Roger Godberd of Swannington

by Chris Thorndycroft

In my previous post on a possible historical basis for the Robin Hood legend, I looked at Robert Hood of Wakefield; a man with the right name who lived in the right period within an arrow’s flight of Barnsdale (the main stomping ground of Robin Hood in the ballads). But there was one other figure of an earlier generation who, despite his name bearing no resemblance to Robin Hood, lived a life with several striking parallels to England’s famous outlaw.

Roger Godberd hailed from Swannington in Leicestershire and the records of his life come from a number of court rolls. Several people have tried to construct his biography from these tantalising scraps but the most readable is David Baldwin’s(1).

The first mention of Godberd is in 1250 where he makes a complaint that his mother and stepfather cut down sixty oaks on his land. He is noted as being underage at this time which would make his year of birth 1229 at the earliest. He appears to have later had a daughter called Diva who is mentioned in a court case in 1258 over disputed land.

Swannington was part of the manor of Whitwick until it became a manor in its own right in more recent times. There is evidence of a moated hall north of the village dating to the 12th century. Godberd appeared to be in charge of Swannington by 1259 as he is recorded handing it over to Jordan le Fleming for a period of ten years but then forcibly booting him off it a year later.

Godberd was a tenant of Robert de Ferrers, the 6th Earl of Derby. De Ferrers – a hot-headed and quarrelsome man – came of age in 1260 and immediately began a campaign to take back his lands which had been held in wardship by the Lord Edward (Longshanks, later to become Edward I, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’). One of these properties was Nottingham Castle of which Roger Godberd was a member of the garrison.

Roger seems to have run into some legal trouble during his time at Nottingham as a record included in The Sherwood Forest Book (a collection of legal documents from various sources) tells of an episode in 1264 where Roger and several companions are accused of poaching deer in Sherwood Forest(2). That this accusation arose in 1287 – twenty-three years after the fact – is perhaps indicative of the efficiency of the medieval judicial system.

The delay may have been partly caused by the outbreak of the Second Barons’ War; a civil war in which the barons, under Simon de Montfort, attempted to establish a parliament more sympathetic to their demands. Robert de Ferrers threw himself into the conflict but was more interested in pursuing his personal vendetta against the Lord Edward than supporting the baronial cause. He ultimately missed out on the Battle of Lewes which saw the barons’ victory over King Henry III.

With the king and the Lord Edward under house arrest, Simon de Montfort became ruler of England in all but name. But while squabbling broke out amongst his supporters, Edward escaped custody and rallied an army to his father’s cause. The resulting slaughter at the Battle of Evesham spelled the end for de Montfort’s movement (not to mention his life) and his followers found themselves disinherited.

The ruins of Kenilworth Castle; once one of England's strongest medieval
fortifications and the site of one of the longest sieges in English history

Pockets of resistance held out; rebels entrenched themselves on the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire and at Kenilworth Castle which endured one of the longest sieges in English history. Roger Godberd was apparently financially desperate and appears in the Close Rolls of 1266 for forcing the Abbot of Garendon to hand over the charters for the lands he had leased the abbey.

In October, 1266, Godberd was granted safe passage to attend the Dictum of Kenilworth; the king’s offer to the rebels to buy back their lands at rates according to their level of involvement in de Montfort’s rebellion. Eventually pardoned, Godberd appears to have moved north to begin a life of crime with his brother Geoffrey and others.

When he was finally brought to trial in 1276, the charges against him vary from burglary, homicide, arson and robbery in Leicester, Nottinghamshire and Wiltshire, the most heinous of which was the robbery of the monks of Stanley Abbey in 1270, one of whom was killed.

Reginald de Grey, Justice of Chester, was given money from Nottingham, Leicester and Derby to raise an army to hunt down the outlaws who were running rampant in those counties. De Gray had recently held the position of High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests (Nottingham didn’t get its own sheriff until 1449). Interestingly, de Grey was also one of the accused Sherwood poachers of 1264 alongside Roger and Geoffrey Godberd suggesting that they had previously been comrades in the Nottingham Castle garrison and now operated on opposite sides of the law.

