Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws

note 6: See H. L. D. Ward's _Catalogue of Romances_, 506, under the Romance of Fulk Fitz-Warine.]

III. HISTORICAL ROBIN HOODS

In 1852 Joseph Hunter issued, as No. 4 of his 'Critical and Historical Tracts,' _The Great Hero of the ancient Minstrelsy of England, Robin Hood_. Amongst other discoveries, he found, in an Exchequer document of expenses in the royal household of Edward II., the name of 'Robyn Hode' occurring several times as a 'vadlet' or 'porteur de la chambre,' at the salary of threepence per diem, between March and November of 1324.

Various other researchers have succeeded in tracing half a dozen people, all named Robin or Robert Hood, within a period of some forty years of the fourteenth century; but few have pressed identification with Robin Hood the outlaw so far as Hunter, 'who,' says Professor Child, 'could have identified Pigrogromitus and Quinapalus, if he had given his mind to it.' Working on the above datum, Hunter shows how probable it is that Robin H