Gradually, too, law and order rose among them, lawless as they were; the instinct of discipline and self-government, side by side with that of personal independence, which is the peculiar mark and peculiar strength of the English character. Who knows not how, in the “Lytell Geste of Robin Hood,” they shot at “pluck-buffet,” the king among them, disguised as an abbot; and every man who missed the rose-garland, “his tackle he should tyne”;-- “And bere a buffet on his head, Iwys ryght all bare, And all that fell on Robyn’s lote, He smote them wonder sair. “Till Robyn fayled of the garlonde, Three fyngers and mair.” Then good Gilbert bids him in his turn “‘Stand forth and take his pay.’ “‘If it be so,’ sayd Robyn, ‘That may no better be, Syr Abbot, I delyver thee myn arrowe, I pray thee, Syr, serve thou me.’ “‘It falleth not for myne order,’ saith the kynge, ‘Robyn, by thy leve, For to smyte no good yeman, For doute I should hym greve.’ “‘Smyte on boldly,’ sayd Robyn, ‘I give thee large leve.’ Anon our kynge, with that word, He folde up his sleve. “And such a buffet he gave Robyn, To grounde he yode full nere. ‘I make myn avowe,’ sayd Robyn, ‘Thou art a stalwarte frere. “‘There is pyth in thyn arme,’ sayd Robyn, ‘I trowe thou canst well shoote.’ Thus our kynge and Hobyn Hode Together they are met.” Hard knocks in good humor, strict rules, fair play, and equal justice, for high and low; this was the old outlaw spirit, which has descended to their inlawed descendants; and makes, to this day, the life and marrow of an English public school. One fixed idea the outlaw had,--hatred of the invader. If “his herde were the king’s deer,” “his treasure was the earl’s purse”; and still oftener the purse of the foreign churchman, Norman or Italian, who had expelled the outlaw’s English cousins from their convents; shamefully scourged and cruelly imprisoned them, as the blessed Archbishop Lanfranc did at Canterbury, because they would not own allegiance to a French abbot; or murdered them at the high altar, as did the new abbot of Glastonbury, because they would not change their old Gregorian chant for that of William of Fécamp. [Footnote: See the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”.] On these mitred tyrants the outlaw had no mercy, as far as their purses were concerned. Their persons, as consecrated, were even to him sacred and inviolable,--at least, from wounds and death; and one may suppose Hereward himself to have been the first author of the laws afterward attributed to Robin Hood. As for “robbing and reving, beting and bynding,” free warren was allowed against the Norman. “‘Thereof no fors,’ said Robyn, ‘We shall do well enow. But look ye do no housbonde harme, That tilleth wyth his plough. “‘No more ye shall no good yemàn, That walketh by grene wood shawe; Ne no knyght, ne no squyer, That will be good felàwe.