“Their arrows finely pair’d, for timber, and for feather,

With birch and brazil piec’d to fly in any weather;

And shot they with the round, the square, or forked pile,

The loose gave such a twang, as might be heard a mile.

And of these archers brave, there was not any one,

But he could kill a deer his swiftest speed upon,

Which they did boil and roast, in many a mighty wood,

Sharp hunger the fine sauce to their more kingly food.”

——, Michael Drayton, “Song XXVI,” Poly-Olbion (1622)

Introduction

In his “Life of Robin Hood,” written in 1795, Joseph Ritson remarked that

“[the outlaws’] life, in short, and domestic economy, of which no authentic particulars have even been traditionally preserved, are more easyly [sic] to be guessed at than described. They have, nevertheless, been elegantly sketched by the pen of an excellent, though neglected poet.”[1]

Ritson’s “neglected poet” was Michael Drayton, and the poem from which he quoted at length was “Song XXVI” from Poly-Olbion, the first part of which was published in 1612 and with a continuation in 1622.[2]

Drayton’s poem does indeed describe Robin Hood’s “domestic economy” but, unnoticed by Ritson, was an allusion to the early modern global economy. Drayton stated that Robin Hood’s arrows were made from “birch and brazil” and “pieced to fly in any weather.”[3] To a casual modern reader, this line evokes a purely insular, romanticized English pastoral scene. However, an analysis of the material culture embedded in this verse exposes a chronological and geographical oddity. Drayton’s text retroactively equips a thirteenth-century provincial yeoman outlaw with paubrasilia echinata (brazilwood)—an exceptionally dense, red-dye-producing tropical hardwood harvested from the Atlantic Forest of South America and strictly protected under a Portuguese Crown monopoly. The casual insertion of this exotic timber into a poem celebrating English national folklore demonstrates that by the early seventeenth century—just over a century after Pedro Álvares Cabral’s landing in Brazil in 1500­—Brazilian timber exports were already well integrated into the global economy.

Brazilwood is the principal concern of this essay, but it was not the only imported material with which Drayton equipped his outlaw. Robin’s bow was made from “Spanish yew,” a foreign timber that early modern commentators valued more highly than native English yew. Read together, the bow and arrows transform quintessentially English martial equipment into an international assemblage: Spanish bow wood, English birch, and a colonial Brazilian hardwood carried into Europe through Atlantic commerce. Drayton’s description therefore does more than insert one anachronistic commodity into the medieval greenwood; it systematically refabricates the material culture of England’s national outlaw using goods available through the colonial trading networks of his own time.

The Early Modern Trade in Brazilwood

Brazilwood (pau-brasil) is a hardwood and is the common name given to the species Paubrasilia echinata. It is native only to Brazil.^[4] Before Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in what is now Brazil on 22 April 1500, the land’s indigenous people had been using brazilwood for centuries. The name that the indigenous Tupí-Guaraní people gave it was ibirapitanga (meaning, in English, “reddish wood”) and they primarily used its heartwood as a dye.[5] This ibirapitanga received the name of Brazilwood when Portuguese explorers, sailing down the Brazilian coast, found that certain coastal regions were heavily populated with this reddish wood and, as a result, they combined two words: pau (“wood”) brasilia (“ember”).

Particularly abundant regions in which brazilwood grew were Cabo Frio, Bahia, and Pernambuco.[6] At first, the harvesting of the wood was less than organised. Portuguese traders (or raiders), using indigenous labour, extracted supplies of the timber and exported it back to Europe. For the first few years, the land that Cabral had called Ilha de Vera Cruz could hardly have been called a colony. There was no office of viceroy. There were no government buildings or even tax collectors at this early point. The only thing that the Portuguese Crown did to claim this land was to send, between 1530–32, Martim Afonso de Sousa on an expedition to control the coast and facilitate traders’ extraction of timber supplies. Merchants and navigators were enjoined by the Portuguese king, João III,

“to always obey [de Sousa] in everything that he commands them as if I myself ordered them.”[7]

De Sousa’s mission was to protect Portuguese commerce, and the land itself, from raids by French privateers, eager to establish a foothold on this newly found land.[8] The French government’s disregard of the Treaty of Tordesillas (which divided the new world between the Spanish and Portuguese Empires) and their piracy along the region’s coast, convinced the Portuguese Crown to establish a colony.

