Robin Hood: The Truth Behind The Legend | Fact Or Fiction | Timeline

I'm walking down what used to be the Great North Road, the medieval version of the M1. And this was one of the most difficult and dangerous stretches because it was bandit country, Sherwood Forest. Now, there can't be many characters from history that you can immediately identify just by saying a place name, but already I'm absolutely confident that all of you will realise this is going to be a programme about Robin Hood. Everyone knows his story. He's one of the most famous people in history. But what was he really like? Did he actually exist? I'm going to try and establish whether the most celebrated outlaw of all time was just a comic book character or a flesh-and-blood historical figure. I've always had a fascination with Robin, so this is something of a personal quest. We all feel we know the famous outlaw, but he comes in a host of shapes and sizes. The pictures of him we've all had since childhood may be a long way from the real truth. In the Dictionary of National Biography, Robin Hood is the only figure who didn't exist. He certainly robbed from the rich, but he never got round to giving to the poor. A thousand men could not find an outlaw if he didn't want to be found in Sherwood Forest. Some years ago, I wrote a children's series called Maid Marian and Her Merry Men. It parodied the Robin stories we all know from TV and the movies. So, who'd have thought it? Robin Hood and his team of mastermind finalists. But what we think of as traditional isn't. Our modern Robin story is the product of centuries of change and evolution. The Robin we know today is Robin of Loxley... ..who returns from the Crusades to find his lands have been stolen by evil Prince John and his henchman, the Sheriff of Nottingham. It's my steed, Robin. He flees to the Greenwood and fights on with his merry men, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. You two go round by the firebank and we'll meet up at the log bridge. Right. He marries his sweetheart, Maid Marian, and gets his lands back only when King Richard the Lionheart returns from the Holy Land. It's a great story, but a red herring as far as tracking down a real Robin goes. If we want a flesh-and-blood Robin, then we're going to have to look for the original Robin stories in their earliest versions. The earliest Robin stories were ballads handed down by word of mouth. We know they were around in 1377. By investigating these original stories, we should be able to find evidence of Robin's real identity. This earliest fiction is just as exciting as our modern versions, but it doesn't offer any clues about how Robin became an outlaw. The tale opens abruptly at his camp. Robin's there with only three of the usual suspects. Little John, Will Scarlet, and much the miller's son. They're preparing a meal. Robin's hungry, but he won't eat until he has a guest. He sends his men off to line wait by the Great North Road and catch a fellow diner. They don't have to wait long before they waylay a threadbare knight. Of course, it's a racket. Robin offers the knight his hospitality, and then, once he's eaten, tells him he's got to pay for his meal. But it emerges the knight's penniless. His son has killed a man. In order to pay a heavy fine, the knight's taken on a vast loan from the monks at St Mary's in York. Unless he repays the debt tomorrow, he stands to lose everything he owns. Because the knight's been honest, Robin sends him on his way with £400 to pay the debt, trusting that the Virgin Mary will pay him back. On top of that, he gives the knight a new set of clothes and a good horse, and sends Little John to accompany him to York as a valet. When you read the ballad, you start to notice that it's very different from the version we know today. Robin here isn't a nobleman. He and the outlaws are yeoman, low-born freemen. But most obvious is the setting. It's not Sherwood Forest. This is where the poem's set, in the forests traditionally known as Barnsdale in South Yorkshire. Yes, Robin Hood was a Yorkshireman. People, perhaps, would be surprised that Robin Hood's a Yorkshireman, but it depends on the background. Historians have known this for a good few years. The problem is that other outlaws, perhaps living down round Nottingham in Sherwood Forest, their stories will be amalgamated with the original ballads, which do come from this area. And the fact that Nottingham is a much better-known place than Wentbridge or Barnsdale, which most people, to be frank, have never heard of outside the area, would help the Nottingham connection. The ballad's very specific about the area. This track is the remnant of the Great North Road as it dipped down into Barnsdale to cross the River Wendt at