Tom a Lincoln, hero and title of an anonymous prose romance of the sixteenth century, founded upon earlier legends.  Tom, the natural son of King Arthur by Angelica, an earl's daughter, is brought up in obscurity as the ostensible son of a poor shepherd and becomes a mighty outlaw.  Arthur being informed that this outlaw is his own son gives him command of an army and sends him to Portugal, where as the Red Rose Knight he inflicts exemplary punishment upon that enemy of England.  He spends a brief period in Fairyland, whose queen Celia bears him a son and subsequently commits suicide on his account, journeys to the court of Prester John, slays a dragon there and elopes with Prester's daughter, Anglitora.  Arthur on his death-bed acknowledges Tom as his son, whence the wrath of Queen Guinevere is kindled against him.  His bitterest grief is the faithlessness of Anglitora, who escapes from England, with her son the Black Knight, and becomes the mistress of a baron in some foreign country unnamed.  After seven years' wandering, Tom finds her, but she and her paramour slay him, whereupon the Black Knight slays his mother.  The story is apparently a confused remembrance of the Scotch ballad Tom Lin. (Heroes and Heroines of Fiction, &c., Walsh, 1915)