Sherwood Forest

The Sheriff of Nottingham

Who can tell truly,
How cruel Sheriff’s are?
Of their hardness to poor people,
No tale can go too far.
If a man cannot pay,
They drag him here and there.
They put him on assizes,
The jurors oath to swear.
He dares not breath a murmur,
Or has to pay again.
And the saltness of the sea,
Is less bitter than his pain.

In Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham was played by Peter Finch who, as part of a long line of famous actors in that role, brought a snide threat, to the villainous character. But what was the real Sheriff of Nottingham like?

In fact the first Sheriff of Nottingham was not appointed until 1449, well after Robin Hood is supposed to have existed. It was Henry VI who in 1448 gave Nottingham a Royal Charter that gave it County Status and from 1449 the Mayor and Burgesses had the power to elect every year, two prominent Burgesses of the two old boroughs, to be Sheriff’s. (For a short time in 1682 it even had four).

These two Sheriff’s of Nottingham were intended to replace the High Sheriff who had since the Norman Conquest been the representative of the king’s government in sole charge of Crown Law. From 1155 this High Sheriff inherited the old Peveril estates and was until Elizabethan times the kings officer and representative of both Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. As the shire-reeve, the sheriff and his officials were responsible for dispensing justice in the county court as the highest law in the county, administering the king’s estates and collecting the income from the shire to pay into the exchequer. He also had to maintain a military force for the king. This power was very often exploited by many for their own financial gain. So it is this High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire who is linked with Robin Hood:

These bisshoppes and these archebishoppes,
Ye shall them bete and bynde;
The hye sherif of Notyingham,
Hym holde ye in your mynde.

(A Gest of Robyn Hode)


Twice a year the High Sheriff made a tour of his county, where amongst many things he heard presentments of criminal activities. The sheriff and his bailiffs had to find and arrest suspects, which was not an easy task. If an accused failed to appear in court after four consecutive sessions to answer the charges he was outlawed, which up until the fourteenth century, meant he could be killed on sight.

When Henry II returned to England in 1170 after four years on the continent he commissioned an inquiry into the behaviour of his royal officials, known as The Inquest of Sheriffs. Almost all the sheriffs were removed along with their bailiffs after complaints against their conduct and accused of exploiting their power and maltreating the men of his realm. In Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, Robert son of Ralph was removed, William son of Ralph came in. Some of these sheriff’s returned back to power eventually and their political power continued to trouble later monarchs. During the reign of Richard I (1189-1199) Ralph Murdoc was High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

After the loss of Normandy, King John (1199-1216) removed many of the old sheriffs and began to appoint new foreign agents, in his attempt to regain his families lands and repay the debts inherited from his brother Richard. These new sheriff’s’ were mercenary captains that became more like royal officials with an expense account.

Few of these foreign interlopers were more hated than the family of Gerard d’Athee, Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire between 1209-9 with his notorious distant cousin Philip Marc as his understudy. Philip Marc was castellan of Nottingham 1209, had custody of Sherwood Forest and held the office as Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire between 1209-1224. His conduct included robbery, false arrest, unjust invasion of property and persistent attacks on local landed interests, both secular and ecclesiastical. As late as 1263 it was discovered that Marc had accepted an annual fee of £5 from the burgesses of Nottingham in return for his good will and the maintenance of their liberties.


By February 1213, feelings were running very high and King John summoned the sheriff’s to his side at Nottingham. Letters had been sent out stating that the king had heard many complaints, which have moved us not a little, of the extortion of the sheriff’s and their men.

The animosity felt for these foreign mercenaries later found its way into Magna Carta in 1215 and in article 50 of the charter it states:

We will remove completely from their offices the kinsmen of Gerard d’Athee………….Philip Marc and his brothers and his nephew, Geoffrey together with all their adherents, so that henceforth they shall have no office in England.

But King John defiantly re-appointed Marc as Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1216.

Well over a century later, the corruptibility of local sheriffs had not gone away and in 1330 many were removed along with their subordinates for their habit of empanelling the jurors and summoning jurors of their choice, procuring wrongful indictments and making false returns. Four years later John de Oxenford, himself a Sheriff of Nottingham, was outlawed for not appearing to answer charges of taking bribes and making unlawful levies.

The early medieval ballads of Robin Hood do not give a name to the High Sheriff of Nottingham, but we do not have to look far to see the candidates that provided the centuries of deep seated hatred and loathing and prompted the minstrels to create the stories about his arch enemy.


Lye thou there, thou proude sherife,
Evyll mote thou cheve:*
There might no man to the truste
The whyles thou were a lyve.