All this about Nottingham and Sherwood may sound more like the Robin Hood of later tradition, not the outlaw of Barnsdale in the earliest ballads. But even in those stories, it is the Sheriff of Nottingham who plays the part of the chief villain despite the fact that he would have been out of his jurisdiction pursuing outlaws in Barnsdale. Not only does this suggest that there were once two separate traditions – a Nottinghamshire one and a Yorkshire one that got blended at some point – but one of the first stories of Robin Hood includes an episode that bears a striking resemblance to what Roger Godberd did next.

In the ballad A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin and his companions befriend a knight called Sir Richard who shelters them at his castle from an assault by the Sheriff of Nottingham. The Calendar of the Close Rolls of Henry III show that a knight called Richard Foliot was accused of sheltering Godberd and his companions at his castle of Fenwick. Richard was eventually forced to hand over his castle and son Edmund to the Sheriff of Yorkshire as surety until he stood trial for harbouring outlaws.

Sherwood Forest

There is also a record (unfortunately undated) in the Hundred Rolls of Edward I showing that Godberd and a number of his followers were captured at a grange owned by Rufford Abbey in Sherwood and imprisoned at Nottingham Castle. The man who captured them was Hugh de Babington, undersheriff at this time to Walter Giffard, High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire etc. and also Archbishop of York. Another record of Godberd’s capture has Reginald de Grey take him at Hereford before conducting him to Bridgenorth. This second arrest suggests that Godberd escaped custody (possibly from Nottingham Castle itself) only to be recaptured by de Grey.

While Godberd spent the next few years in various prisons, his followers remained active. There was an attempt to rescue him from Bridgenorth and Godberd’s brother Geoffrey attacked the servants of Lucy de Grey (Reginald’s step-mother) while they were en route to Leicester.

Stays at Hereford and Chester gaols are also recorded before Godberd was incarcerated at Newgate and brought to trial at the Tower of London in 1276. Inexplicably, King Edward I pardoned him and Roger Godberd wandered off the map of history.

So, we have a rebellious outlaw operating from Sherwood, robbing the clergy and defying the sheriffs and justices. He was sheltered by a knight called Richard and eventually pardoned by a king called Edward (just as Robin was the Gest ballad). Robert Hood of Wakefield may be an interesting candidate but there is no denying Roger Godberd’s possible influence on the legend. That the ballads alternately switch between Barnsdale in Yorkshire and Sherwood in Nottinghamshire suggest there may have been more than one source for the legend. Perhaps Godberd provided one part of the tale while another outlaw in Yorkshire provided the rest.

My recent novel Lords of the Greenwood focuses, in part, on the exploits of Roger Godberd and the Second Barons’ War. It also deals with Robert Hood of Wakefield who is outlawed a generation later and, inspired by tales of Godberd told to him by an old beggar who used to be one of Godberd’s band, sets up his own band of robbers who operate in Barnsdale.

Sources

For a fairly comprehensive list of all records pertaining to Roger Godberd, visit; http://www.robinhoodlegend.com/records-of-godberd/.

1.      David Baldwin. Robin Hood: The English Outlaw Unmasked. 2011

2.      Boulton, H. E. (ed). Sherwood Forest Book. Thoroton Society Record Series Volume XXIII. 1964

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Chris Thorndycroft is a British writer of historical fiction, horror and fantasy. His early short stories appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Dark Moon Digest and American Nightmare. His first novel under his own name was A Brother’s Oath; the first book in the Hengest and Horsa Trilogy. He also writes under the pseudonym P. J. Thorndyke.

His recent novel, Lords of the Greenwood, blends history with medieval ballads. This is the entwined saga of two men, separated by a generation and united by legend, who inspired the tales of England’s famous hooded outlaw. Lords of the Greenwood is available through Amazon.

For more information, please visit Chris Thorndycroft’s website. You can also find him on Twitter and Goodreads.

