Robert Fitzooth

"Robert Fitzooth" is a fictitious identity for Robin Hood, first appearing in William Stukeley's "Paleographica Britannica" in 1746. By then the association of Robin with the earldom of Huntingdon had become conventional, thanks to Anthony Munday's 1598 play "The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon": it was also generally believed that he had flourished in the reign of Richard 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 of Kyme, whom he named as Robert Fitzooth, born in 1160 and dying in 1247: and he claimed that "Ooth" or Odo had become corrupted into "Hood". This has been a popular identification for later writers of fiction (see Disney'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.