Wentbridge. Today, the A1 bypasses Wentbridge half a mile to the east, and it's where the viaduct is now that the Merry Men laid their ambush. This is the spot where little John and Will Scala lie and wait for the night in the poem. Robin sends them to sail to spy on Wentbridge. You can see just beyond those white buildings the road snaking down into Wentbridge from the other side of the valley. The writer knew this place. He knew it was the perfect lookout point. It may surprise some people to hear the Robin Hood stories coming from here and not from Sherwood, but six centuries ago, it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. The phrase, Robin Hood in Barnsdale stood, was a legal saying, meaning that something was a well-established fact. And a couple of miles down the A1 from Wentbridge, there's further proof of Yorkshire's claims. This is Robin Hood's Well near Skelbrooke, or rather it's the cover that the 18th-century architect Vanbrugh designed for it. The landmark's been moved to make way for the dual carriageway, but for centuries, people have stopped here to celebrate Robin Hood. This is the earliest known place name that's associated with Robin Hood. But over the next three centuries, the name starts cropping up all over the place. Robin Hood's Bay near Whitby, Robin Hood's Butts in Cumbria, Robin Hood's Walk in Richmond, Surrey. Practically everywhere except Sherwood. The first name there doesn't appear until the year 1700. We're jumping on the bandwagon at least four centuries after the event. So, we've got tales set in Barnsdale, not Sherwood. Robin's not a dispossessed nobleman, but a lowborn Yorkshireman. What else do these original stories tell us about him? The abbot and monks of St Mary's Abbey in York are hoping that the knight will fail to show up. They're loan sharks. The knight's only got until sunset to repay his vast debt. After that, they can claim all his property and land. But, in the nick of time, the knight arrives. Expecting him to be empty-handed, the abbot shows him no respect and leaves him kneeling like a servant. He gets a shock when the knight hands over the full £400 of his debt. It seems as though everything's square, but there's a twist. Back in the Greenwood, Robin sends his men out on a carbon copy of their first ambush. Lo and behold, this time, their dinner guest is none other than the monk from St Mary's. Unlike the knight, the monk pleads poverty, but is found to have £800 with him. The knight's told the truth and was helped. The monk lied and lost everything. Justice prevails, and Robin doubles his money. But there's no mention of giving to the poor. Our heroes are just a bunch of high-wage peasants and runaway robbers. Can you imagine any archerman robbing the rich to give to the poor? He almost certainly robbed the rich and kept it. That was a product of a much later version. The robbing of the ballads is a bit of a thug. In one poem, he kills a man, puts the head on his bow-staff and mutilates the face. The original Robin Hood is a pretty vicious character, but then again in the Middle Ages, when people were being entertained by the early ballads and stories of Robin Hood, they would expect to find a vicious character as their hero, because in those days, everyone was used to living a pretty hard life. So just because somebody went around lopping people's heads off, stealing from people, as long as he went around killing the people they didn't like, it didn't really matter how he did it. But why does Robin pick on men of the cloth in particular? St Mary's really exists. It's here in York. But don't be fooled by these romantic ruins. It was more than just a religious institution. York was the second most powerful political centre in the country, and the monks who ran abbeys like these were politicians and captains of industry, as well as being in charge of the spiritual welfare of the country. The abbeys of northern England controlled the wool trade. The money was supposed to be a means to an end, supporting a life of prayer, but wealth had led to sleaze. In Robin's day, religious communities were notorious for their greed, lax morals and hypocritical lifestyle. Conversely, Robin's portrayed as fair and truly religious. He may be a criminal, but his rough justice restores true values. When Robin mugged the monk from St Mary's, a great cheer would have gone up. This ordinary bloke Robin was striking a blow for justice and true religion. Everyone knew the system was rotten. Only an outlaw would have dared do anything about it. So far, this original version of the Robin stories has given us a good general picture of the sort of hard-bitten character we're looking for. But we'll be getting more clues about his actual identity when he