A state paper cited by Mr. Hunter exhibits a person of the name of Adam Bell in connection with another of Robin Hood's haunts, and is thought by that gentleman to afford a clue to the real history of one of the actors in the story. "King Henry the Fourth, by letters enrolled in the Exchequer, in Trinity Term, in the seventh year of his reign [1406], and bearing date the 14th day of April, granted to one Adam Bell an annuity of 4_l._ 10_s._ issuing out of the fee-farm of Clipston, in the forest of Sherwood, together with the profits and advantages of the vesture and herbage of the garden called the Halgarth, in which the manor-house of Clipston is situated. "Now, as Sherwood is noted for its connection with archery, and may be regarded also as the _patria_ of much of the ballad poetry of England, and the name of Adam Bell is a peculiar one, this might be almost of itself sufficient to show that the ballad had a foundation in veritable history. But we further find that this Adam Bell violated his allegiance by adhering to the Scots, the King's enemies; whereupon this grant was virtually resumed, and the sheriff of Nottinghamshire accounted for the rents which would have been his. In the third year of King Henry the Fifth [1416], the account was rendered by Thomas Hercy, and in the fourth year by Simon Leak. The mention of his adhesion to the Scots, leads us to the Scottish border, and will not leave a doubt in the mind of the most sceptical (!) that we have here one of the persons, some of whose deeds (with some poetical license, perhaps) are come down to us in the words of one of our popular ballads." _New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare_, i. 245. It must be confessed that Mr. Hunter is easily satisfied. The Bells were one of the most notorious of the marauding tribes of the Marches, and as late as 1593, are grouped with the Graemes and Armstrongs, in a memorial of the English Warden, as among "the bad and more vagrant of the great surnames of the border." (Rymer's _F[oe]dera_, xvi. 183, 2d ed.) Adam was a very common _pr[oe]nomen_ among these people, and is borne by two other familiar ballad heroes, Adam Gordon and Adam Car. The combination of Adam Bell must have been anything but a rarity;[27] nor could it have been an unfrequent occurrence, for a Scottish freebooter who had entered into the pay of the English King, to return to his natural connections, when a tempting opportunity offered itself, or for any Border mercenary to change sides as often as this seemed to be for his interest.