Robin Hood
The legend of Robin Hood explored for
its Yorkshire roots, and our families’ connection with the legends
The Farndale
family included the class of poachers who gave rise to the inspiration for
Robin Hood and later their fifteenth century descendants who lived in the place
where the stories emerged.
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The idea
of Robin Hood
An idea had
crystalised into stories by the mid fourteenth century, about the outlaw Robehod. By the fifteenth century those compound
stories, with a stock character encountering various formulae of adventure, had
evolved into more formal tales of Robin Hood, a forest outlaw.
They were
first recited in verse by travelling minstrels.
The early
ballads are full of drama and character. They transport us to the perceptions
and feelings of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. They can provide us with
a portal into the minds of our ancestors. Included in those perceptions was a
hatred of oppression, a sense of wrong, and longing for freedom and fairness,
and a distaste for clerical and secular impositions.
The first
literary reference to Robin Hood appears, disapprovingly, in William Langland’s
The
Vision of Piers the Plowman of 1377, where an ignorant secular priest
called Sloth confessed that he knew the rhymes about Robin Hood better than he
knew his prayers.
There was
also a reference in John Fordun’s Scottischronicon, 1341, About this time
(1265) arose from among the dispossessed and banished that most famous
outlaw, Robin Hood, and Little John with their companions. Robin was reputed to
be as devout at church as he was brave in combat, and it was said of him that
when once he entered a church to hear the service, whatsoever danger might
occur, he never went away until it was finished. There is however some
doubt about whether this passage was added later.
The first
surviving written stories date to about 1450 by which time there were large
numbers of rymes, some of which have survived
(Robin
Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and
the Potter). Robin Hood was then portrayed as a yeoman (I shall you tel
of a gode yeman, His name
was Robyn Hode – The Gest, Fytte 1, 1) and
characters such as Maid Marion and Friar Tuck had not yet emerged.
By the time
the stories were written down, he lived in a green wood with merry men,
including Little John, Will Scarlock and Much
the miller’s son (who could almost have been the son of Simon the miller of
Farndale whose son Robert
was outlawed for poaching
in Pickering Forest). The sheriff of Nottingham was their nemesis. They hunted
the king’s deer, although they were loyal to the King. They were selectively
anti clerical.
Friar Tuck
was a real outlawed priest, Frere Tuck, of the 1400s.
Maid Marion
was a character from French literature, and was added later.
The
association with Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart set the story in the
1190s, but this was a later elaboration of John
Major, a Scottish historian, in the sixteenth century, later enhanced by
Walter Scott in Ivanhoe
in 1819.
In the late
fifteenth century, the tales were brought together into A
Gest of Robyn Hode (“the Gest”), which was structured into sections or fyttes. Various editions of the Gest were printed
between 1490 and 1550.
The idea of
Robin Hood represents a nostalgic view of a past heroic age, of topsy turvy
justice, where justice was administered by the noble outlaws. The protagonists
of the tales were not real people, but as all epic literature, it provides a
contemporary record which emerged from historic events and experiences.
The
emergence of the Robin Hood stories in the 1400s was likely to have been
inspired in part by the complaints against oppression that led to the Peasants’
Revolt in 1381, which itself was triggered by the imposition of three poll
taxes in 1377, 1379 and 1381.
The stories
traditionally originate in adjoining parts of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. It
has been suggested that if there ever was a real Robin Hood, he fought the
Sheriff of Yorkshire between 1226 and 1234.
Robin Hood’s
700 year survival into modern popular culture is unique.
There is an
In Our Time podcast on the centuries old myth of the most romantic noble
outlaw, Robin Hood and
whether he was a yeoman, an aristocrat, an anarchist or the figment of a
collective imagination and a Rest is History podcast about Robin
Hood.
The epic 1066
and all that by Walter Sellar and Robert Yeatman, took a satirical view
in 1930.
The
crucible of the Robin Hood stories
By
the fifteenth century the villagers at Campsall north
of Doncaster, had formed a
fraternity, and hired their own priest to pray for the parishioners living and
the souls departed.
