The Lost Journal of Robyn Hood: Outlaw

By David Stuart Ryan

You've heard the legend, now read the real story

Until now, the fog of half-truth and legend has hidden from us a momentous battle that took place in the English coutnryside 650 years ago. For years, Robyn Hood and his merrie men fought a guerilla campaign against utterly ruthless forces.

Who was he? Where did he come from? And his merrie men? Who was Maid Marian? Why did he feel forced to fight against all the odds?

At last, these and many other questions can be answered when you follow one man's campaign for justice and the restoration of his civil rights as a free born yeoman.

Yet while Robyn Hood fights on, even he can hardly have guessed the nature of his final confrontation with the dark forces of the world.

It is only through the discoveries of the latest historical research that Robyn's story can be told with certainty. The pieces of the jigsaw fall into place, and a true native hero stands there revealed. Time has yielded up its long-concealed secrets.

Is Robyn Hood the precursor of a new kind of being who shall explore, more than we have dared,
what exactly it means to be born free? Has his time at last come?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Stuart Ryan
• Release date: Dec 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466006942

David Stuart Ryan

Writer, traveller and astrologer.Inventor of a new astrological interpretation program.The writing came first, you can see the titles athttp://www.kozmikhoroscopes.com/kozmik.htmAround the eclipse of March 1968 I turned down a job writing ads for KLM airline and wenttravelling overland to India. (Didn’t everyone?) Felt a little smug about that until I meta girl on the beach in Goa who had turned down a job writing for PanAm to head off to Formenteraand then India. (beat that Ryan!).Did visit an astrologer within 5 days of arriving in an incredibly hot India ( the temperature was hitting over 120F(50C) and even the Indians were dying) who blew me away with his analysis. Even getting that I was anadvertising copywriter.So now many moons later I have a computer program that combines both East and West astrology to givesome unique, mind blowing readings.See for yourself at http://www.kozmikhoroscopes.com

Book preview

THE LOST JOURNAL OF ROBYN HOOD

- OUTLAW

Edited by David Stuart Ryan

Kozmik Press London and Washington DC

For more information on David Stuart Ryan

and Kozmik Press books see online at

http://www.kozmikhoroscopes.com/kozmik.htm

The Lost Journal of Robyn Hood – Outlaw

David Stuart Ryan

Copyright © 2013 David Stuart Ryan

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 13: 978456500108

ASIN: B0045JL59M

About the author

David Stuart Ryan was born in 1943 at Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England. He was educated at Wimbledon College and King’s College London where he read Ancient History and Philosophy as well as editing the London University newspaper, Sennet.

After working as an advertising copywriter he set off on a round the world journey that took some 6 years to complete, visiting Europe, India, SE Asia, Australia, Fiji and America.

On his return to the UK, he became very interested in the history of the country in the medieval period. After visiting many of the sites connected to the Robin Hood legends he set about recreating the historical character who lay behind the stories.

The result of a vivid evocation of a period in English history that was characterized by turmoil and wars, rather similar to the times of the Wild West after the American Civil War.

This is where he firmly places Robin and his merry men.

Other books by the author

Novels

The Affair is All

Looking for Kathmandu

Taboo

1967

Biography

John Lennon’s Secret

The Blue Angel – the Life and Films of Marlene Dietrich

Poetry

The Sphere of the Moon Goddess

The Conjunction of the Sun and Moon

Postcards From Around the Globe

New New World – the Land of Australia and the Islands of Fiji

Home – and a Journey to the USA

Travel

India – a Guide to the Experience

America – a Guide to the Experience

All these titles are available through Amazon and other online retailers such as Apple, Smashwords and Barnes and Noble in printed and ebook format

Kozmik Press London and Washington DC

www.kozmikhoroscopes.com/kozmik.htm

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING ROBYN HOOD COUNTRY

Beside the ancient Great North Road, heading towards Doncaster and Pontefract, past Nottingham, stands a road sign telling the speeding drivers they are entering Robyn Hood country. To their left is what remains of the former great king's forest of Sherwood. Here the forest law used to apply, administered by the king himself.

This brief reminder of an England that has almost vanished still tantalizes many of the present day occupants of the country. Unravelling the true story of Robyn Hood has been a task undertaken by many writers and historians over the centuries. And now we are getting very near to events that happened 650 years ago. It would be churlish not to mention some of these searchers in a new book that brings together many of their findings.

