The Sheriff of Nottingham - A Medieval Myth?

 

Image from "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves."

The Sheriff of Nottingham – A Medieval Myth?

We remember the Sheriff of Nottingham, the ultimate medieval ‘baddie’, enemy of Robin Hood, played with vigorous style by Alan Rickman in “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.”

 

No records give this man’s name, only his title, yet there never was a sheriff of Nottingham. So did this un-named villain exist?

 

One clue is in the title “Sheriff”, meaning shire-reeve, the reeve (royal officer) of the shire.

 

A further clue to the genesis of this myth is the fact that there was a High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, appointed by the Crown by the Normans soon after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

 

The Forest Laws were a Norman import, imposed upon Anglo-Saxon Laws and customs, and very much despised by the conquered population. The Forest Laws were a means by which the King could extend his rule, eagerly used by monarchs to do just that. They could be imposed on more than woodland or forest, and the High Sheriff, the creature of the King, was hated as an enforcer of arbitrary, sometimes brutal laws. Forest Laws were intended to reserve the red and fallow deer  and the boar for the King and the aristocracy – and no one else. Dogs, apart from guard dogs, were forbidden in forest areas, and people were forbidden to carry hunting weapons. William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror, increased the severity of the laws in the royal forests to include death and mutilation. Such sentences seem to have rarely imposed, but such laws caused resentment.  

 

King William II Rufus died in the royal New Forest, struck by an arrow. Political assassination or an angry local, furious at the laws?

 

Another reason why the foil of Robin Hood was a sheriff was because, in history, so many sheriffs or high sheriffs were bad lots. Philip Mark, sheriff from 1209 to 1224, Henry de Faucemberg (!318 to 1319) and John de Oxenford (1334 to 1339) were all corrupt, robbing and extorting with a will. ‘Gentlemen’ gangs of younger sons of the landed gentry, trained for battle and with no lands to inherit, took readily to robbery and more. Men such as the Folvilles and the Coterels actively recruited royal and other officials to help them murder and steal. In 1335 Nicholas Coterel was even made bailiff for the High Peak District of Derbyshire, the ultimate huntsman-turned-gamekeeper!

 

Given the danger for breakers of the king’s laws, poachers in the royal forest areas were often celebrated and praised. Few who benefited protested, especially if they might receive a share of fresh, tasty meat.

 

 

Woodland, forests and hunting feature in many of my medieval stories. I have Magnus, the hero in “The Snow Bride” involved in an assassination attempt in northern woodland during a hunt, and Conrad, the hero of “Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure” is a steward of the forest high lands. I speak of poaching, hunting and magic done to aid both in my novel, “The Master Cook and the Maiden”. All three of these novels are available on Amazon and free to read through Kindle Unlimited. Why not give them a try?

 

"The Snow Bride"

"Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure." 

"The Master Cook and the Maiden." 

Lindsay  

 

 

 

 

Fleeting Fashions: clothing fads of the Middles Ages

For many centuries in the Middle Ages, the basics of fashion for men and women remained the same - a gown for women and a long or short robe or tunic for men. Fashions for sleeves, hats and shoes could be more fleeting or even extreme and it's those I'm looking at today, particularly in Britain.

The sleeveless tunic, based on a knight's surcoat, was a popular clothing choice for medieval men. Then in the middle of the 13th century there was a brief fashion which added wide sleeves to the tunic and sometimes a hood, turning it into a garment called a gardecorps. This was intended to replace the surcoat and cloak, combining both into a single item, however it never really caught on. Still with sleeves and male fashion, the bag-sleeve for men, a wide, baggy sleeve snug at the wrist and shoulder, was popular for about twenty years around 1400, but again never really caught on.

For medieval women, hair and headdresses tended to be 'the thing'. Between 1130-50 there was a fashion for noble women to wear their hair long in plaits and for them to sheath these plaits in silk, usually white with red circular stripes. These sheaths were called fouriaux. However it was with headdresses that medieval noble-women especially indulged and which set the medieval clerics scolding about excess and vanity. A brief fashion, lasting roughly thirty years, was the heart-shaped head-dress, a headgear designed with two 'horns' on either side of the woman's head. Sometimes these headdresses became even wider, which caused a cleric of the time to remark: "She is hornyd like a kowe... for syn." At Ludlow, within the church of St Laurence, there is a misericord carved with a woman portrayed as a scold - and wearing a horned headdress. Women in later years wore the steeple headdress or hennin, a tall cone arrayed with long, flowing veils, although this tended to be a European than British fashion. This was also railed against by clerics, particularly in France.

All classes craved fashion, as can be seen by the various sumptuary laws passed in 1363 and 1463 which tried to stop 'lower' classes dressing in furs and certain fabrics and aping their 'betters'. Such acts made no difference as people loved to dress up.

Men's vanity was often shown in shoes. Piked shoes - shoes with points - were popular with men in the Middle Ages, although the length of the points varied through the years. The truly exaggerated points were a short fashion. The idea that men wore the long points with chains attached to their knees to stop them tripping up may simply have been a mistake or a later urban myth. However, such cramped shoes did cause medieval people to have real problems with their feet, similar to those found in women of the 1950s who wore pinching, pointed-toed stilettos. An archaeologist working in Ipswich found evidence in a medieval cemetery of people with painful feet as a result of their shoes.

I have Swein and Alfwen dressed to impress in my novel "The Master Cook and the Maiden", as you can read from this excerpt.

Alfwen leaned over the outdoor table to look into the shallow, white-glazed bowl filled with clean water. As a mirror it worked well and her reflection stared back.

She was a girl again, her feminity no longer in doubt. She was disquieted to discover that she felt more vulnerable as a woman than she had as a spit-boy, or perhaps that unwelcome feeling was simply because she had become more visible.

“Pretty as apple-blossom.” Swein’s reflection filled the bowl. Still gazing into the water, she tried to pat his arm and missed.

“You dress up very fine, yourself,” she told him, wondering for an instant if he also felt vulnerable, then dismissed that idea as foolish. “The long robe suits you.” It moved like a supple wave as he walked and showed glimpses of his shapely long legs. His legs entwine nicely with mine at night as well. Remembering, Alfwen prayed that the widow who was lately aiding them would not ask after her sudden flush of colour.

“I feel like a dressed and stuffed goose, or a peacock at a banquet,” Swein was meanwhile complaining. He turned to Mistress Glover, who had remained in the house doorway until now. “Must I wear this?”

“You must,” came the crisp response, echoed, it seemed, by the shouts of wherry men on the Thames, and masons and builders on the narrow streets—everywhere in London there were new palaces or dwellings going up or being added to. “It is part of the show of rank. As a master cook you should already understand this.”

 

Everyone, it seems, suffers for fashion, no matter how short-lived that fashion may be!

Lindsay Townsend