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Hunter was starting out from his identification of Robin Hood with Robert Hood of Wakefield. He pointed out that adding up the Gest's fifteen months service plus 22 years back in the greenwood put Robin's death in 1347, which he believed was the origin for the 1247 date on the fake monument, and that Robert of Wakefield's wife's stepsister was named Elizabeth de Staynton, the same name as a Prioress of Kirklees of unknown date (some accounts make her the FIRST prioress, when Kirklees was founded in 1155).

The Wakefield identification doesn't hold water, therefore the rest of this theory collapses. Furthermore, Elizabeth de Staynton wasn't Prioress in 1347: Mary Startin was (Sybilla, no surname recorded, was Prioress in 1247). It was recently argued - I can't remember by whom - that the two Elizabeths were indeed the same, but that she was Prioress around 1370. The name has been used by one or two novelists who set the story much earlier.

In the light of the occasional modern tendency to link the Prioress with Marian (see "Robin and Marian"), it should be mentioned that a Marian Pinkerley was Prioress 1225-40 (contemporaneous with Hobbehod). On the other hand, any of the various Maries could have been known as Marian, and this is not part of the early legend anyway.