The Earl of Huntingdon

In the earliest tellings of the Robin Hood legend, the outlaw hero is a yeoman (roughly speaking, a member of the middle class). But with time the Robin Hood of legend moved up in the world. By the mid-1500s, he was said to be an earl. And in 1599, Anthony Munday wrote two plays that made Robin Hood the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon (or Huntington as Munday spelled it).

Stephen Knight has pointed out that Robin's home in some tales was Barnsdale in Yorkshire. There was also a Barnsdale in Rutland though, and in King Richard's day, it was controlled by the earl of Huntingdon. This fact may have been known by Munday through his archivist friend, John Stow. But in the medieval period, the Rutland Barnsdale was known as Bernardshill. Thus the Rutland connection is less likely than it first seems. But there are Robin Hood elements to the career of the real earl of Huntingdon.

His name was David, brother to William the Lion, king of Scotland. For nearly thirty years, Earl David was next in line for the Scottish throne. Through both of his daughters, Earl David was the direct ancestor of Scottish kings. He held many lands in both Scotland and England. He was a very important figure in Anglo-Scottish diplomacy. And details of Earl David's life are well chronicled and collected in Earl David of Huntingdon 1152-1219 A Study in Anglo-Scottish History by K.J. Stringer. Edinburgh University Press, 1985. Most of the details that follow are from that book.

Henry II's children often rebelled against him. Henry II gave a lot of power to his eldest son (who died before Henry II) Henry, hence this prince Henry was known as the Young King. Earl David of Huntingdon participated in the Young King's 1174 rebellion against his father, after which David lost the earldom for ten years. (Although it had been granted to him in the first place by William of Scotland and the Young Henry, not Henry II.)

He made up with Henry II, and attended a Christmas Court with him. And participated in Richard's coronation. Earl David got married to Maud in 1190. She was also called Matilda (a form of Maud). In Munday's play, Maid Marian's real name was Matilda Fitzwater. Maud was the granddaughter of one Rannulf, Earl of Chester and sister to another Rannulf, Earl of Chester.

When the later Ranulf died in 1232, Earl David's son John became both the earl of Huntingdon and Chester. This is important because the very first literary reference we can find for Robin Hood ballads refers to the "rymes of Robyn hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre". As you can see, there are ties of blood between the earldoms of Huntingdon and Chester.

Anyway, shortly after the marriage (which took place two weeks after Richard left for the Crusades), David disappears from the records for three and a half years. Some later chroniclers, like John of Fordun, say he went on the Third Crusade. But there are no contemporary references to support that.

Another unsupported thing Fordun mentions is that David had a son named Robert who died in infancy. So, in a chronicle that Munday may well have read the name Robert and Huntingdon are, however mildly, linked. (Later stories have sometimes made Robin the son of the Earl of Huntingdon. Seeing as the possibly real Robert of Huntingdon died in infancy, any outlaw career would be exceedingly brief.)

Shortly after David reappears in 1194, he participates in a very Robin Hood like event. I'll just quote my source directly here.

"Roger of Howden reports that in March he supported [Archbishop of Canterbury] Hubert Walter against Count John of Mortain, acting with the earl of Chester to besiege Nottingham as King Richard was preparing to return to England from captivity. Upon Richard's arrival the castle fell and Earl David held a place of honour at the council on 30 March following the submission."

Marching on Nottingham, in support of King Richard, against Prince (or Count, to use another of his titles) John? This resembles some versions of Robin's reconciliation with the king. In Munday's plays, Robin supports Richard and opposes John.

But Richard died, and the man whose supporters the earl marched against was vying for the throne. Although Earl David did support King John's claim in 1199, David lost much of his position in the English court.

Early mentions of Robin Hood's earldom say he was outlawed for debts. This is something Munday picked up on. Earl David had his own financial woes, connected with forest offences. He was fined 200 pounds for "encroachment as a result of the forest eyre of 1207-9, contrary to the liberties of the Huntingdon honour. "This was later forgiven. But in 1211, he owed 1,100 pounds to the Exchequer, and had to sell off some of his land.

In 1212, Earl David was accused as being part of a plot to assassinate King John. David's role was not proven in this affair. But one of the men behind this conspiracy was Robert FitzWalter, father of the Matilda who was Marian in Munday's plays.

And later still Earl David was part of a rebellion against his king. Forced on by his nephew Alexander, the current king of Scotland, he sided against King John in the barons conflict between 1215-16. In November 1215, the king's men started seizing Earl David's lands.

"By March 1216, the whole Huntingdon honour, saving the fees of those sub-tenants in John's peace, had passed into the custody of the king's mercenary captain, Gerard de Sottenghem; subsequently it was transferred to William Marshall junior." Earl David did make peace in the reign of Henry III.

But there are still more Robin Hood connections. David's daughter Isabella married Robert Bruce (an ancestor of the famous one). The Bruces had power in Guisborough, Yorkshire. This place (according to John Bellamy and others) was also known as Gisburne in the middle ages and is a candidate for the home of Guy of Gisborne, Robin Hood's legendary adversary.

Some of Stringer's sources include the chroniclers who made the earliest historical mentions to Robin Hood — Fordun, Wyntoun, and Major. As I said, Earl David was a major power in the time. Therefore, I'd gather he would be important to the Scottish chroniclers. And any Elizabethan playwright looking to find an earldom for Robin would be turn to these same chroniclers which mentioned both Robin Hood and Earl David. Earl David has connections with Rannulf of Chester, Nottingham, rebellion, Matilda, the Fitzwalters, Kings Richard, Henry II and John, and even a place named Gisburne. And he lost his earldom twice. He had problems with debts, including forest offences. Earl David opposed King John on more than one occasion. I am in no way suggesting that Earl David actually was Robin Hood, or inspired the earliest legend. But it seems to me that Munday could have been influenced by some of these things when he selected which earldom to give to Robin Hood.

But after Munday, it wouldn't do to have a real Robin Hood named David. So, in 1746, Dr. William Stukeley combed through old family records, changed a name here, forged a whole family there, and "discovered" the quite fictitious Robert Fitzzooth, Norman lord of Kime and pretended earl of Huntingdon. This fictional Fitzooth background was used by many later writers.

Ever since Ivanhoe in 1819, people think of Robin Hood as a Saxon hero. But Fitzooth is a Norman name, as is Robert (and Robin) for that matter. And even the Scottish Earl David was largely Norman. In fact, William the Conqueror was a part of David's family tree. But there was a Saxon earl of Huntingdon who led a rebellion against his Norman masters.

In 1075, Earl Waltheof of Huntingdon rose up against William the Conqueror. This earl was crushed. Of course, William the Conqueror lived one or two hundred years before most Robin Hood stories are set. Most, not all. Parke Godwin set his 1991 novel Sherwood in William and Waltheof's day. But far from being the earl of Huntingdon, Godwin's Saxon Robin actually sided with the king to stop the power hungry earl, a fellow Saxon.

Although Robin's adversary in modern fiction, Waltheof was useful to the writers of the 19th century who felt uncomfortable with Norman heritage of Stukeley's Huntingdon family tree. In 1887, E. Stredder proposed that Robin Hood was a descendant of Waltheof and stressed Robin's Saxon ancestry. Stephanie L. Barczewski, author of Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, dismisses Stredder's obscure claim by noting the lack of evidence and calling it "just as outlandish as Stukeley's had been", Stukeley had also included Waltheof on his much more Norman-influenced pedigree.

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