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Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar
The legendary hero of Sherwood Forest, Robin Hood, is a figure who has in equal measure attracted and baffled historians for decades. Historian John Paul Davis, while undertaking research on the Knights Templars, has uncovered new evidence on the folk hero that suggests that his ties to that order were much closer than previously supposed. Davis has produced a new portrait of this intriguing figure with colorful and unique insights into the era in which he lived. Lavishly illustrated throughout, Robin The Unknown Templar will be of keen interest to anyone who has been even merely charmed by his legend; potentially explosive reading for those with their own theories of who Robin Hood really was.
""Reviews the ballads, myths and speculations involving the legendary outlaw. A thorough dissection."" -Book News ""Offering new insight to the man who may have been behind the legend, and gives much to intrigue readers."" -The Midwest Book Review
""Reviews the ballads, myths and speculations involving the legendary outlaw. A thorough dissection."" -Book News ""Offering new insight to the man who may have been behind the legend, and gives much to intrigue readers."" -The Midwest Book Review
- GenresNonfictionHistory
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
4 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
John Paul Davis
32 books69 followers📚 John Paul Davis is the international bestselling author of fourteen thriller novels. His debut, The Templar Agenda, cracked the UK Top 20 and claimed the #1 spot in Historical Thrillers. Since then, he has continued to keep readers on the edge of their seats, with hits like The Cortés Trilogy, which reached the UK Top 40 and US Top 20, and the White Hart series, starring a secret black ops group with origins dating back to the Middle Ages.
🖊 In addition to thrillers, JPD has authored seven works of nonfiction. His debut work, Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar, sparked international press interest, while Pity For The Guy, the first full-length biography of Guy Fawkes, was featured on ITV’s The Alan Titchmarsh Show.
🏠 JPD is an active member of International Thriller Writers (ITW) and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He holds a BSc from Loughborough University and resides in Warwickshire, where he enjoys sports, history, reading, contemplating the meaning of life, planning book-related travels and pondering plot twists.
Checkout his official Website: www.johnpauldavis.com
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March 7, 2022As a note, I wrote my MA dissertation on Robin Hood at the University of Nottingham, so this is my primary area of study.
DNF
Right from the beginning, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of the primary and secondary sources, which could be how some of the mischaracterizations came into this book.
Quotes provided from medieval sources have been altered. Even if it were assumed that this is to make them easier to read, the alterations don’t make sense if that was the goal, and the author even offers a translation after a misquote, so it can’t be that the errors are due to an effort at translation. Nor does it make sense when the book gives the actual spelling for the title of one “ballad,” but alters another into more modern English. (As is pointed out by other historians, but not as far as I saw in this book, while the five medieval stories are colloquially referred to as ballads, they are not actual ballads, hence the quotation marks here.) There didn’t seem to be any consistent reasoning behind offering misquotes.
The book says, “In total, five of these early ballads have survived in their original form. Written in Middle English by an anonymous prose writer, or writers . . . ” No, they are not in their original form; they are poetry, not prose; and they were unequivocally composed by multiple writers. Their original form was oral, and they altered between tellings for at least a century – as much as three centuries – before being set down in the manuscripts we have. Gest is not an original but a blatant compilation, where a later writer took a number of earlier tales and did their best to fit these into a cohesive, longer narrative. Death and the last fytte of Gest are two later versions of the same story, neither at all likely to be the original form. Gest is also the only medieval “ballad” to have multiple copies survive, and we can even see differences between these printed copies, while the handwritten original is not known to be extant.
The weight the author says he will give to the evidence of medieval chronicles is alarming, since it’s not unreasonable to view many medieval chronicles more as works of fiction than even the “ballads.” The summaries of the “ballads” in the first chapter leave out important information, and include errors. To give the author the benefit of the doubt, maybe these errors stemmed from a desire to simplify for the casual reader. Though they may at first seem like details, once you dive in and try to get at what is actually happening, it’s important to the interpretation of the medieval “ballads” that, for example, Barnsdale was not a forest and the knight in the first fyttes of Gest is actually not called Sir Richard at the Lee. If these errors come in at the beginning, much larger ones based on faulty assumptions can come in further down the line.
