ABSTRACT
Eustace the Monk, like Fulk Fitzwarin, flourished in the time of King John. In legend he takes on the combined roles of Fulk, Friar Tuck and John de Rampaygne, for he was at once a renegade monk, an outlawed knight and a distinguished magician. In spite of these relations, however, he was not an Englishman (though he was long in the service of the English king), and it is only because some of his adventures were so similar to those of Robin Hood that he deserves notice here. Indeed Michel, who first printed his story, refers to him as ‘a sort of Robin Hood of the Boulonnais’. In fact, his story is if anything nearer to the legend of Fulk Fitzwarin than that of Robin Hood, for it was as a knight fighting the tyranny of his feudal overlord (in his case Rainald of Dammartin, the famous Count of Boulogne) that he won his fame as an outlaw. As in the case of Fulk, moreover, a good deal of the story is devoted to recounting adventures on a larger scale than those of the average outlaw of that time, when as a sea captain he served first King John and later Prince Louis of France.