*Evyll mote thou cheve:evilly must you end

(A Gest of Robyn Hode)

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

A List Of Robin Hood Movies Pre-Disney

When Walt Disney’s film, The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men hit the silver screen during its world premiere in London’s West End in March 1952 it joined a long list of movies based on the outlaws adventures, dating right back to those early pioneers of the motion picture industry. Here is a list of Robin Hood movies before the Disney magic:

1908/1909: Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Dir. Percy Stow. Clarendon Films. (Alternate Title: Robin and His Merry Men) Robin rescues a man from the gallows. (Silent)

1912: Robin Hood Outlawed. Dir. Charles Raymond. With A. Brian Plant. British and Colonial Films. Starring William Thomas? (Silent)

1912: Robin Hood. Dir. Étienne Arnaud and Herbert Blaché. With Robert Frazer, Barbara Tennant, Alex B. Francis and Arthur Hollingsworth. (Silent)

1913: In the Days of Robin Hood. Dir. F. Martin Thornton. With Harry Agar Lyons. Kinematograph. (Silent)

1913: Robin Hood. Dir. Theodore Marston. With William Russell, as Robin Hood , Gerda Holmes as Maid Marian, Harry Benham, James Cruze and William Garwood. Thanhouser (Alternate Title: Robin Hood and Maid Marian) Filmed with a static camera amid the cardboard Sherwood bracken. (Silent)

1919: My Lady Robin Hood. Dir. Jay Hunt. A Western. (Silent)

1922:Little Red Robin Hood. Dir. Joe Rock. (Silent)

1922: Robin Hood. Dir. Allan Dwan. With Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood, Enid Bennett as Maid Marian, Wallace Beery and Alan Hale. William Lowery as the Sheriff. United Artists/ Fairbanks. (Silent)

Fairbanks spent $750,000 on this movie, in which he produced, vaulted palisades and swung through the trees. It featured a specially built ‘medieval’ castle with a 450ft. banqueting hall. Alan Hale was to play Little John three times over 30 years.

1923: Robin Hood Jr. Dir. Clarence Bricker. With Frankie Lee as the young Robin Hood and Peggy Cartwright as Maid Marian. Philip Dunham as the Sheriff. The movie was dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks. East Coast Productions. (Silent)

1924: Robin Hood no yume. Dir. Bansho Kanamori. With Fujio Harumoto. Toa Kinema. (Silent) (Japan)

1932: The Merry Men of Sherwood. Dir. Widgey, R. Newman. With John Thompson, Eric Adeney and Aileen Marston. Delta Pictures.

1933: Robin Hood (Animation) Dir: Frank Moser.

1934: Robin Hood Junior. (Animation). Dir. Ub Iwerks.

1934: Robin Hood Rides Again. (Animation)

1935: Robin Hood (Animation) Dir: Joy Batchelor

1936: The Robin Hood of El Dorado Dir. William A Wellham. An unusual B Western. Starring Warner Baxter.

1936: An Arrow Escape (Animation) Dir. Mannie Davis/ George Gordon

1938: The Adventures of Robin Hood. Dir. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. With Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Olivia De Havilland, Melville Cooper and Alan Hale.

Then the most expensive movie ever made by Warner Bros at two million dollars and interrupted by Flynn’s yachting trips. But, it remains for many, the definitive Robin Hood movie. The only part of the castle built for the movie was the portcullis, the rest was created by the matte process (by painting on glass).

1941: The Chinese Robin Hood. Dir. Wenchao Wu.

1941: Robin Hood of the Pecos. Dir. Joseph Cane. A Western with Roy Rogers and George ‘Gabby’ Hayes.

1942: Red River Robin Hood . Dir. Lesley Selander. A Western with Tim Holt and Cliff Edwards.

1943: Robin Hood of the Range. Dir. William A Burke. A Western with Charles Starrett.

1946:The Bandit of Sherwood Forest. Dir. George Sherman and Henry Levin. With Russell Hicks as Robin Hood, Cornel Wilde as his son, Anita Louise and Jill Esmond.

1946: Robin Hood of Texas. Dir. Lesley Selander. A Western with Gene Autrey and Lynn Roberts.

1947: Robin Hood of Monterey. Dir. Christy Cabanne. A Western with Gilbert Roland.

1948:The Prince of Thieves. Dir. Howard Bretherton. With Jon Hall and Patricia Morison.

1948: Robin Hood-Winked. Dir. Seymour Kneitel. Animation with Popeye as Robin Hood.

