Robin Hood and the Potter [Child 121]

DESCRIPTION: A potter defeats Robin. Robin disguises himself as the potter. He sells pots in Nottingham, giving some to the Sheriff's wife. She invites him home. He offers to take the Sheriff to Robin. Robin robs the Sheriff, sending him home with a horse for his wife
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1795 (Ritson); manuscript copy almost certainly made by 1505, and probably before 1470
KEYWORDS: Robinhood fight trick disguise gift MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Child 121, "Robin Hood and the Potter" (1 text, with "The Playe of Robyn Hode" in an appendix)
Ritson-RobinHood, pp. 60-70, "Robyn Hode [and the Potter]" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 352-360, "Robin Hood and the Potter" (1 text)
Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles 44, "Robin Hood and the Potter" (1 text, 1 tune -- as dubious as any other JJN Robin Hood ballad. In this case, he claimed it was from, ahem, the wife of "Potsie" Cobb. Like the Niles text of "Robin Hood and the Monk," this text is a summarization of the plot of the Child version in what appears to be deliberately dumbed-down verse)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1533
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2585
ADDITIONAL: R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, _Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw_, University of Pittsburg Press, 1976, pp. 125-132, "Robin Hood and the Potter" (1 text, newly edited from the manuscript); also a facsimile of the first page of the manuscript facing p. 124
Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, editors, _Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000, pp. 57-79, "Robin Hood and the Potter" (1 text, newly edited from the sources)
Thomas H. Ohlgren and Lister M. Matheson, _Early Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Edition of the Texts, ca. 1425 to c. 1600_, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2013, pp. 23-38, "Robin Hood and the Potter" (1 text, in a transcript much closer to the original orthography than Child or most other editions)
MANUSCRIPT: {MsRichardCalle}, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS. Ee.4.35 (Part I), folio 14
Roud #3979
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Potter and Robin Hood
NOTES [5102 words]: This is considered by J. C. Holt (following Child and others), to be one of the five "basic" Robin Hood ballads. (For more details on the history of the early texts, see the notes on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117]).
Although early, the "Potter" can hardly be considered an original piece; there is a similar story told of Hereward the Wake, the English rebel against the Norman Conquest. Hereward, knowing an attack on his stronghold of Ely was coming, decided to try to spy out the plan. Leaving the island, he met a potter, and persuaded him to lend the outlaw enough pots to pretend to be a potter. Hereward then visited the Norman camp, and (pretending not to understand French) learned what he needed to learn to foil the plot (Keen, p. 18). On pp. 23-25, Keen notes that the story was also told of Eustace the Monk, who was constantly disguising himself in one way or another -- and Eustace wasn't even English; he was from Flanders. Clearly the tale was adapted to Robin Hood rather than original to him.
It is widely stated that "Robin Hood and the Butcher" [Child 122] is an updated version of this song. This is highly likely, but, given the number of similar tales, we perhaps must consider the matter not quite proved; the "Butcher" might just possibly be derived from a tale of Hereward or Eustace or someone.
Fully half the Robin Hood ballads in the Child collection (numbers (121), 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, (133), (134), (135), (136), (137), (150), with this one being the earliest) share all or part of the theme of a stranger meeting and defeating Robin, and being invited to join his band. Most of the others are late, but it makes one wonder if Robin ever won a battle. Paul Stamler offers the following only-mildly-exaggerated description of the typical ballad of this type:
"Robin Hood meets just about anyone and they quarrel about something really stupid. Robin picks a fight, and since the other person is always bigger, stronger, and a better fighter, he wins. Robin then makes nice with him and invites him to join all the other people who've beaten him up. Somewhere during all this, Robin raises an extremely symbolic horn to his lips. Privately, everyone in Robin's band agrees that Robin would do better if he stayed on his meds."
Common as the type became, this is probably the earliest, and in many ways the best, example of this genre, though it is hardly typical (since it has a second part dealing with the trick played on the Sheriff, and it long enough to qualify as a short romance rather than a ballad). This makes its date and origin a matter of real importance. In this case, we have more information than usual.
