Ten year old Richard II was England's new ruler in 1377. This was at about the time the Robin Hood ballads are mentioned in Piers Plowman. His uncle John of Gaunt was the person most qualified to ascend the throne and everyone knew it. Gaunt was not only older and more experienced than Richard, he was the fourth son of the previous king, Edward III (while Richard was only the grandson), and could have seized the crown for himself without the slightest whimper from anyone. John of Gaunt was a "..highly competent and ambitious man. He only had to look at Richard, pretty delicate, uncompromising Richard, to know at once who would make the better king. But to John's credit (and this was no negative virtue in the Middle Ages and among the Plantagenets), little Richard lived to grow up." [Murray, pg. 155]. It is possible that Richard was saved by a well circulated treatise produced by Thomas Walsingham, Monk of Saint Albans. Walsingham accused Gaunt of plotting against Richard, even though the record shows that Gaunt never displayed anything but loyalty to his sovereign. Gaunt seemed more interested in his position in Spain, where his name is remembered today as much as in England.

John of Gaunt

Gaunt's loyalty to Richard endured in spite of Richard's open contempt for Gaunt. Richard nearly charged Gaunt with treason at one point-- during a time when condemned traitors were disemboweled, with a noose holding the victim just high enough to keep his heels from touching the ground. Gaunt, who could not even spend a night in London without fearing for his life (his most perilous moment comes during the Peasant Rebellion of 1381), finally fled England itself.

The story begins to resemble a Robin Hood ballad, however, when Gaunt returns to England after a three year sojourn on the Continent. Richard is in big trouble by this time and Gaunt arrives in the nick of time. Richard's lifelong tutor, Simon Burley, has already been beheaded by Parliament (not disemboweled, thanks only to Richard's wife, the Queen of England, going to her knees to plead for the old man's safety). The King's closest friend, Robert de Vere, has been exiled for life.

Gaunt fears the British Parliament, but Parliament also fears him. A phrase from an Aesop's Fable, "The Mice in Council," becomes popular at this time: "to bell the cat." A parliament of mice finds the cat's skill with the dog useful. But they fear the cat almost as much as they fear the dog and so they put a bell around his neck in order to be certain of his whereabouts at all times. In England, Gaunt became that fabled cat. (The dog was France.) The popularity of the phrase also illustrates the usefulness of folklore in day to day conversation. One can imagine how a Robin Hood ballad might have been shaped to explain (to a troubled peasant class during the Rising of 1381 for example) the relationship between Richard and Gaunt. The similarity between the Legend and the reality becomes even more complete when Gaunt helps Richard organize his own band of greenwood archers to act as his personal bodyguard during his visits to Parliament. It is not difficult to picture Gaunt strolling alongside his king the way Little John is described in the Ballad of Robin Hood and Little John:

It is amusing to note that the word "gaunt" ("Abnormally lean, as from hunger; haggard-looking; tall, thin, and angular in appearance" --Oxford English Dictionary) enters the English language at about this time.

In any case, the turmoil in Richard's life was very real. Not only Parliament, but the Church, and finally the general population itself rose up in rebellion. The person who fanned the flames, Thomas Walsingham the Monk of Saint Alban's Abbey, reminds us of the monk in a very early Robin Hood ballad: Robin Hood and the Monk. The precise reason for Walsingham's invective has never been explained (indeed all scholars confess bafflement at things people do during this period of English history. Unjust taxation was certainly a reason, just like in the movies!).

One interesting fact is that Richard II is supposed to have been a direct descendant of the last great Anglo Saxon, Hereward Leofricson, known to us as Hereward the Wake. The connection to Hereward is on Richard's mother's side (his grandmother was a Wake), which made Richard II unique among the Plantagenet rulers. Some scholars believe the legend of Hereward to be the purely British source of the Robin Hood legend. (As Victor Head put it, English school boys may sing ballads about Robin Hood, but Robin Hood sang ballads about Hereward.) It is impossible to say what, if anything, Hereward's legacy meant to Richard II. However, it is a detail that could help to explain Richard II's fatal flaw: That he was chosen by destiny to lead England and therefore was immune to the criticism of his mortal peers.

We also notice that all the important elements of the German Reformation are in place by the 14th Century. The Queen is from Bohemia. She knows John Hus, who will be burned at the stake for heresy. (The fate of both Wycliff and Hus will weigh heavily on Martin Luther when it is his turn to reform the Church.) Perhaps Walsingham believed he was saving England from a revival of the wiccan practices for which Hereward was famous. As I mention in a companion essay, England's brand of Christianity was heavily burdoned with pre-Christian tradition.

What strikes the Robin Hood scholar as most curious is the pattern that develops when the legend of Hereward, Robin Hood, and Richard are compared. All three owed their lives to a man who is also their most dangerous rival. For Richard, it was John of Gaunt. For Hereward, it was a man named Gilbert De Gaunt. For Robin Hood, it was Little John. All three heroes lived under the shadow of a strong mother figure. For Richard it was his mother "The Fair Maid of Kent," For Hereward, his mother the legendary Lady Godiva (yeah! small world!). For Robin Hood, it is the Virgin Mother Herself. The two Gaunts, come to think of it, also owe their great wealth to the women they married.

