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.

"Thus you see," added the sheriff, "how this villain perverts
the deluded people by making them believe that those who tithe
and toll upon them for their spiritual and temporal benefit are not
their best friends and fatherly guardians; for he holds that in
giving to boors and old women what he takes from priests and peers,
he does but restore to the former what the latter had taken from them;
and this the impudent varlet calls distributive justice.
Judge now if any loyal subject can be safe in such neighbourhood."