Real robin hood biography

Forest legend

In all these tales, the forest figures prominently. The forest in the Middle Ages included very extensive areas of cultivated land as well as wood and waste land. They were the private preserve of the king and his officers, and were protected by a harsh series of forest laws, against which there could be no appeal - not even to the ecclesiastical courts.

Forest law was extremely unpopular, among all sections of society, but it achieved its purpose of retaining vast areas of semi-wild landscape over which the king and his court could hunt.

Yet the very wildness of the land made it a perfect place for fugitives to hide out, and this is why areas such as Sherwood Forest and Barnsdale feature so prominently in outlaw legend.

The origins of the Robin Hood legend are very obscure.

The first literary reference to Robin Hood comes from a passing reference in Piers Plowman, written some time around 1377, and the main body of tales date from the fifteenth century. These ar