The Portuguese government subsequently established the Captaincy system in 1534.[9] Large tracts of land were rented out to noblemen and wealthy merchants, who would be given the rank of “Captain and Governor,” and they were free to develop their domains as they saw fit. In the deeds granted to Fernão de Loronha’s consortium of merchants and noblemen, specific reference was made to their right to harvest brazilwood, as the following extract from a royal letter to one of these captains, Duarte Coelho, illustrates:

Likewise, it pleases me [the king], concerning the care that the said captain and governor and his successors take to guard and preserve the brazilwood that might be in said land, to grant and reward him by law and inheritance forever a twentieth part of what the wood that is brought to this kingdom [Portugal] yields in liquid profits for me outside of all costs; and the account of the profit will be made in the House of Mines in the city of Lisbon where the said brazilwood is to come.[10]

Although at first the land’s indigenous people had been made to harvest brazilwood, the royal letters issued to the captains allowed them to bring African slaves into the colony. The slaves were brought in great numbers; it is estimated that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alone, 700,000 slaves were brought into Brazil.[11] After a brief period of indigenous forced labour, it was African slaves who undertook the physical task of logging.[12] A thriving export trade in brazilwood soon followed, with merchants in the Low Countries, France, England, and Italy willing to pay significant sums for its import. So extensive did the trade become that, when, in 1534, the Portuguese Crown began leasing land under the captaincy system, the name of the colony changed to Terra do Brasil. Another word, Brasileiro (“Brazilian”), emerged which referred to a person who extracted and traded in brazilwood.[13]

Although “brazil” had earlier been applied to several red dyewoods (e.g. sappanwood), the extensive contemporary importation of South American brazilwood, combined with its documented use in European arrow-making, strongly suggests that Drayton’s “brazill” referred to the commodity exported from Portuguese America which, by the late sixteenth century, was one of the principal commodities traded between Portugal and England.^[14] Spellings throughout the period between 1500 and 1650 included “brasel,” “brazil,” or “brasell.”[15] All three words could refer to either the colony or the timber taken from the colony.

But naming conventions aside, contemporary sources reveal a substantial number of imports. For example, in November 1527 the Mayor of Southampton reported to Cardinal Wolsey in London that a ship had recently arrived “laden with brasel [brazilwood].”[16] In November 1567, the London Port Books reveal that one of the city’s merchants, Randal Hankin, imported “3½ tuns Gascony wine net 3 tuns 1 hhd 9s 9d, ½ tun vinegar, 1 tun turpentine, 40 cwt brazil, 20 pcs resin [total value] £81 3s 4d.”^[17] To put the cost of the entire shipment in context, Hankin’s goods were worth £19,336 in 2026 values. In 1536, another Mayor of Southampton reported to Thomas Cromwell that a ship had again docked in his city carrying, among other things, brazilwood.[18] On 13 March 1557, William Rowlandson imported a shipment of 16,000 lb (7,257kg) aboard John Goddard’s ship, the value of which was £366 13s. 4d.[19] The shipment would be valued roughly at £85,547 in 2026.

Brazilwood was not the only South American timber that England imported. Logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum), from Spanish America, was imported into England on a large scale after its discovery in the late sixteenth century.[20] Just like brazilwood, logwood was a hardwood which was useful in construction works; it also yielded a blood-red dye and was useful for the textile trade. One imperial ton of logwood was valued at £100 when it began to be imported into England at the dawn of the seventeenth century.[21] Such import records are hardly atypical; they reveal that long before Drayton’s time, a significant supply chain was already operating across English ports.