The 14th Century Internet

If the Robin Hood legend had royal involvement, as circumstances suggest, then one would expect the finest musicians and writers in England to be adding a touch or two to the old ballads to help them get the point across.

Both Chaucer's description of the Yeoman and this later blockcut image have served to define Robin Hood's appearance.

John Gower as Greenwood Hero. He introduced the French Musical, Robin et Marion to England

One person very likely to add details to the Robin Hood Legend was John De Montagu Earl of Salisbury. He was a member of King Richard's inner circle and, according the Encyclopedia Britannica, Salsbury's "...military duties were embellished by a taste for literature and the fine arts, rarely cultivated at that period by individuals of his rank." In spite of his aristocratic title, he was as devoted to the levellers as he was to the king. His convictions were deep. He perished at the hands of a mob the same year King Richard died. He refused to receive a priest at the hour of his execution, regarding his own personal relationship with God sufficient to save his immortal soul.

His role as the King's ballad-master mattered as much as that of web-master in today's world. Before the invention of the printing press, folk songs and ballads functioned like the world wide web. The medium was owned by no one and shared by everyone, from king to shopkeeper. It is possible to imagine how the king's involvement in this 14th Century "Internet" would have prepared him, at age fourteen, for his famous confrontation with Walter ("Wat") Tyler, a folk hero so admired in the English speaking world that a U.S. President (John Tyler) would someday claim him as an ancestor. Wat Tyler entered into history during the peasant rebellion of 1381. The confrontation between this self styled Robin Hood and his King must go down as one of the strangest coversations in history. (If you find the following conversation between an English king and an English outlaw hard to follow, it was no less so for those who actually witnessed the discussion!)

According to Froissart, Tyler...

spurred his horse and departed from his company and came to the king, so near him that his horse head touched the croup of the king's horse, and the first word that he said was this: 'Sir king, seest thou all yonder people?'

'Yea truly,' said the king, 'wherefore sayest thou?'

'Because,' said he, 'they be all at my commandment and have sworn to me faith and truth, to do all that I will have them.'

'In a good time,' said the king, 'I will well it be so.'

[According to another account: "Presently Wat Tyler, in the presence of the King, sent for a flagon of water to rinse his mouth, because of the great heat that he was in, and when it was brought the rinse his mouth in a very rude and disgusting fashion before the King's face. And then he made them bring him a jug of beer, and drank a great draught... in the presence of the King...."]

Then Wat Tyler said, as he that nothing demanded but riot: 'What believest thou, king, that these people and as many more as be in London at my commandment, that they will depart from thee thus without having thy letters?'

'No,' said the king, 'ye shall have them: they be ordained for you and shall be delivered every one each after other. Wherefore, good fellows, withdraw fair and easily to your people and cause them to depart out of London; for it is our intent that each of you by villages and townships shall have letters patents, as I have promised you.'

With those words Wat Tyler cast his eyen on a squire that was there with the king bearing the king's sword, and Wat Tyler hated greatly the same squire, for the same squire had displeased him before for words between them. 'What,' said Tyler, 'art thou there? Give me thy dagger.'

'Nay,' said the squire, 'that will I not do: wherefore should I give it thee?'

The king beheld the squire and said: 'Give it him; let him have it.'

And so the squire took it him sore against his will. And when this Wat Tyler had it, he began to play therewith and turned it in his hand, and said again to the squire: 'Give me also that sword.'

'Nay,' said the squire, 'it is the king's sword: thou art not worthy to have it, for thou art but a knave....

The scene, described by Jean Froissart (c.1337–1410?), ends with Tyler's death at the hands of Richard's bodyguards. In spite of the unhappy ending, the fact that there was any conversation at all between a French speaking king (who learned English as a second language) and a common thief suggests a line of communication that the ballad craft might have made possible. It was because of this medium, perhaps, that instead of being struck down in a bloodbath that day, the common people left the scene in peace, recognizing Richard II as their true-life Robin Hood, "and long did they cherish his memory." (Churchill)

Winston Churchill dismisses some deeds and words of Richard II that make him seem hostile to the underprivileged. It is true that Richard II said the words, "Villeins ye are, and villeins ye shall remain." to a group of peasants after the Rising of 1381. But he also "...freed many peasants from their fuedal bonds [by the same letters patent mentioned above]. He solemnly promised the abolition of serfdom. He had proposed it to Parliament." These good deeds were not forgotten by the underprivileged folk. After his death, "He was deemed, whether rightly or wrongly, a martyr to the causes of the weak and the poor. Statutes were passed declaring it high treason even to spread the rumour that he was still alive." [Churchill, Pg. 285]

Today we think of King Richard the First as Robin Hood's benefactor. However, it seems more likely that the Lion Heart's namesake and distant relation, Richard II, was the one that kept the legend active in the popular imagination. Like Richard I and John I (who shared the throne instead of going to war over it) or their father Henry II (who preferred to spend his time in the law courts listening to arguments than to be out hunting for game), Richard II would prefer to win a debate with his opponent than to attack him by stealth. However, on that fateful day in London in 1381, a willingness to debate was not enough. Both sides had to speak the same language. The Robin Hood Ballads would have provided all the words an English king and an outlaw needed in order to agree about the future of their country.

