CHAPTER XI.
-- Tuck, the merry friar, who many a sermon made In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade .-- DRAYTON.
The baron, with some of his retainers and all the foresters, halted at daybreak in Sherwood forest.

The foresters quickly erected tents, and prepared an abundant breakfast of venison and ale.
"Now, Lord Fitzwater," said the chief forester, "recognise your son-in-law that was to have been, in the outlaw Robin Hood." "Ay, ay," said the baron, "I have recognised you long ago." "And recognise your young friend Gamwell," said the second, "in the outlaw Scarlet." "And Little John, the page," said the third, "in Little John the outlaw." "And Father Michael, of Rubygill Abbey," said the friar, "in Friar Tuck, of Sherwood forest.

Truly, I have a chapel here hard by, in the shape of a hollow tree, where I put up my prayers for travellers, and Little John holds the plate at the door, for good praying deserves good paying." "I am in fine company," said the baron.
"In the very best of company," said the friar, "in the high court of Nature, and in the midst of her own nobility.

Is it not so?
This goodly grove is our palace: the oak and the beech are its colonnade and its canopy: the sun and the moon and the stars are its everlasting lamps: the grass, and the daisy, and the primrose, and the violet, are its many-coloured floor of green, white, yellow, and blue; the may-flower, and the woodbine, and the eglantine, and the ivy, are its decorations, its curtains, and its tapestry: the lark, and the thrush, and the linnet, and the nightingale, are its unhired minstrels and musicians.
Robin Hood is king of the forest both by dignity of birth and by virtue of his standing army: to say nothing of the free choice of his people, which he has indeed, but I pass it by as an illegitimate basis of power.
He holds his dominion over the forest, and its horned multitude of citizen-deer, and its swinish multitude or peasantry of wild boars, by right of conquest and force of arms.

He levies contributions among them by the free consent of his archers, their virtual representatives.