The major breakthrough was made in the 19th century by Joseph Hunter, a clergyman and amateur historian who had access, through his role as a sub-commissioner of public records in the Yorkshire area, to archive material and local collections. He established that a Robyn Hode had also lived in Wakefield and that the 'comely king' mentioned in the earliest days of Robyn Hood must refer to Edward II.

More recently. Professor James Holt has meticulously covered the background and physical setting of this earliest account, A Geste of Robyn Hode, while Professor John Bellamy has done some excellent detective work in tracking down many of the characters referred to in the Geste.

Through serendipity which seems to figure prominently in researching any person's life, the author came to many of the same conclusions as John Bellamy and it was a happy coincidence to come across his book just as the first draft of this lost journal was being completed.

The atmosphere, philosophy, life of medieval England has almost entirely vanished but it is still possible to conjure up how our ancestors thought and acted from the monuments they left behind. In preparing this book, the author visited the places listed below. There are undoubtedly many more fragments of the 14th century the reader could visit to help imagine life in his time. But for the record, and perhaps as your own starting point, here they are:

Links to medieval England

Nottingham castle (now a museum, though some of the outer walls still survive)

Newstead Abbey (still a peaceful magical place)

The city of York (redolent with the past)

York Minster (supercharged with its royal associations)

The cathedrals of Ely, Gloucester, Exeter, Canterbury, Salisbury (and its enclosing walls).

All of these, significantly, developed in the great age of church building

Walsingham, England's holiest shrine, still a place of pilgrimage.

Castle Rising, near King's Lynn.

The Tower and the City of London, which abounds in streets and names from this time.

Southwark Cathedral and St Bartholomew’s church, Smithfield, are also survivors from medieval times which escaped the great fire of London.

Books consulted in the preparation of this lost journal are listed in their approximate order of relevance.

Robin Hood, an Historical Enquiry. John Bellamy, Croom Helm.

Robin Hood, J C Holt. Thames and Hudson.

Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry, Guild Publishing.

The Black Death, Philip Ziegler, Penguin

Castle Rising Castle, R Allen Brown, English Heritage

Edward II, Christopher Marlowe.

The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Vision of Piers Plowman, William Langland.

Richard II, William Shakespeare.

The Thirteenth Century, Powicke, OUP.

The Fourteenth Century, McKisack, OUP.

The Legendary Tales of Robin Hood, Jim Lees, Temple Nostalgia

The Tales of Robin Hood, Nottinghamshire County Council.

The English Language in Medieval Literature, N F Blake, J M Dent

Tirant lo Blanc, Translated by David H Rosenthal. Macmillan.

A Social History of England, Asa Briggs. Penguin.

Larousse Encyclopaedia of Ancient and Medieval History. Hamlyn.

The English, Christopher Hibbert. Guild Publishing.

The Flowering of the Middle Ages, Guild, Thames and Hudson.

The Murdered Magicians, Peter Partner. Crucible.

Origins of Folk Tales, Kaye Ward

Last, but not least, thank you to the organisers of the Age of Chivalry Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1987.

1.

HAPPY EARLY DAYS

From The Lost Journal Of Robyn Hood

I WAS BORN in Loxley, South Yorkshire, in 1300 towards the end of the long reign of Edward I. Loxley, at the eastern edge of the Peak District, is on a river named after the village. It is impossible for anyone born by waters surging ever onwards, to not fall back on this slow rhythm of life when all appears to have become topsy-turvy, as it has done for so much of my time on earth. My first memory is of walking down through a tree- lined lane to the riverside at the height of summer. Though I could not have been more than four at the time the memory stays vividly with me. For reasons I cannot explain, I was aware that this brief idyll in my life with its slow leisurely pace was not to last much longer. All would become speeded up, no time to contemplate the slowly turning seasons, the quiet purposeful flow of the river, the steady warmth of the sun. No time to stretch out on the ground and feel its comforting support.

And so it turned out. Shortly afterwards my father moved to Wakefield, since he had inherited his father's farm. For him it was a return home, for me the first of many enforced moves. The farm was quietly prosperous in those early days, life seemed one long summer, gathering in the crops, tramping the dusty fields, exploring the woods all about, observing the beasts in all their moods, making new discoveries each day. But this was the state of much of the country thanks to the conscientious improvements in the government of the land by Edward and his several saintly advisers. For much of the reign good sense was the order of the day. Perhaps the king had an overly legal turn of mind. His frequent pilgrimages to the eastern counties, to Our Lady's shrine at Walsingham in particular, seemed to provide a necessary corrective to the corrosive effects of immense power.

