Laing, II, 263. Disorderly persons undertook, it seems, to imitate Robin Hood and his men. In the year 1417, says Stowe, one, by his counterfeit name called Fryer Tucke, with many other malefactors, committed many robberies in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, whereupon the king sent out his writs for their apprehension: Annals, p. 352 b, ed. 1631.[36] A petition to Parliament, in the year 1439, represents that one Piers Venables, of Derbyshire, rescued a prisoner, “and after that tyme, the same Piers Venables, havynge no liflode ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothinge, ... and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that contré, like as it hadde be Robyn-hode and his meyné:” Rotuli Parliamentorum, V, 16.[37] Bower, writing 1441–47, describes the lower orders of his time as entertaining themselves with ballads both merry and serious, about Robin Hood, Little John, and their mates, and preferring them to all others;[38] and Major, or Mair, who was born not long after 1450, says in his book, printed in 1521, that Robin Hood ballads were in vogue over all Britain.[39] Sir John Paston, in 1473, writes of a servant whom he had kept to play Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and who was gone into Bernysdale: Fenn, Original Letters, etc., II, 134, cited by Ritson. Gutch cites this allusion to Robin Hood ballads “from Mr Porkington, No 10, f. 152, written in the reign of Edward IV:” Ther were tynkerris in tarlottus, the met was fulle goode, The “sowe sat one him benche” (_sic_), and harppyd Robyn Hoode. And again, the name simply, from “a song on Woman, from MS. Lambeth, 306, fol. 135, of the fifteenth century”: He that made this songe full good Came of the northe and of the sothern blode, And somewhat kyne to Robyn Hode. Gutch, Robin Hood, I, 55 f.