All these attempts have been made at one time or another, but not until the spirit which begot him had begun to dwindle in the English heart. If King Arthur is the ideal knight of Celtic chivalry, Robin is the ideal champion of the popular cause under feudal conditions: his enemies are bishops, fat monks, and the sheriff who would restrain his liberty. It is natural that an enfranchised yeoman, who took toll of the oppressors, and so effected what we still call a redistribution of wealth, should be the hero of the oppressed and the law-abiding poor; and it is natural that, as social conditions altered (for better or for worse) with the national prosperity under Elizabeth, and classes and masses reconsidered their relative positions, Robin should fall from the popular pantheon, and should degenerate, as we find him degenerated in the broadsides of the Reformation hacks, into a swashbuckler unheroic enough to be defeated in quarter-staff bouts and so undemocratic as to find for himself a noble title and a wife of high degree. There are, then, four Robin Hoods:-- (i) The popular outlaw of the greenwood, as revealed to us in the older ballads. (ii) The quasi-historical Robin, the outlaw ennobled (by a contradiction in terms) as the Earl of Huntingdon, Robert Fitzooth, etc., and the husband of Matilda. (iii) One of a number of actual Robert Hoods, whose existence (and insignificance) has been proved from historical documents. (iv) Robin Hood, or Robin o’ Wood, explained by German scholars as the English representative of Woden, or a wood-god, or some other mythical personage. We will now investigate these in turn, attempting so far as may be possible to keep them distinct. I. THE BALLAD HERO ROBIN HOOD The earliest known reference to Robin Hood the outlaw was first pointed out by Bishop Percy, the editor of the _Reliques_, in _Piers Plowman_, the poem written by Langland about 1377, where Sloth says (B. text, passus v. 401):-- ‘But I can [know] rymes of Robyn hood, and Randolf erle of Chestre.’ Observing that this first mention of Robin is as the subject of ballads, and that he is coupled with another popular hero, one of the twelfth-century Earls of Chester, we pass to the next reference. ‘Lytill Ihon and Robyne Hude Waythmen ware commendyd gude; In Yngilwode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.’ This passage, from Wyntoun’s _Chronicle of Scotland_ (about 1420), is referred to the year 1283, and means that Robin and his man Little John were known as good hunters (cf. ‘wight yeomen,’ constantly in the ballads), and they carried on their business in Inglewood and Barnsdale at this time. In 1439 a petition was presented to Parliament concerning a certain Piers Venables, of whom it is stated that, having no other livelihood, he ‘gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers’ and ‘wente into the wodes in that contrë, like as it hadde be Robyn-hode and his meynë.’