The sole manuscript of the Potter, Cambridge Ms. EE.4.35, appears to have been owned by someone who wrote his name, in Latin, as Ricardo Calle; his merchant's mark and signature ("Iste liber constat Ricardo calle") is in the manuscript (a copy can be seen on p. 71 of Ohlgren/Matheson).
The hand used for this colophon is not overly neat, and I notice some minor differences with the letterforms used in the text of the "Potter" itself (there is a specimen facing p. 124 of Dobson/Taylor, and Plate XVIII of Paston/Davis-II shows a letter written by Calle -- notably, Calle in his letter to Margery Paston used รพ while the Potter manuscript used th; also, the Potter manuscript has much heavier, longer vertical strokes, though this might just be a difference in the type of pen and the style of the manuscript), but they are similar enough that they might be from the same scribe. (If so, then Calle was not the neatest writer; Dobson/Taylor, p. 124, say that the manuscript shows curious orthography and erroneous repetitions.)
I am not a paleographer, but the curved subscripts of the "Potter" manuscript clearly did not come into use until the fifteenth century and continued into the sixteenth (see the samples on pp. 480-490 and 540-560 of Thompson). Solely on the basis of the writing, a date c. 1500 for the manuscript (as given, e.g., by Child) seems about right. So we need to look for Calle in that approximate period.
So who was Ricardo Calle? Ohlgren believes the owner was a man he titles Richard Call, a servant of the Pastons of Norfolk (Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 21). We know a good deal about this Richard Call from other sources, at least compared to most ordinary people of the fifteenth century. Few other modern authors spell the surname "Call"; most give him the name "Calle" -- so e.g. Paston/Davis-Selection, p. 178; Caster, p. 131; Kendall, p. 394; Bennett, 42; Curran, p. 18. Romanes gives the family name as "Call" but generally refers to Richard as "Calle." The Pastons sometimes called him by the initials "R.C." (Paston/Davis-Selection, p. 177=Paston/Davis-I, #332, p. 541), but often spell it out as "Richard Calle"; (e.g. Fenn/Ramsay, vol. I p. 109); in vol. I p. 36, we find the man himself signing his name "Richard Calle". There are quite a few letters from Calle in the Paston correspondence: Paston/Davis-II, p. xxvii, lists 26 letters from Calle (probably the most famous of all the Paston letters is his love letter to Margery Paston, quoted in part or in full, in the original language or modernized, in Paston/Davis-Selection, p. 178=Paston/Davis-II #861, pp. 498-500=Fenn/Ramsay, Vol. II, p. 25=Romanes, p. 30=Gies, pp. 210-212).
There are other hints that Calle might have known Robin Hood material. The earliest Robin Hood play, which parallels the story of "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" [Child 118], also gives indications of being from the Paston archives, and we know that one of the Paston servants had played Robin Hood in a drama, or at least that the Pastons knew such dramas: on April 16, 1473, John Paston II wrote to his brother John Paston III that he was losing one of his servants: "I haue kepyd hym thys iij yere to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robynhod and the shryff off Notyngham, and now when I wolde haue good horse he is goon in-to Bernysdle, and I wyth-owt a kepere," i.e. "I have kept him this three year(s) to play Saint George and Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and now when I would have good horse he is gone into Barnsdale, and I without a keeper" (Paston/Davis-I #275, p. 461).
Thus there is a strong Paston link to our earliest substantial Robin Hood materials, supporting the hypothesis that the Pastons' Calle, or some member of his family, was indeed the owner of the manuscript. And we know that Richard Calle owned books; a French book of his was lost when enemies raided the Paston household (Curran, p. 117; Paston/Davis-I, Letter 195, p. 326; the book was said to be worth 3 shillings 4 pence, so it was a fairly substantial loss).
We have no birth or death notice for Richard, so his dates have to be conjectured from incidental references. Romanes, p. 15, thinks that Richard was one of eight children of John Calle (I), a grocer of Framlingham; there are four boys (John II, Regnold, Richard, and Nicholas, of whom John II succeeded his father as grocer) and four girls (Margaret and three others whose names are unknown although we know the names of most of their husbands).
Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 72, suggests that Calle died some time after 1504, and conjectures that he was born around 1431. Castor, p. 215, suggest that he was in his late thirties when Margery Paston was 20 or 21, which comes to about the same date. Curran's family genealogy on p.22 suggests he was born 1435 and died c. 1515.
Romanes called Richard Calle "Richard of Bacton," based on the town near Norwich where, according to Romanes, p. 21, he spent his later years. Romanes is able to trace Richard's descendants through eleven generations to himself, and then down to his great-granddaugher Eleanor Jean Romanes; odds are that if someone were willing to do the work, we could find Calle's living descendants of the fifteenth or sixteenth generation, although the last known descendant in male line died in 1883. Richard and Margery Calle's descendants outlasted the main Paston line; the last male Paston heir, William Paston, the second Earl of Yarmouth, died in 1732 leaving a daughter but no son -- and bankrupt, so there was no point in passing the earldom to his daughter's husband. (That doesn't mean that there are no descendants of the Pastons -- after all, the Calle line is descended from the Pastons! But while the family eventually achieved their goal of reaching the nobility, the earldom went extinct with William Paston.)
It has been suggested that Calle is first mentioned in one of the Paston letters from 1453 (so Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 72, based Paston/Davis-I, #147, p. 250, a letter from Margaret Paston to John Paston I dated July 6, 1453, although it merely mentioned "Richard" without a surname; Romanes claims a mention of "Calle" from c. 1448 and a letter from Richard in 1450, but wrote before Davis's careful dating of the letters). It is certain, though, that he was in service not long after. Paston/Davis-I p. lxxvi and Paston/Davis-Selection, p. 61 n. 3, says that he became bailiff of the Paston lands around 1455 (this based on a letter he wrote to John Paston I, Paston/Davis-II #519, p. 113, which Davis dates May 8, probably of 1455). He was hired based on the recommendation of the Duke of Norfolk (Richmond, p. 210 n. 165, based on Paston/Davis-I #65, pp. 114-116, line 47). Calle kept his post, off and on, for close to a quarter of a century -- possibly longer.
Four years after that 1455 letter, the death of the immensely rich Sir John Fastolfe in 1459, set in motion a decades-long inheritance problem involving the Pastons and, as a result, Calle. Fastolfe died without children, and it was claimed that on his deathbed he had named John Paston I (who had been his chief manager/lawyer for several years) his heir -- but there was no sealed will, just some statements by those who were there, so everyone tried to get their share of the Fastolfe/Paston lands. The Pastons spent many years struggling to make good their claim to the Fastolfe inheritance, with only very partial success (cf. Wagner, p. 196; Kendall, p. 394. According to Castor, pp. 155-156, Calle was imprisoned in 1461 as an innocent sort-of-bystander in the dispute),
In 1469, against the family's wishes, Calle married the oldest daughter of John Paston I and Margaret Paston, Margery, who can't have been much more than half his age when they became betrothed. (John Paston III exploded to John Paston II, "he shall never have my good will for to make my sister to sell candle[s] and mustard at Framlingham"; Paston/Davis-Selection, p. 177=Paston/Davis-I, #332, p. 541=Fenn/Ramsay, vol. II, p. 24=Bennett, p. 43. Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 73, suggest that the letter means Calle was a grocer as well as a Paston servant, but it is surely a reference to Calle's family and their grocery business). Castor, p. 215, thinks that the Pastons' anger was the result of a family which was itself newly risen in status, and struggling to retain it, not wishing to have any links to those of lower classes. Most sources seem to agree that it was the Paston family's own fault for keeping her at home too long; "Margery's not marrying until she married herself remains something of a mystery" (Richmond, p. 174). The Pastons tried for two years to hold off the marriage, hoping she would change her mind, and then called on the Bishop of Norwich to try to get their betrothal annulled -- only to have the Bishop conclude, reluctantly, that the two had made a commitment that could not be broken (Bennett, pp. 43-45; Curran, p. 149-155, who derives the information from Paston/Davis-I, #203, pp. 341-344).
