Robin Hood, a celebrated English outlaw, was born at Locksley, in the county of Nottingham, in the reign of Henry II. about 1160. He is said to have been of noble extraction, being the son of William Fitzooth by his wife a daughter of Payn Beauchamp, baron of Bedford, and lady Roisia de Vere, daughter of Aubrey, earl of Guisnes in Normandy,[11] and is frequently styled earl of Huntingdon--a title to which, in the latter part of his life, he actually appears to have had some sort of pretension. In his youth he is said to have been of a wild and extravagant turn; insomuch that, his inheritance being consumed, and his person outlawed for debt,[12] he sought an asylum in the woods of Barnsdale, in Yorkshire,[13] Sherwood, in Nottinghamshire, and, according to some, Plumpton-park, in Cumberland.[14] He either found or was afterwards joined by a number of persons, the principal being Little John (whose surname is said to have been Nailor), William Scadlock (Scathelock or Scarlet), George a Green (pinder or pound-keeper of Wakefield), Much (a miller's son), and a certain monk or friar called Tuck. "These renowned thieves," says Stowe, "continued in the woods, despoiling and robbing the goods of the rich. They killed none but such as would invade them, or by resistance for their own defence. The said Robin entertained 100 tall men, good archers, with such of the spoils and thefts as he got, upon whom 400 (were they ever so strong) durst not give the onset. He suffered no woman to be oppressed, violated, or otherwise molested; poor men's goods he spared, abundantly relieving them with that which by theft he got from abbeys and the houses of rich old carles." He died in 1247; see _Robin Hood's Death and Burial_, post. Guy of Gisborne,--the only other memorial which I can find relating to him is in an old satirical piece by William Dunbar, a celebrated Scottish poet, of the fifteenth century,[15] on one "Schir Thomas Nory," where he is named along with our hero, Adam Bell, and other worthies, it is conjectured, of a similar stamp, but whose merits have not come to the knowledge of posterity:-- "Was neuir weild Robeine vnder bewch, Nor zitt Roger of Clekkinstewch, So bauld a bairne as he; Gy of Gysburne, na Allane Bell, Na Simones sones of Quhynsell, Off thocht war neuir so slies." Gisborne, or Gisburne, is a market town in the west-riding of Yorkshire, on the borders of Lancashire. The following ballad was first printed in Percy's _Reliques_ in 1765, from his "folio MS." When shaws[16] beene sheene, and shraddes[17] full fayre, And leaves both large and longe, Itt's merrye walkyng in the fayre forrest To heare the small birdes' songe. The woodweele sang, and wold not cease, Sitting upon the spraye, Soe lowde, he wakened Robin Hood, In the greenwood where he lay.