He could, of course, execute his judgment ferociously, as he proved when, still a prince, he defeated Simon de Montfort, a man still mourned much in our part of the country during my childhood.

Simon de Montfort had seemed to offer a greater sharing of power among the lords and barons, the kingdom had been split in two before the fateful battle of Evesham. In Wakefield, where many of the people had been supporters of the fallen lord, we had been careful ever since to show our allegiance to the king and his appointees. By and large, the tax gatherers in the shape of his sheriffs had respected the new dispensation and had not sought to seek revenge from any but a few leaders of the revolt.

But a village split in two takes a long time to heal. I can remember how near fifty years afterwards the children were divided into Simon's men and Edward's men in the perennial games of hide and seek we played. In such small details does history live on among the young, who must play out all of their country's history.

My mother’s side of the family, tradition says, came from further east. A village named Winterton, near the mouth of the Humber on the Lincolnshire side.

My next earliest memory is a reminder of how dangerous it can be to back the wrong side in any struggle. Struggles for power are rarely of the yeoman farmer's making. However, he owes his livelihood to his lord, who can insist on armed service in return for the right to enjoy tenure of the manor land. This service may cost him his life, but at least his family will be able to survive. An Englishman has always been expected to guard his land with his life when called upon. For the landless - and there have been many of these in the last few years - can only descend to the very bottom of society, forced to wander and beg, dependent on the mercy of the great abbeys for their sustenance and those God-fearing souls who have always distinguished our nation in good days and bad.

This realisation of the immense dangers of being declared outside the law occurred when I was little more than six years old. My father had been summoned to the parliament called on August 23rd, 1306, when the traitor William Wallace was condemned to death after another unsuccessful Scottish rebellion. The parliament, and my father should be included in the general sentiment, was tired and weary of the drain in men and resources that the Scots' constantly simmering revolt had caused. They were a threat to the well-being of all England, for they had little compunction about laying waste the northern counties, as far as York even. They took a delight, we had gruesomely heard, in setting the torch to homesteads, killing the sheep, cows and goats, torturing the men most horribly and brutally raping the women, often before their children's eyes. They exhibited a savagery we in England had left behind. Old men in Wakefield told tales of the plundering Vikings handed down from father to son. But all this had occurred three and four hundred years before. Even with this Viking blood on my mother's side I would be one of the first to say that they knew little better. Converted to Christianity, the Danelaw has proved as religious a part of the country as any other, perhaps more so than most. Certainly the savage killer inside every man can still be summoned forth, but it takes quite exceptional provocation; with the brutalised Scots a murderous hate burns just below the surface.

After William Wallace, betrayed by his fellow Scots, was brought to Westminster Hall and found guilty, his execution proceeded immediately. It was my first visit to London, that great city of the South that rivals York in size and outdoes it in number of palaces. My father's selection as a representative of the county of Yorkshire owed much to his father and grandfather having been similarly selected. In fireside chats during Wakefield's long cold winters he often talked of our descent from a Saxon warlord in the times of the great migrations from northern Germany to England. Being half Saxon and half Viking, I often wonder how much of the blood of the Britons also mingles in my blood. Surely not all the children and women were killed along with the men? In the Danelaw, the Vikings have become apart of the countryside just like the Saxons, Angles, Jutes and Frisians who preceded them. It would be difficult to even be sure who is a Norman through and through. The great estates are still passed on to the eldest son, but second, third and fourth sons, and daughters, have spread out their blood through the yeoman population and even into the serfs and peasantry. We are becoming a thoroughly mixed race, you hear little now of those formerly frequent slayings that occurred in the last century when Saxons would cheerfully slit the throat of any Norman they happened across, leaving him in some ditch to be discovered or quietly forgotten. Some of the nobility are learning to speak English, though Norman French is still their preferred language. In England today the free born Englishman is prepared to assert his right to the land and vindicate his ancestry. The Normans have learnt over a long period of time to mitigate their arbitrary seizures of estates through the administration of written law and a gradual devolution of authority. But some laws are honoured in their breaking. To say that most understand their rights is not to say that usurpers and plunderers are any less frequently found trying to snatch what is not theirs by force of arms and cunning stratagem. Our ancient rights are ever under threat and in constant need of defence against tyranny.

