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In it we read how he visited his cousin, the Prioress of Kirklees Nunnery, for the purpose of being bled. She, who must have been soul-sister of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, took advantage of his defencelessness, and, after opening a vein, locked up the room and left him for a day.
Before dying, he blew his horn, and Little John, who was outside, burst open the doors just in time to hear his last words. The Garland is full of instances of Robin's nobility, and for delightful, invigorating reading may even be commended to the youth of to-day. It is a concise little history, beginning with the first day of his outlawry, and ending with the fatal scene at Kirklees.
Some hundreds of starving cloth-dressers assembled in the very field near Kirklees that sloped down from the house which Miss W afterwards inhabited, and were armed by their leaders with pistols, hatchets, and bludgeons, many of which had been extorted by the nightly bands that prowled about the country, from such inhabitants of lonely houses as had provided themselves with these means of self-defence.
Then he bade Little John make ready to go also, for he might perchance need aid in his journeying. So Little John and he took their leave of the others, and Robin Hood bade Will Stutely be the captain of the band until they should come back. Thus they came by easy stages and slow journeying until they reached the Nunnery of Kirklees.
A bow, said to have belonged to Little John, with the name of Nayler upon it, is now in the possession of a gentleman in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Sir George Armitage, of Kirklees Hall. See Mirror, vol. xix. p. 322. Its preparation has been entrusted to Mr.
Then he bade Little John make ready to go also, for he might perchance need aid in his journeying. So Little John and he took their leave of the others, and Robin Hood bade Will Stutely be the captain of the band until they should come back. Thus they came by easy stages and slow journeying until they reached the Nunnery of Kirklees.
Thus died Robin Hood, at Kirklees Nunnery, in fair Yorkshire, with mercy in his heart toward those that had been his undoing; for thus he showed mercy for the erring and pity for the weak through all the time of his living.
He considers that Robin Hood was one of the 'contrariantes, or malcontents, of the reign of King Edward II., and that he was still living in the early years of King Edward III.; but that his birth must 'be carried back into the reign of King Edward I., and fixed in the decennary period, 1285 to 1295; that he was born in a family of some station and respectability, seated at Wakefield or in villages around; that he, like many others, partook of the popular enthusiasm which supported the Earl of Lancaster, the great baron of those parts, who, having attempted in vain various changes in the government, at length broke out into open rebellion, with many persons, great and small, following his standard; that when the earl fell, and there was a dreadful proscription, a few persons who had been in arms not only escaped the hazards of battle, but the arm of the executioner; that he was one of these; and that he protected himself against the authorities of the time, partly by secreting himself in the depths of the woods of Barnesdale or of the forest of Sherwood, and partly by intimidating the public officers by the opinion which was abroad of his unerring bow, and his instant command of assistance from numerous comrades as skilled in archery as himself; that he supported himself by slaying the wild animals which were found in the forests, and by levying a species of blackmail on passengers along the great road which united London with Berwick, occasionally replenishing his coffers by seizing upon treasure as it was being transported on the road; that there was a self-abandonment and a courtesy in the way in which he proceeded, which distinguishes him from the ordinary highwayman; that he laid down the principle, that he would take from none but those who could afford to lose, and that, if he met with poor persons, he would bestow upon them some part of what he had taken from the rich: in short, that in this respect he was the supporter of the rights or supposed reasonable expectations of the middle and lower ranks a leveller of the times; that he continued this course for about twenty months April 1322 to December 1323 meeting with various adventures, as such a person must needs do, some of which are related in the ballads respecting him; that when, in 1323, the king was intent upon freeing his forests from such marauders, he fell into the king's power; that this was at a time when the bitter feeling with which the king and the Spencers had first pursued those who had shewn themselves such formidable adversaries, had passed away, and a more lenient policy had supervened the king, possibly for some secret and unknown reason, not only pardoned him all his transgressions, but gave him the place of one of the valets, porteurs de la chambre, in the royal household; which appointment he held for about a year, when the love for the unconstrained life he had led and for the charms of the country returned, and he left the court, and betook himself again to the greenwood shade; that he continued this mode of life we know not exactly how long; and that at last he resorted to the prioress of Kirklees, his own relative, for surgical assistance, and in that priory he died and was buried.
Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows run from basement to roof; and look down upon a long green slope of pasture-land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George Armitage's park. Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles apart, the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as if they enjoyed a different climate.
Thus it came that, on the morning of the fourth day, he called Little John to him, and told him that he could not shake the fever from him, and that he would go to his cousin, the prioress of the nunnery near Kirklees, in Yorkshire, who was a skillful leech, and he would have her open a vein in his arm and take a little blood from him, for the bettering of his health.