Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-226878-20150710200046/@comment-174.89.110.232-20151117000020

To TheRozenQueen: You're right; stealing is classified as a crime and stealing from the nobles is even worse...insofar as the nobles are concerned. I honestly believe that in Robin Hood's day 'stealing from corrupt, robber barons' was not considered a law and that 'stealing from the poor via tax laws was an unpopular law.' If the proceeds of the theft turn up in the hands of the starving poor or to ransome a captive lady of the court before she can be pressed into marriage with a bounder, it's certainly worse for the nobles moneywise. Not so the starving poor and the ransomed lady. Again, there were more ransomed ladies and starving commoners than nobles, and the point shouldn't be missed: the nobles amassed their wealth off the backs of the serfs and tenant farmers who worked for them, oftimes dropping them from the category of freemen to landless members of the class of no-man's-land where people fell between the cracks and starved in winter. Robin Hood taking back what the overtaxed citizenry considered to be properly theirs absent the arbitrary taxation doesn't appear criminal to the citizenry.

Laws changing over time is the heart of the matter. Again, a law considered unethical by people governed by it is likely to be ignored. Or to be rebelled against. Unless and until it goes away. I'm seeing Samuel Adams leading the Boston Tea Party at the moment, but that's again a real occurrence.

Stealing in a democracy is a different thing from the kind of stealing Robin Hood was doing. In a democracy, incomes range from low to high in a variety of levels and it isn't necessarily the end of the world if you lose your tv or car; they might be insured in any event, even if the company takes the heat, but they make money off the insurance premiums anyway. England in his time wasn't a democracy but a monarchy without a constitution, no protections for the masses from any act the Crown chose to take, and with Prince John on the throne the Crown pretty much took it all until Runnymede.

It interests me that all your examples of stealing involve current thefts from very well monied individuals: the President, or a CEO of a corporation. The difference between stealing from them is that they operate in a democracy, and Robin Hood did not. The poor of his day had no votes to cast, no recourse to run for office, no political connections; they were s.o.l. Getting away from theft, look at the refugee crises all over the place. Life is simply better in democracies and people risk their lives to go there, legal or not.

Maybe the term 'extenuating circumstances' will ring a bell, or 'defence of necessity' or 'defence of self-defence or defence of others' or in a rather obscure one, 'money had and received', a plea in equity which nowadays puts the courts in the role of protectors of the constitution. Not even elected lawmakers can make illegal laws when the courts can and must strike them down. The courts of today would uniformly strike down the arbitrary taxations whatever field of monarchical law was being cited as justification. I'm not sure if I've made it clear, but in Robin's day the nobles and royality did not just seize taxes, but they also seized lands, horses, forests, and last but not least, brokered brides betrothed as babies (too much alliteration, sorry) to friends of their fathers to marry men in their fifties when they were about 13 or 14 for the sake of melding fortunes and lands. It was not a good thing to be a teenaged noblewoman in those days.

So, my migraine making staring at the screen very glary now, I think I'll log off and try and sleep. I'm enjoying this discussion very much. Thank you, TheRozenQueen.