The execution of William Wallace was a terrible affair. Imagine the shock for one as young as me to see a former great man reduced to a battered hulk of raw flesh arriving at the Tower of London after having been drawn by a horse through the stinking streets of London from Westminster. An ugly mob, given to the worst excesses of wicked delight in a man's suffering, followed him along the Strand and up Fleet Street passing through Temple Bar - as usual adorned with the heads of other traitors - on their way to the Tower. My father and I followed at some distance behind the terrible taunts of the London mob, who vied with each other in the desecrations both verbal and physical they could heap upon the unfortunate Wallace. For them it was a not unusual entertainment. My father stayed stony-faced when I glanced up at him on hearing a pain- wracked scream from Wallace that seemed to issue from the very depths of his being, as his face was abrased into a bloody, inchoate mess by the scuffing of the London cobbles and rough, dirt lanes. His body twitched convulsively when they untied his legs from the hurdle at the well-named bloody tower. No mercy was shown him. He was led on his faltering way to the Elms in Smithfield after some young boys had desultorily thrown some water over his unrecognisable, scrubbed-out features. A sight printed indelibly upon my mind, for with the blood briefly removed, you could see that Wallace no longer had much of a nose nor lips, yet he carried himself with some stoic fortitude as, hands tied behind his back, he trudged to the scaffold specially erected near the meat markets.

The Scottish outlaw was not hanged until his genitals had been rudely gouged out, at which point he seemed to give up the ghost and became only a shadow of a man as the punishment undoubtedly intended. The English rightly reserve their greatest fury for the crime of treachery and the most revered in the land were present to show their scorn for the wretch. The king himself had become a far more vindictive character than ever before during his more than forty year reign. It is disturbing how age's enfeeblement - and the loss of his beloved Eleanor - had left him bitter and vengeful.

But the Scottish campaigns had been characterised by trickery and betrayal, by perpetually changing allegiances, the king had decided that only the severest of punishments could bring the Scots to their knees in obeisance, so often had they reneged on solemnly sworn treaties. After the hanging and the hacking of the body into its grisly quarters despatched to the four ends of the kingdom, the vengeance of the English had still not been completed. His head was impaled on London bridge, among the babble of the taverns and brothels lining it, as a warning to all traitors, a ritual that has lost none of its power to terrify in spite of its frequent occurrence.

If the Scots and their rebellion formed one of my earliest memories, it is also true that they marked my sudden transition from childhood to early manhood. In 1314, Edward II had determined to relieve the siege of Stirling castle where Robert the Bruce's brother, Edward, had pinned down Sir Philip Mowbray's English forces. It was to be my first acquaintance with that unhappy and maligned king.

It is market day in Nottingham. A great hubbub of chatter fills the market square. All manner of hawkers and traders are bellowing out the virtues of their wares: garments in the finest English wools from East Anglia dyed in magnificent reds, yellows and blues, fish from the great ports of Grimsby and Hull, farm produce from the Nottinghamshire countryside and beyond. Itinerant musicians weave their way through the crowded stalls dressed in costumes adorned with bells, one leg in bright purple, the other in rich orange, their tunics sparkling with a thousand shining stars. The whores spill out from the taverns and alehouses with men who are already drunk although it is scarce midday. In this month of May, the good King Edward seems finally to have thrown off the great depression into which he had succumbed after the peremptory execution of his favourite Piers Gaveston, for whom the Dominicans still pray night and day at the king's bidding (and largesse). Rumour has it that Gaveston sold many of Edward's crown jewels to Italian merchants while he lavished every kind of exotic entertainment upon his Irish subjects, much endearing himself to those sensation-seeking Celts in the process, when he was despatched there by King Edward after the barons had forcibly demanded his exile from the court. But the days of the enforcement of the Ordinances on the king have passed. It was Thomas, earl of Lancaster, who ordered the summary execution of the French fop, for that is how all England saw the object of the inexplicable infatuation of the king. Edward has become an older, wiser ruler who has learnt some of the limits to his powers. At thirty-one he cuts a fine figure of a man, large dark and broad, beard and hair much curled, a man's man who delights in hunting, fishing, riding, acting, minstrelsy, carousing and - so it is said - ditch digging and roof thatching. Yes, almost surely, he delights in the company of rough working men and shares their gluttonous pleasures. His young Queen Isabella is only eighteen and has already presented him with a fine son, the future Edward III. It is expected that the arrival of his first born will enable him to settle down - for he is perpetually on the move and ever active – and allow the duties of his office to sit on his broad shoulders more easily.