Over time
the Church dedicated to St Mary Magdalene at Campsall came to resemble a
collegiate church. Alongside the vicar and deacon were also chantry priests in
the vicinity who sang masses for the repose of the souls of individuals who
left endowments to the church. The chantry priests were add ons
to the parish clergy and may have been involved in teaching. It has been
suggested that the first floor chamber above the vaulted west bay of the south
aisle at St Mary Magdalene, dating from the late thirteenth century, might have
been a space used for such a purpose.
The
emergence of the theologian Richard of Campsall (c1280 to c1350) suggests a well established tradition of teaching in Campsall. Richard
of Campsall, or Ricardus de Campsalle, was a secular
theologian and scholastic philosopher at the University of Oxford. Richard of
Campsall’s extant works include his Quaestiones super librum
Priorum analeticorum
(“Questions about the book Prior Analytic”), the Contra ponentes naturam (“Against Nature”, on universals), a short
treatise on form and matter, Utrum materia possit esse sine forma (“whether matter can exist without
form”), and Notabilia de contingencia et presciencia Det (“Remarks on contingency and presceience”), all of which were probably written about
1317 or 1318. Campsall’s Sentences commentary is not extant, but Walter Chatton, Adam of Wodeham, Rodington, Robert Holcot, and
Pierre de Plaout cited him in their Sentences
commentaries. In the Questions on the Prior Analytics Richard of
Campsall proposed that training in logic was the basis for all other sciences.
He discussed the concepts of syllogism, consequences, and conversion. He argued
that the crux of logical thinking was the syllogism and knowledge of
consequences and conversion was necessary for the study of syllogism,
especially for converting “imperfect” syllogisms into “perfect” syllogisms. In
the area of supposition theory, Campsall proposed views usually first
attributed to Ockham, including his distinction between simple and other types
of supposition.
This was
deep stuff. Campsall must have been the crucible of some serious intellectual
debate to have produced a person such as Richard.
Most English
writers of the fifteenth century had at least some association with the Church.
Those who captured the rymes of Robehod into the written word were therefore likely to
have had some ecclesiastical background.
The earliest
references to Robin Hood are more associated with
Barnsdale Forest than Sherwood. Many of the names given to geographical
locations in Sherwood Forest were given in the nineteenth century. Some names
though are much older, such as Barnsdale’s Stone of Robin Hood, about 500m
north of Robin Hood’s Well, which was mentioned as a boundary marker in about 1540 by John Leland, in his Itinery in or about the years 1535-1543.
Robin
Hood and the Potter named Wentbridge (Went breg)
in Barnsdale.
In Robin
Hood and Guy of Gisborne, the action took place in Barnsdale, and the
sheriff was slain when he tried to flee to Nottingham.
Robin Hood’s
association with Barnsdale was included in early written records of the tales
including by the Scottish poet and Augustinian canon Andrew of Wyntoun in his Cronykil of Scotland of circa 1420.
Robin
Hood in Barnesdale Stood was quoted in a case by a judge in
the court of Common Pleas in 1429.
In the late
fifteenth century, the tales were brought together into A Gest of
Robyn Hode. Various editions of the Gest were printed between 1490 and
1550. The Gest
of Robin Hood places Robin Hood firmly in Barnsdale.
Barnsdale is
a constant reference in the Gest:
The same
knight later watched wrestling at Wentbridge:
In a later
part of the story, Robin Hood intercepted two Benedictine monks on the highway
north of Doncaster:
After
Robin’s royal pardon, when he was in royal service, he longeth
sore for Bernysdale (Gest, Fytte
8, 442)
The King
allowed Robin to return to Barnsdale for a short time (Seven nyght I gyve thee leve, No lengre, to dwell fro me. Gest, Fytte 8,
443).
So Robin gratefully
returned to Barnsdale forest.
So on his
return to the grene wode
at Barnsdale, he slew a hart (as Roger the
miller of Farndale had done in January 1293), and gave a joyous blast of
the horn he had made, so his merry followers would know that he had returned.