Brazilwood, and other timbers from various European countries’ colonies, needed to be imported into England because supplies of native timber were thought to be decreasing on a dramatic scale.[22] Although Richard III is sometimes said to have ordered a general plantation of yew trees in England to help build up a national stockpile of bows for the use of English archers, no contemporary authority for this claim has been identified. His Parliament instead sought to remedy the shortage of bow wood by requiring Italian merchants to import ten bowstaves with every butt of Malmsey or Tyre wine.[23] One of the first verifiable signs of the national concern over the depletion of timber resources occurred in 1543. The preamble to the Acte for the Preservacion of Woodes drew attention to

The great Decay of Timber and Woods universally within this his Realm of England to be such, that unless speedy Remedy in that Behalf be provided, there is great and manifest Likelihood of Scarcity and Lack, as well of Timber for building, making, repairing and maintaining of Houses and Ships, and also for Fewel and Fire-wood.[24]

The perception that the nation was fast losing its timber supplies did not dissipate over the course of the century. In the next century, James I’s attention was also drawn to the question of the “decay” of woods and depletion of timber supplies.[25] So preoccupied with what might be called the national timber question, James I commissioned Robert Cecil, in 1607, to undertake a survey of British woodland and catalogue the timbers growing therein.[26] Parts of Drayton’s Poly-Olbion itself have been interpreted as an intervention into contemporary debates surrounding woodland management.[27] By the early seventeenth century, then, the brazilwood trade, as well as imports from Europeans’ American colonies, had matured to such a degree that this South American timber was no longer a rare curiosity, but an established bulk commodity within English commercial and manufacturing networks.

Brazilwood Arrows and a Spanish Yew Bow

The uses to which brazilwood was put once it arrived in England were many and varied. That its heartwood was used to produce red dye is beyond doubt; an act of Henry VIII’s parliament passed in 1533 specifically prohibited dyers from using “brasell” on woollen cloth, hats, or caps, and required scarlet to be produced with “grain” (kermes) alone.[28] The prohibition was essentially a form of quality control, the reason being that the cheaper and less durable brazilwood dye could be used to imitate costly kermes-based scarlet, thereby deceiving purchasers. State papers, also from the reign of Henry VIII, reveal that some people also used the timber in the framing of roofs.[29]  Yet, as Drayton’s words in “Song XXVI” indicate, brazilwood likewise found its way into the workshops of English fletchers. Robin Hood’s arrows, he tells us, were formed “with birch and brazil, pieced to fly in any weather.”

In giving Robin Hood arrows pieced with brazilwood, Drayton’s Robin Hood was carrying on a tradition that the indigenous people of Brazil had followed, as Jean de Lery revealed in Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre de Brésil (1578).[30] Comparable practices were adopted by European fletchers and Drayton’s description reflects early modern fletching knowledge, probably mediated through Ascham or the description of the technical process of fletching represented in his Toxophilus. Ascham stated that the larger part of an arrow should be made from a lighter wood but that this could be “pieced” with a native hardwood, such as holly (or in Drayton’s case, birch) to make a formidable weapon:

Peecynge of a shafte with brasell and holie, or other heauy woodes, is to make y^e ende compasse heauy with the fethers in fliyng, for the stedfaster shotyng […] Sūme vse to peece theyr shaftes in the nocke wyth brasel, or holye, to counterwey, with the head, and I haue seue sūme for the same purpose, bore an hole a lytle bineth the nocke, and put leade in it.[31]

(Piecing a shaft with brazilwood and holly, or other heavy woods, is done to make the end around the feathers heavy in flight, so that the shot is steadier. […] Some use brazilwood or holly to piece their shafts at the nock, to counterbalance the head; and I have seen some, for the same purpose, bore a small hole a little beneath the nock and put lead into it.)

The “nock” of an arrow is the notched rear end of the shaft that receives the bowstring. And it was not only English fletchers who made use of brazilwood for their arrows’ nocks. The Ottoman Empire, too, imported vast quantities of brazilwood for this very purpose.[32] Arrows pieced with brazilwood were not only used as weapons but were also the principal wood used for recreational shooting.[33]

“Brasell” was no good for making the bows, however, and according to Ascham, for this purpose only the yew tree would do:

As for brasell, Elme, Wych, and Asshe, experience doth proue them to be but meane for bowes, and so to conclude Ewe of all other thynges, is that, wherof perfite shootynge woulde haue a bowe made.[34]

(As for brazilwood, elm, wych elm, and ash, experience proves them to be only mean materials for bows. And so, to conclude, of all materials, yew is that from which the perfect archer would have a bow made.)

