Robert Fitz Ooth

Robert, Earl of Huntingdon or Robert Fitz Ooth - to give him his full name – allegedly lived from 1160 to 1247.The first mention of him was in the sixteenth century, and then again in the eighteenth century when William Stukeley suggested the theory that the true identity of Robin Hood was Robert, Earl of Huntingdon. The name "fitz Ooth" was not applied to him by anybody before Stukeley, nor is it otherwise known.

The BBC has now supported that theory in its new series about Robin Hood.

The story goes that the Earl of Huntingdon fell out with King John and was forced to flee north, taking refuge in Sherwood Forest where he spent the rest of his days.

The real Earl of Huntingdon at the time was David of Scotland, succeeded by his son John. David did have a son named Robert but he is believed to have died in infancy. In the 1980s ITV series "Robin of Sherwood", this Robert, made older than he would historically have been, is David's eldest son and survives to adulthood but is disinherited when outlawed. (The chronology at www.robinofsherwood.com reckons Robert of Huntingdon's birth as falling in or around 1179; the historical Robert's date of birth is not precisely known but cannot fall earlier than 1191.)

Stukeley's genealogical "researches" turned up the name "Fitz Ooth" in 1746 but it is now generally believed that he forged the Fitz Ooth family tree and that this Robert never existed. Medieval references to Robin Hood made him a yeoman, not a nobleman, although it is true that when the idea of a "noble" Robin did first arise in the sixteenth century there was consensus that Huntingdon was his earldom.