comes face to face with his arch-enemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham. To find the facts about the real Robin Hood, we've been looking at the earliest fictional versions of his legend. These medieval tales explode the myth of a penniless nobleman in Sherwood in favour of a much tougher out-and-out criminal based in Yorkshire. But the stories in these ancient texts also contain evidence pointing us to a real flesh-and-blood historical Robin. Robin and his men are brilliant archers. The Sheriff of Nottingham organises a competition to trap them. Despite wearing their hoods, the Sheriff knows that whoever splits the wand to win must be an outlaw. Of course, he never succeeds. The outlaws always escape in the nick of time. There's chases, fights, escapes from prison, and then the feud with the Sheriff climaxes in a showdown. Robin takes down his arch-enemy with a single shot. He moves in for the kill, beheading the Sheriff with his sword. By the horror, he smote off the Sheriff. Robin beheld our... Next, King Edward himself comes to sort out these rebels in the north. With his men disguised as monks, he deliberately gets captured in the forest. But when he sees that Robin's a loyal subject, he forgives the outlaws and takes Robin into his service. My Lord. Which leaves us with a puzzle. The modern Robin story is set in the reign of Richard the Lionheart. The evidence in the ballads suggests this is all wrong. The ballads say that Robin met an entirely different king, Edward the Comely King. Now, there have been eight King Edwards who've ruled Britain through the ages. The first mention of the ballads is in the year 1377, so that rules all these kings out because Edward IV didn't come to the throne until the 15th century. So, using this logic, Robin must have been around between 1274, when Edward I comes to the throne, and 1377, when we get that first mention of the ballads. And there's another blindingly obvious piece of evidence that supports that dating. It's the one thing more than any other that Robin Hood's famous for. It's the rise of the bow, the longbow, as they call it nowadays. It began to take off 12th, 13th century. That's when it's got to have permeated through the villages and through the towns and begun to become ingrained into our communities and become, basically, a common man's religion for sport. In Richard the Lionheart's reign, the bow was a minority weapon. There was no cult of the longbowmen. Edward I, II and III had made the bow a key part of their military strategy. Archery was compulsory for every able-bodied male, and so being a great archer was like being a football star today. If you got the eye and the strength and you could do the business with the bow, you were really one of the best in the community. Robin the Crack Marksman could only be a product of this culture in the early 14th century, and closer examination of the ballads leads us to an exact date. Historians have looked closely at the lives of the three Edwards who were potential candidates to be our Cumley king, and they've come to the conclusion that only one of them could possibly have come face to face with an outlaw in this area. In the year 1323, Edward II went on a tour of the north, ending in Nottingham, because of a political crisis that started here, at Pontefract Castle. Pontefract, in West Yorkshire, was confusingly home to Thomas the Earl of Lancaster, the cousin of Edward II. The king was unpopular. Lancaster decided to make his own bid for the throne. He called up his men from Yorkshire and Lancashire to form an army, but as they moved out of Pontefract, Edward ambushed them and crushed the rebel. The Earl of Lancaster was tried and beheaded. His followers were outlawed and fled for their lives to places like Farnsdale. Provides a plausible explanation as to why Robin and his men would have been outlaws, it also connects Robin to Nottingham through the villain of the piece. The period of the revolt was the only time that the sheriff of Nottingham was also responsible for Yorkshire. He'd have been the king's right-hand man in fighting the rebels. The Lancastrian rebellion also explains another puzzle. The poor knight who Robin originally held up is a recurring character in the stories. When the outlaws are fleeing from the sheriff, they run to his castle for protection. The knight's name is Sir Richard of the Lee, and this is where the ballad says he was from, Lee in Wiredale. But this is Lancashire, several days' ride from Farnsdale, where Robin's based. At first glance, it seems pretty implausible to have a leading character from so far away, but actually, it makes perfect sense. Plumpton and Wiredale are linked with Barnsdale through the lands of Thomas Earl of