In attempting to provide Robin Hood with a noble ancestry, Ritson
quotes, amongst other authorities, a manuscript life of Robin, which, as
it supplied him with other errors, had best be put out of court at once.
This is Sloane MS. 780 (Ritson calls it 715, which is due to the fact
that in his time Sloane MSS. 715-7, 720-1, and 780-1 were bound up
together); it is of the early seventeenth century, which is much too
late for any faith to be put in its statements.
No allusion to the noble descent of Robin Hood has been found earlier
than one in Grafton's Chronicle (1569), where the author alleges that he
takes this information from 'an olde and auncient pamphlet.' As Child
says, we must 'invoke the spirit of Ritson to pardon the taking of no
very serious notice of Robin Hood's noble extraction.'
Stukely, an antiquary who published his _Palæographia Britannica_ in
1746, derived 'Robert Fitzooth, commonly called Robin Hood, pretended
Earl of Huntingdon,' from a series of Anglo-Norman lords.
It would be almost unnecessary to mention the two Elizabethan plays
concerning Robert the Earl, were it not for an ingenious suggestion made
in connection with them. _The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington_,
and _The Death_ of the same, were written by Anthony Munday and Henry
Chettle, and are first mentioned in Henslowe's _Diary_ in 1598. The
Earl, being outlawed, flies to Sherwood Forest, accompanied by Matilda,
daughter of Lord Fitzwater; and there he assumes the style and title of
Robin Hood, and calls Matilda Maid Marian. This plot is introduced by an
induction in which John Skelton the poet appears as stage-manager; and
it has been suggested that Munday's play may be founded on a now-lost
interlude or pageant of Skelton's composing. Robert, Lord Fitz-Walter,
a descendant from the original Earls of Huntingdon, was patron of the
living at Diss, in Norfolk, which Skelton held.'[6]
[Footnote 6: See H. L. D. Ward's _Catalogue of Romances_, 506,
under the Romance of Fulk Fitz-Warine.]