Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-226878-20150710200046/@comment-174.89.110.232-20151117220714

Regarding whether Robin Hood would have been thought of by many as a criminal: I should have mentioned that there were NO COURTS to hear a 'criminal case' against a person, to determine if there were enough proof and if so what sentence was appropriate; and NO APPEALS from a penalty which was gruesome and unfair. At the time, theft generally called for a fine. But it was John who made the laws and enforced them and stuck people in prisons to starve to death for crossing them.

The underlying principle wasn't Right v. Wrong. It was MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.

John, as Prince and King before Magna Carta, followed in the footsteps of Richard and their father, who was a Norman. (Robin Hood was Saxon.) Watch 'The Lion in Winter' to get a feel for how the family, including Eleanor of Acquitaine, got along with each other: they didn't. When Richard left for the Crusades, he tried to tie up his possessions so John wouldn't seize them and set himself up as King in Richard's place. No matter, there were plenty of nobles to seize property from and even more commoners. John took the position that the King was above the law and was created so by the divine right of kings. He pretty much made himself a tyrant of the worst type.

Having that much power meant that pointing at a man and declaring him a traitor and a criminal was likely to be utterly empty without proof and a dictator never needs proof. The 'traitor' and 'criminal' was neither in reality, or before a modern court, absent proof, and that's something the poor and dispossessed knew in their souls. An empty slur, if made by John against an otherwise innocent peasant OR against a 'traitorous' noble whose castle John seized, throwing his family out on the streets and putting the noble to death one way or another, an empty slur. Check your history: Prince John/King John did it all. This is fact.

Since there were no laws to hold John back from theiving and robbery and murder, the others in England, Normal and Saxon, would likely be more in harmony with those who mitigated John's brutality than with anyone flouting it. You cannot break a law which is no law. John's gluttony for gold and land, and the lengths he went to get them may not have been completely unalike various other rulers of the day, or the 1300's or 1400's but it's sufficiently extreme to make me wonder if he was mentally ill. He certainly swung from border to border of manic depression, dancing around now and thundering death sentences then.

Robin Hood was a Saxon, and Saxon laws tended to be fairer and less restrictive. Normans were tougher and meaner in their laws and government. William the Conquerer 'harried' the north of England, and in so doing, burned the crops, the buildings, the stock, and strew salt in the land, making it unable to bear new crops. He also killed innocent and guilty without a second thought. Anything of value he took. (Read a little about the Norman invasion. I am unutterably glad I didn't live then.) John had examples before him about what a King could do, and he did them, adding widespread involuntary enrolment of men in his armies to throw them into the front lines of the various wars he waged. These were real horror stories. Freddie had nothing on them.

So today's versions of men who are above the law, wage war all over, decide who shall die for what trumped up charge, what to seize and who to get it from, and how to execute people most gruesomely are out there. We know them. We know some of the ones who bridge the gap in years, like Vlad the Impaler and Gilles de Rais. We know some of the victims: Joan of Arc, sold out by her King/Dauphin, burned for wearing men's clothing when leading the French army, possibly the slaughtered Knights Templar, about whose guilt there remains controversy.

But again, you can't break a law which is no law, and John declaring any act a law is hollow. It was just Might makes Right and if Robin Hood had the strength to grab back the food, then his MIGHT made him RIGHT. Or so it would have been thought in the late 1100's.