Robin then did not rejoin the King, but returned to his old ways and lived in
Barnsdale for another 22 years until he was betrayed by the prioress of Kyrkësly to her lover, the knight, Sir Roger of Donkestere.
Kirklees
Priory was a Cistercian nunnery whose site is in the present-day Kirklees Park,
Clifton near Brighouse, Calderdale, West Yorkshire. The priory is featured in
the medieval legend of Robin Hood. According to Robin Hood's Death, Robin was
killed by the prioress of Kirklees. She was medically treating Robin by
bleeding, but treacherously drained too much of his blood instead.
The
references in the stories of Robin Hood,
including Barnsdale, the Saylis and Wentbridge suggest a very local knowledge of those who
captured the stories into writing. Doncaster is just seven miles to the south.
By 1540 its population was about 2,000.
The
locations with which Robin Hood is associated, like the stories themselves, are
imagined over centuries of storytelling. The places, like to stories, are
ephemeral and locating the green wood precisely is not the right approach to
take. Yet there is no doubt that the idea of the green wood has a very close
association with Barnsdale, Campsall, and the area immediately to the north of
Doncaster. Robin Hood’s domain, though flexible to the imagination of countless
story tellers, clearly stretched to Doncaster. My purpos
was to haue dyned to day;
At Blith or Dancastere (Gest, Fytte
1, 22). Robin Hood’s ultimate betrayal was to the knight, Sir Roger of
Doncaster. Barnsdale forest was then at the eastern edge of the great swamp
land that dominated the land westward to the Humber estuary.
There is no
forest at Barnsdale today, but a large area around Campsall was once forested.
It may even have stretched past Doncaster to merge with Sherwood. The medieval
records do not though suggest forest at Barnsdale was an administered royal
forest like Pickering,
with its forest verderers and regarders. Barnsdale or Bernysdale
was likely to have been a lightly wooded area that was not officially a forest,
but it was a place of ambush in the fourteenth century. Highway robbery in
Yorkshire in the fourteenth and fifteenth century was a significant problem and
there were recorded holdups around Barnsdale and Wentbridge.
There was at least one inn at Wentbridge, where
stories would have been retold. The area along the road from Doncaster and
Pontefract at that time, was likely a melting pot of storytelling.
In 1540 John Leland described the road which followed the modern A1 near Campsall as bandit country
and on his journey from Doncaster to Pontefract, Leland wrote From Dancaster to Causeby lesys by a mile and more, wher
the rebelles of Yorkshir a
lately assembled. He also described the area The ground betwixt Dancaster
and Pontfract in sum places
Yorkshire, meately wooddid
and enclosid ground : in al
places reason- Rably fruteful
of pasture and corne.
The
references in the tales of Robin Hood and the grene
wode to which he returns is obviously associated
with Barnsdale. Carey’s map of Yorkshire 1754-1835 referred to Barnsdale Lodge
(also known as Barnsdale House) near the modern Barnsdale Bar on the A1
junction.
Richard
Morris, Yorkshire a Lyrical History of England’s Greatest County,
suggests If the Gest was designed to be recited in instalments, what if
someone in the vicinity adapted a selection of tales that were already widely
known for a local audience? If such a collection was then printed and began to
circulate it would appear that the stories had originated around Barnsdale.
Perhaps then
the written record which has been passed through the generations originated in
Barnsdale, but arose from a collective memory of stories from Barnsdale and
from further afield.
There are
hints of the Robin Hood stories more directly associated with the North York
Moors and Kirkbymoorside. There are stories of Robin Hood’s butts above Robin
Hood’s bay from where he fired an arrow that landed in the bay, taken as a
positive sign for the future seaside village. There are other Robin Hood butts
near Danby (the place to which De Wilelmo de Farndale first left Farndale by 1301) and
associations with Castleton. It was suggested that Robin Hood regularly fled
the law at Robin Hood’s bay and was given local shelter, sometimes heading out
to sea with the fishing boats. The English ballad The
Noble Fisherman, 1610, tells a story of Robin Hood visiting Scarborough, taking a job as a fisherman,
defeating French pirates with his archery skills, and using half the looted
treasure to build a home for the poor.
