Little John's Grave

This wintry scene shows Little John’s Grave in St Michaels and All Angels Parish Church, School Lane, Hathersage in Derbyshire.

Apart from Little John’s exceptionally large grave-between two yew trees-the fourteenth century church also houses 15 brasses to the local Eyre family. Charlotte Bronte stayed at the vicarage nearby, with a friend in 1845 and it is believed that the village of Morton, in her novel Jane Eyre, is based on Hathersage. It is also very likely that Charlotte took her heroine's name from the prominent Eyre family.

Domesday Nottingham

Robin Hood is often described as a Saxon, competing against his oppressive Norman overlords in various films and novels. So what was Nottingham, the place most associated with the outlaw like, when the Normans began to rule England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The best way to find out, is to look in the Domesday Book, an incredibly unique snapshot of life in late eleventh century England.

Great Domesday was commissioned by William I (the Conqueror) at his Christmas Court in 1085 and the whole enormous work of collecting the information and turning it into the book that survives today, took under two years to complete. A fantastic achievement and a tribute to the political power and formidable will of William the Conqueror. This book is today preserved at the Public Record Office at Kew, but for many centuries it was held at Winchester the ancient Saxon capital of Wessex. It is not only written in Latin, but in a highly abbreviated form of Latin. It took approximately nine hundred sheepskins, soaked in lime and stretched over wooden frames, to make the parchment for the clerk, to give us a snapshot of a world, far different to the one we know today.

The Domesday survey was a detailed statement of lands held by the king and by his tenants and of the resources which went with those lands. It recorded which manors rightfully belonged to which estates, reducing the years of confusion between the Anglo-Saxons and their Norman conquerors . It also gave him the extant to which he could raise taxes! This illuminates a crucial time in our history, the settlement in England of William and his Norman and northern French followers. Local people likened this irreversible gathering of comprehensive information, to the Last Judgement, and by the late twelfth century this remarkable survey became known as Doomsday. Before that it was known as the Winchester Roll or King’s Roll.

Nottingham at this time, is recorded as:

Snoting(e)ham/quin: King’s land. The main landholders are listed as Hugh FitzBaldric; the Sheriff; Roger de Bully; William Peverel; Ralph Fitzhurbert; Geoffrey Alselin; Richard Frail.

A church is also listed, the original Saxon church of St Mary’s, later destroyed in the mid twelfth century. The number of burgesses given is 120 and the amount of families in Nottingham at this time can not have been more than 500.

Roger de Busli or Bully and William Peverel were William the Conqueror’s two great tenants-in-chief. Some believe that Peverel was an illegitimate son of the Conquror. The Domesday Book shows that after the Conquest, Peverel was rewarded for his invovement in the Battle of Hastings with 162 lordships.

After stopping at Nottingham on his way north, William I had given Peverel instructions for a motte and bailey type ‘royal’ castle to be built on the 130 ft. high rock overlooking the town, in the king’s name. Over the following centuries the wooden fortress would be re-built in stone. The castle would be a strategic key to the midlands. Peverel was later made constable of Nottingham Castle and rewarded with a ‘fief’, known as the Honour of Nottingham, which included Sherwood Forest, the High Peak and lands in six shires, to support him. During the reign of King John, the sheriff’s of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire became custodians of land that became known as the Honour of Peverel.

The ‘Peverel Court’ was held in Nottingham up until 1321. It was a Court of Pleas for the recovery of small debts and for damages of trespass and had jurisdiction over 127 towns and villages around the shire. In Basford stood Peverel’s Gaol, founded in 1113 and used for the imprisonment of debtors by the successive sheriffs of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Roger de Busli was rewarded by King William I, like William Peverel for his assistance at the Battle of Hastings and was granted holdings in six English counties, including 174 estates in Nottinghamshire. Very little is known about him and he is described by some as famous in Domesday but nowhere else. His seat of power, became his manor house at Blyth in Nottinghamshire, described in the Domesday Book as:

Blyth (Blide) land of Roger de Busli 1 Bovate of land and the fourth part of 1 bovate taxable. Land for 1 plough. 4 villagers and 4 smallholders have 1 plough. Meadow 1 acre.

