―――― * “Filius Roberti filii Odonis est in custodia Domini Regis, et est vj annorum, et ipse est heres decime partis unius militis, et vix possunt inde habere victum suum ipse et mater sua.” Rotulus de vidius, &c. (31 H. 2) MSS. Har. 624. [12] Grafton’s Chronicle, p. 85. [13] Collec. i. 54. [14] See Robin Hood’s Progress to Nottingham, part ii. ballad 2. [15] Plompton Park, upon the banks of the Peterill, in Cumberland, was formerly very large, and set apart by the kings of England for the keeping of deer. It was disafforested or disparked by Henry VIII. See Camden’s Britannia, by Bishop Gibson, who seems to confound this park with Inglewood forest, a district of sixteen miles in length, reaching from Carlisle to Penrith, where the kings of England used to hunt, and Edward I. is reported to have killed 200 bucks in one day (_Ibid._) [16] _Anno 1194_] _Vicesima nona die mensis martii_ Richardus rex Angliæ _projectus est videre_ Clipestone, & _forrestas de_ Sirewode, _quas ipse nunquam viderat antea: & placuerunt ei multum, & eodem die rediit ad_ Notingham (R. de Hoveden, Annales, p. 736). Drayton (Polyolbion, song 26) introduces Sherwood in the character of a nymph, who, out of disdain at the preference shown by the poet to a sister-forest, “All self praise set apart, determineth to sing That lusty Robin Hood, who long time like a king Within her compass liv’d, and when he list to range, For some rich booty set, or else his air to change, To Sherwood still retir’d, his only standing court.” [17] It occurs in “Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatory,” 1630, 4to (entered on the Stationers’ books in 1590). [18] It likewise gives the proverb noticed in a preceding page thus: “Were he as good as George a Greene, I would strike him sure.” [19] There is an edition in 1706, 8vo. [20] Scotish Poems, i. 122. [21] Surely the “lady” alluded to in the old May-game cannot be our Maid Marian. The earliest notice of her occurs in Barclay’s _Egloges_, about 1500, where she is evidently connected with Robin Hood. See Note 26. [22] Without “the ancient songs,” to which the Doctor refers, are confined to his “old MS.,” he evidently asserts what he would probably find it difficult to prove. As for the passage he produces, it seems nothing to the purpose; as, in the first place, it is apparently not “antient,” and, in the second, it is apparently not from a “song of Robin Hood.”