ABSTRACT
Like Cutlack, Bellendon was first recorded in performance at Newington Butts in the summer of 1594 by Philip Henslowe. It includes a central character, a robber named Belin Dun who is hanged. The earliest written reference to Dun the robber is in the Tractatus de Dunstaple. Baker's Chronicle of the Kings of England makes the same connection in a single sentence. Alexander Smith gives a particularly detailed account of Dun's execution. Thomas Hearne alludes to traditions around Dun, 'that famous thief, handsome and brave in his first youth'. Dun's story has a place within an overall narrative of Henry I's reign. Edmond Malone published a transcription of a now-lost document which he had found among the manuscripts at Dulwich College. John Falstaff's incompetent highway robbery at Gad's Hill is often seen as in dialogue with the Robin Hood tradition, but when John Taylor put together Robin Hood, Belin Dun, and the Gad's Hill robbers; he was, knowingly or unknowingly, describing three stars.