Lancaster. They formed a corridor right across the Pennines, allowing for easy communication between rebels here and here. A knight based in Wiredale would have been brother-in-arms to a yeoman outlaw in Barnsdale. The Lancastrian revolt is the only time and place where the ballads fit with political history. When historians realised this, they set about the task of finding a real Robin Hood from this period in the medieval archives. Today, if you wanted to track me down, you'd probably try looking in the telephone book, and there, among all the Robinsons, you'd be bound to come across a Tony. But whether or not it was this Tony Robinson, you'd be hard-pressed to know, and in the early 14th century, it would be even more difficult, because the court rolls and the church records of the early Middle Ages weren't catalogued, there were no indexes, and no-one was written down in alphabetical order. Nevertheless, lo and behold, when historians were looking for Robin in the early 14th century, they found one. In the court rolls of the Manor of Wakefield in the reign of Edward II, living with his wife Matilda was a tenant called Robert Hood. To most people, that's not Robin Hood, that's a totally different name, but it isn't. Robin is a nickname for Robert. For many years, the name Robin was used instead of Robert, just like, for example, Jack might be a nickname for the name John. Hence, John F. Kennedy is Jack Kennedy. So this man is called Robin Hood. Let's suppose for a moment that this is the real man behind the Robin of the Barrels. Robert Hood was a forester. He's one of the Lancastrian rebels who are outlawed after the rebellion. As a result, he loses his property in Wakefield. And the property was here. Robert Hood's house was in Bick Hill. Today, it's the site of the bus station. Our Robert Hood, who lived somewhere under the number 49 stop, disappears in 1322. We don't hear of him again, but it's not quite the end of the story. The ballad says Robin was taken into the king's service, but after 15 months, he was so depressed that he left to return to his former life. But a year after the Lancastrian revolt, there was still political unrest. The king set off on a tour of the north, offering an amnesty to the outlaws, some of whom he took into his own ranks. Enter our second candidate. This is Robin Hood of Valais-de-Chambre, a bodyguard, who appears on the payroll at Edward II's court in 1323, but the following year takes a lump sum of five shillings because he can no longer work. When you compare the stories with the history, the parallels are striking. Let's recap. The ballad tells us that the king forgave Robin Hood of his crimes, that Robin went to work for him, but he left the king's service a year or so later because he felt fed up and depressed. And the records tell us that this man, Robert Hood of Wakefield, fought in the Lancastrian revolt and disappeared, but that shortly afterwards, this man crops up, Robin Hood, a king's servant, who worked for the king for about a year, and then he too disappears. Could these two men be the same person? Our Robert Hood of Wakefield was a forester. He'd have been well-equipped for life as an outlaw in the forests of Barnsdale. At Papalwick Church in Sherwood, there's a medieval forester's grave that gives us an idea of the essential forester's kit. There's a bow and arrow, of course, and this, a sort of shoulder strap with a horn hanging from it, is, I have to tell you, a baldrick. But living out in the forests required more than this. Near the church, I learnt just how tough life on the run could be. At the cave known as Robin Hood's Stable, I met a man who's made a point of surviving in the forest using only the tools of the Middle Ages. What were the biggest problems? The rain one night. It rained very, very heavily one night. I resolved it by actually getting into an oak tree and sleeping inside the oak tree, not far from here. What equipment have you got? The basic equipment you'd have to carry home on your bike, really. This is a flask, because water is very hard to find. This is a cup made from an ox horn, a blanket for wrapping yourself up in at night, an antler for digging a hole to go to the toilet in. The toilet paper hangs on the trees. An axe for making a woodland shelter. And in here, necessities and a few little luxuries. Some eating utensils, some salt, some flour. Just a basic kit. In terms of weapons, a U-bow, a simple U-bow in a hunting case. These are hunting arrows, a knife to eat with, a knife to kill people with. I see you've got a hunting horn there. It is. It's very important to maintain communications in the forest. This was the medieval equivalent of Robin Hood's mobile phone. So, might Robin Hood really have gone... You