they were outlaws, but not robbers.
‘We must take the King’s deer,’ he ended, ‘since we must eat to live. But when the King returns I myself will beg pardon at his feet for this trespass. And now you shall all swear the oath which I swear with you, and all seeking to join us must swear also. We declare war upon all of those thieves, robbers, extortioners and men of evil whom we find among the nobles, the clergy, and burgesses of town – in particular those who follow or accompany Prince John; false abbots, monks, bishops and archbishops, whom we will beat and bind like sheaves of corn so that they may yield the golden grain of their robberies – the Abbots of St Mary’s, Doncaster, and Fountains shall we seek for in particular; and I think we shall keep within our oath if we make it our especial care to harry and persecute the false Sheriff of Nottingham who so wickedly abuses his power to please and satisfy his master Prince John.
‘Now, my friends, we do not take from these and their kind to enrich ourselves. We take for the general good, and it shall be as much our duty to seek out the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan and all those who have suffered or are suffering wrong, and minister to their wants in so far as we can.
‘We shall swear, moreover, to harm no woman, be she Norman or Saxon, high or low, but to succour and assist any who crave our aid or need our protection, dealing with them with all honesty and purity, seeing in every woman the likeness of Our Lady the Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, in whose name we take our oath, and by whose name we dedicate ourselves to the service of the true Church, and to whom we pray to intercede for us before the throne of God that we may have strength to keep this our oath in the face of all temptations.’
Then, in that wild and lonely glade, while the owls screamed over the dark forest, and an occasional wolf howled in the distance, they all knelt down together and swore their oath – a pledge as high and as sacred, though they were but outlaws and escaped felons, as that sworn by the noblest knight who, in the days when the Saxons themselves were the conquerors and oppressors, had sat at King Arthur’s Table.