Robert Hood of Wakefield

by Chris Thorndycroft

Much has been written on the possible historical basis of the Robin Hood legends and the search is problematic to say the least. Even if we accept the idea that England’s famous forest-dwelling outlaw was a real person and not a literary character or a mythological archetype, the name Robin/Robert Hood was hardly an uncommon one in medieval England. To even be in the same ballpark we need to look for specific Robin Hoods whose lives bear at least a passing resemblance to the figure of the legends. And the search has turned up some interesting candidates.

First of all we need to reacquaint ourselves with the Robin Hood of the medieval ballads in which he makes his first appearance. Forget Prince John trying to usurp the throne while his brother King Richard the Lionheart is a prisoner on his way home from the crusades. The only king mentioned in the early ballads is an unspecified King Edward. There were three Edwards who ruled in succession in the Middle Ages which indicates a timeframe of 1272 to 1377; a good hundred years after the Lionheart’s reign. Sherwood Forest also has to go. The stomping ground of Robin Hood in the ballads is Barnsdale which once took up a sizable portion of West Yorkshire.

With the aforementioned facts in mind, a possible candidate has been put forward in the form of Robert Hood of Wakefield who lived during the reign of Edward II. Aside from his name and era, there is one other thing about him that makes him a possibility; his hometown.

Wakefield was a manor ruled by Earl John de Warenne until around 1317 when Earl Thomas of Lancaster took it from him as a result of a bitter feud. The previous spring Lancaster’s wife, Alice de Lacy, was purportedly abducted by de Warenne’s men (although rumour had it that she and de Warenne were lovers). Immensely powerful and more or less ruler of the north, Lancaster also had a falling out with his cousin, King Edward II. Lancaster drew support from the Marcher Lords who resented the king and his relationship with the hated royal favourites; the Desepnsers. What began as an attack on the Despensers’ lands soon turned into open rebellion and ended with the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322 and the subsequent execution of Lancaster for treason.

It is interesting to find a Robert Hood living in Wakefield at this time because the forest of Barnsdale encroached upon that very manor and was a natural hiding place for any outlaw on the run. The antiquarian Joseph Hunter was the first to put Robert Hood forward as the real Robin Hood and his findings were largely culled from the Wakefield Court Rolls(1). Subsequent historians like J. W. Walker(2) and J. C. Holt(3) found additional entries and bolstered his brief biography. What follows is a basic outline of Robert Hood’s life according to Hunter, Holt and Walker.

• On Jan 25th, 1316 Robertus Hood, son of Adam Hood (who hailed from nearby Stanley and was a forester for Earl de Warenne) and his wife Matilda gave 2 shillings for leave to take one piece of the lord's waste on Bichill (the market place in Wakefield) between the houses of Phillip Damyson and Thomas Alayn.
• In 1316, Robert Hood's handmaid was fined for taking wood from Old Park. In the same year, Hood himself was fined 3d for not obeying Earl de Warenne’s summons to join the forces of Edward II's Scottish invasion.
• After the Battle of Boroughbridge and Lancaster’s execution in 1322, his followers were outlawed and their properties seized. One property seized in 1322 was a ‘building of five rooms of a new construction on Bichill, Wakefield’.

Hunter’s hypothesis is that Robert Hood was outlawed after taking part in Lancaster’s rebellion against the king and fled to nearby Barnsdale to begin his life of crime. But that’s not all. Hunter also found a ‘Robyn Hode’ serving in the chamber of King Edward II not long after. That these two people could be one and the same sounds highly unlikely were it not for the events in the earliest ballad; A Gest of Robyn Hode. In this story, King Edward travels to Nottingham and, furious at the poaching of the deer in his royal parks, tracks Robin and his companions down. Impressed by his honour and skill, the king takes Robin into his service where he remains at court for ‘twelve months and three’. Then, longing for the greenwood, Robin returns to Barnsdale and lives there for a further twenty-two years until his death at the hands of the treacherous Prioress of Kirklees.