Blyth became one of only five designated sites in England, licensed by Richard I to hold tournaments. The area has been recently re-discovered in a field known locally as Terminings (tourneyings) Meadow on a tract of land between Blyth and Stirrup. The Pope had denounced these exhibitions of skill in arms, but Richard refused to be denied the ability to train his English knights to the level of skill of their counterparts on the continent.

Roger Busli also built Tickhill Castle an earthwork motte and bailey fortressfor the king, where he bestowed many great gifts to his followers, to the disadvantage and animosity of the original Saxon landowners.

If we look in the Domesday Book at some of the local villages that later become known as part of Sherwood Forest, we can see how the land was parcelled up between the new powerful Norman lords.

Edwinstowe, now the main modern tourist centre for Sherwood, was land owned by the king, Edenestou 1c. Of land taxable. Land for 2 ploughs. A church and a priest and 4 smallholders have 1 plough. Woodland pasture 1/2 league long and 1/2 wide. Clipstone (Clipestune) was land owned by Roger de Busli as was Cuckney (Chuchenai). Linby (Lidebi) belonged to William Peverel. Mansfield (Mamesfeld/Memmesfed was King’s land with, mill, fishery, 2 churches.

Nottinghamshire was originally included in the diocese and province of York up until 1836 and we see Blidworth (Blidworde) a village in Sherwood Forest, described as owned by the Archbishop of York before and after 1066. Oxton (Ostone/tune) was also land held by the Archbishop of York and the under tenant was Roger de Busli. Papplewick (Papleuuic) was held by William Peverel and Thoresby (Turesbi) was King’s land.

Sherwood Forest is first mentioned 68 years after the Domesday survey when it was controlled for the king by Peverel’s grandson (also called William). But this sandy infertile part of Nottinghamshire was probably afforested by William the Conquror, or his immediate successors, at a far earlier date.

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

Robin Hood and the Green Goddess

Robin Hood at sea? Well almost. Above is a timetable from the RMS Caronia dated July 1 1952 during her North Cape Cruise. The list of events shows that at 4.30 pm and at 9.30 pm on that day, Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood was to be shown in the ship’s theatre on the prom deck.

The RMS Caronia was the post war pride of the British Merchant Navy and the first all first-class ship launched by Cunard after WW2. She was also the first vessel owned by Cunard White Star to have an outside swimming pool and air conditioning in every public room. These cruises for the rich soon earned her the nickname ‘The Millionaires Yacht’.

Launched on the 30th October 1947 in the presence of Princess Elizabeth, shortly before her marriage to Prince Philip, Caronia's first maiden voyage from Southampton to New York took place in January 1949.

During her annual refitting at Liverpool Docks in December 1952, the Caronia caught fire. The local fire brigade soon managed to quickly get things under control and she was repaired and ready in 1953 to bring American visitors across the Atlantic to see the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in London.

Purpose built for transatlantic crossings, with her art deco interiors, open air lido and her attention to luxurious detail, the ‘green goddess’, as Caronia became known, due to her four shades of green, is remembered today with great affection.

Hmm! Green? Wasn't that Robin Hood’s favourite colour?

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

Robin Hood's Statue At Nottingham Castle

Four months after the Royal Premier of the film The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men in London, further up north in Nottingham, they unveiled a statue to their world famous outlaw, by the castle walls, in the presence of the Duchess of Portland.

The ceremony took place on July 24th 1952 on Castle Green, in a specially landscaped area at the foot of Castle Rock, in the remains of the old moat, by local architect Cecil Howitt. The seven foot statue, including four bas-relief plaques were a gift to the city, by local businessman Philip E. Clay and was designed and cast out of half a ton of bronze, one inch thick, by Royal Acadamician, James Woodford (1893-1976) in his studio at Hampstead. Woodford was the son of a Lace designer and was born in Nottingham. He attended the Nottingham School of Art and after military service during the First World War he trained at the Royal College of Art in London.

