subject: Was Robin Hood A Real Person? [print this page] Does Robin Hood seem to be a real person to you? For centuries many people have wondered about that. Let's take a look at real outlaws that may have inspired or been inspired by him and the Merry Men. Brace yourself for the quest to find that elusive outlaw of Sherwood and Barnsdale.
For centuries chroniclers wrote about when him existed. However, their dates clashed each other, and we don't know the chroniclers' logic for choosing various dates. Someone also went far as fabricating a family tree. But in 1852, Joseph Hunter, a clergyman and assistant keeper of records, published a book trying to show a proof of a real person with that name.
The discovery of L.V.D. Owen in 1936 of the early real person was the most promising. But why not look for a person with that name in his celebrated birthplace Loxley?
An unidentified manuscript (the Sloane manuscript) from around AD 1600 says he was born in Locksley. This was most likely meant to be the real village of Loxley in Yorkshire, although many later writers have moved "Locksley" to Nottinghamshire where most modern stories are placed.
In the earliest stories of the legend, the outlaw hero is a yeoman (generally speaking, a member of the middle class). But with time the the legend moved up in the world. By the mid-1500s, he was assumed to be an earl.
Maybe the earliest outlaw that had the name is Robert Hood, servant of the Abbot of Cirencester. Sometime between 1213 and 1216, he killed a man named Ralph in the abbot's garden. Most legends stories do give the legendary outlaw resentment against the church. But J.C. Holt rejects this one as being too far from Robin's usual setting.
And 1354, there was a RH that most likely a real person in a Rockingham jail for forest offences. Holt thinks this one wasn't successful enough to arouse a legend. Also, he lived too close to the first literary reference to him in 1377 for tall stories to grow.
Local Nottingham historian Jim Lees speculates that he was really a minor 13th century nobleman named Robert de Kyme. In Stukeley's false lineage he is a lord of Kime. However, it seems like Lees' assumptions are not extensively accepted.
There are also several records of criminals with other names who are called by the same name in reference to the legend. Was he just a legend or a real person is something many historians are trying to find out.