There is a
recorded history of forest
outlaws in such places as Pickering forest.
There is a
particular association of the stories with Barnsdale and Robin Hood’s chapel,
dedicated to Mary Magdalene. The historian John Paul Davis wrote of Robin's
connection to the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene at Campsall, which appears in
A Gest of Robyn Hode, ‘I made a chapel in Bernysdale,
That seemly is to se, It is of Mary Magdaleyne, And thereto wolde I
be’. Davis suggests that there is only one church dedicated to Mary
Magdalene within what one might reasonably consider to have been the medieval forest
of Barnsdale, and that is the church at Campsall. The
church was built in the late eleventh century by Robert de Lacy, the 2nd Baron
of Pontefract. Local legend suggests that Robin Hood and Maid Marion were
married at the church.
The parish
church at Campsall, still the Church of St Mary Magdalene, coincides with
Robin’s chapell in Bernysdale.
There were several churches dedicated to Mary Magdelene, including the parish
church in Doncaster itself,
but the church at Campsall is the most likely association as it sits in the
heart of the area associated with Barnsdale.
There is
only one church dedicated to Mary Magdalene within what might reasonably be
considered to have been the medieval forest of Barnsdale, being the church at
Campsall. Indeed, a local legend suggests that Robin Hood and Maid Marion were
married at the church of Saint Mary Magdalene, at Campsall. The Maid Marion
story cannot have been true however, since Marion was a character who did not
emerge in Robin Hood stories until much later.
One
persistent legend attached to Campsall is that Robin Hood and Maid Marian got
married in St Mary Magdalene Church. There is a strong claim amongst Robin Hood
scholars that the legendary outlaw comes from Yorkshire and not Nottingham.
Based on the references to locations contained in early versions of the Robin
Hood stories, they argue that Barnsdale Forest is the original, and Sherwood
the imposter. And in one verse telling of the story, Robin declares: “I made a
chapel in Barnsdale, That seemly is to see, It is of Mary Magdalene, And there
to would I be." Campsall’s church is the only one in Barnsdale dedicated
to St Mary Magdalene. The wedding story was certainly widely told during
Edwin’s tenure there. Unfortunately Maid Marian, like (perhaps) Sherwood, is a
later and fictional addition to the Robin Hood entourage. The historical Robin
Hood was in fact already married to a certain Matilda at the time of his
outlawing in 1322 (a time, incidentally, when for a very brief period the
sheriff of Nottingham had jurisdiction over Yorkshire. (Rev
Edwin Castle, 1843 to 1898 and the Yorkshire Robin Hood).
Various
theories about the association between Robin Hood and Yorkshire are discussed
in Yorkshire
is the Birthplace, refuge and burial place of Robin Hood and Was
Robin Hood from Yorkshire.
A tradition
dating back at least to the end of the sixteenth century gives Robin Hood's
birthplace as Loxley, Sheffield, in South Yorkshire. The original Robin Hood
ballads, which originate from the fifteenth century, set events in the medieval
forest of Barnsdale. Barnsdale was a wooded area which covered an expanse of no
more than thirty square miles, ranging six miles from north to south, with the
River Went at Wentbridge near Pontefract forming its
northern boundary and the villages of Skelbrooke and Hampole forming the southernmost region. From east to west
the forest extended about five miles, from Askern adjacent to Campsall on the
east to Badsworth in the west. At the northern most
edge of the forest of Barnsdale, in the heart of the Went
Valley, is the village of Wentbridge. During the
medieval age Wentbridge was sometimes locally
referred to by the name of Barnsdale because it was the predominant settlement
in the forest. Wentbridge is mentioned in what may be the earliest
Robin Hood ballad, entitled, Robin Hood and the Potter, which reads, "Y
mete hem bot at Went breg,' syde
Lyttyl John". And, whilst Wentbridge is not directly named in A Gest of Robyn Hode,
the poem does appear to make a cryptic reference to the locality by depicting a
poor knight explaining to Robin Hood that he ‘went at a bridge’ where
there was wrestling.