could try. So, disappointingly tuneless outlaws. And there's one more surprise in store if you're still clinging to the image of the merry men living out in the greenwood. They probably went home in winter. This place is particularly inhospitable in bad weather. You can imagine what it's like in January. You would die if you stayed out overnight here in January. And so, they almost certainly went home. So, we have a plausible, if surprising, candidate for our real Robin Hood. A yeoman Yorkshireman living as an outlaw during the summer and sneaking back to his home with his wife Matilda here in Wakefield in the winter. But every outlaw needs his gang. Next, we have to find the real merry men. By matching the clues in the earliest stories of Robin Hood with historical records, we've found a candidate for the real Robin Hood, Robert Hood, who lived in Wakefield until 1322 when he fled to the forests of Barnsdale. Can we also find real versions of the merry men who could have been in league with Robert of Wakefield? Here again, the earliest version of the story doesn't have the outlaw band we know today. We have Little John mentioned with Robin from the very beginning, and then a few others, Much, Wolf Scarlet, Friar Tuck comes in later. And so, in a lot of the early ballads, you have Robin and a very small group, which is very credible for outlaws, real outlaws. It was usually the leader, his younger brother, a cousin and someone from the same village who'd also got into trouble. That's realistic. And I think it is perfectly possible that there may have been, you know, folk from Nottingham, Yorkshire, wherever else, who had those names who were outlaws. So, what evidence do we have about the outlaw's real identity? I was on this bridge first and I intend to cross first. What do you carry that staff for? Just to make yourself look like a bold fellow, or do you know how to use it? We all know Little John as the giant who joins the merry men after fighting Robin on a bridge. But in the earlier stories, there's no fight and John plays a much more central role. There is no merchant in Mediheaven. It's actually Little John who starts the whole feud with the sheriff. His relationship with Robin is much more democratic than in a modern version. Little John isn't afraid of telling Robin what to do. I've looked well, mate. The tourist tradition about Little John is that he's buried in Hathasage, in Derbyshire, so people assume he came from there. But the ballads say he comes from Holderness, near Beverley in Humberside, and Little John is just an alias. His real name is Reynold Greenleaf. I whistle about my name. Men call me Reynolds Greenleaf. We've got records from 1318 and 1323 of John the Little being charged with crimes in Wakefield and Beverley. It could be that Little John was already a criminal who joined Robert Hood of Wakefield in Barnsdale after the Lancastrian Revolt. As for the other outlaws, we don't have a record of much the Miller, but there are some fascinating clues about Will Scarlet's identity. Will Scarlet's an odd name because, in the earliest texts, he seems to have the name of Scathlok, or Scathlok, perhaps, in a northern form, and Scathlok seems to mean lock-smasher. He's a break-and-entry merchant. In some recent versions, Will Scarlet has got dressed in scarlet. You know, he's very elaborate, and I don't think that's what they had in mind. And yet again, there's evidence of a Will Scathlok at the right time and place who could have known Robert Hood of Wakefield. He was a monk from the very St Mary's in York that's mentioned in the ballad. We don't know why, but he was thrown out of the abbey at the end of the 13th century. If this real Will Scathlok harboured a grudge against St Mary's, it would help explain why the abbot ended up as a villain in the story. Then we come to some really disappointing news. Robin Hood may have had a wife, but it wasn't Maid Marian. The early versions of the story don't have any love interest in them at all. Marian comes into the tradition in a completely different way. Every year at Wixom in the Middle Ages, the workers used to have processions and plays to celebrate the coming of summer. We still have the remnants of this tradition preserved in Morris' dancing and Mama's plays. Robin was one of the main characters in these revels, which were riotous and disruptive. I can see he likes food. Among the other characters, there was a Marian, too, and over time, she became Robin's partner. The Robin and Marian characters used to force revelers to give money for good causes, which is where we eventually get the tradition of robbing from the rich to give to the poor. As Robin changed from bandit to nobleman in Tudor times, Marian was brought into the