Sir John Oldcastle

OLDCASTLE, SIR JOHN (d. 1417), English Lollard leader, son of Sir Richard Oldcastle of Almeley, Herefordshire, served in the expedition to Scotland in 1400. Next year he was in charge of Builth castle in Brecon, and serving all through the Welsh campaigns won the friendship and esteem of Henry, the prince of Wales. Oldcastle represented Herefordshire in the par liament of 1404. Four years later he married Joan, the heiress of Cobham, and was thereon summoned to parliament as Lord Cob ham in her right. Oldcastle held a high command in the expedition which the young Henry sent to France in 1411. Oldcastle had adopted Lollard opinions before 1410, when the churches on his wife's estates in Kent were laid under interdict for unlicensed preaching. In the convocation which met in March 1413, shortly before the death of Henry IV., Oldcastle was at once accused of heresy. But his friendship with the new king prevented any de cisive action till evidence was found in a book belonging to Old castle, which was discovered in a shop in Paternoster row. He was convicted as a heretic Sept. 25. Henry granted a respite of 4o days in the hope of saving his old friend.

Before that time had expired Oldcastle escaped from the Tower by the help of one William Fisher, a parchment-maker of Smith field (Riley, Memorials of London, 1868). He now put himself at the head of a widespread Lollard conspiracy. The design is said to have included the seizure of the king and his brothers during a Twelfth-night mumming at Eltham. Henry, forewarned, removed to London, and when the Lollards assembled in force in St. Giles's Fields on Jan. 1o, they were easily dispersed. Oldcastle himself escaped into Herefordshire, and for nearly four years avoided cap ture. He took part in several conspiracies. In November 1417 he was captured by the Lord Charlton of Powis. On Dec. 14, he was

formally condemned, on the record of his previous conviction, was hanged that same day in St. Giles's Fields, and burnt "gallows and all." Oldcastle died a martyr. At the same time his execution can be justified on political grounds. His opinions and early friendship with Henry V. created a traditional scandal which long continued. In the old play The Famous Victories of Henry V., written before 1588, Oldcastle figures as the prince's boon com panion. When Shakespeare adapted that play in Henry IV., Oldcastle still appeared; but when the play was printed in 1598 Falstaff's name was substituted, in deference, as it is said, to the then Lord Cobham. Though the fat knight still remains "my old lad of the Castle," the stage character has nothing to do with the Lollard leader.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The

record of Oldcastle's trial is printed in Fasciculi Zizaniorum (Rolls series) and in Wilkins's Concilia, iii. 351-357. The chief contemporary notices of his later career are given in Gesta Henrici Quinti (Eng. Hist. