Simon Mattacks
speaker
2,981 appearances
17 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 13 Sep
Simon Mattacks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
His father, John Folville, served as MP for two counties and as a justice of Leicestershire to boot.
Meanwhile, Sir William Anne of the Cotterell family had received constableships and had served as keeper of castles under King Edward II.
With these types of advantages, the Folville and Cotterell men were adept at using good weapons, and they had the all-important relationships that greased the wheels of corruption.
Why would privileged men resort to crime, you might wonder?
According to Taran, there were many motivations, ranging from the payment of debts to revenge.
If you're thinking, this sounds like an episode of The Godfather, you're not wrong.
The two families eventually got by simply by scaring people with their reputations.
As such, they could easily threaten folks, even in writing, and extort them.
Taron points out that in Piers Plowman, William Langland referred to the Falkvilles, saying that they were using their own brand of law to fix it for false men.
One might ask how he could say something so complimentary about such bad people, but this epitomizes the shoulder shrugging about the outlaws during that time.
Langland's written celebration of their lawlessness was on trend with the general resentment of the establishment at the time.
Were any of these Folvilles or Cotterills the real Robin Hood?
There's no good evidence of that.
But, as Taron points out, his character was part of the mood at that time.
This was the world that produced the literary Robin Hood, if not the real one.
Britannica summed up that connection, saying that, the authentic Robin Hood ballads were the poetic expression of popular aspirations in the north of England during a turbulent era of baronial rebellions and agrarian discontent, which culminated in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
The theme of the free but persecuted outlaw enjoying the forbidden hunting of the forest and outwitting or killing the forces of law and order naturally appealed to the common people.
By the beginning of the 15th century, Robin Hood had become a popular subject of plays and festivities around the holiday of May Day.
It seems that this was where the character of Maid Marian became romantically linked to him, as Marian was already an established part of May Day lore on her own.
In fact, for hundreds of years, the French tradition had included a Robin des Bois, in English, Robin of the Woods, who was paired with a Marian.
Showing 1641–1660 of 2,981 · page 83 of 150
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