Fulk Fitz-Warin

From International Robin Hood Bibliography
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By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2013-07-12. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2018-11-25.

Fulk Fitz-Warin III (c. 1160-1258) was a Marcher Lord and heir to Whittington Castle in Shropshire, who in 1200, when he was denied the right to inherit the castle, went into rebellion against King John. He was pardoned and reinstated as lord of Whittington in 1203. His deeds and those of his ancestors were the subject of a 13th century Anglo-Norman narrative poem that was part ancestral romance, part outlaw tale. This is lost, but a very close 13th century prose paraphrase survives. There was also an ME metrical romance which was still extant in the mid-16th century, when John Leland made excerpts from it, supplementing it, where a couple of leaves were missing, with the Anglo-Norman version. The story of Fulk's outlawry, as told in these literary sources, is not only very interesting in it own right but also has many clear, sometimes very close, parallels to the early Robin Hood ballads, especially the Gest.

Literary sources

Anglo-Norman prose paraphrase

Editions

Translations
English

Leland's Collectanea

Studies and criticism

Brief mention

Background

Places named after or connected with Fulk Fitz-Warin