1948: Nu luo bin han. Dir. Pengnian Ren. Made in Honk Kong. A female Robin Hood .

1950: Rogues of Sherwood Forest. Dir. Gordon Douglas. With John Derek, Alan Hale and Diana Lynn.

1950: Trail of Robin Hood. Dir. William Witney. A Western with Roy Rogers.

1951: Badal. Dir: Amyra Chakrabaty. An Indian version of the legend. With Premnath and Madhubala.

1951: Tales of Robin Hood. Dir. James Tinling. With Robert Clark as Robin Hood and Mary Hatcher as Maid Marian.

1952: Miss Robin Hood. Dir. John Guillermin. A British comedy starring Margaret Rutherford and James Robertson Justice.

1952: The Story of Robin Hood. Dir. Ken Annakin. With Richard Todd and Joan Rice. RKO-Disney. (Alternate Title: The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men)

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

Nottingham

The medieval town of Nottingham is beautifully reconstructed in Walt Disney’s Story of Robin Hood and the film also has one unique historical detail not included in other movies about the hero. The Sheriff has his own house in the town.

This is reflected in the fifteenth century ballad Robin Hood and the Potter, where Robin Hood dressed as a potter rides to Nottingham and sells five penny potts for the price of 3d:

Yn the medys of the towne,

There he schowed hes ware;

‘Pottys! pottys!’ He gan crey foll sone,

‘Haffe hansell ffor the mare!’*

Ffoll effen agenest the screffeys gate

Schowed he hes chaffare;#

Weyffes and wedowes abowt hem drow,

And chepyd ffast of hes ware.

*you will have a present the more you buy

# chaffare: merchandise

The screffeys gate (the sheriff’s gate) suggests the sheriff’s house, known in Nottingham as the Red Hall, near Angel Row, a manor house in the Norman borough of the town where Bromley House now stands.

Robin Hood’s links with Nottingham and its sheriff, go back to the very earliest surviving ballads. Robin Hood and the Monk, preserved at Cambridge University, is one of the most distinguished and oldest and has about 2,700 words. In the tale, Robin Hood regrets not having been to hear Mass for a fortnight, so he decides to go to Nottingham, only accompanied by Little John.

Whan Robyn came to Notyngham,

Sertenly withouten layn,

He prayed to God and myld Mary

To bring hym out save again.

He gos in to Seynt Mary chirch,

And kneled down before the rode;

Alle that ever were the church within

Beheld wel Robyn Hode.

Rising 126 feet, in the heart of the old Lace market, St Mary’s Church is the finest medieval building in Nottingham. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book, although a religious building was on the site well before the Conquest.

The original settlers around what is now known as Nottingham seemed to have occupied an outcrop of sandstone to the east. The earliest recorded name for what is now Nottingham is the Celtic, Tuigobacu, which means Cave Dwellers. (the caves were still being occupied during the medieval period). The modern name first appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 868 A.D: a Danish Army spent the winter in Snotta ing ham ‘a village belonging to Snotta’. The hame (home) of the ing (people) of Snot (The Wise). This original village seems to have been at the first point where the River Trent could be crossed safely.

Towards the end of the ninth century, Snotingehame was fortified with a ditch around the settlement, a rampart and a wooden palisade. In about 920 King Alfred The Great’s son, Edward the Elder built a fort at West Bridgford and a bridge over the River Trent. So the Tenth Century saw Nottingham become one of England’s new trading town’s its population grew to several hundred and the town’s western limit reached as far as Bridlesmith Gate.

After the Norman Conquest, King William ordered a castle to be built on the huge rocky red sandstone, on the site of the original Danish tower, to the south-west of the settlement. Sparing the local Saxons of the loss of their homes and property rights. It was originally made of wood and later re-built in stone in the twelfth century. Nottingham Castle remained outside the towns boundaries until the nineteenth century.

So a Norman settlement grew up around the shelter of the new wooden castle, leaving the Saxons largely undisturbed in their area around St. Mary’s Hill. For administrative purposes, two boroughs were set up, one French and one English, each had its own language and customs with a boundary wall running through the market place. To this day two maces are borne before the Sheriff of Nottingham, representing these two boroughs. The church of St. Peter was founded alongside St. Nicholas, both were in the French borough, whilst the pre-conquest church of St. Mary’s , visited by Robin Hood, was in the English.

