AS a new series of Robin Hood has recently started on the BBC, I read Mr Shaw’s letter with great interest.

Before coming to Hereford, I worked in Eton College Library. Dr Julian Luxford, who made the Robin Hood discovery, spent a great deal of time looking at one of Eton’s manuscripts. The “Robin Hood note” appears in a manuscript copy of Higden’s Polychronicon, a history book if you like, which was made in the early 15th century (c1420). The later manuscript addition referred to by Mr Shaw, dated to c1460, is located near a section of text dealing with the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), and so associates Hood’s activities with the reign of that king and thus somewhat earlier than Stanbury.

So if a bishop of Hereford was attacked by Robin – as is stated in one of the medieval ballads – he was of another vintage. The cathedral archives, which are more concerned with the doings of the cathedral than its bishops, possess nothing that says a bishop was roughed up by the man in Lincoln green. This manuscript note is probably perpetuating a legend rather than historical fact.

However, there is a very nice Stanbury connection which is worth pointing out. This copy of the Polychronicon once belonged to John Blacman, who was a Fellow of Eton between 1443 and 1457, and author of a memoir of King Henry VI. Blacman eventually joined the Carthusian monastery at Witham, and took the book with him. It did not reach Eton until 1913.

This manuscript has lots of interesting features, including an early sketch of Windsor Castle, but more importantly, it belonged to a friend of Henry VI. Stanbury, too, was a great friend of King Henry VI and this Eton connection is recorded in a series of stained glass windows in Hereford Cathedral.

The wonderful thing about medieval manuscripts is that new finds are always popping up.

You think that you know a volume and then it surprises you. I wonder how many other items lie undiscovered at Eton or in our very own Chained Library?

NICK BAKER, Librarian, Hereford Cathedral.