carts—and nights en route had to be spent in Europe’s wretched inns.
These were unsanitary places, the beds wedged against one another, blankets crawling with roaches, rats, and fleas; whores
plied their trade and then slipped away with a man’s money, and innkeepers seized guests’ baggage on the pretext that they
had not paid.
The peril came from highwaymen, whose mythic joys and miseries were celebrated by the Parisian François Villon. In reality
there was nothing attractive about these criminals in the woods. They were pitiless thieves, kidnappers, and killers, and
they flourished because they were so seldom pursued. Between towns the traveler was on his own. Except in a few places like
Castile, where roads were patrolled by the archers of the Santa Hermandad, no policemen were stationed in the open country.
Outlaws had always lurked in the woods, but their menace had increased as their ranks were thickened by impoverished knights
returning from the illstarred crusades, demobilized veterans of various foreign campaigns, and, in England, renegades from
the recent War of the Roses. Sometimes these brigands traveled in roving gangs, waiting to ambush strangers; sometimes they
stood by the road disguised as beggars or pilgrims, knives at the ready. Even gallant seigneurs declined responsibility for
travelers passing through their lands at night, and many a less-principled sire was either a bandit himself or an accomplice
of outlaws, overlooking their outrages provided they hold important personages harmless and present him with lavish gifts
at Christmas.
Therefore honest travelers carried well-honed daggers, knowing they might have to kill and hoping they would have the stomach
for it. Wayfarers from different lands usually banded together, seeking collective security, though they often excluded Englishmen,
who in that age were distrusted, suspected of petty thefts, regarded by seamen as pirates, and notorious for the false weights
and shoddy goods of their merchants. Even Britons like Chaucer, who denounced greed, were themselves greedy. Their women were
unwelcome for another reason. They were so foul-mouthed that Joan of Arc always referred to them as “the Goddams.” And the
English of both sexes were known, even then, for their insolence. In 1500 the Venetian ambassador to London reported to his
government that his hosts were “great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think there are no other
men than themselves, and no other country but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say that ‘he looks
like an Englishman,’ and that it is a great pity that he is not one.”
Doubtless the same thing could be said, mutatis mutandis, of other people, but Englishmen, aware of their reputation, always
went abroad heavily armed—unless they were rich. Surrounded by bands of knights in full armor, wealthy Europeans traveled
in painted, gilded, carved, and curtained horse-drawn coaches. They knew they were marks for thieves, and never left their
fiefs to visit cities, or attend the great August fairs, unless heavily guarded.
A Y ORKSHIRE gravestone bears this inscription:
Hear underneath dis laihl stean
las Robert earl of Huntingtun
neer arcir yer az hie sa geud
And pipl kauld in Robin Heud
sick utlawz as he an iz men
il england nivr si agen
Obiit 24 kal Decembris 1247
Robin Hood lived; this marker confirms it, just as the Easter tables attest to the existence of the great Arthur. But that
is
all
the tombstone does. Everything we know about that period suggests that Robin was merely another wellborn cutthroat who hid
in shrubbery by roadsides, waiting to rob helpless wayfarers. The possibility that he stole from the rich and gave to the
poor is, like the tale of that other cold-blooded rogue, Jesse James, highly unlikely. Even unlikelier is the conceit that
Robin Hood, aka Heud, was accompanied by a bedmate called Maid Marian, a giant
These were unsanitary places, the beds wedged against one another, blankets crawling with roaches, rats, and fleas; whores
plied their trade and then slipped away with a man’s money, and innkeepers seized guests’ baggage on the pretext that they
had not paid.
The peril came from highwaymen, whose mythic joys and miseries were celebrated by the Parisian François Villon. In reality
there was nothing attractive about these criminals in the woods. They were pitiless thieves, kidnappers, and killers, and
they flourished because they were so seldom pursued. Between towns the traveler was on his own. Except in a few places like
Castile, where roads were patrolled by the archers of the Santa Hermandad, no policemen were stationed in the open country.
Outlaws had always lurked in the woods, but their menace had increased as their ranks were thickened by impoverished knights
returning from the illstarred crusades, demobilized veterans of various foreign campaigns, and, in England, renegades from
the recent War of the Roses. Sometimes these brigands traveled in roving gangs, waiting to ambush strangers; sometimes they
stood by the road disguised as beggars or pilgrims, knives at the ready. Even gallant seigneurs declined responsibility for
travelers passing through their lands at night, and many a less-principled sire was either a bandit himself or an accomplice
of outlaws, overlooking their outrages provided they hold important personages harmless and present him with lavish gifts
at Christmas.
Therefore honest travelers carried well-honed daggers, knowing they might have to kill and hoping they would have the stomach
for it. Wayfarers from different lands usually banded together, seeking collective security, though they often excluded Englishmen,
who in that age were distrusted, suspected of petty thefts, regarded by seamen as pirates, and notorious for the false weights
and shoddy goods of their merchants. Even Britons like Chaucer, who denounced greed, were themselves greedy. Their women were
unwelcome for another reason. They were so foul-mouthed that Joan of Arc always referred to them as “the Goddams.” And the
English of both sexes were known, even then, for their insolence. In 1500 the Venetian ambassador to London reported to his
government that his hosts were “great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think there are no other
men than themselves, and no other country but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say that ‘he looks
like an Englishman,’ and that it is a great pity that he is not one.”
Doubtless the same thing could be said, mutatis mutandis, of other people, but Englishmen, aware of their reputation, always
went abroad heavily armed—unless they were rich. Surrounded by bands of knights in full armor, wealthy Europeans traveled
in painted, gilded, carved, and curtained horse-drawn coaches. They knew they were marks for thieves, and never left their
fiefs to visit cities, or attend the great August fairs, unless heavily guarded.
A Y ORKSHIRE gravestone bears this inscription:
Hear underneath dis laihl stean
las Robert earl of Huntingtun
neer arcir yer az hie sa geud
And pipl kauld in Robin Heud
sick utlawz as he an iz men
il england nivr si agen
Obiit 24 kal Decembris 1247
Robin Hood lived; this marker confirms it, just as the Easter tables attest to the existence of the great Arthur. But that
is
all
the tombstone does. Everything we know about that period suggests that Robin was merely another wellborn cutthroat who hid
in shrubbery by roadsides, waiting to rob helpless wayfarers. The possibility that he stole from the rich and gave to the
poor is, like the tale of that other cold-blooded rogue, Jesse James, highly unlikely. Even unlikelier is the conceit that
Robin Hood, aka Heud, was accompanied by a bedmate called Maid Marian, a giant
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