"This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption... Beer!"
- Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Friar Tuck

Friar Tuck is a considered to be a main member of Robin Hood’s legendary band of outlaws. Although not mentioned in the earliest surviving stories, the friar has become an integral part of Robin Hood Lore. He is often represented as a nature loving man who could not survive the rigors and rules of life in a monastery.

What follows is a story which includes different versions of the legend. He was a former monk of Fountains Abbey (or in some cases, St Mary's Abbey in York, which is also the scene of some other Robin Hood tales) who was expelled by his order because of his lack of respect for authority. Because of this, and in spite of his taste for good food and wine, he becomes the chaplain of Robin's band. In Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, he is specifically sought out as part of the tale of Alan-a-Dale: Robin has need of a priest who will marry Allan to his sweetheart in defiance of the Bishop of Hereford.^[1]

In many tales, from "Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar" to Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, his first encounter with Robin results in a battle of wits in which first one and then the other gains the upper hand and forces the other to carry him across a river. This ends in the Friar tossing Robin into the river.

In some tales he is depicted as a physically fit man and a skilled swordsman and archer with a hot-headed temper. However most commonly Tuck is depicted as a fat, bald and jovial monk with a great love of ale. Sometimes the latter depiction of Tuck is the comic relief of the tale.

Two royal writs in 1417 refer to Robert Stafford, a Sussex chaplain who had assumed the alias of Frere Tuk. This "Friar Tuck" was still at large in 1429. These are the earliest surviving references to a character by that name.