(2) —“_was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham._”] “Robin Hood,” says a MS. in the British Museum (Bib. Sloan. 715), written, as it seems, toward the end of the sixteenth century, “was borne at Lockesley in Yorkshyre, or after others in Nottinghamshire.” The writer here labours under manifest ignorance and confusion, but the first row of the rubric will set him right: “In Locksly town, in merry Nottinghamshire, In merry sweet Locksly town, There bold Robin Hood was born and was bred, Bold Robin of famous renown.”[4] Dr. Fuller (Worthies of England, 1662, p. 320) is doubtful as to the place of his nativity. Speaking of the “Memorable Persons” of Nottinghamshire, “Robert Hood,” says he, “(if not by birth) by his chief abode this country-man.” The name of such a town as Locksley, or Loxley (for so we sometimes find it spelled), in the county of Nottingham or of York, does not, it must be confessed, occur either in Sir Henry Spelman’s Villare Anglicum. in Adams’s Index Villaris, in Whatley’s England’s Gazetteer,[5] in Thoroton’s History of Nottinghamshire, or in the Nomina Villarum Eboracensium (York, 1768, 8vo). The silence of these authorities is not, however, to be regarded as a conclusive proof that such a place never existed. The names of towns and villages, of which no trace is now to be found but in ancient writings, would fill a volume. {xvi} (3) —“_in the reign of King Henry the Second, and about the year of Christ 1160._”] “Robin Hood,” according to the Sloane MS., “was borne . . . in the dayes of Henry the 2nd, about the yeare 1160.” This was the 6th year of that monarch; at whose death (anno 1189) he would, of course, be about 29 years of age. Those writers are therefore pretty correct who represent him as playing his pranks (Dr. Fuller’s phrase) in the reign of King Richard the First, and, according to the last-named author, “about the year of our Lord 1200.”[6] Thus Mair (who is followed by Stowe, Annales, 1592, p. 227), “Circa hæc tempora [sci. Ricardi I.] ut auguror,” &c. A MS. note in the Museum (Bib. Har. 1233), not, in Mr. Wanley’s opinion, to be relied on, places him in the same period, “Temp. Rich. I.” Nor is Fordun altogether out of his reckoning in bringing him down to the time of Henry III., as we shall hereafter see; and with him agrees Andrew of Wyntowne, in his “Oryginale Cronykil,” written about 1420, which, at the year 1283, has the following lines: “Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude Wayth-men were commendyd gud: In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.”