A mere fourteen-year-old, I had persuaded my father to allow me to travel south to Nottingham, famous for its October Goose Fair and the quality of its leatherwork, in order to see the great king for myself. He comes trotting into the square, a magnificently able rider you are immediately able to see from his noble carriage and faultless control of the horse.

Behind him troop a great body of knights, their pennants and colours fluttering as they trot, the horses' hoofs echoing on the cobble stones in the square surrounded by the tall three-storey houses, resplendent with their black timbers and whitewashed walls.

'Citizens of Nottingham, pray silence for the king's commands,' bellows a herald after there has been a soul-stirring fanfare from four trumpeters. The crowd falls suddenly silent and still. A knight rides forward on an immensely tall shining black horse that has been impeccably groomed so that his long tail flows effortlessly behind his flanks. Edward sits in front of the line of forty or more knights who maintain their position at the side of the square.

'Citizens of Nottingham, you are ordered to bear arms on behalf of your king and country against the treacherous Scots who have broken their solemnly sworn oaths and even now are laying siege to Stirling castle held by your king's servant. Sir Philip Mowbray. King Edward has determined that only a great army of freeborn Englishmen can put these perfidious Scots to flight. All men-at-arms in their lords' liege are commanded to return to their dwellings forthwith and report here within the hour ready to do service for your lord, King Edward the Second. You will join the great army he is assembling as he proceeds to Scotland and victory in God's battle. Return home now and rouse your neighbours to action, there must be 1,000 men here in this ancient square to join the great body of archers from the Welsh marches and all the followers of your king's most loyal lords.This is the command of Edward the Second, by the grace of God, Lord of Ireland and the Isles and King of all Scotland, England and Wales.' The crowd erupts into a torrent of cheering, people seething in all directions at once, I am caught up in the mad commotion and find myself hoisted aloft by my eager neighbours.

'Here is a fine young man for your army,' they shout, laughing gleefully at the knight.

He glances in my direction and indicates with his sword that I should fall in behind his colours held by one of the men-at-arms. I join a great crush of boys and young men, so that in less than half-an-hour the king has more than 1,000 men to follow him, although half at least are my age or even a little younger.

'Where do I get arms?' I ask the knight's equerry as the knight himself rides past the tattered line we have tried to form ourselves into. The people's cheering and good wishes are aided by liberal helpings of ale and wine from the alehouses and taverns by this time, there is an air of mad jubilation. We are a motley crew, all mud-splattered leggings and tunics, few seem to have more than a knife in their possession.

'The king's wardrobe will clothe you in your soldier's wear,' he booms at us. It is the first time I have heard the curious word.

The knight, Sir Humphrey Bohun, can be little more than twenty-two or twenty-three, I guess, but his fierce countenance, with long angular nose and narrowed eyes, the look of a Viking warrior, command instant respect. His eyes, pale blue, glitter with the gleam of coming battle, an excitement he passes on to his new followers.

By nightfall, the column of Nottingham's young men has marched some ten miles northwards and camp is pitched close to Newstead Abbey where the king and his barons are received royally by the monks amid the beautifully tended gardens and great lakes, peacocks roam the wide richly green lawns and the monks chant in plain song for his safe deliverance, joined by the nuns who also reside there.

By early June, we are in Edinburgh having marched daily some thirty or more miles along the same roads that took the Roman legions north against the Picts and Scots, purposeful straight roads that brook no opposition. The city is thronged to overflowing with infantry and archers, messengers come and go at a furious gallop on foaming-mouthed steeds, stores are continually unloaded from the ships which have reached here from London, though it is rumoured that more should have been here. Other rumours circulate. Robert the Bruce has joined his brother, Edward, and the Scots number upwards of 10,000 men. Undoubtedly, a great battle is to be joined which will decide the fate of the kingdom for many years to come.

Under the gaunt granite hill in the centre of Edinburgh, the soldiers drink, wench and sleep, confident that victory is theirs. Little discipline is enforced on the great hordes of perpetually drunk soldiers from the Midlands, from the Welsh marches, from the North. Many of these men are veterans of the Scottish campaigns led by Edward I. In the taverns they regale us with tales of the