The author states that Ritson and Child collected all of the known Robin Hood poems – they did not, though they did make an effort. In the acknowledgements he says that he “relied heavily” on Child’s 19th century collection, “and to a lesser extent” on Ritson’s 18th century collection. While these are valuable, it gives me pause that this book is based not on the original medieval manuscripts, but on these later transcriptions, which differ from the originals and contain several reinterpretations and errors. There are more reliable recent academic editions of the tales that could have been used, if access to the medieval manuscripts was an obstacle. (Dobson and Taylor, or Knight and Ohlgren, the latter freely available online.) The author also specifically singles out Maurice Keen’s book as “extremely important.” Keen is a brilliant historian, but his book on medieval outlaw legends, while interesting, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It came very early in his career, and he has acknowledged that as he’s progressed in his research he no longer endorses a number of the ideas expressed in that book.
With all of these fundamental errors at the beginning, I couldn’t take this book seriously enough to get much further. If even the basics of the sources aren’t understood, the more complex arguments later on, based on these misunderstandings and misquotes, don’t stand a chance. Reliable information is needed to reach reliable conclusions.
DNF
Right from the beginning, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of the primary and secondary sources, which could be how some of the mischaracterizations came into this book.
Quotes provided from medieval sources have been altered. Even if it were assumed that this is to make them easier to read, the alterations don’t make sense if that was the goal, and the author even offers a translation after a misquote, so it can’t be that the errors are due to an effort at translation. Nor does it make sense when the book gives the actual spelling for the title of one “ballad,” but alters another into more modern English. (As is pointed out by other historians, but not as far as I saw in this book, while the five medieval stories are colloquially referred to as ballads, they are not actual ballads, hence the quotation marks here.) There didn’t seem to be any consistent reasoning behind offering misquotes.
The book says, “In total, five of these early ballads have survived in their original form. Written in Middle English by an anonymous prose writer, or writers . . . ” No, they are not in their original form; they are poetry, not prose; and they were unequivocally composed by multiple writers. Their original form was oral, and they altered between tellings for at least a century – as much as three centuries – before being set down in the manuscripts we have. Gest is not an original but a blatant compilation, where a later writer took a number of earlier tales and did their best to fit these into a cohesive, longer narrative. Death and the last fytte of Gest are two later versions of the same story, neither at all likely to be the original form. Gest is also the only medieval “ballad” to have multiple copies survive, and we can even see differences between these printed copies, while the handwritten original is not known to be extant.
The weight the author says he will give to the evidence of medieval chronicles is alarming, since it’s not unreasonable to view many medieval chronicles more as works of fiction than even the “ballads.” The summaries of the “ballads” in the first chapter leave out important information, and include errors. To give the author the benefit of the doubt, maybe these errors stemmed from a desire to simplify for the casual reader. Though they may at first seem like details, once you dive in and try to get at what is actually happening, it’s important to the interpretation of the medieval “ballads” that, for example, Barnsdale was not a forest and the knight in the first fyttes of Gest is actually not called Sir Richard at the Lee. If these errors come in at the beginning, much larger ones based on faulty assumptions can come in further down the line.
The author states that Ritson and Child collected all of the known Robin Hood poems – they did not, though they did make an effort. In the acknowledgements he says that he “relied heavily” on Child’s 19th century collection, “and to a lesser extent” on Ritson’s 18th century collection. While these are valuable, it gives me pause that this book is based not on the original medieval manuscripts, but on these later transcriptions, which differ from the originals and contain several reinterpretations and errors. There are more reliable recent academic editions of the tales that could have been used, if access to the medieval manuscripts was an obstacle. (Dobson and Taylor, or Knight and Ohlgren, the latter freely available online.) The author also specifically singles out Maurice Keen’s book as “extremely important.” Keen is a brilliant historian, but his book on medieval outlaw legends, while interesting, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It came very early in his career, and he has acknowledged that as he’s progressed in his research he no longer endorses a number of the ideas expressed in that book.