A year after his statue of Robin Hood was unveiled at Nottingham Castle, James Woodford RA was commissioned to carve a set of ten heraldic figures out of Portland Stone, to be placed at the entrance of Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. These heraldic beasts were selected from the armorial bearings of her royal ancestors and can be seen today along the walkway between Palm House and the pond at Kew Gardens.

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

Whitby Abbey

The atmospheric 13th Century ruins of Whitby Abbey stand on the steep windswept headland overlooking its picturesque old whaling town and the North Sea. This once magnificent monastery was founded in the seventh century by the Saxon princess St Hild. She later became the focus of many traditional stories and miraculous deeds, including ridding the town of snakes by turning them to stone. Another legendry character linked with this dramatic, monastic site, is Dracula the vampire, the creation of one time Whitby resident, Bram Stoker. So with the fishing village, known as Robin Hood’s Bay, six miles along the coast and the bronze age burial mounds at Stroupe Brow, dug into the moorland about a mile away, known by the locals as Robin Hood’s Butts, it was inevitable that down the centuries, local stories about the outlaw hero would emerge.

Lionel Charlton often known as the first historian of Whitby, was born at Hexham about 1722. Described as lame from his youth, halting with one leg, and having one hand shrunk up, did not prevent him studying at Edinburgh University and becoming a land surveyor and teacher of mathematics. About 1748, Charlton settled in Whitby, in North Yorkshire, where he would stay for the next forty years running his school in the old town house. But it was towards the end of his life that he undertook the task for which he became famous, writing The History of Whitby and Whitby Abbey which was published in York, in 1779.

With free access to the ancient records of Whitby Town and its Abbey, given to him by the Lord of the Manor, Nathanial Cholmley, Lionel Charlton began to painstakingly decipher the rolls of parchment. His groundbreaking work is today often criticized for his occasional fanciful detours away from the restraints of historical research and his piece on Robin Hood and Little John’s visit to Whitby Abbey, is a good example. It is also interesting to note that Charlton was assisted by Dr Thomas Percy (1729-1811), the first of the great ballad collectors, and author of ‘Reliques of Ancient English Poetry’ published four years before Charlton’s work. Percy’s collection on Robin Hood and in particular the unusual later ballad Robin Hood’s Fishing, commonly known as The Noble Fisherman: Or Robin Hood’s Preferment, probably inspired, what Professor Dobson describes as Charlton’s ingenious powers of invention, about Robin Hood’s visit.

Now, quoth Robin Hood, I’ll to
Scarborough goe,
It seems to be a very fair day,
Who tooke up his inn in a widow
woman’s house,
Hard by upon the waters gray.
(The Noble Fisherman)

Tradition informs us Lionel Charlton begins, that in one of Robin Hood’s peregrinations, he attended by his Little John went to dine a Whitby Abbey with the Abbot Richard [de Waterville] , who having heard them often famed for their great dexterity in shooting with the longbow, begged them after dinner to show him a specimen there of; when to oblige the abbot they went up to the top of the abbey, whence each of them shot an arrow, which fell not far from Whitby-Laths, but on the contrary side of the lane; and in memorial there of, a pillar was set up by the abbot in the place where each of the arrows was found, which are yet standing in these our days; the field where the pillar for Robin Hood’s arrow stands being, still called Robin Hood’s Field and the other where the pillar for Little John’s arrow, John’s Field. Their distance from Whitby Abbey is MORE THAN A MEASURED MILE, which seems very far for the flight of an arrow, and is a circumstance that will stagger the faith of many; but, as to the credibility of the story, every reader may judge thereof as he thinks proper; only I must here beg leave to observe that these very pillars are mentioned, in the old deeds for that ground, now in the possession of Mr Thomas Watson.
(History of Whitby, York, 1779.)