Under this Norman protection in 1086 the two boroughs had between 600-800 people. The first of the Plantagenet king’s, Henry II commenced to re-build the castle and its fortifications around the town in stone. He also gave Nottingham its first Royal Charter in 1154 allowing the Burgesses (leading citizens) to try thieves, levy tolls on visiting traders and hold markets on Fridays and Saturdays. This charter also gave them the monopoly in the working of dyed cloth within a radius of ten miles.

The Market Square (the largest in England) quickly became a focal point of the town, it also had an annual fair and from 1284 Edward I permitted extra fair days and one of these days became what we now know as Goose Fair, when people from as far away as Yorkshire would come for the two day event.

During the medieval period, Nottingham’s main industry was wool manufacture. But there were many craftsman in the town and some of those occupations can be identified by the remains of its old street names, such as Wheelwright Street, Pilcher Gate, Boot Lane, Bridlesmith Gate, Blow Bladder Street, Gridlesmith Gate, and Fletcher Gate.

Because of its royal castle, Nottingham now gained importance. Almost all the medieval kings were visitors at one time or another. The importance of the castle is no better illustrated than by the continuous disputes over its ownership during the reign of Richard the Lionheart and his brother John. It was also under King John that the castle witnessed one of its most ghastly chapters, when in about 1212 he allegedly hung twenty eight young sons, of Welsh noble families, from the castle ramparts. Today, the area is still said to be haunted by the cries of the young boys.

As the power base of the midlands and the north, the monarch mobilized armies there, kept court, summoned councils and parliaments, or simply rode forth to enjoy the hunting in the vast woodland of Sherwood Forest that came to the edge of the common fields bordering the town.

The harsh laws of the forest were often a cause of tension and no more so, than in August 1175, when Henry rode into Nottingham in a rage accusing local people of breaking those laws. His son Richard I later set the cruel penalty for killing the king’s deer as mutilation by removal of the offenders eyes and testicles. The only authority in the town during this period was that of the king, via his chosen nobleman, the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

© Clement of the Glen 2006-2007

The Outlaws in Nottingham Square

15. Scathelok And Stutely Are Set Free

As the townspeople roared their approval, Robin cut down Will Stutely with his knife.
Drawing his sword, the Sheriff rushed towards the outlaw leader, but Will Scarlet, carrying a forester’s quarter staff, sent the Sheriff’s sword spinning out of his hand.
The square was now filling with acrid smoke and undercover of all this, some of Robin’s men released the unconscious Scathelok.
From the steps of his house, the Sheriff watched the outlaws riding away and called angrily for his foresters. But the townspeople now began to show their contempt, by pelting him with vegetables from the various stalls.
“Drive the cattle out of the square!” He commanded. His foresters moved forward and attempted to force the angry townsfolk back. But the arrival of a grim faced Prince John dispersed the crowd almost immediately.
“Where is the force of a hundred new foresters you’ve been boasting about?” The Prince asked the stunned Sheriff.
“Throughout the countryside,” he replied, “gathering the tax money it takes to maintain them.”
“Meanwhile,” the Prince raged, “a handful of outlaws dare to enter Nottingham in broad daylight, mock our justice and shames us before the townsmen!”
The Sheriff paused for a moment, “my lord, I have been guilty of holding this Robin Hood too lightly. On the morrow, I myself will lead a full force against him. Before I return, I will rid Sherwood Forest of the outlaw and every last one of his band.”

The Stocks

Although The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men is a Walt Disney film, synonymous with good wholesome family entertainment, the scenes in which Scathelok is struck across the face, whilst in the stocks and Will Stutely is hung up in a deer skin over a burning brazier and beaten continuously by foresters on horseback, are quite harrowing.
But this is definitely in-tune with medieval society, as punishment of this kind was thought to be the solution to every criminal or social offence, from stealing to adultery and heresy.
The stocks, as used for Scathelok, were a very common form of medieval punishment and had been used from Anglo-Saxon times till the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1405 a law was passed that required every town and village to have a set of stocks. Normally they were placed by the side of a roadway or on or near a village green.
The offenders foot wear was removed, exposing their bare feet, which was considered a form of humiliation during the middle ages. Their ankles would be placed between the holes of two pivoting boards of wood or iron, hinged at one corner with a lock at the other. Unlike the pillory, the offender was kept in a sitting position with their hands either chained or free.
Often the person could be punished for many days or even weeks in all weathers, during the heat of the summer or the freezing winter, living only on bread and water and exposed to the often very harsh treatment of the local townspeople. Apart from being pelted with stones and rotten fruit and vegetables, punches, cuts and even urination over the victims body was very common.
They were abolished in England along with pillories in 1837.

© Clement of the Glen