We all have our heroes. When he wasn’t busy wooing another wife or closing down monasteries, one of Henry VIII’s favourite pastimes was to dress up as Robin Hood. In fact, early in his reign, the roguish outlaw, famous for his proto-Marxist ideology of taking from the rich in order to feed the poor, was at the centre of a popular national cult. The young Henry, standing over six foot tall, auburn haired and dazzlingly handsome, liked little more on a May morning than to don his hose of Lincoln green and gallivant about the countryside. What the legend represented, though, and its timing, sheds light on Henry’s choice of favourites, as he frequently departed from tradition to promote his intimate servants according to merit rather than birth. Wolsey, Cromwell and even Anne Boleyn, might owe their advancement to the dashing outlaw.
Traditionally set late in the twelfth century during the reign of Richard the Lionheart, stories of Robin Hood’s exploits had survived over three hundred years in ballads and songs. He was a stock figure of medieval literature, appearing in “Robin Hood and the Monk” in 1450, “Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham” in 1472 and “A Gest of Robin Hood” in 1475. A multitude of records and manuscripts attest to his popularity during the end of the fifteenth century. By the time of Henry VIII’s birth, in 1491, Hood was established as part of the May Day festivities, represented as the May King in pageants to celebrate the arrival of the silly season.
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