(Castor, pp.216-217, is convinced that they consummated the marriage, and Gies, p. 209, thinks it likely. This contention, I think, we can ignore. If Calle had slept with Margery, there would be no debate over whether the marriage was real. The only question was what the Pastons would do to Calle in revenge. The fact that the Bishop of Norwich had to look into the situation proves Castor wrong.)
Rollinson, p. 30, quotes Gardner's reconstruction of what happened: Once the Bishop of Norwich, to whom the Pastons appealed, concluded that the marriage had taken place, the bishop perforce sent Margery to a nunnery until the marriage could take place, since the family rejected her. So:
"Calle, meantime unmarried, was staying at Blackborough Nunnery near Lynn, where is bride had found a temporary asylum. He was still willing to give his services to Sir John Paston, and promised not to offer them to any other unless Sir John declined them. They appear to have been accepted, for we find Calle one or two years later still in service of the family. But he never seems to have been recognised as one of its members."
There is no record of an earlier marriage for Calle, although it is hard to believe that a man who was seemingly adult in 1455 would have waited that long to become engaged. (Margery Paston was definitely much younger; Castor, p. x, estimates her as born c. 1448; Gies, p. 71, says "probably in 1448"; and most online estimates place her birth between 1447 and 1450. Curran, p. 30, says she was born c. 1449; Richmond, p. xviii, says "before 1450." She is first mentioned in a letter by Margaret Paston -- Paston/Davis-I, #141, pp. 242-243 -- dated to July 1451, in which Margaret Paston told John Paston I that both Margaret and "yowr dowghtere," i.e. the young Margery, have been "rygth evyll att ese," i.e. sick).
Although the Pastons seemed resolute against Calle at first, forcing him to take a temporary job as a received for the nuns of Blackborough (Richmond, p. 211 n. 166), he was willing to return to their service (Richmond, p. 211). And he was clearly a competent worker; given the state of the conflict between the Pastons and their neighbors, Calle was useful enough that they soon brought him back (Kendall, p. 400; Bennett, p. 46; Curran, p.159, suggests that he turned over his accounts for a time after the marriage, but chapter 33, note 2 [p. 170], says that they were again working together on land matters by 1472; Richmond, p. 211 n. 166 dates his return to 1472/1473. It can hardly be later; Paston/Davis-II, #728-729, pp. 356-358, are two letters from Calle to Margaret Paston about work for the Pastons, believed to be from November 27, 1472 and late 1473).
Calle worked for the Pastons until at least 1479 and probably until at least 1481; a letter from Margery Brews Paston (not to be confused with Margery Paston Calle) to her husband John Paston III is written in the hand of Calle (Paston/Davis-I, #417, pp. 664-665), and it must be after 1479 and is probably from 1481.
Richard Calle and Margery had three sons, John, William, and Richard (Curran, p. 22), before Margery Paston Calle died, probably in or before 1482 (Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 73; Paston/Davis-Selection, p. xxix, states that she was dead by 1479, and Richmond, p. xviii, says "probably" by 1479; Castor, p. x, and Curran, p. 30, give her death date as c. 1480; Curran p. 162, thinks she died before their tenth anniversary). On p. 284, Castor adds that Margery was not included in her mother Margaret Paston's 1482 will -- although she admits this might have been a matter of long-held pique over Margery's marriage. Their oldest son may have been named for her Paston grandfather or uncles; at least, when Margaret the mother of Margery died, she left the substantial sum of 20 pounds to John Calle son of Richard (Kendall, p. 400; Castor, p. 284; Bennett, p.46)
By 1480, Calle was starting to lease land; seemingly he was coming up in the world (Richmond, p. 211 n. 166)..