The Gest makes a specific reference
to the Saylis at Wentbridge.
The nineteenth century South Yorkshire Historian, Joseph Hunter identified the
site of the Saylis. From this location it was once
possible to look out over the Went Valley and observe
the traffic that passed along the Great North Road. The Saylis
is recorded as having contributed towards the aid that was granted to Edward
III in 1346-47 for the knighting of the Black Prince. An acre of landholding is
listed within a glebe terrier of 1688 relating to Kirk Smeaton, which later
came to be called ‘Sailes Close’and ‘Sayles
Plantation’.
Within close proximity of Wentbridge there are several landmarks which relate to
Robin Hood. One such place-name location occurred in a cartulary deed of 1422
from Monkbretton Priory, which makes direct reference
to a landmark named Robin Hood’s Stone which is on the east side of the Great
North Road, the A1, a mile south of Barnsdale Bar. The historians Barry Dobson
and John Taylor suggested that on the opposite side of the road once stood
Robin Hood's Well, which has since been relocated six miles north-west of
Doncaster, on the south-bound side of the Great North Road. Over the next three
centuries, the name popped-up all over the place, such as at Robin Hood's Bay
near Whitby, Robin Hood's Butts in Cumbria, and
Robin Hood's Walk at Richmond, Surrey. The first place-name in Sherwood does
not appear until 1700, suggesting that Nottinghamshire jumped on the bandwagon
at least four centuries after the event.
The
Farndale Poachers
It has
been suggested that if there ever was a real Robin Hood (Robin Hod), he fought
the Sheriff of Yorkshire between 1226 and 1234 (Robert Tombs, The English and their
History, 2023, 128).
There are
three aspects to the history of the Farndale family which support a close
association with the Robin Hood stories.
1. The Inspiration
The earliest
records associated with our ancestors are dominated by references to poachers and outlaws in
Pickering Forest. We have already met those poachers in an earlier chapter
of our story.
Our
ancestors were amongst the many forest outlaws and archers who were later
immortalised in story.
2. Witnesses in the place where the
stories were probably first written down
Those
individuals who left Farndale, but adopted its name, first headed south across
the agricultural plains around York and settled in York itself, around Sheriff Hutton to the
north of York and to the area around Doncaster where William Farndale
was the chaplain immediately after the
Black Death and then parish vicar from 1397 to 1403.
By the early
fourteenth century Second, the main branch of the family who called themselves
Farndale were focused around Doncaster,
and by the sixteenth century, were living in or around Campsall, where
Robin Hood had made a chapell in Bernysdale.
The
emergence of the Robin Hood stories in the 1400s was likely to have been
bolstered in part by the complaints against oppression that led to the
Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, which itself was triggered by the imposition of three
poll taxes in 1377, 1379 and 1381. We know that Nicholaus de ffarnedale, perhaps the direct ancestor of the modern
Farndale family, paid 4d for the second Poll Tax in 1379, and may well have had
rebellious sympathies with these ideas.
It seems
probable that the descendants of the outlaws of Pickering Forest were living in
the area of Barnsdale at the same time that the rymes
were committed to writing, including in the form of the Gest.
Then in the
sixteenth century, William
Farndale, son of Nicholas
and Agnes Farndale and Agnes Farndale, married Margaret Atkinson at St Mary
of Magdalene, Campsall on 29 October 1564, the very church which Robin Hood is
said to have built in Barnsdale. We can then directly link William’s son, George
Farndale to the modern Farndale family. It seems probable that the direct
ancestors of the modern Farndale family therefore lived in or around Campsall
in 1564 before they emigrated north of the North York Moors to the Cleveland area in
about 1567. It seems very likely that the family group who lived in or around
Campsall in the mid sixteenth century were the descendants possibly of Nicholaus de ffarnedale, the brother of William Farndale,
the vicar of Doncaster himself.
3. Intellectual Powerhouse
The church
of St Mary Magdalene at Campsall was an
intellectual centre by the late fourteenth century. Given the associations of
the early stories with Barnsdale forest and Campsall itself, close to the
dangerous stretch of road north which was known to be bandit country, a place
where travellers rested, Campsall was a likely candidate for a location where
the Robin Hood stories were first committed to writing.