stories. Marian appears in full form when Robin becomes gentrified. When Robin is a lord, he's of a lady, and she appears in 1598-99 in Anthony Munday's play, The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and the second one, The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. But even here, there's a link. In the play, she assumes the name Marian as an alias to conceal her real name in the play. Interestingly, Robert Hood of Wakefield, his wife, Matilda, is recorded as having fled with him into the forest to join him in the struggle. Now, that is what Maid Marian is supposed to do in the popular legend of Robin Hood. So, Robert Hood of Wakefield's wife, Matilda, matches very much the Maid Marian profile. Marian's a later addition. There's only one woman recorded in the early stories. She was a nun, and she'd be Robin's nemesis. This is the Three Nuns pub on the road between Huddersfield and Dewsbury. It's been a hostelry here for over 700 years. It gets its name from the shenanigans that were rumoured to be going on between the guests and three of the local nuns from nearby Kirkley's Priory. If the ballads are to be believed, the guest house that would have once stood here would have been the last place that Robin ever saw before the Priory gates closed behind him and he went unwittingly to his death. After leaving the King's service, Robin lives on in the Greenwood for 22 years. Then, unwittingly, he goes to his cousin, the prioress at Kirkley's Priory, to be bled for his health, as they did in the Middle Ages. I must be careful. I loved him. The story gives no motive, but this nun betrays Robin and leaves him to bleed to death. And a later story says that Robin fires one last arrow through the window and asks to be buried where it lands. Christ have mercy on his soul, the dying on the road. Kirkley's Priory was dismantled by Henry VIII as part of his dissolution of the monasteries. The only sign of the actual Priory today are the odd stone and bumps in the ground. The guesthouse where Robin is said to have died still stands. Although there's no record of how Robert Hood of Wakefield died, it's possible that he was the person who was killed here. Kirkley's is only ten miles from Wakefield, where Robert Hood lived, and the relevant dates link the original stories with historical fact. The ballads tell us that Robin Hood was killed by a relative who ran the Priory here 22 years after leaving the King's service. Dating from the time of Edward II's visit, that would be about 1346 or 7. And the records tell us that in 1346, the Prioress here was Elizabeth de Stanton, none other than the cousin of Matilda, Robert Hood's wife. This is the room in which Robin is said to have died. The spot marking his grave's up there. But the business about the arrow can't be right. It's 650 yards away and uphill, almost twice the longbow range for a skilled archer. It's generally accepted that Robin being buried where his arrow lands is a piece of poetic elaboration round the original simple story of his death. The site of Robin's grave at Kirkley's has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries. But if you expect a nice simple ending, you're going to be disappointed. Searching for Robin Hood's a bit like being the Sheriff of Nottingham. The moment you think you've got him, he slips through your clutches. This is the site of Robin Hood's grave. Except it isn't. The site's been moved at least three times. And this is what Robin's gravestone looked like, according to a sketch from the year 1665. But it disappeared, and a replica was made, and it was chipped to pieces by 18th-century canal workers who thought that a little bit of Robin Hood's gravestone would cure their toothache. When this site was excavated, there was nothing but earth, which isn't surprising if the grave's been moved. To replace the missing grave slab, there's a 19th-century inscription in Codd-Oldie English to establish the grave's ancient credentials. Even if we haven't found his last resting place, we've built a coherent picture of a historical Robin. Our man from Wakefield matches the clues given in the earliest sources. The Lancastrian Revolt gives him opportunity and motive. There's real contemporary outlaws from Yorkshire who could have been his merry men. And Robin Hood was related in real life to characters mentioned in the ballads, like the Prioress of Kirklees. But as with the grave, the truth about Robin is complex and fragile. There's always more to him than meets the eye. Just when we thought we'd found our crime suspect, Robert Hood of Wakefield, 250 miles to the south, historians discovered another man who blew the whole thing wide open again. And this man had never committed a crime in his life. The