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AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113

    Robin Hood - The Man Behind The Myth    

^{Copyright © Colin James Hamer 1984, 2006}

This is a newly revised and augmented, mosaic arrangement of personal and family research notes generously supplied by my good friend of almost twenty years' standing, Doctor John Russell Pope-de-Locksley, K.T.E., K.O.T.O., K.G.S., etc., King of Ibogonia, Ofrika & Ife in Nigeria, Laird of Camster, now of East London & formerly of Barnet, born 11 July 1953, (like Einstein) a sometimes very much misunderstood and insufficiently appreciated talented dyslexic, who is herein claimed to be directly descended from Robin Hood (1138-1200 ~ not 1247!), the grandson, through Udeard, of Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother of William the Conqueror, Lord of Hode - and by implication also, for those willing to accept the claims recently advanced by Marilyn Hopkins, Graham Simmans & Tim Wallace-Murphy in Rex Deus - The True Mystery of Rennes-le-Château and the Dynasty of Jesus (Element, 2000) and TIM WALLACE-MURPHY & MARILYN HOPKINS in Custodians of Truth - The Continuance of Rex Deus (RedWheel/Weiser, 2005), a member of the Rex Deus group of families.
Citations, translations and comments from a variety of other sources believed to be relevant have also been incorporated into our text. Reference to an earlier version of this study was made in the Nottingham Evening Post on Monday, 6 February 1984.
A cautious approach is especially recommended to any researchers new to this particular field of inquiry, in which myth as well as legend are beautifully and very closely intertwined with history at every stage of its development from the most ancient times right up to the present day. Steve Wilson's Robin Hood - The Spirit of the Forest (London: Neptune Press, 1993, with a Foreword by Alan Moore) provides a helpful and useful starting-point. For further references please refer to our Treasury of Books and scroll through it with the help of the notes provided.
Prominent academics as well as private investigators have more than once fallen into error. Undue haste in arriving at any definite conclusions as regards the specific facts of this complex matter needs carefully to be avoided.
Appropriate interpretation and responsible evaluation of available data is seldom easy. Truth is a multi-facetted diamond. Only rarely will any one author's account of Robin Hood be sufficiently nuanced in the details of its presentation as to be objectively credible, and it is, for instance, already clear that Lawrence Gardner's account in his highly imaginative Realm of the Ring Lords - Beyond the Portal of the Twilight World (ISBN 0-9537686-7-8) cannot be entirely relied on. On the other hand, what Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha von Dechend have written in their almost indispensable Hamlet's Mill (Boston: NonPareil 1998, pp. 354-5) intriguingly highlights some all too frequently overlooked aspects of our subject. Our own aim is simply to complement what others have already made clear; we in no sense aspire to replace

A Proposed Genealogy of John Russell Pope-de-Locksley

According to the Domesday Book, the Curia Regis Roll for 1199, the Beauchamp Charters, the Dictionary of National Biography, the Feet of Fine MS, the Ballad of the Birth, Breeding, Valour and Marriage of Robin Hood, Burke's Peerage, The Complete Peerage, Stukeley's Britannia, the Victorias County Histories for Staffordshire and Warwickshire, B. Platt's The True Robin Hood, Sir Ian Stuart-Knill's Pedigree of King Arthur and Sir Antony Wagner's Pedigree and Progress:

Zarah	Pharez
	King David
	King Solomon
Darda	Reorboram
	Jeconiah
	Jacob
	Joseph
Pepin	James of Jerusalem Jesus of Bethlehem
	Simon Ben Star
	Bustainai Ben Haninai
	Daniel Ben Hisdai
Charles Martel	Natronai Ben Havivai
Pepin III (sister = Makhir,King of the Jews)	Theodoric Makhir = sister of Pepin III
Charlemagne	William, Marquis of Septimania
Hugh Plantard
The Counts of Boulogne
Judith, Countess of Huntingdon
Ralf de Tony = Alice
The Barons De Clifford
Daughter of Prince of Wales = De C.'s son
Guy,Earl of Warwick († r.Edward the Conf.)	William the Conqueror
daughter = Hugh de Beauchamp,Bn.'Bedford	Eldest son (1054-1134) Robert Curthose,
William de B.; Payne Beauchamp = Rosia	Count of Mortain, Lord of Hode, now
William de Beauchamp; Simon	Hotham in Humberside [or Hodcott/
Walter Beauchamp, daughter = Odo de Sal-	Hodicote in Berkshire?] & holder of Foulton
died 1236, having warpe,i.e., Robert Curt-	Manor in Essex [or Esse in Kent?],
married a daughter hose's heir,Odo de Lock-	imprisoned 1106-1134 after leading an
of Roger de Mortimer sley, also called	uprising to take the throne from his brother
Udard de Hode (Odo de Harbury was	Henry I.
surnamed Fitzjohn)