This places
our family at the same location where the stories of Robin Hood emerged in the
written record. Given that they were likely descended from outlaws of Pickering
Forest, who poached for hart and soar in desperate
acts of survival, they had the inspiration to romanticise about their
ancestors’ exploits.
There are
other associations with the Farndale’s ancestral past. Perhaps the oldest Robin
Hood story, which appears in the Gest, is that of a knight, Richard of the Lee
who had become indebted to the abbot of St Mary’s, York who threatened to
possess his lands. Robin Hood came to his aid by robbing the monks themselves
to repay the loan. After the Norman Conquest, the lands of Kirkbymoorside were
the property of two rival baronial families, the House Mowbray and the House Stuteville. Farndale was
first mentioned as a gift by Roger de Mowbray’s ward to the Cistercian abbey of
Rievaulx. However the Stutevilles
favoured the Benedictine monks of St Mary’s Abbey in York and so in 1209 it was
St Mary’s who had rights in the forest of Farndale.
The Robin
Hood stories are well rooted in historical experiences, of which our Farndale
ancestors were players and direct witnesses.
In passing,
it is interesting to note that the valley which runs parallel to Farndale, and
with which it is closely associated in the medieval records, is Bransdale, and
it is tempting to draw some association with those around Campsall who later
named the area of Barnsdale. Only two letters shift!
Barnsdale
Bransdale
There is a
historical documentary series on Sky television, called The
British, in which episode
2 depicts two outlaws pursued in Pickering Forest whilst poaching for deer.
They were brothers called Philips, but they may as well have been Farndales.
The documentary observes that it was such folk who would inspire the legend of
Robin Hood, and their archery skills would one day comprise the successful
armies who fought at Crecy and Agincourt.
Farndale
witnesses to the events themselves and the capturing of the stories in writing
It seems
probable that our ancestors were both the actors who, no doubt amongst many
like them, inspired the stories of Robin Hood, and may well have been amongst
those who passed down the stories and eventually recorded them to writing.
Hence, we
find our family history in the heart of Robin Hood territory.
The medieval
sources record a significant number of our ancestors who were fined, outlawed
and even excommunicated, for poaching and illegally hunting, particularly
within the Royal Forest of Pickering. At the time they were petty criminals,
but they later became the heroic ‘merry men’, and there are plenty of such
characters in our history.
A historical
explanation for this activity might have been the struggles of the villein
classes in the thirteenth century and the Great Famine following bad weather
and poor harvests in 1315 which gave rise to widespread unrest, crime and
infanticide, followed by the Black Death
which hit Yorkshire in 1349.
A rebellious
trait is a seam which runs through the history of the English people and is
perhaps the origin of the democratic gains which were slowly achieved through
time. That rebellious streak certainly flowed through the generations of the
Farndale family.
Six hundred
years after the time of the Farndale poachers, in 1936 John
William Farndale was the youngest member of the Jarrow marchers.
As we learn
more about our ancestral history, this nostalgia for a world where justice and
fairness is administered by a noble outlaw on behalf of the ordinary folk,
weaves itself easily into the factual narrative of our ancestors.
We cannot
say that our descendants were the fictional Robin Hood nor his merry men, nor
were they likely to have been the authors of the written stories, but our
ancestral path weaves closely betwixt the idea of Robin Hood, and it seems
probable that our ancestors were those who inspired the tales and who, in later
generations, were close to those who wrote them down for posterity.
Will
Withers
In 1222 Kilton Castle passed to Sir
Robert de Thweng (1205 to 1268) through marriage
to Matilda de Kylton. Robert was in dispute with the
Prior of Guisborough about the
ownership.
After an
attempted appeal to Rome, the frustrated Sir
Robert rebelled and raided church property in about 1232, using the
nickname Will Wither, or William the Angry. It is said that he then distributed
the spoils, Robin Hood like, to the poor. He was excommunicated in consequence,
but was supported by other local noble families including the Houses of de Brus, Percy and Neville.