After Margery Paston died, Richard Calle remarried and had two additional sons, Andrew and John. He must have been a fairly attractive figure, because his second wife was also above his station, although from a family that would not be popular with the Yorkist government: Margaret Trolloppe, the daughter of Sir Andrew Trolloppe (Romances, p. 33). Trolloppe's ancestry is unknown, and we have no information about his birth, but by the 1440s, he was fighting the French in Normandy; by 1453, he was a senior officer in the English garrison of Calais (Wagner, p. 273). He committed several acts of piracy in this period, which means he probably was fairly wealthy from the prize money (Griffiths, p. 733, 809). In 1459, he was the captain of the Calais force that the Yorkists brought to England to oppose King Henry VI -- but at Ludford, he brought the garrison over to the Lancastrian side, forcing the Yorkists to flee (Griffiths, pp. 822-823); this caused the Yorkists to put a price on his head (Ross, p. 35). He would later be one of the senior officers at the Battle of Wakefield, where Richard Duke of York was killed (Wagner, p. 273). Henry VI knighted him after the Second Battle of St. Albans in 1461 (Griffiths, p. 872 n. 94). Several of my books credit him with the strategies that won at Wakefield and St. Alban's, but given the sources of the period, I would not trust that very far. He would die at the Battle of Towton later in 1461 (Griffiths, p. 874; Ross, p. 37). Thus Margaret Trolloppe must have been born by 1461, and probably some years before that.
There are sundry references to Richard Calle in rental records from 1508/1509, and a chancery reference that can be dated sometime between 1500 and 1515. What Curran, p.163, regards as the last reference to him calls him a "gentleman," so it seems he rose somewhat in the world. Similarly the last reference to him by John Paston III, in 1503, which says that he is sufficiently well off to have a servant (Paston/Davis-I, #392, pp. 630-631.) (We should note that the 1508/1509 reference is to Richard Call, not Calle (but, of course, we've seen that confusion even in modern sources!). Romanes, p. 1, declares that "The Calls of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cornwall are an old English family who have taken part in many political and ecclesiastical struggles that have occurred in Britain" -- and prints a 1751 manuscript of his ancestor Martin Call who seems to trace this ancient family back to Richard Calle and Margery Paston (Romanes, p 2).
Although Ohlgren believes Richard Calle owned the "Potter" manuscript, the inscription in the "Potter" manuscript is not in the same hand as Richard Calle's letters in the Paston correspondence -- a point even Ohlgren admits (Ohlgren/Matheson, pp. 73-74), although his suggestion is that the scribe of the book added the inscription on Calle's behalf. This raises a real problem. Can we be certain that the Richard Calle of the Cambridge manuscript is the same as the Calle of the Paston letters? Many scholars have said they were not. It is true that there would not have been many literate Richard Calles in fifteenth and sixteenth century England -- but one who would have been literate was Richard Calle junior, the third son of Richard Calle and Margery Paston Calle.
This is an issue of significant concern, because there are three indications of date in the Cambridge manuscript. One, the weakest, is the handwriting, since it tells us little except that the book is probably fifteenth or sixteenth century. The second is the ownership mark of Richard Calle. The third is a precise but ambiguous date reference. The manuscript refers to the "espences of fflesche at the mariage of my ladey Margaret, that sche had owt off Eynglonde."
This has been taken to refer to the marriage of Margaret Tudor, the elder daughter of Henry VII of England, to James IV of Scotland in 1503 (Dobson/Taylor, p. 123). But if Ohlgren is right about Richard Calle Senior owning the manuscript, this would mean that Calle was about seventy at the time it was written -- which some think too old. But we know that Calle was still alive in 1503.
That of course does not prove anything about the ownership. There are two other possibilities: Either the Calle involved is Richard Calle junior (in which case all difficulties disappear, since he was probably born around 1475), or the book is Calle's but the Margaret is some other royal Margaret.
Ohlgren, even though he thinks Richard Calle senior was the owner of the book, plumps for the latter possibility. Ohlgren/Matheson, pp. 21, suggest that the wedding involved was that of Margaret of York, the sister of King Edward IV, who married Charles Duke of Burgundy in 1468 (Wagner, p. 160). This certainly fits Calle senior's dates -- Ohlgren suggests based on a few hints in the letters that Calle may even have been present (Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 75) It is known that John Paston II and John Paston III were part of Margaret's marriage party (Paston/Davis-Selection, p. 164 n. 1; Castor, p. 194). This would also explain the slightly "rebellious" nature of the manuscript's contents: 1468 was around the beginning of Calle's romance with Margery Paston, which he must have known the family would not approve of.