earliest ballads about Robin Hood have given us a picture of a historical suspect, Robert Hood of Wakefield, who seems to have ended up working for King Edward after the Lancastrian Revolt of 1322. But in all the best detective stories, the neatest of solutions can be upset by a single clue. Suddenly, evidence turned up and pointed to an earlier one. In the Middle Ages, it was the custom to be known by your father's name. So, if your dad was a yeoman called Robert or Robin Hood, then you'd be called Fitzrobert or Robertson or Hoodson or Hudson or Hood, or, of course, Robinson. But then, out of the blue, a historian discovered a man who'd lived in Sussex in the year 1296, called Gilbert Robin Hood. This was an extremely rare surname and seemed to imply that the name was already known as some sort of nickname. But then more and more people called Robin Hood or Robin Hud started to pop up, but these weren't just random individuals. We know that a very high proportion of them had, at some time in their lives, committed criminal acts. There's even one case where the clerk of the court changed a man's surname from the Fairbrood to Robin Hood because he was now Robin Hood. Later, Robin Hood became a common criminal alias. This doesn't mean that any of these men are candidates for the real Robin. It just proves that people knew about him 50 years or more before Robert Hood of Wakefield. So, where does that leave our prime suspect? Well, it's still likely that he's the Robin of the ballads, but the ballads aren't about the original Robin. Historians then went scurrying off and came up with another Robert Hood in 1225. He was an outlaw who'd been fined 32 shillings and sixpence of the Yorker sizes. But there's no record of him doing anything like the Robin of the stories. Randomly picking up Robin Hood-type names from the records didn't seem to be leading anywhere. But there were medieval figures that we know existed whose lives matched the famous stories. They just weren't called Robin. The best example is a story that started with a dispute over the ownership of Whittington Castle here in Shropshire, funnily enough, in the reign of Richard the Lionheart. In 1197, it was inherited from his father by a man called Fulk Fitzwarren. But a rival lord with better contact with King John wanted Whittington too. Charges of treason were trumped up and Fitzwarren was outlawed. For three years, he operated a guerrilla campaign in the forests of the Welsh Borders, and the stories that grew up about him are eerily similar to those we associate with Robin Hood. Not only does Fitzwarren have a right-hand man called John, he robs people by inviting them to supper and then getting them to pay. He takes shelter with a local knight and kills his sworn enemy in the forest. But when the king comes to the forest in disguise, Fitzwarren is forgiven. Sound familiar? Could this man from Shropshire be a new prime suspect whose name got changed in the course of history? It's really weird. Maybe there never ever was a real historical Robin Hood. Maybe the stories are just that, a mishmash of old legends. But if that's the case, why bother with inventing Robin Hood at all? Why not just stick with Fulk Fitzwarren and have all the stories about him? Or maybe there actually was a bloke in real life, like our Robin Hood of York or our Robert Hood of Wakefield, who had adventures and then a lot of fictional stuff was tacked onto them. But there is a third possibility. Suppose both the Fulk Fitzwarren stories and the Robin Hood ballads are based on an earlier figure, a hidden Robin Hood who we haven't yet discovered. The modern Robin Hood story is set in the time of Richard the Lionheart, when Robin is also called Robin of Loxley. Because of the northern connections in the ballads, historians always assumed this meant the Loxley in Yorkshire. But there's another Loxley, here in Warwickshire, near Stratford-on-Avon. And here, the trail leads us to the ancestor of one of the Norman invaders who came over with William the Conqueror. In 1193, the Lord of Loxley Manor was Robert FitzOder, a descendant of Bishop Oder of Bayeux. Because Fitz meant an illegitimate descendant, it was sometimes dropped, leaving us with Robert Oder, effectively another Robert Hood. In the time of Richard the Lionheart, he was thrown out of his manor, Loxley Manor, and for a while became an outlaw, because there are records from that period saying that he is causing trouble in the surrounding woodlands. And he was a robber for a while. He was finally given his lance back when Richard the Lionheart came back from the Crusades, eventually. And so he does match quite, to some degree, the actual historical Robin Hood from the point of view of the later legend. So, out