Bibliography

The Death of Wat Tyler

and Tyler too: A Biography of John & Julia Gardiner Tyler by Robert Saeger II, McGraw-Hill Book Company, N.Y, Tennessee, London, 1963 "Lyon G. Tyler, the Tyler family biographer [and father of United States President John Tyler], once argued that Henry Tyler was an aristocratic Cavalier in flight from Puritan despotism, and that the whole Tyler clan was directly descended from the famous Wat Tyler, the fourteenth-century revolutionist against the tyranny of Richard II. To further this dubious connection Judge Tyler named one of his sons Wat. But... the claim can be established neither historically nor genealogically.... [Wat's brother, President] John Tyler himself accepted the alleged family connection with Wat the Red and gloried in it, defending its legitimacy against all doubters. 'I am proud of Wat Tyler and cannot let him go.' he once confessed." In 1842, President Tyler purchased a 1,150 acre estate in Virginia and named it "Sherwood Forest." He and his wife also owned 70-some slaves!

www.britannica.com., "John Montacute, Earl of Salisbury (1350-1400)", Article of February, 2009.

The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century, by William Chester Jordan, Princeton University, 1996. The rumor that your Caucasian ancestors and mine resorted to cannibalism during the 14th century--and even developed a taste for human flesh long after the crisis had passed--is not dispelled. In The Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman asks if the appalling cruelty visited upon Richard and his court by the famed "Merciless Parliament" could have been a symptom of mankind's psychological response to the ice, starvation and plague of the 14th Century.

Hereward by Victor Head, Alan Sutton, 1995. This closely researched book validates many of Kingsley's classic assertions about the (arguably) last great Anglo Saxon defender against the Normans. There are intriguing similarities between King Richard II and Hereward. For example, Robin Hood, Richard and Hereward all had problems getting along with monks. Richard and Hereward also had a difficult but fabulously wealthy family friend named "Gaunt" (Gilbert De Gaunt and John of Gaunt) on whom they depended for their survival. They had interesting mothers (Joan the Countess of Kent, and the notorious Lady Godiva). In fact, Joan's mother belonged to the family Wake, which claims a connection to Hereward. The names "Hood" and "Hereward" are similar enough to invite speculation. There are many other similarities among Hood, Richard and Hereward, but these similarities remind us of what the Book of Ecclesiastes says about history: "What once was, will be again. There is nothing new under the Sun." In the Medieval world, as in the Old Testament, history does not progress. It circles. Did I mention that half of Gilbert De Gaunt's lordships were in Nottinghamshire, and that a Robin Hood inn now rests on the site of one of his castles....?

Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley, Grosset & Dunlap, [no date] "And then Hereward rode up the Ermine Street, through primeval glades of mighty oak and ash, with holly and thorn beneath, swarming with game... the yellow roes stood and stared at him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and thrush sang out from every bough; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak tops, and sank down on them as his song sank down. And Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all." Pg.47. On the other hand, the English greenwood could be "...a sad place enough, when the autumn fog crawled round the gorse, and dripped off the hollies, and choked alike the breath and the eyesight; when the air sickened with the graveyard smell of rotting leaves, and the rain-water stood in the clay holes over the poached and sloppy lawns." Pg.437

The History of the English Speaking Peoples, The Birth of Britain, by Winston S. Churchill, Bantam, N.Y., 1963.

John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe by Anthony Goodman, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1992. Having "won the jackpot in English noble inheritance" by his first marriage, Gaunt devoted his time to England's problems at home and abroad, the most important problem abroad being the defeat of the Serbs at Kosovo. Gaunt set an example of "public service" long before the concept was introduced by political scientists. Goodman explains that Gaunt's "cardinal error" may have been "his failure to develop a harmonious personal relationship with Richard." Goodman's chapter on Gaunt and the Church is especially interesting. Like many Christians of his day, Gaunt was devoted to the Virgin. However, the intensity of his devotion is counted as one of Gaunt's eccentricities. "It seems likely... that Gaunt's devotion to the Virgin intensified after he escaped from the disaster of 1381." Pg. 247

John of Gaunt by Sydney Armitage-Smith, Barnes & Noble, 1964.

The Hollow Crown by H. F. Hutchison, The John Day Company, New York, 1961. The Robin Hood ballads were "...part of an organized and inflammatory propaganda..." that encouraged the Rising of 1381. Strangely, one of the rebellion's catch phrases named "Hob the Robber" as the enemy. (Pg. 57) Robin Hood is not the only ambiguous figure in King Richard's world. "Both contemporary chroniclers and modern historians have found it difficult to decide whether John of Gaunt was a benevolent or a wicked uncle..." to Richard. (Pg. 14) This book's title is from Shakespeare's Richard II.