But the phrasing of the inscription is interesting. It sounds as if this Margaret had to be given some sort of grant to pay her expenses. This fits an earlier royal wedding, that between King Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Margaret brought no dowry at all, except a brief truce in the Hundred Years' War (Gillingham, p. 59), and even that was at the cost of major territorial concessions. And, because the English were broke, she had to be granted property in Lancashire to pay her expenses (Rubin, p. 231). The whole wedding was so obscure that most chroniclers didn't even know where it took place! This fits the description in the manuscript very well.
Admittedly the marriage took place in the 1440s, which is before any known references to Richard Calle, but this is not impossibly early. Thomas Wright, indeed, referred the manuscript of the "Potter" to the reign of Henry VI (1422-1461, briefly restored 1470-1471). Wright also dated the "Monk" to the reign of Edward II, a dating of which Dobson/Taylor, p. 123n1, are frankly contemptuous, but in the case of the "Potter" Wright may have been onto something.
"Robin Hood and the Monk" [Child 119] is usually described as the oldest Robin Hood ballad. But the strong evidence (discussed in the entry on that ballad) is that it must date from 1465 or after, later than the usual dating cited by Child, etc. If the Margaret of the inscription in the "Potter" is indeed Margaret of Anjou, then we must redate the "Potter" early enough to make it probably the earliest Robin Hood ballad, and it might be the earliest even if the Margaret of the inscription is Margaret of York.
Ohlgren quotes Julia Boffey as saying that the manuscript of the "Potter" appears to be the work of "someone used to writing [but] not a professional scribe" (Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 69). Based on the lack of ruling and other characteristics described by Boffey, this sounds right -- the scribe was literate, and indeed wrote quite frequently, but did not as a matter of course write books, and did not know the scribal methods of ruling the pages to assure an attractive result.
Turning to the manuscript's contents, Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 69, count no fewer than six different hands involved, although (based on Ohlgren/Matheson's folio count) the main hand is responsible for some 90% of the text, including the entire text of the "Potter" (the tenth of 17 items in the manuscript, based on the list on p. 70 of Knight/Matheson, and one of only two items in the book longer than three folio).
Several of the items are clearly for educating children. Others are religious -- one consists of four proverbs in English (at least two of which Richard Calle quoted to his wife in letters; Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 80). The texts of these appear, interestingly, to be from the Wycliffe translation -- which was, of course, very heterodox. It is also ironic, because "The Miracle of the Lady who Buried the Host" (Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #622) is a thoroughly unlikely justification of the doctrine of transubstantiation, which had been Catholic dogma since 1215 but which was denied by Wycliffe. All of these pieces, however, are short. The four longest pieces in the Cambridge manuscript are the most interesting:
* "The Adulterous Falmouth Squire" -- a tale known in eight copies, and seemingly intended as an exemplum, or story with a moral attached. The key story involves two brothers who die on the same day. The younger, who was innocent of fornication, is in heaven; the older, who was an adulterer, is in hell suffering extreme torture. Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2052/DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #3348. For what it's worth, we know that John Paston II had a daughter Constance out of wedlock (Curran, p. 81); she was his only known child; he never married; when she died, Margaret Paston left "to Custaunce [Constance], bastard daughter of John Paston, knyght [=John Paston II], when she is xx yer of age x marc" [10 marks, i.e. 6 and two thirds pounds, the equivalent of several years' wages for a laborer] (Paston/Davis-I, # 230, p. 388), By contrast, John II's younger brother John Paston III married and carried on the Paston line (though there is a hint that he too had an illegitimate child; Castor, p. 188). (To be sure, John II was engaged for a long time to Anne Haute, and Richmond, p. 235, regards this as a marriage, but eventually the relationship was dissolved.)
* "The Cheylde and hes Stepdame" -- Otherwise known as "The Frere/Friar and the Boy." This too was popular enough to be found in multiple manuscripts, and was printed by Wynken de Worde, perhaps around 1500. A more recent version is found on pp. 250-254 of Briggs. Asbjornsen and Moe had a Norwegian version known in translation as "Little Freddie and His Fiddle." Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #977/DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #1599; for more about it, see the notes on "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (II)."
