- Robert Fitzooth
"Robert Fitzooth" is a fictitious identity for
Robin Hood , first appearing inWilliam Stukeley 's "Paleographica Britannica" in1746 . By then the association of Robin with the earldom ofHuntingdon had become conventional, thanks toAnthony Munday 's1598 play "The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon": it was also generally believed that he had flourished in the reign ofRichard I of England .Unfortunately, David of Scotland was Earl of Huntingdon throughout Richard's reign, so "Robin Hood" could not have been. Stukeley therefore "discovered" a descendant of Earl
Waltheof , and therefore a rival claimant to the earldom, related to the lords ofKyme , whom he named as Robert Fitzooth, born in1160 and dying in1247 : and he claimed that "Ooth" or Odo had become corrupted into "Hood". This has been a popular identification for later writers of fiction (seeDisney 's "The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men" (1952),Roger Lancelyn Green 's novel (1956), etc). There is, however, no evidence that Robert Fitzooth existed; his genealogy appears to be mostly fictional. Earlier sources say that Robin lived later and was of yeoman rank, and no modern historian takes the "Fitzooth" identification seriously.
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