Sir William ‘Robin Hood’ Harcourt: Edwin J. Milliken’s ‘Bold Robin Hood: A Fytte of Foreste Finaunce’ in “Punch” (1894) | Stephen Basdeo

This article examines Punch’s 1894 poem ‘Bold Robin Hood’, which recast Sir William Harcourt’s Budget as fiscal outlawry. Rather than celebrating Robin Hood’s moral economy, Edwin James Milliken’s satire made redistributive taxation appear as cant, coercion, and highway robbery in defence of property and middle-class respectability.