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Number 114, June 2003 |
Robin Hood Forest Resources, Land Rights and Civil Conflict in Olde England, James R. Lee |
Case
Background
Environment Aspect Conflict Aspect Environment Conflict Overlap Related Information |
I. CASE BACKGROUND
Robin Hood was more than a thief. He was a revolutionary who led an uprising against the royal priveledge and expropriation of common forest lands and their resources by peasantry. He was no doubt an amalgam of many people, real and fictional.
Robin Hood is remembered as a thief who stole from the rich and gave to the
poor. He lived in Britain in Middle Ages around the area of Nottingham and the
Sherwood Forest. While he did rob the elite who transported goods or traveled
through the forest, at the heart of the dispute is the forest itself and its
resources. Robin and other vagabonds lived in and hunted in the royal forest,
which was forbidden. The Sheriff of Nottingham was in charge of enforcing local
royal law and thus became Robin’s antagonist. By this time, Britain’s
forest cover was mostly converted to pasture or agricultural land. This meant
that deer, which lived in the forests for cover and left to browse on grasses,
became rare. Sherwood forest was a sort of Medieval theme park.
“Actual Robin Hood texts first appear in the fifteenth century, initially
as fragments of verse, then in a handful of complete tales.” Robin Hood
was probably an amalgamation of many Cumbrian outlaws who lived in the 1400s.
Robin Hood’s emergence as a myth also is surely the offspring of the larger
social movements and discontents of the time. The Peasant’s revolt of
1381 “held that the discontent expressed was that of the lower stratum
of the gentry, petty landholders who were affected by rising labour costs and
other economic changes in the fourteenth century.” Robin Hood games, fetes
of archery to support public causes, lasted from the 1500s to about 1600. With
time, it invigorated the myth of the Robin Hood legend, including the Sheriff
of Nottingham, Maid Marion and Friar Tuck.
Robin the poacher preceded Robin the robber. “Interpretations of Robin
Hood’s greenwood have focused heavily on the Forest Laws and royal ownership
of the forest. These elements are present in the legend, yet they are ultimately
a structural feature. Robin is undeniably a bold poacher of venison, and doubtless
his violation of the Forest Laws colored the audience response to his adventures,
yet his infringements of the royal prerogative is very rarely mentioned in the
ballads. The significance thus is not legal but practical.” Robin demands
social rights and a type of social contract. “His poaching of deer likewise
impinges on royal prerogatives, and his antipathy to the Sheriff sets him at
odds with the enforcement of royal policy.
The forest itself provided a cover that allowed Robin Hood’s guerilla
movement to continue and flourish. This is not so different from the use of
forest covers in warfare that occurred in the U.S. Revolutionary War (the Appalachian
Trail) and the Vietnam War (the Ho Chi Minh Trail). Mughal armies in India also
cut down forests around cities they were about to siege as did Europeans armies
who attempted to storm castles (see earlier Mohenjo-Daro case). The lines of
transportation in these environments run through heavily forested areas. Abilities
to destroy these supply lines are often hindered by the forest. Robin Hood used
the forest as cover to raid the supply lines of the royalty.
“Robin Hood the national fiction is not a simple product; like all the
other versions of the outlaw, from local play-game leader to renaissance pastoral
figurehead, he is contrasted in a set of interlinked sometimes contradictory
maneuvers across a range of places and times. The process starts around 1800
in a context of raised socio-cultural awareness, when political and industrial
revolutions are in the forefront of the minds of writers.”
Continent: Europe
Region: Western Europe
Country: United Kingdom (England)
II. Environment Aspects
The royal right to the forest and its resources often imposed great hardships
on the people who lived in or near the areas. Robin Hood is known for his crime
of stealing deer, but there were also bans in differing places on hunting boars
and even smaller animals such as birds and rabbits. Felling of timber was also
restricted in some places.
Robin uses a longbow as his weapon (his bow was made of the English “ewe"
(or “yew”) tree. This was the same type of wood used thousands of
years before by Osti, the frozen iceman). It was important to be skilled at
the bow and arrow in the 13th and 14th centuries because it was the means of
hunting and survival and the means of protection (similar to the gun in the
American west of the 1800s). Because Robin became a mythical legend, he was
the greatest archer. One story that demonstrates his archery skill is the Golden
Arrow contest set up by the Sheriff to bring Robin out of hiding. This is similar
to the William Tell legend. “The myth of yeomanry is reflected symbolically
in the outlaws’ choice of weapons. One of the most consistent elements
in the legends is Robin’s prowess as an archer, and the practice of archery
figures prominently in many of the early ballads.” British excellence
at archery was one of their advantages over the French in the Hundred Years
War.
The myth of Robin receded with the growth of the British Empire, but revived
during the Industrial Revolution. At this time, some thought that taking from
the rich through progressive taxation, should be state policy.
IV. Environment and Conflict
Overlap
V. Related Information and Sources
TED
Jeffrey L. Singman, Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend, Westport and London:
Greenwood Press, 1998, p. 5.
Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw, Oxford and
Cambridge: Blackwell, 1998, p. 51.
J.C. Holt, in “Past and Present” (Hilton, ed., 1976).
April, 2001