Hugh Latimer Preaches on Robin Hood Day.

"My father was a yeoman,” we are informed by Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worchester, “and had no lands of his own: only he had a farm of three or four pound by the year, at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep; and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness, with himself and his horse, while he came to the place that he should receive the king's wages. He kept me to school... He married my sisters with five pound or twenty nobles apiece... He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor."¹ It is a simple picture of humble virtue.

The times would test that inheritance in the son. He took religious orders in around 1521. A Catholic in office and moderate Protestant in practice he pleased none of the authorities entirely, many not at all. He managed to get both the approval of Cardinal Wolsey and Cromwell during each of their service as Chancellor to Henry VIII. While he supported the king's divorce, however, he plead with him to permit the publication of English language Bibles (a thing the king had yet to approve).

Upon the appointment of Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, Latimer soon had the support of yet another powerful person in the government under of Henry. He was appointed Bishop of Worchester in 1535. Still, religious matters in the realm were unsettled. The king wanted to take control of the church but had little idea what he wished to do with it except seize its wealth into his coffers.

Lattimer was a target in the struggle between prelates to salvage what they could. Neither did he alter his positions to please the king. Again, he was disatisfying all parties. He was forced to resign his Bishopric in 1539.

Though he had been offered back his Bishopric during the reign of Edward VI he declined and was merely a humble preacher when he delivered his famous sermons to the young king. He mildly called upon his audience to direct their charges as God would have them putting aside vestigial pagan practices and back alley behaviors.

In Latimer's sixth sermon to the young king, on April 12, 1549, as May Day (or as many called it “Robin Hood Day”) approached he inserted one of his many anecdotes from the life of the class from which he had sprung.

I came once myself to a place, riding on a journey homeward from London, and I sent word over night into the town that I would preach there in the morning, because it was holiday; and methought it was an holiday's work. The church stood in my way, and I took my horse and my company, and went thither. I thought I should have found a great company in the church, and when I came there, the church door was fast locked. I tarried there half an hour and more : at last the key was found, and one of the parish comes to me and says, " Sir, this is a busy day with us, we cannot hear you; it is Robin Hood's day. The parish are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood: I pray you let them not." I was fain there to give place to Robin Hood: I thought my rochet should have been regarded, though I were not; but it would not serve, it was fain to give place to Robin Hood's men. It is no laughing matter, my friends, it is a weeping matter, a heavy matter ; a heavy matter, under the pretence of gathering for Robin Hood, a traitor and a thief, to put out a preacher, to have his office less esteemed;... ²

The day was called Robin Hood Day to excuse the people going out into the countryside for rural sports. The main sport might be archery competitions of which Latimer wholly approved. But morris dances were also the rule, the dancers leading Maid Marion to the May Pole beneath which she might sit with a doll on her lap. The more wiley celebrants said the young maid who played the part was the Virgin Mary but no one was fooled.

In many places, it seems, the festivities continued through the night into morning. In his Anatomie of Abuses (1583), Phillipe Stubbes informs his puritan readership that he has

heard it credibly reported,... by men of great gravitie, credite, and reputation, that of fourtie, three score, or a hundred maides goyng to the woode ouer night, there have scarcely the thirde parte of them returned home againe undefiled.³

Presumably, the preacher ws aware himself of such rumors. In England, the puritans, especially, rejected the Catholic Church a the devil's church for its willingness to allow their parishoners to engage in such festivities as harmless traditions.

A Catholic monarch would soon be back on the throne who owed Catholic Emperor and Pope for their vigorous support. She would see Latimer burned at the stake for far bigger matters than Robin Hood Day though she had no desire to forbid the pagan practice. The Catholic Church had largely looked the other way in such matters. It would continue to be celebrated when the Church of England Protestants came permanently back into power, as well.

1  Sermons of Hugh Latimer (1844). George Elwes Corrie, ed. i.

2  Sermons, 208. “The Sixth Sermon Preached Before King Edward, April Twelfth, [1549.]”

3  Brand, John. Observations on Popular Antiquities (1900). 118.

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