Whitby’s other colourful historian Rev. Dr. George Young (1777-1848) later gives us more details in his History of Whitby (1818):

.......they both shot from the top of the abbey, and their arrows fell on the west side of Whitby Lathes, besides the lane leading from thence to Stainsacre; that of Robin Hood falling on the north side of the lane, and that of Little John about 100 feet further, on the south side of the lane. In the spot where Robin’s arrow is said to have lighted stands a stone pillar about a foot square, and 4 feet high; and a similar pillar, 2 1/2 feet high, marks the place where John’s arrow fell. The fields on the one side are called Robin Hood Closes and those on the other Little John Closes. They are so termed in the conveyance, dated in 1713, from Hugh Cholmley Esq.

In the 1890’s both pillars were seen lying in a ditch of the field bearing their name. One had been removed because it was in the way of the farmer’s mowing machine ! And in 1937 one of the stones was put to use as a field roller at Summerfield Farm near Hawsker Church.

In 1903 two new pillars were erected and described by Stanhope White in Standing Stones & Earthworks on the North Yorkshire Moors (1987) as :

......two saddle-like stones, round pillars with small mushroom caps; the rim of the first is engraved Robin Hood Close and the other Little John Close......It is not improbable that these two stones have replaced two Bronze Age standing stones; they would have attracted tales of Robin Goodfellow; when Robin Hood began to appear as a folk hero his name replaced the earlier leaders name, and no doubt some good burgher of Whitby replaced the ancient stones with these more decorative modern ones!

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

Bolsover Mine

One day in Bolsover in the county of Derbyshire in the 1820’s, two pitmen were busy sinking an exploratory coalmining shaft into a side of a hill, when suddenly the earth gave way, revealing a yawning gap. It was the entrance to a cave.

After they had tentatively climbed down into this new discovery, amidst the dust and loose rocks, their lanterns began to reveal what appeared to be old swords, bows and iron pots with the wood ash and half-charred logs from an old fireplace. Against a wall was a rack of bows and belts, broadswords and quivers full of arrows. As the orangey light from their lanterns moved around and the dust began to settle, their eyes suddenly came upon the gruesome sight of the remains of a skeleton wrapped in an old woollen habit, one hand holding a crucifix, the other a chisel, propped up against the cave wall. Above its head were roughly scratched a long list of names on the cavern walls. At the top it said, these died that we might live. Requiescant in pace. Below it painfully said, I was the last, Michael Tuck.

After the two miners had climbed out and nervously clambered to the top, there came a great rock fall and the cave promptly collapsed under hundreds of tons of rock, completely burying the new shaft and all their equipment. The cave has never been located since. When the pitmen described to the local people from Bolsover village what they had witnessed, they laughed and dismissed the miners’ story as pure fantasy.

This incident is reported in the book, Robin Hood: His Life and Legend (1979) by Lord Bernard Miles. Lord Miles is a distinguished actor, writer and founder of the Mermaid Theatre in London.

Will Scarlet

“Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,
And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.”
(Alfred Noyes, Sherwood 1904)

Overlooking the village of Blidworth in Nottinghamshire stands the church of St. Mary of the Purification. Up until the reign of Richard III (1483-1485) the medieval church on this site, was known as the Chapel of St. Lawrence. It was at one time completely surrounded by Sherwood Forest and can trace its history right back to Saxon times and even the Druids. At Blidworth Dale, King John had a hunting seat and nearby is Queens Bower, the site of a Tudor encampment during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Blidworth and St. Mary’s church have many connections to the Robin Hood legend and near a hill on which the village stands is a cave, where the outlaws are said to have stored their food. One of the local traditions states that Will Scarlet knew every path through these parts of the forest and lies buried in an unmarked grave against the old church wall, after being killed by one of the sheriff’s men. Today, in the churchyard, under some old yew trees, an apex stone originally part of the collapsed fragments of the old medieval church tower, acts as a tombstone to Robin’s loyal henchman.

