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Detailed research into documentary sources offers an exciting new
identification of the "e;real"e; Robin Hood.For over a century and a half
scholars have debated whether or not the legend of Robin Hood was based on an actual outlaw
and, if so, when and where he lived. One view is that he was not a legend as such but a
myth: an idea, rather than a person who could possibly be identified in historical records
and placed in a real historical and geographical context. Other writers have gone even
further, arguing that he is a literary concoction, with no traceable original, and that
seeking to pin him down to a particular time and location is futile and unnecessary. This
survey begins by tracing the development of the legend, and contemporary views about it,
between the thirteenth and early twenty-first centuries, taking account both of new
interpretative literature on the subject and fresh discoveries from the author's own
research in the early records of the English royal administration and common law. It then
gives a detailed account of the places that came to be associated with the legend, and of
evidence illustrating the importance of the outlaw's name in the development of English
surnames. The concluding chapters deal with the administration of criminal law in medieval
England, and the evidence that points to the possible origins of the legend in the
activities of a notorious Yorkshire criminal, tracked down and beheaded in the county in
1225. DAVID CROOK, now retired, spent his working life in The National Archives, where he
became immersed in the extensive surviving early records of the English royal administration
and common law. From those sources have emerged important findings which may identify a real
criminal as the original of the legendary English outlaw Robin Hood.
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