In 1106 (until 1134) title to the Manor of Hode was transferred to Hugh de Locksley either in stewardship or because he had married the Count of Martain's daughter. Robert Fitzodo de Locksley, also called Robert de Hode (1138-1200), is accordingly held to be he in whom the above shown lines of descent are directly linked. Hence, it now suffices to trace the subsequent descent as follows:

The present (when this paper was first drafted in 1984) Baron De Clifford, John Russell, descends from Jack & Evelyn's son, Edward Russell. Another son, Thomas Russell (1897-1970), together with Amy Tatt had an illegitimate son, Jack Russell, who lived at Caenwood Towers, then owned by the Watsons, related to the Cliffords (Red-Dragon in Coat-of-Arms), and also a daughter, Blanch Russell. Jack Russell married Edna and they produced a son, David Russell. Blanch Russell married Frederick Pope, R.S.M., and their still today living son is Doctor John R. Pope-de-Locksley.

My heart overflows with noble words.
To the king I must speak the song I have made;
my tongue as nimble as the pen of a scribe.
 
Your are the fairest of the children of men
and graciousness is poured upon your lips:
because G-d has blessed you for evermore.
 
O mighty one, gird your sword upon your thigh;
in splendour and state, ride on in triumph
for the cause of truth and goodness and right.
 
Take aim with your bow in your dread right hand.
Your arrows are sharp: peoples fall beneath you.
The foes of the king fall down and lose heart.
 
Your throne, O G-d, shall endure for ever.
A sceptre of justice is the sceptre of your kingdom.
Your love is for justice; your hatred for evil.
 
Therefore G-d, your G-d, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness above other kings:
your robes are fragrant with aloes and myrrh.
 
From the ivory palace you are greeted with music.
The daughters of kings are among your loved ones.
On your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

^{Psalm 44 (45)}

Wisdom is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of G-d's active power, image of his goodness. Although alone, she can do all; herself unchanging, she makes all things new. In each generation she passes into holy souls, she makes them friends of G-d and prophets.

^{Wisdom 7: 26-27}

Contributing towards Contemporary Discussion of the Evidence Today Available

John's Our Modern Day Hero

by Caroline Stringer

^{Nottingham Evening Post, 6 February 1984}

Robin Hood is alive and well - making a good living as a civil servant in deepest Hertfordshire, it was revealed today.
John Pope may not look as though he'd readily steal from the rich to enhance the poor, or carry Maid Marian off to a semi-detached tree in Sherwood Forest - but scientific research claims that he is a descendant of Nottinghamshire's famous outlaw.
Doctor Colin Hamer, Head of Languages at a London College, has presented a paper which claims that the Robin Hood was one Robert Fitzooth from Loxley, Warwickshire.
John, 30, pictured with an amused onlooker, lives on a modest council estate.
He is said to be the only surviving relative of Robert Fitzooth - and as such can readily claim the ancestral bow and arrow. Some of his closer forebears lived in the Bobbers Mill area of Nottingham, said Dr. Hamer.
"It's been a family tradition. Since I was about seven years old people have been telling me I'm related to Robin Hood," said John, who lives with his step-mother and mountains of outlaw-type paraphernalia.
"No one's been interested in the past and in Nottinghamshire, they're definitely not amused," he added.
"I have visited Nottingham and was very impressed. I've met the Sheriff and been round the Castle."
John takes his rôle as a modern day hero very seriously. He keeps a green outfit in his bedroom and has books, wall-charts and records about his illustrious predecessor.
"I'm trying to save up enough money to buy Huntingdon Castle - that's the ancestral home," he said.
"I've got to live up to his ideals and my contribution to life is that law should be full of justice."

