Robin Hood T. H. Aston Past and Present, No. 20 (Nov., 1961), 7-9. Stable URL http: flinks jstor-org/sici sici=0031-2746% 281961 11% 290%3A20%3C7%3 ARH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 Past and Present is currently published by Oxford University Press, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www jstor.org/joumals/oup hm. ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Tue Dec 13 18:56:52 2005Communication ROBIN HOOD THOSE WHO HAVE FOLLOWED THE STIMULATING DISCUSSION 1 Past and Present, Nos. 14, 18 and 19 about the historical background and significance of the Robin Hood belleds will be interested in Mr. Maurice Keen's recent book on The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), as a very clear summary of the contents of the early legends from Hereward the ‘Wake to Robin Hood; and as an attempt to put these literary outlaws in their social context. The outlaw, is in fact, something of a novelty in the writing of medieval English social history, and many ‘of the issues raised in this book will need lengthy and careful inquiry. But a good part of the argument of the book stands or falls on the points debated in this Journal. If Mr. Holt (Past and Present, Nos. 18 and 19) is right, if Robin was the hero not of the peasantry ‘but ofthe gentry, then much of Mr. Keen’s book will need substantial modification. One major difficulty in seeing the Robin Hood ballads as the literature of peasant discontent is, surely, the contrast between their basic acceptance of the existing social framework and the social challenge of the Peasants’ Revolt. Mr. Keen's answer is not to try to make Robin into a revolutionary (except perhaps on p. 52), but to make the peasants into piecemeal reformers. They did not, he ‘writes, demand “a review of the whole {social] system, but reform on. particular points in it which bore harshly on them” (p. 162). But we ‘need very cogent reasons for thus denying contemporary impressions, and for calling “particular” what to them seemed only too general. ‘And given the conditions and traditions of fourteenth-century society, ‘was the demand for the abolition of bondage and serfdom really only a “particular” point? Or for the abolition of seigneurial jurisdiction? Taken by and large, Mile End and Smithfield (Gifferent programmes indeed) — not to mention the burning of the records of existing landlordism — came passably close to denying the ‘main economic and jurisdictional bases of what historians have meant by feudalism; and Wat Tyler would have done hardly less to the established order ofthe church. Again, when assessing peasant aims by the light of “establishment” reactions, it is not easy to know where real insight and true report end and “shocked imagination” (p. 168) begins: for, with men conspiring to overthrow the kingdom and much else besides in 1414 oF 1431, can we be sure that those who said similar schemes were afoot in 1381 were altogether wrong ?8 PAST AND PRESENT uaBeR 20 ‘That many of the rebels had “sims... bounded by local horizons” (p. 162) is true enough. The ftightening novelty — for con- temporares — was that many did not. But ifthe ballads do not reflect the mood and sims of 1381, normal peasant discontent did not do so either. What then of those less Coordinated tensions in. manorial society, over rent, service and tenures over common rights (probably the most widespread and constant source of trouble) and land transfers; over the extortion of manorial officials, and so on. Of none of this is there anything whatever in the ballads, “There is not any mention of unfice peasants in the ballads. For all they tell us, the whole manorial ‘system might have passed out of existence” (p. 139). I do not see hhow this simple fact can be explained away — especialy if, as Mr. Keen observes, “the ballad makers were not in the habit of ignoring ‘widespread complaint” (p, 142). To suggest (p. 139) that internal Changes in the manor ate the explanation’ is surly to get those changes very much out of focvs,, For however much the manor hanged and almost whatever we understand by the word “manor”, the peasant discontent of which we hear — when not associated with royal taxation — seems overwhelmingly “manorial” up to the middle of the fourteenth century's for the rest of the century, the Ordinance fnd Statute of Labourers in particular introduced a novel element, ‘ut not an altogether “non-manorial” one since these measures were in large part designed to bolster its labour organisation. Nor indeed is the currently fashionable diagnosis of this discontent — at last in the form Mr. Keen adopts — in all respects satisfactory. If, for instance, great emphasis is to be convincingly placed on increased Social stratification, we need a more realistic starting point than an “average peasant” with “perhaps thirty or forty acres” ad opus (two or three days a week) (p. 139): we need to come to grips with the profound and widespread differentiation shown as carly as 1086, Confirmed more deeply two hundred years later in the Hundred Rolls and demonstrated in countless manorial surveys, accounts and cour ros, ‘None of this isto deny that peasants, discontented or otherwise, listened with relish —as do children still —to tales ofthe greenwood. Nor even that their disputes with their own masters — manorial lords, reeves and the like — may have whetted their appetite for stories ofthe tumph of right in rather romantic and gruesome vein “itonly asa variant on biblical themes, What it docs mean i that the primary social significance of the Robin Hood ballads does not lie in the realm of peasant discontent. Mr. Holt has (it seems to me)ROBIN HOOD 9 made out a powerful case for looking to the gentle classes; and Mr. Keen's chapter on “The Outlaw in History” seems really to point in the same direction, a direction in good harmony with the tales of Hereward, Fulk and Gamelyn, Further than that one can hardly go at the moment. We need to know much more of the real outlaws, and of crime in general; of those who passed from what we might call opposition into banditry; and of the attitudes and behaviour of ‘those middling ranks of landowner whose discontent has yet to be put in proper perspective beside that of the baronage and peasantry. ‘There is room enough here for a very mixed audience indeed — and for its entertainment no less than for its discontent. Corpus Christi College, Oxford T. H, Aston NOTES ' Mr, Keen's other suggestion (pp. 154:5) supposes a lower class acceptance of certain contemporary commonplaces which discontented peasants explicitly or impliedly often rejected in practice. "Te should, however, be noted that peasant discontent due to, eg, royal taxation, prises and purveyance, royal admainistition in genera, royal forests, fof brigundage, Pad ‘harvests ete. has not et been adequately investigated "Nos-manoria!” eauses may thus turn ‘out to be relatively more tmportant than at present appears." See, for instance, A Lincolnshive dsize Roll for 1398, 24; W. 8 Thomson, (Lincoln Rec; Soc. vol. 36). 5 Miss Putnam's book on the enforcement of the statute i incorocty listed in the bibliography as are various other tems, among them 8 book and an frtcle by De- Hilton to. whom is attributed Mist ‘Levert’s study of the ‘Winchester estates,