When does 'rob from the rich, give to the poor' actually appear?

Matter of the Greenwood Topic

Summary: Not in the early ballads. The Gest's Robin lends money, extracts it from a lying monk, and returns a knight's estate - redistribution within the gentry, not to the poor. He instructs his men to spare husbandmen and yeomen and to beat bishops. The first surviving statement that he robbed the rich to help the poor is John Major's, in 1521; Ritson in 1795 turned it into an ideology and made it the point of the legend, and Scott, Pyle and Hollywood carried it the rest of the way. This single question is the best entry point to the whole tradition.
Note: Designated as the spine of both the ROBINCRAWL visual novel and the portal's headline essay.