A little less than four years later and only four weeks before leaving leaving London for Exeter, on the afternoon of Saturday, 14 November 1987, I was just one of a large group of relatives and friends present on that occasion who had been invited to attend the marriage of Natasha McCarthy to John R. Pope-de-Locksley of 71 The Ridge, Dollis Valley, Barnetvale, Barnet, Hertfordshire EN5 2TT, in Saint Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Highgate Hill, London N6, which is administered by Fathers of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, whose Monastery stands immediately adjoining the Church. Incidentally, this is the very Church in which the present President of the British Psychic & Occult Society, David Farrant, married in August 1967 Mary Olden, an Irish lady he had met in Bordeaux while on a European tour. John and David first became acquainted with each other in 1973.

By this time John himself wasn't only a prominent member and, indeed, the President of the London-based Robin Hood Club; he was also in regular contact with one of that association's friendly rival research-groups, the Yorkshire Robin Hood Society that Nurse Barbara Green, R.G.N., S.C.M., D.N., had founded in 1984, the very same year in which the Nottingham Evening Post had first published Caroline Springer's above quoted article.

At the same time our hero was also one of the more colourful employees of the Department of the Environment's Fire Research Department Stores at Boreham-Wood; he began work there in 1974, having previously, after his boyhood in Worthing, received a private education at Winchester Lodge Preparatory School in Torquay and at Bishop's Palace Public School, Farnham.

Although this civil-servant claims to have seen UFOs on several distinct occasions in his life, it was quite an ordinary plane that flew overhead as John pronounced his marriage vows that autumn afternoon. There was also nothing unusual about the well attended wedding-reception immediately after the service; it was held just across the road in the Old Crown Hotel, with drinks, a running buffet, music and dancing.

Were Natasha's many relatives and friends present on that occasion fully aware of the true identity of John Pope-de-Locksley of Barnet? I suspect not. They may not even have been aware of this staunch patriot's unusually strong interest in British history generally, as well as in the many myths and legends of Robin Hood and his Merry Outlaws, and they certainly had no idea that even before the second millennium came to its end on 22 December 1999, Natasha's & John's life of marital bliss together would, at least so far as human minds and hearts may discern, have been "on the rocks" for some time, John, not entirely unpredictably and far from uniquely (and I'm not only thinking of St. Peter), having felt "the call" to "higher things"!

He believes there is credible evidence available that dinosaurs did not all die out in prehistoric times, and it is to their later survival that he attributes the origin of the legends of the Lampton Worm and of St. George & the Dragon.

He reminds us that a document dated 1405 in Wormingford Church on the Suffolk and Essex borders has Richard the Lion-Heart housing in the then Zoo, the Lion Tower in London, a fearsome Dragoun or Cockadrill which he had brought back from Palestine. This animal subsequently escaped and devoured various cows, sheep and people in Wormingford until it was killed by an Essex Knight, George de la Layer of Haye, Count of Boulogne.

John also suggests that the monstrous dragon which St. Leonard killed in a forest near Horsham in the 6th century was actually still alive in 1614 - saurian remains were unearthed near Horsham in the 19th century and, in the 1960s, bones of an iguanodon were discovered in Tilgate. The Scintillating Dragon of Pelling Castle in Glamorgan was only killed in 1900.

In the 1860s treasure-hunters seaching in a tunnel leading from Offington Hill to Cissbury Fort were attacked by dragons and compelled to abandon their work.

Taunton Museum houses the skull of Ben, the blue dragon of St. Kilve, which died in a Somerset bog and has been identified as an icthyosaurus.

The skeleton of the St. Osyth Dragon is also, in John's opinion, clearly that of some species of beast wrongly classified as prehistoric, while the bones in Coventry of the dun cow killed by Guy of Warwick in the days of Edward the Confessor are clearly those of a mammoth.

Alternative names for dragons include: 'kows', 'worms', 'cockatrices', the 'grampus', 'lizards' and 'snakes'. Strictly speaking, however, as John has noticed, a grampus is a 10-feet-long marine creature, part dolphin, part whale. The Nile-side kommodo lizard, also about 10' in length, is, therefore, a more plausible dragon. The salvadori dragon, found in New Guinea, can measure more than 15 feet.

Still, despite continuing claims that dinosaurs are still at large in various parts of Africa and South America, John has so far found no convincing evidence of this, but he remains unshaken in his belief that dinosaur remains would come to light if the various historical sites associated with dragon legends were properly excavated.

