This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1887 Excerpt: ... 125 ROBIN HOOD: A HISTORY AND A VINDICATION. By REV. S. FLETCHER WILLIAMS, OP BIRMINGHAM. It is M. Augustin Thierry who, in his admirable Histoire de la Conquete de VA ngleterre par les Normcmds, has made the nearest approximation that any modern writer has yet done to a just view of Robin Hood's historical character and popularity. Until M. Thierry was led to examine the matter, in tracing the protracted operation of the Conquest upon the social condition of the Anglo-Saxon population, the highest estimate which the great northern Outlaw could ever obtain was that of having been "the gentlest of thieves," the most magnanimous as well as dexterous of poachers and highwaymen. Yet, surely, it should sooner have occurred to the historical investigator that some higher claim to heroic sympathy than that of the deer-stealer, however successful, or the bandit, however generous, must have been requisite to make a man for ages the Achilles of a popular Iliad, the Cid of an English romancero; and it is that something which I shall now endeavour to historically exhibit. The Latin chroniclers of England, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, occupied almost exclusively with another class of heroes, give us little direct insight into the political and social circumstances of the celebrated outlaw chieftain. But the Scottish writers of the same period, for reasons which will hereafter appear, were disposed to entertain a greater sympathy, or at any rate much less contempt, for a popular hero of the North of England. Thus, in the great work left incomplete by John of Fordun, who, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, laid the foundations of modern Scottish history, we find a considerable passage respecting Robin Hood--an important and a significant passage....