John Wesley Hales and Frederick John Snell

“ The earl of Huntingdon was probably a nickname for a hunter. At last, with the change of times, the myth ceased growing. Its rise and development and decay deserve a more thorough study than they have yet received.
What perhaps is its greatest interest as we first see it is its expression of the popular mind about the close of the middle ages. Robin Hood is at that time the people’s ideal as Arthur is that of the upper classes. He is the ideal yeoman as Arthur is the ideal knight. He readjusts the distribution of property: he robs the rich and endows the poor. ”

“ He is an earnest worshipper of the Virgin, but a bold and vigorous hater of monks and abbots. He is the great sportsman, the incomparable archer, the lover of the greenwood and of a free life, brave, adventurous, jocular, open-handed, a protector of women. ”

“ We parallel it with the Arthurian story, and hold that, just as there was probably a real Arthur, however different from the hero of the trouvères, so there was a real Hood, however now enlarged and disguised by the accretions of legend. That Charlemagne and Richard I. of England became the subjects of romances does not prevent our believing in their existence; nor need Hood's mythical life deprive him of his natural one. Sloth in Langland's poem couples him, as we have seen, with Randle, earl of Chester ”