With all of these fundamental errors at the beginning, I couldn’t take this book seriously enough to get much further. If even the basics of the sources aren’t understood, the more complex arguments later on, based on these misunderstandings and misquotes, don’t stand a chance. Reliable information is needed to reach reliable conclusions.
September 30, 2016
Any historical study of the legend of a Robin Hood is set in the dark and shadowy middle ages. 'Robin Hood-The Unknown Templar' was a title that raised eyebrows and suspicions of Leigh and Baigent's publications.
John Paul Davis has written a very commendable study based on historical texts and ballads that, though unable to put flesh on bones, or even discount a fictional character, goes some way to place the legend into a more realistic setting than the view of the Saxon outlaw fighting the forces of King John from Sherwood Forest, toward the reign of Edward II.
Throughout his study, this author has remained balanced and fair minded and his Bibliography displays a very solid background to this period of English history.
A book well recommended for those raised on Robin's adventures with Richard Greene.
John Paul Davis has written a very commendable study based on historical texts and ballads that, though unable to put flesh on bones, or even discount a fictional character, goes some way to place the legend into a more realistic setting than the view of the Saxon outlaw fighting the forces of King John from Sherwood Forest, toward the reign of Edward II.
Throughout his study, this author has remained balanced and fair minded and his Bibliography displays a very solid background to this period of English history.
A book well recommended for those raised on Robin's adventures with Richard Greene.
March 27, 2022
Almost everyone has heard of Robin Hood, right? He robbed from the rich and gave it to the poor. But, who was Robin Hood? Did he really exist? Is the character a combination of numerous characters from throughout early British history?
This is an interesting look at the life/myth/history of the famed outlaw of Sherwood Forest - who probably never set foot in that location, or if he did, it was just in passing through. Drawing upon old English poems/songs by minstrels dedicated to the character, Davis comes up with an interesting premise: Robin Hood and his men were former members of the Knights Templar.
Consider: They (there were supposedly about 140 of his merry men) were highly religious - Hood, for example, according to the old stories was very devout and would never miss attending mass. They did everything with military precision. They were apparently celibate (no Maid Marian here - she didn't come along until later). They had a treasury and weren't above loaning funds to someone who was expected to pay them back, with interest. These and other factors were all hallmarks of the Templars and the conclusion is obvious - after the dissolution of the Templars, some went to England where they continued their Templar ways and fought for what was right.
Davis thoroughly examines the possible Templar connection and looks into other aspects related to the Robin Hood (or Robert Hode, or Robin Hode, or other permutations of the name) and the conclusion seems to be obvious. If they weren't former Templar knights, they were the next best thing.
This offers a fascinating and interesting look into the legend of Robin Hood - whomever he may or may not have been - and is well worth the time it takes to read the book. If you're interested in the Robin Hood legend, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up.
This is an interesting look at the life/myth/history of the famed outlaw of Sherwood Forest - who probably never set foot in that location, or if he did, it was just in passing through. Drawing upon old English poems/songs by minstrels dedicated to the character, Davis comes up with an interesting premise: Robin Hood and his men were former members of the Knights Templar.
Consider: They (there were supposedly about 140 of his merry men) were highly religious - Hood, for example, according to the old stories was very devout and would never miss attending mass. They did everything with military precision. They were apparently celibate (no Maid Marian here - she didn't come along until later). They had a treasury and weren't above loaning funds to someone who was expected to pay them back, with interest. These and other factors were all hallmarks of the Templars and the conclusion is obvious - after the dissolution of the Templars, some went to England where they continued their Templar ways and fought for what was right.
Davis thoroughly examines the possible Templar connection and looks into other aspects related to the Robin Hood (or Robert Hode, or Robin Hode, or other permutations of the name) and the conclusion seems to be obvious. If they weren't former Templar knights, they were the next best thing.
This offers a fascinating and interesting look into the legend of Robin Hood - whomever he may or may not have been - and is well worth the time it takes to read the book. If you're interested in the Robin Hood legend, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews