"
The sheriff then proceeded to relate to his companion the adventure
of the abbot of Doubleflask (which some grave historians have
related of the abbot of Saint Mary's, and others of the bishop
of Hereford): how the abbot, returning to his abbey in company
with his high selerer, who carried in his portmanteau the rents
of the abbey-lands, and with a numerous train of attendants,
came upon four seeming peasants, who were roasting the king's
venison by the king's highway: how, in just indignation at
this flagrant infringement of the forest laws, he asked them
what they meant, and they answered that they meant to dine:
how he ordered them to be seized and bound, and led captive
to Nottingham, that they might know wild-flesh to have been destined
by Providence for licensed and privileged appetites, and not for
the base hunger of unqualified knaves: how they prayed for mercy,
and how the abbot swore by Saint Charity that he would show them none:
how one of them thereupon drew a bugle horn from under his
smock-frock and blew three blasts, on which the abbot and his
train were instantly surrounded by sixty bowmen in green:
how they tied him to a tree, and made him say mass for their sins:
how they unbound him, and sate him down with them to dinner,
and gave him venison and wild-fowl and wine, and made him pay
for his fare all the money in his high selerer's portmanteau,
and enforced him to sleep all night under a tree in his cloak,
and to leave the cloak behind him in the morning: how the abbot,
light in pocket and heavy in heart, raised the country upon
Robin Hood, for so he had heard the chief forester called
by his men, and hunted him into an old woman's cottage:
how Robin changed dresses with the old woman, and how the abbot rode
in great triumph to Nottingham, having in custody an old woman in a
green doublet and breeches: how the old woman discovered herself:
how the merrymen of Nottingham laughed at the abbot:
how the abbot railed at the old woman, and how the old woman
out-railed the abbot, telling him that Robin had given her food
and fire through the winter, which no abbot would ever do,
but would rather take it from her for what he called the good
of the church, by which he meant his own laziness and gluttony;
and that she knew a true man from a false thief, and a free
forester from a greedy abbot.
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