conception. He had originally intended to place the story at the time of the First Crusade, from 1090 to 1100; but he afterwards changed his mind, finding Richard Cœur de Lion a far more available personage than Robert of Normandy could have been made. The relations between Saxon and Norman belong to the earlier period. At the time of Richard's, or the Third, Crusade, nearly a century later, the two races had become far more welded together as one, and were ripe for making common cause against John to obtain the English laws of King Edward as Magna Charta.

The state of society at the outset, described in the conversation between Gurth and Wamba, is that of the reign of William Rufus, when the Norman Conquest was still recent, and the grandparents and parents of the existing generation had lived under Edward the Confessor. Cedric of Rotherwood and Ulrica of Torquilstone both show traces of having been invented to chime in with that period. An English-born queen had shared the throne of Henry I.; the wars of Stephen and the policy of Henry II. had put the Conquest into comparative oblivion; the soreness of the vanquished had passed away; and, by the time Richard reigned, there was national feeling among them.

Still his absence on the Crusade had caused great troubles at home, and the country was in a turbulent and lawless state. Early in his absence, his chancellor, William Longchamp, had been expelled by the intrigues of that mischievous person, John, who, with the French king, Philip Augustus, the bitterest foe of the House of Anjou, was working mischief against him, with all his might.

When Richard was shipwrecked on his way home, and taken captive by his enemy, Leopold of Austria, while endeavoring to pass through the Tyrol in the disguise of a merchant, it was long before his fate was known. John, letting his wish be father to the thought, actually did homage to Philip for the continental possessions of the House of Anjou, as if his brother were dead, and gave to France a large part of Normandy as a fee for the French King's support. The barons of Normandy, however, refused to believe in Richard's death, and repulsed the French sent to take possession of them. In England likewise, though John succeeded in seizing the castles of Windsor and Wallingford, the main body of the nation would not credit that the Lion-Heart had perished. Leopold made the prisoner over to the Emperor Henry VI.; and it was thus that Richard's fate became known. The Pope excommunicated the Duke, and threatened the Emperor, since the person of a Crusader was held to be sacred. Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, together with the chief prelates and nobles of England and Normandy, sent deputies to confer with the Emperor on the terms of his release.

The theory was that the Emperor was supreme over all the sovereigns of Europe; and Henry VI. convoked a council of the great vassals of the Empire, before which Richard consented to appear, to answer for his violent acts in the Crusade. There was a strong party in Germany in his favor, headed by the Duke of Saxony, whose mother was Richard's sister. The Emperor was avaricious; and Philip Augustus tried to outbid Queen Eleanor, and induce Henry to retain his captive; but the indignation of the princes of the Empire, the threats of the Pope, and

the 100,000 marks offered by Richard prevailed. For five months the Queen and the Chancellor Longchamp were engaged in collecting the amount of 70,000, the first instalment, on the arrival of which, Richard was released: they were paid over at Cologne. The Emperor sent tidings to Philip, that he was forced to release the King of England; and Philip is said to have sent the tidings to John in the billet, "Take care of yourself, for the devil is unchained."

John appears to have been actually in Normandy at the time; but he sent a priest, named Adam de St. Edmond, to try to raise the English against the King. The man betrayed his purpose at the table of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, who detained him, and sent warning to all the loyal nobles. Thus the brilliant account of the Ashby tournament, with the news arriving in the midst, is pure imagination; but it might so easily have been true, that we grieve to contradict both this and the King's arrival in disguise.

Immediately after landing at Sandwich, Richard made a public entry into London, where he was received with so much pomp and display of splendor that some Germans, who accompanied him, observed that if they had only known how much wealth there was in England, his ransom would have been doubled. His adventures as the Black Knight are in harmony with stories told of several of the English kings,-Edward I. and the outlaw, Edward IV. and the miller, Henry VIII. and the cobbler; and to make Cœur de Lion meet Robin Hood and Friar Tuck was perfectly irresistible to Scott. All must be grateful who can remember the ecstacy of the first perception of who Locksley really was, and who the merry clerk of Copmanhurst. And who was Robin Hood?

There is no documentary evidence respecting him. Neither Matthew Paris, nor any other chronicler of the twelfth century, has a word to say of him; and the rolls of the Earldom of Huntingdon show no record of any such person, as indeed the Earl of Huntingdon of that day was no other than David of Scotland, the Sir Kenneth of the Lion of the Talisman.

Yet popular ballads without number commemorated his exploits. He was said to be the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, and Maid Marian to have been a young lady of rank, who ran away from her home to become his wife. He lurked in Sherwood Forest with a band of followers, most of whom he had gained by exploits of personal bravery with bow or with cudgel. Such was his second in command, Little John, so called from his extraordinary height, Will Scarlet, and the rest, all supposed to have lived at large in Sherwood Forest, clad in Lincoln green, and making free with the King's deer. They stopped travellers on the way, robbing fat abbots and rich merchants, but assisting the poor, and often bursting forth to redress oppression or wrong, as in the case of Allan-a-Dale, who became one of their company. He was found lamenting in the forest that his true love was to be wedded by force to an old and hateful man, whereupon Little John and his band appeared in full array at the church, substituted Allan-a-Dale for the bridegroom, and carried the bride off to the good green wood.

The ballads are not particular as to dates. There are two in which Robin Hood performs feats of archery before King Henry and Queen Catherine, probably a composition when Henry V. and Catherine of France were the prominent sovereigns in English minds; but