Parke Godwin’s Sherwood and the Chronological Location of Robin Hood by Steven H Silver

Parke Godwin’s Sherwoodand the Chronological Location of Robin Hood Steven H Silver

I first read Parke Godwin’s Robin Hood novel, Sherwood when it was first published in

1991. To this day, it remains one of my favorite versions of the Robin Hood story, partly because Godwin elected to jettison much of the traditional tale. Godwin did keep many aspects of the story, otherwise it would not be a tale of Robin Hood, but set in the years following William of Normandy’s conquest of England, Robin is actually Edward Aelredson of Denby, who finds himself on the losing side of history as an Anglo-Saxon living in a country that is having the foreign Norman ways imposed upon it. A student of the old laws, Robin fights the Norman powers that are appointed to rule over him and his fellow Normans, unable and unwilling to bend to the newer ways of doing things.

Opposing Robin is the Sheriff of Nottingham, Ralf Fitz-Gerald, whose job is to impose William’s will on the kingdom. Despite his own opinion of Robin, whose cousin, Judith, Ralf married as part of the process of integrating the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, Ralf must do his duty, which includes attempting to hunt down Robin and bring him to justice. Although Walter Scott depicted Robin as a stalwart of the Saxons fighting against their Norman overlords in Ivanhoe, Godwin decision to set the struggle in the years immediately following the Norman Conquest makes more sense, giving the battle between the Saxons and their customs and the Norman invaders more urgency. It makes more sense that a dispossessed Saxon thane would fight against the Normans in the 1070s rather than 130 years later when, separated by the reigns of six monarchs as well as a civil war between two French factions, the Norman culture and polity was more established. Godwin’s Robin takes on this historical mantle of men like Hereward the Wake, who led a popular revolt against the Normans in East Anglia and whose deeds were recounted in the early twelfth century Gesta Herewardi, which claims to be a Latin translation of an earlier Anglo-Saxon text. Similarly, the Harrying of the North in 1069 and 1070 was William’s response to an uprising by Anglo-Saxon earls against his rule. Although that was caused by more personal issues and power plays than those depicted by Godwin, it does show the tensions between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons which Godwin embraces. While the novel is set in a different period, it doesn’t jettison all of the additions made to the legend over the years. Robin is in love with Marian. Over the course of the novel, he acquires a collection of friends to support his activities and they are clearly based on the traditional band of merry men, including Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scatloch, and Much, even if each of them is not quite the stereotypical version of the characters that so often appear. In many of the versions of Robin Hood, his band comes together from disparate places over time, unknown to each other until they come into Robin’s circle. In Sherwood, the novel opens with Will Scatloch, ten years older than Robin, already known to him, one of Robin’s father’s slaves. Will helps teach forestcraft to Robin and gives Robin his first bow. Much, the Miller’s son, is a local lad, also a couple years older than Robin, and John Littlerede, the village blacksmith, was one of Robin’s father’s comrades in arms. Their growth as a band is organic. Ralf Fitz-Gerald, as the Sheriff of Nottingham, is also much more fleshed out than the typical Sheriff. Just as Godwin follows Robin from his juvenile years, Ralf’s life is also explored in parallel. As a bastard son, he has tied his fortunes to William of Normandy and for him the invasion of England is the opportunity to make something of himself and find his fortune. His appointment as sheriff in not just about collecting taxes, but also about ensuring that the lands over which he has jurisdiction follow the laws and the new culture that

William and his Normans are bringing in to England while also making sure the traditional Anglo-Saxon ways are no longer being followed. By untethering his version of the Robin Hood saga from many of the traditions that had grown around it over the years and grounding it in a more historical milieu, Godwin was able to create a Robin Hood story with the feel of historical fiction, albeit with some fantastic elements. His characters are fresh and interact with each other in different ways than from the traditional telling of the stories and their motives are more complex. Even though the earliest versions of the Robin Hood legend that referred to a monarch placed his adventures during the reign of King Edward (which could have put it during the reign of Edward the Elder, 899-924; Edward the Martyr, 975-8; Edward the Confessor, 1042-66; Edward I, 1272-1307; Edward II, 130727; or Edward III, 1327-77), and the post Ivanhoe tradition places him firmly in the middle years of Richard I’s reign (1192-4), moving Robin to the years immediately after the Norman Conquest permits Godwin to retain the later accretion of the Anglo vs. Norman conflict in a manner which makes more sense than the later stories as well as explore a culture in transition and upheaval. Godwin would return to this material in Robin and the King, set several years after the events of Sher-

wood.