In Disney’s Story of Robin Hood (1952), it was Anthony Forwood who played Robin’s cousin Will Scarlet. The character never develops in the movie and remains merely a member of the ‘merrie’ men who helps rescue Scathelok and Stutely from Nottingham Square. But it is interesting to note that all three of these characters are probably variations of just one original shadowy member of Robin Hood’s medieval band of outlaws.

Robyn stode in Bernesdale,
And lenyd hym to a tre;
And bi hym stode Litell Johnn,
A gode yeman was he.

And also dyd good Scarlok,
And Much, the myller’s son;
There was non ynche of his bodi,
But it was worth a grome.

Will Scarlok, (Scalok, Scadlock, Scatheloke, Scathelok, Scarlet, Scarlett) is one of the most mysterious of all Robin’s men. His name, like Little John and Much the Millers Son, could be an alias and all three appear as early as stanza 4 in the Gest of Robyn Hode. He appears by the side of Robin Hood in most of the early ballads. In Robin Hoode his Death as Will Scarlett he advises his leader to take fifty of his best bowman to Church Lees, when Robin is ill and needs to be ‘let blood.’

But Robin is scornful and tells him that if he is afraid he should stay at home!

And thou be feard, thou William Scarlett
Att home I read thee bee:
And you be wrothe, my deare master,
You shall never heare more of mee.

It is as Will Scadlock that he informs Robin Hood of the ‘curtall frier’ in the ballad The famous Battle between Robin Hood and the Curtall Fryer:

God blessing on thy heart, said Robin Hood,
That hath such a shot for me;
I would ride my horse a hundred miles,
To finde one could match thee.

That caused Will Scadlock to laugh,
He laught full heartily:
There lives a curtal friar in Fountains Abby
Wil beat both him and thee.

Will Scarlet’s background, like Robin and the rest of his band, is never explained, so it was left to the later ballad makers to construct a popular story around his origins for the new expanding printing presses. In Robin Hood and the Newly Revived Robin discovers a ‘deft young man as ever walkt on the way’:

His doublet it was of silk, he said, His stockings like scarlet shone, And he walkt on along the way, To Robin Hood then unknown.

Robin watches the smartly dressed, young stranger shoot deer and is impressed with his skill:

Well shot, well shot,quoth Robin Hood then,
That shot it was shot in time;
And if thou wilt accept of the place,
Thou shalt be a bold yeoman of mine.

But the young man rudely tells Robin to go away and eventually a swordfight ensues.

The stranger he drew out a good broad sword,
And hit Robin on the crown,
That from every haire of bold Robins head
The blood ran trickling down.

God a mercy, good fellow! quoth Robin Hood then,
And for this thou hast done;
Tell me, good fellow, what thou art,
Tell me where thou doest woon.

The stranger then answered bold Robin Hood,
I’le tell thee where I did dwell;
In Maxfield was I bred and born,
My name is Young Gamwell.

Young Gamwell had killed his fathers steward and fled to the ‘English wood’ to seek his uncle, Robin Hood. After much rejoicing the two of them make their way back to Little John.

I met with a stranger, quoth Robin Hood then,
Full sore he hath beaten me:
Then I’le have a bout with him, quoth Little John,
And try if he can beat me.

Oh no, quoth Robin Hood then,
Little John, it may [not] be so;
For he’s my own dear sisters son,
And cousins I have no mo.

But he shall be a bold yeoman of mine,
My chief man next to thee;
And I Robin Hood, and thou Little John,
And Scarlet he shall be.

As themes were re-worked and adapted in the later tales, names became changed and new elements introduced. In this case it seems the character Gamwell, later to become Will Scarlet, has been re-moulded from Gamelyn an outlaw in the earliest surviving English outlaw ballad, the Tale of Gamelyn (c.1350). In turn the name Gamelyn possibly evolved from the servant Gandelyn, in the mysterious old English carol about the New Year Wren hunt, Robyn and Gandelyn.

A later variation of the story of Robin Hood finding his long lost cousin, can be found in The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood (c. 1846). By this time, when the stranger introduces himself, his name had transformed into Gamble Gold!