The yew that Ascham recommended did not necessarily need to be from an English forest. In fact, contemporaries thought that the best, and certainly the most prestigious, yew wood came from Spain.[35] English yew wood was generally considered inferior to that which grew in warmer climes because it grew too quickly and misshapen in English forests. The difference in quality was reflected in the prices at which manufactured bows retailed. In 1566, the price of foreign yew bows was 6s 8d (approximately £80 in modern values). In the same year, bows manufactured from English yew wood retailed at 2s.[36]

Drayton’s Robin Hood did not use a bow made of English yew. In fact, he equipped Robin Hood with another international import, for his bow is made of “Spanish yew.” This was not the first time that Drayton had equipped his medieval English yeoman with Spanish yew bows. In his “Ballad of Agincourt,” Drayton equips the English archers with Spanish yews:

Well it thine age became,

O noble Erpingham,

Which did the signal aim

          To our hid forces;

When from a meadow by,

Like a storm suddenly,

The English archery

          Stuck the French hourses.

With Spanish yew so strong,

Arrows a clothyard long,

That like to serpents stung,

          Piercing the weather.[37]

(Drayton’s “Ballad of Agincourt” should not be confused with his much longer narrative poem titled “The Battle of Agincourt” which, incidentally, contains a reference to Robin Hood.)[38] That Drayton equipped the outlaw with a prestigious and expensive Spanish bow might be taken as tentative evidence of the gentrification of the Robin Hood legend, the development of which has been highlighted by Stephen Knight. Although in Knight’s conception of gentrification Robin Hood is usually required to be cast as an aristocrat, here a type of gentrification occurs through his use of prestigious and expensive weaponry.[39] Although the English long bow made of yew has often been characterised as a peasants’ weapon, Robin instead uses a tool that would have been found in the estates of the nobility.[40] Drayton strips Robin Hood of his insular, medieval reality and the outlaw is, in a small way, transformed from a local legend into a recipient of goods obtainable in the early modern globalised market.

Conclusion

Drayton’s Poly-Olbion was an idealised survey of the landscape and the historical myths and legends of the British Isles.[41] He located the figure of Robin Hood firmly in the popularity of the “tales” of Robin Hood, specifically the medieval ballad tradition:

In this our spacious isle I think there is not one

But he hath heard some talk of him [Robin Hood] and Little John:

And to the end of time, the tales shall ne’er be done,

Of Scarlock, George a Green, and Much the Miller’s son,

Of Tuck, the merry friar, which many a sermon made,

In praise of Robin Hood, the outlaws, and their trade.[42]

The tales which shall ne’er be done are also located firmly in the English landscape. Nottingham—quite rightly for a Robin Hood poem—receives a reference, as does Mansfield, near Sherwood Forest. Yet the borders of Drayton’s idealised Sherwood and England extend beyond the medieval period. Robin Hood’s signature weaponry quietly depends upon the products of early modern Portuguese colonialism.

This apparently incidental anachronism is not a deliberate falsehood from Drayton by which he intended to deceive readers about the economic reality of the medieval past; it is, rather, a projection of the contemporary commercial realities of Drayton’s own time onto his imagined medieval past. Drayton achieves what might be called “commodity-fetishistic effect.” The theory of commodity fetishism stems from Karl Marx’s Capital (1867, 1885, and 1894). It describes a process whereby, in any given commodity, the social and economic relationships behind its production are obscured from view.[43] While it might seem overly ambitious to retroactively apply this concept to a seventeenth-century poem, aspects of the theory do help to illuminate the understanding. Drayton’s finished commodity is an arrow that is pieced with brazilwood. It appears as a natural part of an idealised English landscape while indigenous and slave labour, colonial resource exploitation, and Atlantic shipping disappear from readers’ views.

Joseph Ritson was therefore more perceptive than he perhaps realised when he praised Drayton’s account of Robin Hood’s “economy,” although this article has highlighted the commercial economy of Portuguese colonial commerce and international shipping. Drayton’s description should not be treated as a deliberate attempt to deceive his readers; the use of brazilwood in a variety of industries, including fletching, seems to have been so commonplace that, when Drayton imagined the medieval English past, Spanish yew and brazilwood had become a naturalised part of the English landscape. The borders of medieval England thus extended, in both temporal and geographical terms, across the Atlantic and through several centuries.