Matthew
Paris described Robert as of gentle birth, juvenis
elegans et miles strenuus.
In 1232 he
began his opposition to the foreign ecclesiastics who invaded England during
Henry III's reign. One of these had been intruded into the living of Kirkleatham, the advowson of which
belonged to Thweng. Failing to get redress, Thweng adopted a pseudonym, William Wither, placed himself
at the head of an agitation against the foreigners, and about Easter 1232
raised an armed force which infested the country, burning the foreign
ecclesiastics' corn and barns. Letters patent were shown forbidding
opposition to their proceedings, the priests sought refuge in abbeys,
not daring to complain of the wrongs done them, and the rioters distributed
alms to the poor. When these outrages came to the pope's ears he warmly
remonstrated with Henry III, and in response the king ordered the arrest of
various sheriffs who were accused of connivance at the disturbances. Hubert de
Burgh was charged with having issued the letters patent used by Thweng and his men (Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii. 43).
Thweng
himself justified his conduct before the king, and escaped unpunished (Rog.
Wend. iii. 27, 29).
Henry III
advised him to lay his grievance in person before the pope, to whom he gave him
letters of recommendation. It was not till 1239 that Thweng
set out for Rome. He was then made the bearer of a general letter of complaint
from the English barons (printed in Matthew Paris, iii. 610–12). Perhaps
through the influence of Richard
of Cornwall, whose adherent Thweng was, his
mission was successful. Gregory IX sent letters to Richard and to the legate
Otho confirming the rights of lay patrons, and particularly Thweng's
claim to Kirkleatham (ib. iii.
612–14).
Early in
the following year Thweng started with Richard of
Cornwall on his crusade. Gregory, however, and the emperor endeavoured to stop
him at Paris; but Richard rejected their counsels, and sent Thweng
to the emperor to explain his reasons. Probably Thweng
went on with Richard to Palestine, returning in 1242. He was afterwards
employed in various negotiations with Scotland, receiving in February 1256–7 an
allowance for his expenses in ‘divers times going on the king's message towards
Scotland’ (Bain, Cal.
Doc. i. 2079).
Apparently
he sided with Henry during the barons' war. He died probably about 1268.
Dick
Turpin
Tales of
highwaymen in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were a modernisation of
Robin Hood.
Richard
Turpin was baptised on 21 September 1705. He was an English highwayman whose
exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft.
Dick might
have started his career as a butcher, like John Farndale.
By the early 1730s, he had joined a gang of deer thieves and, later, became a
poacher, burglar, horse thief and killer.
The epic
tale of his fictional 200 mile overnight ride from London to York on his horse Black
Bess was written by the Victorian novelist William Harrison Ainsworth
almost 100 years after Turpin's death.
Turpin's
involvement in highway robbery followed the arrest of the other members of his
gang in 1735. He then disappeared from public view towards the end of that
year, only to resurface in 1737 with two new accomplices, one of whom Turpin
may have accidentally shot and killed. Turpin fled from the scene and shortly
afterwards killed a man who attempted his capture.
Later that
year, he moved to Yorkshire and assumed the alias of John Palmer. While he was
staying at an inn, local magistrates became suspicious of "Palmer"
and made enquiries as to how he funded his lifestyle. Suspected of being a
horse thief, Palmer was imprisoned in York Castle, to be tried at the next
assizes. Turpin's true identity was revealed by a letter he wrote to his
brother-in-law from his prison cell, which fell into the hands of the
authorities. On 22 March 1739, Turpin was found guilty on two charges of horse
theft and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Knavesmire
on 7 April 1739.
Turpin
became the subject of legend after his execution, romanticised as dashing and
heroic in English ballads and popular theatre of the 18th and 19th centuries.
There is a Short History of Highwaymen
in the BBC series.
or
Go Straight to
Campsall and Barnsdale Forest
or
Re-read the Poachers of
Pickering Forest
You might be
interested in the following:
Yorkshire
Archaeological Journal, Volume 36
There is a
separate Robin
Hood webpage with research notes and a chronology.