We come across Scadlock with Robin Hood and Little John in the unusual ballad Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon (c.1660) in which he helps free the city of London by slaying the Prince of Aragon and an infidel Turk, marries a princess and finds his long lost noble father. In the much earlier Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne it is as Scarlett that he is pursued by the sheriff’s men:

And Scarlett a ffote flying was,
Over stockes and stone,
For the sheriff with seven score men
Fast after him is gone.

The prolific Tudor playwright Anthony Munday (c.1553-1633) settled upon using both characters, a Scarlet and a Scathlock- the sons of Widow Scarlet- for his influential production The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington in (c.1600). A device also used by Howard Pyle in his classic Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), where we find a Will Scarlett and a Will Scatheloke.

The character Will Stutely/Stutly appears in only two prominent later ballads, Robin Hood and Little John, where he Christens the giant stranger (a role played out by Will Scarlet in The Story of Robin Hood) and the other is the story of his freedom from the gallows in Robin Hood rescuing Will Stutly. On both occasions his name seems to be yet another derivation from Scathelok/Scarlet. The evidence of the evolution of this, was later found amongst the recently discovered ‘Forresters Manuscript,’ where the tale of this outlaws rescue from the hangman's noose is known as Robin Hood and Will Scathelok.

The anonymous compiler of the Sloane Manuscript (included on this blog under Robin Hood History) writing in about 1600 added to all this confusion with Scarlock included in a role later played out by Alan-a-Dale:

Scarlock, he induced, upon this occacion: one day meting him, as he walked solitary, and lyke to a man forlorne, because a mayd to whom he was affianced was taken from by the violence of her friends, and giuen to another that was auld and welthy.

The cross-over between Will Scarlet and Allan-a-Dale re-appears yet again in the Warner Brothers 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood. Patric Knowles, dressed in red, plays a rather dandy Will Scarlet to Errol Flynn’s Robin and during the fight scene with Little John, thinks nothing of picking up his lute and strumming a merry tune.


So the malleable character of Will Scarlet continues to show his various faces down the centuries. In more modern times we have seen the flamboyant Patric Knowles version, to the dark, (scarlet inside) menacing, Ray Winstone portrayal in TV’s Robin of Sherwood 1984.

More recently Christian Slater, with his Californian twang, played Will Scarlet as a maladjusted teenager in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves 1991. Slater explains his character in the movie:

Several things were put into the script after I was cast. For instance, the fact that Robin Hood recently screwed up my life when I was younger. His father dated my mother and I was the result. I came forth into the world as Robin’s half-brother. There is one point in the film when I have to tell Robin the truth. So it adds an edge to the whole movie for me.

There is disagreement surrounding the historical meaning of the unusual name, Scatheloke. Jim Lees (Mr Robin Hood) in his book The Quest For Robin Hood explains that the nickname is derived from scathe– to burn or harm, and locke meaning hair. So from this we get red head! But Professor Stephen Knight interprets the name in a more dramatic fashion. He says that it is more likely to mean lock-smasher, a name very appropriate for a hunted outlaw.

Which brings us to any historical evidence for a real outlaw with that name. There have been a number of interesting, although rather vague discoveries. A Schakelock is recorded in Scotland in 1305 and in December 1316 a Schakelock is mentioned as a soldier in Berwick town garrison. In November, two years later a William Scarlet is listed amongst the pardons for felonies.

In the Wakefield Court Rolls in Yorkshire an Adam Schakelok is recorded on 10th April 1317 as holding land at Crigleston and in the Assize Rolls a person known as W. Shakelok/W. Scathelok is recorded between the years of 1372 and 1381.

But the most fascinating discovery is the William Shyreloke, a novice of St. Mary’s Abbey York (the very abbey at the heart of the epic poem, the Gest of Robyn Hode) mentioned between 1286-7. According to Abbey documents he was thrown out because of a crime imputed to him!

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

(To see all posts about Will Scarlet please click on the label marked Will Scarlet in the right-hand panel or below).