of the blue, another candidate from a part of the country not usually associated with the Robin stories. But it gets even weirder. The Robert Oder connection comes from a relatively recent piece of research. But there's evidence here in Loxley Churchyard that it may have simply uncovered a tradition that was known before. Lying just to the north of the church, they found a mysterious gravestone. Its design seemed to match the original Kirklees graveslab. Remember, in 1665, the Kirklees stone had been sketched in Yorkshire and had then disappeared. Is this evidence that people were aware that Loxley was part of the story long before the historians? This is the gravestone. It seems to me there's three possibilities. Either the whole thing's just a coincidence, but that seems unlikely, given how similar the original drawing is to what we've got here. The pattern's the same and the dimensions are so similar. Or else this could be a copy of the original gravestone in Kirklees. Or else maybe, just maybe, this is the original Kirklees gravestone, which was brought here by someone who believed that this was the real last resting place of Robin Hood. We've got three historical candidates who together have helped to create the figure of Robin Hood. There's Robert Hood of Wakefield, the Lancastrian rebel. There's our historical non-Robins who've added their touches. And there's Robert Oda, the original mogulman Robin Hood. But there's another angle to the story. And for that, we have to return to Sherwood Forest. Not the usual tourist trail this time. The clues lie in Southall, Minster. When the stonemasons finished the cathedral in the Middle Ages, they decided to leave an exhibition piece in the octagonal chapter house. The highest form of the stonemasons' art was to carve leaves in stone that had the lightness and delicacy of nature. And interwoven into the fabric of this Christian meeting house is the ancient pagan spirit of the Greenwoods, the so-called Green Man. Another name for the spirit of the Greenwoods was Robin Goodfellow. Could this Robin be the inspiration behind the mythic hero of Sherwood Forest? This figure is not clearly associated with outlawry. He's much more associated with nature. Because Robin in the original ballads always appears framed in the forest. That's where he is. Then he moves into action and he returns to the forest. And if you want the original Robin Hood, I think he is that figure. You know, Robin of the wood, Robin in the hood. It is perhaps this pagan version of Robin that appeals most to us in the 21st century. Robin Hood-type stories, I think, have been with us since probably the end of the last Ice Age, about 35,000 years ago. But they've been added to and taken away from since then. Robin Hood that we know now here in Sherwood Forest is not the Robin Hood that we would have known if we were standing here in the 10th, 11th or 12th century. He's now cast as a preservationist, a conservationist, look after the Greenwoods. In those days, it was nothing like that at all. It was simply, watch out for bishops, archbishops, beat them up, and whatever you do, don't get caught by the Sheriff of Nottingham. When I wrote my children's series about Maid Marian, I knew I was joining in a long tradition of telling stories about Robin. But until I went to look for the real Robin, I never fully appreciated just how much that tradition has evolved to suit the needs of the audience. I think Robin Hood is in the process of becoming the secondary character in a feminist set of sagas starring Maid Marian. That's well underway. What will there be then? Intergalactic Robin Hoods? Will there perhaps be a gay Robin Hood? I think it's quite likely that that will happen. The homo-sociality of the legend will be interpreted in that way and one can see good reasons for that. But I guess what's really next for Robin Hood is lots of exposure. I started my search by trying to find out whether Robin Hood was fact or fiction. And the answer is, he's both. There's a whole host of Robin Hoods. There's the mysterious man from Loxley, the Lancastrian revolutionary, the petty criminal, the king's servant, not to mention the countless medieval outlaws who took on his name as an alias in order to try and protect their anonymity. They all lived and breathed. They were all fact. But it took a fiction to make the story great. A legend that could touch us more profoundly than the simple story of one human being ever could. And whether that legend is about the spirit of the Greenwood or the nature of being a hero or the struggle of the common man, they all create for us a Robin who's fair, brave, heroic and just human enough for us to be able to believe that in a fairer world, we too might be Robin Hood.