Publication of this collection of essays on outlawry and organized criminality coincided with the release of a new cinematic version of the exploits of the most famous outlaw of them all, Robin Hood. It is testament to the enduring popularity of the outlaw figure and public fascination with the blurring of the boundaries between law and criminality, especially when set at a suitable remove in the medieval past, that box office big hitters such as Russell Crowe should seek to bring the ancient legend (or a reinterpretation of it) to a twenty-first-century audience. As a new generation discovers the outlaw tales, they should be encouraged to take up this volume for essential reference to their wider context. Several contributors use the richness of historical detail to bring real outlaw figures to life. Leading from the front, Paul Dalton investigates the elements of historical truth underpinning the lives of the companions and enemies of late eleventh-century outlaw, Hereward “the Wake,” whose resistance to William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066 was the stuff of legend long before the ballads of Robin Hood took root in popular imagination. Dalton’s essay demonstrates that in spite of the spin placed on Hereward’s heroic deeds and obfuscating romantic literary conventions, the sources for the tales of his life and actions have more credibility than normally presumed, with wider implications not only for the construction and function of such a legend but our understanding of the Norman invasion and the political and tenurial conflict that underlay it. Other essays play out against a less ostentatious or significant historical backdrop but are redolent of the details of individuals that microcosmic attention brings. Hans Kleineke’s case study of the criminal proclivities of four members of “the gentry” highlights the varying circumstances that gave rise to lawbreaking and lawlessness (and the reactions of the agencies of law enforcement) in the frontier region that comprised medieval Cornwall and the very different attitudes and temperaments of the historical actors involved. For Neil Jamieson, war provided a theater in which combatants were either themselves conscripted criminals and outlaws or, in pursuit of the crown’s territorial or dynastic ambitions, behaved like them. His evidence shows how professional soldiers were hardened to violence and often difficult to control when not engaged in conflict, gaining a reputation at home and abroad for disruptive and antisocial behavior. Consequently, they were loathed by and alienated from civilian communities. The ambiguous nature of contemporary attitudes toward criminality is presented by John Appleby in his study of piracy in Elizabethan England and Wales. Opportunistic and essentially random plundering in local waters is contrasted with more organized ventures and privateering on a transatlantic scale. He draws the two together to reveal not only ambivalence toward the condemnation and punishment of pirates but that both community and state were guilty of sponsoring piratical activities under notional flags of private enterprise and entrepreneurialism or at least sanctioning them on the grounds of “foreign policy” or a redistribution of wealth.

Wisely, the editors balance essays focusing on the activities of outlaws and criminals themselves and the ambiguousness of the response to them with others that concentrate on the legal system and aspects of governance, namely, the judicial mechanisms and personnel intended to deal with the perceived threat to established law and order. Appleby’s essay dovetails appropriately with the issues of exemption from capital punishment raised by Candice Gregory-Abbott in relation to treatment of criminals by the competing jurisdictions of church and state. While “sacred outlaws” is rather overstating the status of those who sought sanctuary or benefit of clergy or enjoyed other legal concessions, the harshness of the legal system could certainly be tempered for those wrongdoers who knew the relevant loopholes. Moreover, as Richard Gorski explains, the antihero of the Robin Hood tales, the medieval sheriff, was a more complex character than he might otherwise appear on the screen. In the main, sheriffs were overburdened royal officials for whom preservation of the peace and the arrest of malefactors were only a small part of their duties. Not all sheriffs, of course, were up to the job, and (as Kleineke also shows) there existed a criminal element amid officialdom too, though periodic investigations tended to root out the corrupt, who were duly replaced.

Superficially, this volume of essays proclaims the triumph of historical fact over fiction, yet it is not as simple as that, as in essence it is the fiction that gives life to and fuels the fact. It also serves, more significantly, to convey an ideology of reform and communicate to historians the strange admixture of satisfaction and complaint felt by contemporaries. As Gorski highlights, the Robin Hood stories are important in the fourteenth century for their commentary on the standards and expectations of medieval justice. Anthony Pollard takes this further in a penetrating essay addressing the impact of the stories in the fifteenth century. He argues that these stories had a powerful influence on the men and women of all classes (gentle and nongentle) in medieval and early modern England who read, listened to, or witnessed dramatic presentations of them, but particularly represent an ideal of a better world subscribed to by “the middling sort.” The Robin Hood stories, he maintains, were particularly influential in shaping the ideology of the commons (whose perception of themselves in the political world has been paid scant attention by proponents of a “new constitutional history” of England) for whom they not only lent legitimacy to direct action undertaken in defense of the common good but also provided a grounding for rejection of the established legal order. Printed media cannot normally hope to compete with the big screen for attention when conveying a historical message, but this compelling new volume certainly provides a valuable context and should be included with any special-edition DVD of the movie.