The legend I heard was that he didn't like his cousin and suspected her of helping Bad King John in order to gain her high office of Prioress. He refused the drink because he suspected poison. Any good prioress worth her salt would have a stock of home brewed medicines available to nurse her sisters. These would have included monkshood (aconite) and foxglove (digitalis), both medicinal and both affecting the heart in different ways. Because he refused the poison, she bled him but deliberately let him bleed too much.

Interesting that the legend of Robin Hood takes place in Nottingham but his death is in Yorkshire, at Kirkleys (or Kirklees) Priory some considerable distance away.

If anyone is confused why the Kirklees Priory, founded by Cistercian monks should have a prioress, it's because monasteries and nunneries were frequently side by side, separated by walls, coming together (ostensibly) only during worship in the common church.

It's all rather confusing really.

LTS