We have taken no notice of the later fortunes of Robin Hood in his true and original character of a hero of romance. Towards the end of the sixteenth century Anthony Munday attempted to revive the decaying popularity of this king of good fellows, who had won all his honors as a simple yeoman, by representing him in the play of "The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington" as a nobleman in disguise, outlawed by the machinations of his steward. This pleasing and successful drama is Robin's sole patent to that title of Earl of Huntington, in confirmation of which Dr. Stukeley fabricated a pedigree that transcends even the absurdities of heraldry, and some unknown forger an epitaph beneath the skill of a Chatterton. Those who desire a full acquaintance with the fabulous history of Robin Hood will seek it in the well-known volumes of Ritson, or in those of his recent editor, Gutch, who does not make up by superior discrimination for his inferiority in other respects to that industrious antiquary.
[Footnote 1: A writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ (July, 1847, p. 134) has cited an allusion to Robin Hood, of a date intermediate between the passages from Wyntown and the one about to be cited from Bower. In the year 1439, a petition was presented to Parliament against one Piers Venables of Aston, in Derbyshire, "who having no liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be _Robyn Hude and his meyne_."--_Rot. Parl._ v. 16.]
[Footnote 2: "Legendis non raro incredilibibus aliisque plusquam anilibus neniis."--Hearne, _Scotichronicon_, p. xxix.]
[Footnote 3: In his _Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands_, livr. xi. Thierry was anticipated in his theory by Barry, in a dissertation cited by Mr. Wright in his Essays: _Thèse de Littérature sur les Vicissitudes et les Transformations du Cycle populaire de Robin Hood_. Paris, 1832.]
[Footnote 4: _London, and Westminster Review_, vol. xxxiii. p. 424.]
[Footnote 5: No 4. _The Ballad Hero, Robin Hood_. June, 1852.]
[Footnote 7: Mr. Hunter thinks it necessary to prove that it was formerly a usage in England to celebrate real events in popular song. We submit that it has been still more customary to celebrate them in history, when they were of public importance. The case of private and domestic stories is different.]