This piece in particular is interesting in light of Calle's marital story, because it is a tale of a boy with a wicked stepmother, who one day shares his meal with a stranger and is rewarded with gifts (a bow that cannot miss, and a pipe that always makes the hearers dance, plus the power to cause his stepmother to break wind or, in cleaned-up versions, suffer laughing fits) which save him from his troubles. Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 85, say that the version in the Cambridge MS. has a different ending from the usual versions. It is fascinating to note that another copy of "The Friar and the Boy" was also bound with the Wynken de Worde print of the "Gest" (Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 117).
* "Robin Hode and the Potter"
* "The Kynge and the Barker." A unique text, printed by Child as an appendix to "King Edward the Fourth and a Tanner of Tamworth" [Child 273], it is one of the many sorts of tales of a commoner meeting the king in disguise. Child considers it to be ancestral to ballad #273, although he says that it has been much modified over time. It is Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #4168/DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #6691; for discussion of it, see the notes on "King Edward the Fourth...."
Ohlgren sees many reasons why Richard Calle might have liked the tale of the "Potter." Ohlgren/Matheson, pp. 25, 82, suggests that Calle had reason to enjoy the idea of a sheriff being outwitted, having himself suffered badly at the hands of a sheriff during the interminable conflicts between the Paston family and the other Norfolk landowners -- he even expressed a hope for a better sheriff in future. And on pp. 80-81 Ohlgren argues that Calle would have liked the image of Robin flirting with the sheriff's wife, a woman above his station, just as Calle courted Margery Paston. He also thinks this might have influenced Calle's decision to include "The Cheylde and the Stepdame."
On the other hand, the "Potter" also sees Robin Hood violating the standards of the merchant class by selling pots too cheaply (charging just three pennies rather than the usual five). Ohlgren/Matheson, pp. 88-89, thinks Calle would approve of this trickery, but I strongly doubt that a man from a family of grocers would like being so badly undercut. And on pp. 89-90, Ohlgren starts edging toward claiming Robin Hood learned game theory, or at least Adam Smith style economics, in the course of the ballad. This would perhaps be possible in the Tudor era, when the great joint stock companies were formed, but this goes against Ohlgren's claim of a Yorkist date.
The history of the manuscript after it left Calle's hands is unclear and not much help. According to Ohlgren/Matheson, p. 94, it was given to Cambridge in 1715; it was part of the library of Bishop John Moore of Ely which George I donated to Cambridge upon Moore's death. Moore had it ultimately from the library of Thomas Knyvett. Knyvett was a relative by marriage of Edmund Paston, a descendant of Margery Paston Calle's brother William. Ohlgren on this basis conjectures that the Paston family had the manuscript until at least 1603. This seems likely, but how it went from the Calles back to the Pastons is not known. One might suspect that it was in 1546, when Richard Calle's son John (who by then seems to have been a substantial property owner, having roughly the equivalent of a knight's fee, based on the numbers on p. 35 of Romanes) and his family released to Sir John Paston (who I suspect was Margery Paston Calle's grand-nephew) their rights in Fleghall Manor, which they had had since 1515 (Romanes, p. 36).
Bottom line: Although there are strong arguments on both sides, the manuscript of the "Potter" is at least as likely to be fifteenth as sixteenth century, making it very likely the oldest surviving Robin Hood manuscript. And it comes from East Anglia, not Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire, implying that the story might be older still. So there is a very good chance that this, not "Robin Hood and the Monk," is our oldest Robin Hood text.
One more curious note: Although the "Monk" and the "Potter" are in different manuscripts, there are significant similarities. Both contain "The Adulterous Falmouth Squire" and "The Lady Who Buried the Host." And both have versions, although not the same version, of the tale-type known as "The King and the Subject" (represented in the Child collection as "King Edward the Fourth and a Tanner of Tamworth" [Child 273]). In the "Potter" manuscript, it's "The King and the Barker"; in the "Monk" manuscript, it's "A Tale of King Edward and the Shepherd" (Severs/Hartung, pp, 1762, 1765-1767). Does this hint that there was some sort of common influence on the two books? It would certainly be interesting if there were such! - RBW
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