Robin Hood: Hero or Villain?

Ladies and gentlemen, the resolution we have before us today is: "be it resolved that Robin Hood was (contrary to popular belief) a felonious man. The information that I show later in my paper will prove this point. My first point is that according to pre-Robin laws, Robin would have been an outlaw. Secondly, I am going to prove that Robin's morals and values were inane, because he cared none for others, just for himself. Thirdly, I am going to strengthen my case against him by explaining why he was an outlaw in his own time. For my penultimate point, I will explain how we are giving today's youth a very bad role model! And for my last point, I will demonstrate how if Robin Hood were alive today, he would not be a revered hero, but an inmate in a maximum-security prison. Let me begin.

Nobody is quite sure when Robin Hood existed. Every website, book, or reference paper tells a different story. The earliest he could have lived is the middle 1200s, and the latest is around the early 1700s. But the laws in the pre-1600s were quite clear. An outlaw was: "A person who is in contempt of authority by refusing to become amenable to a court's jurisdiction" . Or, put in layman's terms, "Someone who is an enemy of authority by not wanting to listen to the court's power." So therefore, Robin was an enemy of authority, because in the legends that have made him famous, he has repeatedly fled from the scene of his crime, or cowardly ran from the Sheriff or even the Prince himself. For instance, in the very first story of Robin Hood, on how he became an outlaw to begin with, 'All made haste to leave the burning manor-house, most of which was now a blackening or smouldering ruin... ...Robin led the way.' And even though murder was also a strict sin according to laws, and morals, of the pre-17th century, I will give evidence of this later in my later cases. But since there were laws against murder, accidental or not, before Robin's time, I shall include a reference to it as well.