9th April, 2025 in History

The real Sheriff of Nottingham?

By Catherine Hanley

In the thirteenth century the law and finances of each English county were under the jurisdiction of a sheriff (the word comes from ‘shire-reeve’), who was appointed by the Crown. Catherine Hanley author of A Pale Horse discusses who was the real sheriff of Nottingham.

A shrievalty, as the position was known, could be extremely lucrative, depending on how it was approached. Each sheriff owed an annual shire payment to the national exchequer – basically the tax owed collectively by the whole county – but how he organised that payment was left up to him, and if he collected more than was owing (as often happened), he could keep the difference for himself. Bribes, ex gratia payments, gifts and favours were also not unknown.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that many sheriffs gained a reputation for being selfish and grasping, none more so than the most famous (fictional) postholder of all: the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood stories. Many suggestions have been put forward over the years as to the identity of the ‘real’ Robin Hood, but who might the real sheriff have been?

If we take the period in question to be the reign of King John – the most common setting for the legends – we can see that there are several plausible candidates. ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ wasn’t actually a dedicated position at the time, as responsibility for that county was rolled up into the overarching post of ‘High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests’, but Sherwood was one of those forests, tying the shrievalty firmly to the legend, so these sheriffs are a good place to start.

From 1208 to 1224 the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests was a man called Philip Mark (or Marc), whom we can certainly class in the ‘grasping’ category. Philip had come to England from Touraine (which had been one of the French territories belonging to Henry II, but which had been lost by King John to Philip Augustus of France) in 1204. He was a close adherent of John and immediately gained a reputation for cruel and unethical behaviour. During his tenure as sheriff he ‘accepted’ an annual fee of £5 – a substantial amount of money at the time – from the citizens of Nottingham in return for ‘his goodwill and the maintenance of their liberties’, which sounds suspiciously like a protection money racket. He was accused of robbery, false arrest, unjust disseisin (the wrongful confiscation of goods), and the occasional threat to burn people’s homes to the ground if they didn’t pay up. He was so intensely unpopular that he was actually mentioned by name in Magna Carta as being one of John’s cronies whom the barons specifically demanded be removed from his post.

Philip is therefore a good candidate to be the basis for the fictional Sheriff of Nottingham, but in fact there is another man whose claims might be even more credible. With such a large geographical area to cover, Philip delegated most of his duties in Nottinghamshire, and all of the accounting the the exchequer, to a deputy named Eustace of Lowdham. This means that it was Eustace who was tasked with raising the shire payment for that county by whatever means he deemed necessary.

Eustace is connected to both of the regions most closely associated with the Robin Hood stories. He hailed from Nottinghamshire (his birthplace of Lowdham lay inside the boundaries of Sherwood Forest), and in addition to his time as deputy sheriff there, he was also later the deputy sheriff of Yorkshire. In Yorkshire he notably pursued, captured and executed an outlaw named Robert of Wetherby, and it was also during his tenure there that the chattels of a fugitive named Robert Hod were confiscated.

During his career Eustace accumulated a great deal of wealth and property, and he was known to be less than honest, charging far more money than was necessary and keeping the difference once he’d accounted to the exchequer for what was owed. His character and actions, and those of Philip Mark, bear striking similarities to Robin Hood’s legendary antagonist, and it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that the fictional ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ is based on a later and half-remembered amalgamation of both.