The first written stories about Robin Hood emerged in the late 14th century, although they likely stem from an older oral tradition. There are multiple theories as to where the tradition came from, but it may have been partly inspired by turmoil in the earlier part of the century when criminal gangs ran roughshod over Robin’s heartlands in the East Midlands. These gangs did “give to the poor and take from the rich,” but it was not from altruism.
The Wild East: Gangs in East Midlands
The two primary gangs that strode around the early 14th century East Midlands were the Coterels and the Folvilles, so-called because they coalesced around men from these two local families.
Links between the gangs and Robin Hood are not just a modern theory. The first recorded inclusion of Robin Hood in folklore comes from William Langland’s late 14th-century allegorical poem, Piers Plowman. The Folvilles are also mentioned in the same poem, using their own brand of “law” to “fix it for false men.”
Unlike Langland, we should not romanticize either of these two bands. Like Robin Hood, they engaged in robbery and poaching, but they also kidnapped, murdered, and extorted. Rather than plucky outlaws, they were more like small armies, heavily armed and skilled in violence. Rather than battle corruption as Langland apparently believed, they were beneficiaries of it. But how, why, and where did they emerge?
It is easy to take for granted that the stories of Robin Hood are rooted in a particular time and place. The movies and TV series tend to be set in the periods of uncertainty caused by Richard the Lionheart’s absences. It is more likely, however, that the legends, if they have any historical basis at all, originate in a similar period more than a century later, during the reigns of Edward II and Edward III.
Edward II, particularly towards the latter end of his rule, was generally judged by contemporaries to have been a weak king who relied on favorites. As the administration of law and justice was denuded, local forces—legitimate or otherwise—filled the vacuum. Further, fighting members of the aristocracy and upper gentry, who in his father’s time found themselves on the winning side of battles against the Welsh and Scots, were now beaten, demoralized, and demobilized. Edward II’s deposition by his queen, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, in the name of his infant son, Edward III, only exacerbated the feeling of chaos.
This is the context in which the East Midlands began to be plagued by crime and disorder. But why this region of England in particular? There’s a reason the Robin Hood myths revolve around Sherwood Forest. In the 14th century, it dominated the county of Nottinghamshire. At 150 square miles, it was one hundred times bigger than it is today. Combined with the moors, tors, and caves of the Peak District of nearby Derbyshire, it meant that outlaws and criminals could easily rob and raid and then quickly vanish into the shadows. The real sheriff of Nottingham, in fact, the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, could only do so much at a time when he was reliant on locally raised bands or the occasional small support force from the central government. Maintenance of order largely depended on local landowners, townspeople, and villagers.
Noble Outlaws
Part of the issue was that the leaders and members of these gangs were either sons of landowners or even minor lords in their own right. The Folvilles were prominent enough in their native Leicestershire to have endowed villages with their name, such as their seat in Ashby Folville. The father of their leader, Eustace, Sir John Folville, was respectable to the point of holding government offices, including serving as MP for two different counties and as a Justice for Leicestershire.
This level of respectability extended to the accomplices. Sir William Aune of the Coterel Gang had received constableships and served as the keeper of castles under Edward II. Another, Oliver Ingham, ended up as the chief governor (seneschal) of Gascony after serving well in Scotland and France. Rather than the plucky upstarts of the Robin Hood tales, the gang members were typically gentry or lower aristocracy raiding larger estates, notably the coordinated Coterel attacks on the lands of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1328.
Their relatively high social status meant that gang members, in contrast to the common peasantry, would have been proficient in contemporary weaponry. It also meant that, as well as taking advantage of the local landscape, the gangs could benefit from their network of other local landowners and even church institutions. Jury records recounting the high point of the Coterels’ criminal activity in 1331 and 1332 give us a rough idea of their travels across the Peak District and North Nottinghamshire and of those who assisted them. In Bakewell, they were maintained by the canons of Lichfield, and in Mackworth and Markeaton by the family of Sir Robert Tuchet, who had holdings across three counties. When hiding in Great Shardlow Wood, they were even brought the rents of Stainsby by a member of a local prominent gentry family.
Membership and Support
The gangs built up membership and support for a variety of reasons, none of which were likely to be Robin Hood-style altruism. Doubtless, some of their members were simply motivated by the prospect of enriching themselves and the excitement of violence and outlawry. With others, we can identify more precise reasons. Roger le Sauvage, a key Coterel accomplice, was working to pay off his debts. William Aune, although occasionally entrusted with public office, lost them as easily as he kept them, so he was regularly on the lookout for fruitful employment. Revenge seems to have been a frequent motivator. The murder of Robert Bellers, a baron of the exchequer, in 1326 by the Folville brothers and their associate Ralph le Zouche was likely driven by his investigation of the Zouches earlier in the decade.
