Do Americans know where Robin Hood was from?
To answer Question 1: did Robin Hood exist? The answer is: not as a single person. He seems to be a composite of a number of people, some historical and some fanciful. There are a number of sites on the net which discuss him. His companions are also either composites (such as Maid Marion, who is based on people such as Matilda de Huntingdon) or later additions to make the stories more interesting. Certainly, if Robin had existed in the days of King Richard, he would not have been a Saxon against a Norman, as those distinctions had largely gone by that time, so, if someone did exist upon whom the legend was based, it had to be earlier. Certainly there was a Robert of Locksley, who went feral, but he was around during the reign of Henry 1, the third Norman king. Some of Robin’s attributes could have even come from the Saxon hero Hereward the Wake, who held out against William the Conqueror for many years, using the fens in East England as a base.
