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Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). xxi + 229 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3885-3. $25.00.
In Piers Plowman B, xix.246-7, Grace, a messenger of God, lists, among the talents and abilities granted to men to help them resist the assaults of Antichrist, the capacity to restore by force things wrongfully taken from the weak or unlucky: 'He wissed hem wynne it ayein thorgh wightnesse of handes / And feccen it fro false men with Foluyles lawes.' To equate the activities of a notorious Leicestershire gang of gentry criminals, the nucleus of which consisted of the Folville brothers, with law and a theologically justified restitution of property is at first sight astonishing, even in a writer as individualistic as Langland, unless one is aware that medieval outlaws (for the Folvilles and their adherents were frequently outlawed for non-appearan.ce at court to face criminal charges) were sometimes regarded as local heroes and were often assisted by the people of their own locality in defying authority, because they were felt somehow to be acting on behalf of those who were otherwise powerless. The chronicler Henry Knighton, not noted for his antiestablishment stances, records but excuses the Folvilles' murder in 1326...