and honorable character of this man, and desired to have
some personal knowledge of him. He succeeded in surprising Gordon
with a superior force, and engaged him in single combat, forbidding
any of his own followers to interfere. They fought a long time, and
the prince was so filled with admiration of the courage and spirit of
his antagonist, that he promised him life and fortune on condition of
his surrendering. To these terms Gordon acceded, his estates were
restored, and Edward found him ever after an attached and faithful
servant.[9] The story is romantic, and yet Adam Gordon was not made
the subject of ballads. _Caruit vate sacro_. The contemporary
historians, however, all have a paragraph for him. He is celebrated
by Wikes, the Chronicle of Dunstaple, the Waverley Annals, and we know
not where else besides.

But these theories are open to an objection stronger even than the
silence of history. They are contradicted by the spirit of the
ballads. No line of these songs breathes political animosity. There is
no suggestion or reminiscence of wrong, from invading Norman, or from
the established sovereign. On the contrary, Robin loved no man in the
world so well as his king. What the tone of these ballads would have
been, had Robin Hood been any sort of partisan, we may judge from the
mournful and indignant strains which were poured out on the fall of De
Montfort. We should have heard of the fatal field of Hastings, of the
perfidy of Henry, of the sanguinary revenge of Edward,--and not of
matches at archery and encounters at quarter-staff, the plundering of
rich abbots and squabbles with the sheriff. The Robin Hood of our
ballads is neither patriot under ban, nor proscribed rebel. An outlaw
indeed he is, but an "outlaw for venyson," like Adam Bell, and one who
superadds to deer-stealing the irregularity of a genteel
highway-robbery.

Thus much of these conjectures in general. To recur to the particular
evidence by which Mr. Hunter's theory is supported, this consists
principally in the name of Robin Hood being found among the king's
servants shortly after Edward the Second returned from his visit to
the north of his dominions. But the value of this coincidence depends
entirely upon the rarity of the name.[10] Now Hood, as Mr. Hunter
himself remarks, is a well-established hereditary name in the reigns
of the Edwards. We find it very frequently in the indexes to the
Record Publications, and this although it does not be