References

[1] Joseph Ritson, Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, 2 vols (London: T. Egerton and J. Johnson, 1795), I, p. vii.

[2] I am grateful for the pre-publication comments on this article that were kindly given on a first draft by Prof. Alexander L. Kaufman. This is the text of a paper that was delivered to the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, 9-10 October 2026.

[3] Michael Drayton, ‘Poly-Olbion’, in The Poetical Works of Michael Drayton, ed. by Robert Anderson (Edinburgh: Mundell and Son, 1793), pp. 514–515.

[4] Cameron J. G. Dodge, ‘A Forgotten Century of Brazilwood: The Brazilwood Trade from the Mid-Sixteenth to Mid-Seventeenth Century’, E-Journal of Portuguese History, 16: 1 (2018), pp. 1-27

[5] Fernando B. Matos and Patrícia da Rosa, ‘Brazilwood: The Tree That Named a Country’, Google Arts & Culture https://artsandculture.google.com/story/AwXR_aWbDMKdUg [accessed 28 July 2026].

[6] Bernardino José de Sousa, O Pau-brasil na História Nacional, 2nd edn (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1978), pp. 45–49.

[7] ‘The Royal Letter Granting Powers in Brazil to Martim de Sousa,’ in A Documentary History of Brazil, ed. by E. Bradford Burns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), pp. 29–31 (p. 30).

[8] Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil, trans. Arthur Brackell, 2^nd edn (Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 11.

[9] See John L. Vogt, ‘Fernão de Loronha and the Rental of Brazil in 1502: A New Chronology’, The Americas, 24: 2 (1967), pp. 153-159

[10] ‘Royal Letters to Duarte Coelho’, in A Documentary History of Brazil, ed. by E. Bradford Burns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), pp. 33–50 (p. 40).

[11] E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil, 3^rd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 43.

[12] Dodge, ‘A Forgotten Century of Brazilwood’, p. 14.

[13] Matos and Rosa, ‘Brazilwood: The Tree That Named a Country’.

[14] V. M. Shillington and A. B. Wallis Chapman, The Commercial Relations of Portugal and England (London: Routledge, 1907), p. 171.

[15] ‘The English’, in A Documentary History of Brazil, ed. by E. Bradford Burns (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), pp. 51–54 (p. 51).

[16] ‘Henry VIII: November 1527, 16-30’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 4, 1524-1530, ed. by J. S. Brewer (London, 1875), British History Online [accessed 28 July 2026].

[17] ‘London Port Book, 1567-8: Nos. 100-199 (Nov–Dec, 1567)’, in The Port and Trade of Early Elizabethan London: Documents, ed. by Brian Dietz (London, 1972), British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol8/pp14-28 [accessed 28 July 2026]. Approximate modern monetary equivalents have been calculated using The National Archives, ‘Currency Converter: 1270–2017’ [accessed 27 September 2026]. The resulting figures are intended only as a general guide to historical values.

[18] ‘Henry VIII: November 1536, 16-20’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 11, July-December 1536, ed. by James Gairdner (London, 1888), British History Online [accessed 28 July 2026].

[19] The London Customs Accounts: Part IV: The Tudor Dynasty (1485-1560). Number 25: 3 & 4 Philip and Mary (1556/57) – 5 & 6 Philip and Mary)/1 Elizabeth (1558/59), ed. by Stuart Jenks (Lübeck: Hanseatic History Association, 2024), p. 304. Further records from the London Port Books can be accessed in the following place: ‘London Customs Accounts’, Medieval England Maritime Project [accessed 29 July 2026].

[20] For an excellent illustrated précis of the history of logwood, see Wayne P. Armstrong, ‘Logwood and Brazilwood: Trees That Spawned Two Nations’, Wayne’s Word (1992) [accessed 26 September 2026]. The webpage is adapted from Armstrong’s longer journal article: Wayne P. Armstrong, ‘Logwood: The Tree That Spawned a Nation’, Pacific Horticulture, 53.1 (1992), 38–43.

[21] Archibald Robertson Gibbs, British Honduras: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Colony from its Settlement, 1670 (London: Sampson Low, et al., 1883), p. 224.

