In attempting to provide Robin Hood with a noble ancestry, Ritson quotes, amongst other authorities, a manuscript life of Robin, which, as it supplied him with other errors, had best be put out of court at once. This is Sloane MS. 780 (Ritson calls it 715, which is due to the fact that in his time Sloane MSS. 715-7, 720-1, and 780-1 were bound up together); it is of the early seventeenth century, which is much too late for any faith to be put in its statements. No allusion to the noble descent of Robin Hood has been found earlier than one in Grafton’s Chronicle (1569), where the author alleges that he takes this information from ‘an olde and auncient pamphlet.’ As Child says, we must ‘invoke the spirit of Ritson to pardon the taking of no very serious notice of Robin Hood’s noble extraction.’ Stukely, an antiquary who published his _Palæographia Britannica_ in 1746, derived ‘Robert Fitzooth, commonly called Robin Hood, pretended Earl of Huntingdon,’ from a series of Anglo-Norman lords. It would be almost unnecessary to mention the two Elizabethan plays concerning Robert the Earl, were it not for an ingenious suggestion made in connection with them. _The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington_, and _The Death_ of the same, were written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and are first mentioned in Henslowe’s _Diary_ in 1598. The Earl, being outlawed, flies to Sherwood Forest, accompanied by Matilda, daughter of Lord Fitzwater; and there he assumes the style and title of Robin Hood, and calls Matilda Maid Marian. This plot is introduced by an induction in which John Skelton the poet appears as stage-manager; and it has been suggested that Munday’s play may be founded on a now-lost interlude or pageant of Skelton’s composing. Robert, Lord Fitz-Walter, a descendant from the original Earls of Huntingdon, was patron of the living at Diss, in Norfolk, which Skelton held.’[6] [Footnote 6: See H. L. D. Ward’s _Catalogue of Romances_, 506, under the Romance of Fulk Fitz-Warine.] III. HISTORICAL ROBIN HOODS In 1852 Joseph Hunter issued, as No. 4 of his ‘Critical and Historical Tracts,’ _The Great Hero of the ancient Minstrelsy of England, Robin Hood_. Amongst other discoveries, he found, in an Exchequer document of expenses in the royal household of Edward II., the name of ‘Robyn Hode’ occurring several times as a ‘vadlet’ or ‘porteur de la chambre,’ at the salary of threepence per diem, between March and November of 1324.