The Gest of Robyn Hode says a knight pledged his lands to an abbot for £400 and Robin paid the debt; a 1598 play made Robin an earl robbed by his uncle

Robin Hood is a legend, and the Gest is the longest early ballad about him. It was printed by Wynkyn de Worde and in Antwerp around 1500 and was probably compiled between 1450 and 1475. In it, Sir Richard at the Lee owes the rich Abbot of St Mary's in York £400, with his lands as security. The Gest says he borrowed it after his son and heir killed a knight; other readers say the son killed a man in a joust, or that the money was a ransom. On the day the loan falls due he has ten shillings. The county justice and the sheriff will not help, and the abbot expects to take the lands. Robin lends him the £400, taking the Virgin Mary as surety, and the knight pays the abbot and keeps his land. Later Robin's men take £800 from a monk of St Mary's, twice the loan, and treat it as the Virgin's repayment. The Gest ends with Robin bled to death by his kinswoman, the Prioress of Kirklees. In February 1598 Philip Henslowe paid Anthony Munday for a Robin Hood play. In it, Robin is Robert, Earl of Huntington, outlawed through his steward and his uncle, the Prior of York. Munday was the first to make Robin an earl.