I am not in any position to say that he is mistaken. A few years ago, during my tenure of office as Head of the Department of Languages & Liberal Studies at Streatham and Tooting Adult Education Institute, Bill Walker, then a student in one of the Insttitute's weekly evening-classes at Granton School in Streatham Vale, discovered an almost complete dinosaur fossil in Ockley Brick-Works in Surrey. This fine specimen has since been named Baronyx Walkeri, and is on display in the British Natural History Museum in South Kensington; only parts of its tail are now missing.

There is, on the other hand, nothing at all remarkable about the Diploma signed on 28 March 1987 by Bishop Kirby J. Hensley, President of the Universal Life Church of 601 3rd Street, Modesto, California, which certifies that John has been awarded what most reputable academics might consider a completely worthless Doctor of Metaphysics Degree "for meritorious recognition upon completion of a course of instruction in the principles of the Universal Life Church."

Yet, only two weeks previously, on 12 March 1987, writing in the Halifax Courier, John had identified himself publicly not only as the President of the London Robin Hood Club but also as a "descendant of Robert Fitzodo of Locksley, the original Robin Hood."

Legend, of course, in its present-day Hollywood version, invariably presents Robin Hood as an outlaw who hid in Sherwood Forest. He is also said to have robbed people on Watling Street and to have spent a great deal of his time in Barnet Dale.

Although from after 1218 Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, covered 90 square miles, it had previously been without any fixed limits. If Robin Fitzodo was, indeed, Robin Hood, how could he have known his way about in such a vast place?

Fitzodo is recorded as having held the manor of Morton. Morton village is near Retford in Nottinghamshire, and Morton Hall is about 2 miles west of Morton, set in Spectacle Wood, by the side of the A1, which forms today the northern part of the forest of Sherwood. Robert Fitzodo would, obviously, have known that part of Sherwood well, and, being just off the main road, it was ideally placed for robbing rich passing merchants.

Since the legend also mentions Robin as having his camp in a hunting-lodge in Sherwood, this may possibly be identified with Fitzodo's own hunting-lodge on his Morton estate. Apleyhead Lodge, 1 mile west of Upper Morton, Nottinghamshire, and in Apleyhead Wood beside the A614 may, then, have been the outlaws' camp.

However, the Percy Folio makes no mention of Robin Hood being in Sherwood, which was first associated with his name by Antony Mundays in 1601 in his play, The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, otherwise Robin Hoode.

John Pope-de-Locksley's Barnet may seem far removed from Sherwood Forest, but all Sherwood's place-names in the present-day legends of Robin Hood were invented by the Reverend Mr. Whitworth at the beginning of this century. Chapman & Millar's 1508 Edinburgh edition and Jan Van Doebock's 1510 Antwerp version of the Little Geste of Robin Hood both locate Robin in Barnedtale - and this can quite plausibly be understood as being an alternative spelling of Barnetdale. [Like Shakespeare before him, John, it is important to appreciate, attaches no special importance to orthography. Hence, several references here used, which he has very kindly supplied, may not always exactly correspond letter for letter with the original sources. John focuses on the sense and meaning of words, and these, surely, are the things that mainly count. Some, I know, have questioned his learning - but, of course, envy and jealousy are by no means new. Our own preferred policy is to respect and honour the truth, no matter where it is to be found.]

Mundays, in the play just mentioned, wrote, "From Barnsdale Shroggs [i.e., 'thorn bushes'] to Sherewodes red cliffes", a spelling which could easily refer to the 13th-century Sherrards Woods in Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

Another Sherwoods Wood exists today as part of Watford Heath, immediately to the east of the railway-line and west of Oxhey Grange and, although it is undoubtedly modern, its name echoes that of Sherrards Woods. Barnet Vale is north-north-west of the Watford Heath Sherwoods and quite close by, just north of the junction of the A1000 Great North Road and the A110 Station Road, New Barnet.

Wynkine de Words in his 1507 edition of the Geste and Copelands in his edition of 1560 place Robin Hood not only in a Barnsdale Forest but also in Plumpton Park. There are quite a number of Plumptons - in Cumberland, in Lancashire, in Yorkshire and also in Northamptonshire. The Cumberland Plumpton is in Inglewood and Wytoun's 1420 account of Robin Hood's life locates him in Barnsdale and in Inglewood Forest.

Although there is a Barnsdale in Yorkshire covering 30 square miles between Doncaster and Pontefract, it was never a forest; in 1300 it was known as Beornsval and in 1202 it went by the name of Bernards Hill, it was not wooded and it was not stocked with deer.

