And an example of how far back this goes (from the Wiki page decribing the origins of the custom): "An event which took place in the autumn of 1450 illustrates

And an example of how far back this goes (from the Wiki page decribing the origins of the custom): "An event which took place in the autumn of 1450 illustrates well the way in which the often separate activities of poaching and protest could on occasion conflate. On October 1450 a large group of men entered the duke of Buckingham's park at Penshurst in Kent and carried off eighty-two deer. Thirty-two men, nineteen of them yeomen, were named in subsequent indictment which made clear that a good number had escaped by its claim that there had been a total of a hundred present (not a figure to be taken too literally). These armed men had charcoaled faces, wore long false beards and withheld their names, calling themselves servants of the Queen of the Fairies."