any spelling) was also fairly common because it referred either to a hooder, who was a maker of hoods, or alternatively to somebody who wore a hood as a head-covering. It is therefore unsurprising that medieval records mention a number of people called "Robert Hood" or "Robin Hood", some of whom are known criminals. Another view on the origin of the name is expressed in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica which remarks that "hood" was a common dialectical form of "wood" (compare Dutch hout, pronounced /hʌut/, also meaning "wood"), and that the outlaw's name has been given as "Robin Wood". There are a number of references to Robin Hood as Robin Wood, or Whood, or Whod, from the 16th and 17th centuries. The earliest recorded example, in connection with May games in Somerset, dates from 1518. Early references The oldest references to Robin Hood are not historical records, or even ballads recounting his exploits, but hints and allusions found in various works. From 1261 onward, the names "Robinhood", "Robehod", or "Robbehod" occur in the rolls of several English Justices as nicknames or descriptions of malefactors. The majority of these references date from the late 13th century. Between 1261 and 1300, there are at least eight references to "Rabunhod" in various regions across England, from Berkshire in the south to York in the north. Leaving aside the reference to the "rhymes" of Robin Hood in Piers Plowman in the 1370s, and the scattered mentions of his "tales and songs" in various religious tracts dating to the early 15th century, the first mention of a quasi-historical Robin Hood is given in Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Chronicle, written in about 1420. The following lines occur with little contextualisation under the year 1283: In a petition presented to Parliament in 1439, the name is used to describe an itinerant felon. The petition cites one Piers Venables of Aston, Derbyshire, "who having no liflode, ne sufficeante of goodes, gadered and assembled unto him many misdoers, beynge of his clothynge, and, in manere of insurrection, wente into the wodes in that countrie, like as it hadde be Robyn Hude and his meyne." The next historical description of Robin Hood is a statement in the Scotichronicon, composed by John of Fordun between 1377 and 1384, and revised by Walter Bower in about 1440. Among Bower's many interpolations is a passage that directly refers to Robin. It is inserted