King Edward II did indeed tour the north of England after the defeat of Lancaster’s rebellion and was particularly interested in the state of his forests such as Pickering and Knaresborough which had seen many trespasses during the war. He stayed at Nottingham in November, 1323 and Hunter remarks that from April, 1324, several payments were made to a porter of the chamber named Robyn Hode. On the 22nd November, 1324 – a year after the king visited Nottingham – Hode is given five shillings as a gift because he is ‘no longer able to work’ and nothing further is heard of him.

Later research by J. C. Holt shows that Robyn Hode was already in the king's service from June 27th, 1323, a good five months before the king arrived in Nottingham. This has weakened Hunter’s hypothesis in the eyes of many but it is interesting to note that on June 27th the itinerary of King Edward II places him at Chapel Haddlesey; a village roughly ten miles east of Barnsdale.

Hunter calculated the year of Hood’s death as 1347; twenty-two years after he left the service of the king. Interestingly there is a grave at Kirklees Priory (in the Wakefield manor) inscribed with Hood’s name and the date of 1247; exactly a century earlier than Hunter’s prediction. The grave is a relatively recent replacement for a previous monument and its inscription makes it clear that Robin Hood of legend is meant. That the date is a century earlier than Robert Hood of Wakefield’s death (according to Hunter) either means that the Robin Hood buried at Kirklees is not Robert Hood of Wakefield or, it is and a scribal error was made on the part of the engraver.

It’s tempting to consider Robert Hood of Wakefield (and possibly Robyn Hode of the king’s chamber) as the real life Robin Hood. After all, he has the right name and lived in the right place at the right time. However, not only is it pure conjecture that Robert Hood of Wakefeld and Robyn Hode of the king’s chamber are the same man but there is also no evidence that either were ever outlawed. Nevertheless, of all the possible candidates for the historical Robin Hood, Robert Hood of Wakefield provides both name, location and a tantalising correspondence to the Gest ballad in the appearance of a similarly named man in the chamber records of King Edward II who is also known to have been in the area at the right time. Coincidences maybe, but intriguing ones at that.

In my recent novel Lords of the Greenwood, Robert Hood of Wakefield, or more correctly, his son (also called Robert), is the Robin Hood of legend. Robert Hood the Elder (the one who was married to a Matilda in the Wakefield court rolls) was killed by the Scots at the Battle of Myton as a result of Lancaster’s treachery. His son, Robert the Younger, finds himself outlawed for murder and has only his bitter enemy Will Shacklock for company in the woods of Barnsdale (the Wakefield court rolls show a Schackelock family living at nearby Crigglestone at this time(4) and the name bears a similarity to the variants of Will Scarlet’s original surname in the ballads). Robert and Will learn to put aside their differences and begin recruiting a band of outlaws fleeing the chaos of Lancaster’s rebellion. Their actions eventually draw the attention of the king himself who comes to them with a proposition…
Sources

1. Joseph Hunter. The Great Hero of the Ancient Minstrelsy of England, “Robin Hood”: His Period, Real Character, Etc. Investigated, and Perhaps Ascertained. 1883
2. J. W. Walker. Robin Hood Identified in The Yorkshire archaeological journal vol. 36 (1944)
3. J. C. Holt. Robin Hood. 1982
4. P. Valentine Harris. The truth about Robin Hood : a refutation of the mythologists’ theories, with new evidence of the hero’s actual existence. 1952

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Chris Thorndycroft is a British writer of historical fiction, horror and fantasy. His early short stories appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Dark Moon Digest and American Nightmare. His first novel under his own name was A Brother’s Oath; the first book in the Hengest and Horsa Trilogy. He also writes under the pseudonym P. J. Thorndyke.

His recent novel, Lords of the Greenwood, blends history with medieval ballads. This is the entwined saga of two men, separated by a generation and united by legend, who inspired the tales of England’s famous hooded outlaw. Lords of the Greenwood is available through Amazon.

For more information, please visit Chris Thorndycroft’s website. You can also find him on Twitter and Goodreads.