Robin Hood's Barnsdale was almost certainly in Northamptonshire which includes, as well as a Plumpton, a Wakefield. Both are in Wittle Wood Forest just west of Watling Street and slightly further north one finds, just east of Watling Street, a Salcy Forest containing what may have been Robin's preferred trysting place, a Great Oak.

In legend Robin meets George a'Green at Wakefield and, in the Geste, his followers pass through the Sales or Sayles to reach Watling Street. Shenly, where Robin Hood is said to have robbed the Abbot of Woburn in 1225, is on Watling Street, not far south-west of Wakefield and just north of Whaddon Forest in Buckinghamshire, Woburn Abbey itself being north-south-west of Shenly and over on the Bedforshire side of Watling Street, which then runs straight down south-west to St. Alban's in Hertfordshire.

Though Rutland is today an independent county north of Northamptonshire, it was formerly administered from Nottingham and it included within its boundaries a large deer-park, named Barnsdale on account of its connection with the De Brus family, which had previously belonged to the St. Liz family but had passed to their cousins, the Fitzooths, in 1184, only to be sold to the Scottish King David by Richard the Lion-Heart in the 1190s (it is worth remembering that in 1194 William de Ferers, Sheriff of Nottingham, owned Oakham Castle in Rutland and that Robert de Ferers of Tutbury, where Robin Hood is said to have married his Maid Marion, was Earl of Nottingham) and was not legally recovered by the Earls of Huntingdon until a judgment was made in their favour in the 1250s; this included a moated site known as Robin Hood's Cave, though this has since the 1970s been submerged beneath the recently created Rutland Water. However, a Barnsdale Hill and a Barnsdale Wood survive in the vicinity.

In addition to this, a 14th-century map of Nottinghamshire prepared for the Duke of Rutland includes Bryunsdale Hill, a name which may derive from Brunswald, a forest in Northamptonshire used by Hereward the Wake and which extended from west to east from Northampton over to Alconbury, taking in the villages of Newton Bromswald and Leighton Bromswald.

The Huntingdons had various estates and castles in Rockingham Forest, which is also in Northamptonshire. Indeed, the Hood in Robin Hood's name may be a reference to Hooton Pagnell, which is in Barnsdale Forest, where there is a mediaeval castle. In the reign of King John (1199-1216) Rockingham was in the hands of the Earl of Albemarle who was in rebellion against John and was a relative of Robin Hood (cfr. Dictionary of National Biography: "Fitzooth"). John captured the castle from him at one time, possibly during the Barons' War, but no doubt many of his followers escaped into the forest and so made themselves 'outlaws' - and Robin may have been one of these.

The Birth, Breeding, Valour & Marriage Ballad about Robin Hood (1650-1702) places Loxley in Nottinghamshire, it is true, and Sheerwood in Staffordshire, but Loxley is actually in Staffordshire - although there is also a village of that name in Warwickshire, not to mention the wooden one of the same name in Yorkshire, since this latter was obviously non-existent in Robin's day. Sheerwood, then, may be a mistake for Needwood Forest or Rockingham. According to the Domesday Book Hugh Grandmesnil, Lord de Locksley, of Staffordshire, held lands in Northamptonshire at Charwelton, Middleton Cheney, Maidford, Thorlubenham and Thrupp, and also in Hertfordshire at Ware as well as at Broxbourne by the river Lea. Between Ware and Broxbourne is Hoddesdon, previously called Hodesden or Hood's House and, although its estate is not mention in Domesday, it seems likely that this, too, belonged to the Locksleys.

A 1227 Callendar-Roll mentions that Robert de Kyme, outlawed in 1225, has been pardoned. This Robert was a son of William de Kyme whose brother, Simon, had married Maud, daughter of William de Ferrers Lord of Locksley, and who himself held lands at Locksley from the Ferrers.

Since Robert de Kyme held the manor of Oxenby in Yorkshire from Simon, he might, while an outlaw, have found it convenient to use the name Hood. Certainly it is in Yorkshire that the 1225 Pipe-Roll locates the fugitive Robin Hood who may, therefore, be the Robert Hood mentioned in a Curia Regis Roll for the same year as having, together with others, robbed the Bishop of Hereford on Watling Street in Buckinghamshire....

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