[22] Andrew McRae, ‘Tree-Felling in Early Modern England: Michael Drayton’s Environmentalism’, Review of English Studies, n. s. 63: 260 (2012), pp. 410–30 (p. 412).

[23] Della Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), p. 210, observes that claims concerning an order issued under Richard III for the planting of yews ‘have never been substantiated by modern researchers’. Richard’s surviving legislation instead concerned the compulsory importation of bowstaves: 1 Ric. III, c. 11.

[24] ‘An Acte for the preservacion of Woodes’ (35 Hen. VIII, c. 17), in The Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols (London: Record Commission, 1810–28; repr. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1963), III, pp. 977–79.

[25] James I, ‘By the King: To All Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Other Our Loving Subjects, to Whom It May Appertain’ (1 August 1611), in Arthur Standish, New Directions of Experience Authorized by the Kings Most Excellent Maiesty, as May Appeare, for the Increasing of Timber and Fire-Wood ([London?: Nicholas Okes], 1616), sig. A2r–v. For the proclamation in its separately issued broadside form, see James I, By the King. To All Noblemen, Gentlemen, and Other Our Louing Subiects to Whome It May Appertaine ([London?]: [William Stansby], 1611), STC (2nd edn) 8470.7; ESTC S477956; EEBO 2441:7.

[26] N. D. G. James, A History of English Forestry (Oxford,: Blackwell, 1981), p. 166.

[27] McRae, ‘Tree Felling in Early Modern England’, p. 410.

[28] ‘An Act concerning the true dying of Woollen Cloth’ (24 Hen. VIII, c. 2), in The Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols (London: Record Commission, 1810–28; repr. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1963), III, pp. 419–20.

[29] ‘Henry VIII: November 1540, 11-20’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 16, 1540-1541, ed. by James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie (London, 1898), British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol16/pp108-120 [accessed 28 July 2026].

[30] Jean de Lery, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, trans. Janet Whatley (University of California Press, 1992), p. 113.

[31] Roger Ascham, Toxophilus the Schole of Shootinge Contayned in Two Bookes (London: Edouardi VVhytchurch, 1545), p. 15.

[32] ‘Flight Archery: Going the Distance’, Archery Historian [accessed 28 July 2026].

[33] Jonathan Davies, ‘Painful Pastime versus Present Pleasure: Tudor Archery and the Law’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 85: 343 (2007), pp. 224–236 (p. 232).

[34] Ascham, Toxophilus, p. 5.

[35] John Lowe, The Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland (London: MacMillan, 1897), p. 131.

[36] Davies, ‘Painful Pastime versus Present Pleasure: Tudor Archery and the Law’, p. 232.

[37] Michael Drayton, ‘The Ballad of Agincourt’, in The Poetical Works of Michael Drayton, ed. by Robert Anderson (Edinburgh: Mundell and Son, 1793), pp. 586–587.

[38] Michael Drayton, ‘The Battle of Agincourt’, in in The Poetical Works of Michael Drayton, ed. by Robert Anderson (Edinburgh: Mundell and Son, 1793), pp. 1–25 (p. 7).

[39] See Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003)

[40] Lowe, The Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland, p. 21: Lowe draws attention to the fact that the “Inventory of the Goods and Chattels of S^r Jno Byron the elder, Knight, taken at Mansfyld” contained “four Spanish viewe bowes w^th a quiver and arrows” valued at 40s. On the bow’s traditional social association with the commoner rather than the mounted aristocratic warrior, see Felicity Brown, ‘A Chivalric Show of Civic Virtue: The Society of Prince Arthur’s Archers’, Review of English Studies, 73 (2022), pp. 42–58 (p. 51), who describes archery as historically ‘the remit of the yeoman and not the knight’; see also A. T. Hatto, ‘Archery and Chivalry: A Noble Prejudice’, Modern Language Review, 35 (1940), pp. 40–54.

[41] See Stephen Knight’s commentary: Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, pp. 67–69 and Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 136–139.

[42] Drayton, ‘Poly-Olbion’, p. 514.

[43] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. I, chap. 1, § 4, ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof’, Marxists Internet Archive [accessed 1 August 2026].