Members and connections were also drawn to their success. Their early attacks seem to have revolved around the split between members of the nobility and Edward II’s favorites, the Despensers, including the aforementioned murder of Robert Bellers in 1327. At least one of the Coterels took part in the wasting of Despenser manors near Loughborough. After winning pardons from the victorious Roger Mortimer, they moved on to ransom, robbery, and murder. As well as regularly pillaging Lancastrian estates, the Coterels killed Sir William Knyveton and John Matkynson at Bradley in Derbyshire in 1330. The High Sheriff complained that the Folvilles were attacking, robbing, and even killing travelers across the region. In the summer of 1331 alone, the Coterel gang was accused of a maiming, a kidnapping, and a murder.
Eventually, they were able to make money just from their reputation for violence. In late 1331, the Coterels extorted 100 shillings from Ralph Murimouth of Bakewell, a similar amount from Robert Foucher of Osmaston, and 40 shillings from Robert Fraunceys of Hardstoft. The following year, threatening visits and letters won 20 shillings from William Amyas, the former mayor of Nottingham; 40 pounds from Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, and 10 pounds from John de Staniclyf, who was forced to pay to free himself from his own kidnapping. The fact that they were bold enough to put their demands in official-style letters shows how cognizant they were that they were filling the vacuum of royal authority.
They also attracted support because they were useful. Although some of the criminal activity recorded from these gangs was little more than self-interested plunder, a good deal of it was “contract” work. In August 1328, the Coterels attacked Walter Can, the vicar of Bakewell Church, and stole 10 shillings from the offerings. It appears that they had been instructed by Robert Bernard, a former clerk of Chancery, who had been the vicar himself the year before but had been booted out by parishioners due to embezzling of church funds. The Folvilles also benefitted from church feuds, engaged by officials at Sempringham Priory and Haverholm Abbey to destroy a rival’s water mill.
The Crackdown
Eventually, both gangs overstepped the mark at just the wrong time. In January 1332, the two gangs joined with other assailants in the audacious kidnapping of Sir Richard de Willoughby, a member of the king’s bench pursuing a commission against criminal activities in the region, who had crossed paths with the Coterels in the past. The confederates successfully extorted 1,300 marks from the judge, with the money divided between the participants and their backers, which included Sir Robert Tuchet. The affront to such a senior justice acting on the king’s business triggered a decision to bring the region to heel. By now, Edward III had taken control of his own government and was determined to impose his authority. A commission of Trailbaston (an itinerant panel of judges) arrived in the area in the spring. Hearings were held, and indictments were passed, but most escaped arrest thanks to a tip-off from a local friar.
Some members of the gangs chose to surrender in return for leniency. The investigation into the dean and chapter of Lichfield, which had assisted the Coterels, even went before parliament. Due to delays and the difficulty of flushing out the gang members and their allies, most of the hearings were not held until early the following year. Many exploited their network to secure pardons and lenient punishments, or get themselves taken on military service. The latter was the primary tactic of the royal government, seeking to utilize the warlike talents of the gang leaders and senior members as Edward’s wars against his neighbors began. Nicholas Coterel sought the clemency of the queen and was appointed her bailiff of the High Peak in Derbyshire. Others, including Nicholas, joined the king in service against Scotland. Robert and Eustace Folville were both sent on campaign in France.
Real Robin Hoods: Symbols of Resistance
Why did these gangs apparently win popular support to the point where Langland could hail the Folvilles as heroes against a corrupt system? It may be that the criminals were generous with their proceeds to secure compliance from locals, but the evidence for this is limited. More likely, they were simply on the right side of a growing resentment of the legal system and its practitioners. Langland’s poem is part of a wider tradition of “protest” literature, such as The Outlaw’s Song of Trailbaston. Even Henry Knighton, a contemporary chronicler, approved of the Folville murder of Robert Bellers and was hardly condemnatory of the kidnapping of Willoughby, recording that he was a man who “sold the law like cattle.”
Although the Coterels and Folvilles are unlikely to have been the direct inspirations for the Robin Hood folk hero, they were at least part of a wider ecosystem of outlaws and criminals that fed into them.
Bibliography
E.L.G Stones (1957) “The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and Their Associates in Crime, 1326-1347,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 7, pp. 117-136
G.H Martin (1995) Knighton’s Chronicle 1337-1396, Oxford
J.G Bellamy (1964) “The Coterel Gang: An Anatomy of a Band of Fourteenth-Century Criminals,” The English Historical Review, 79, No. 313, pp. 698 717
W Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman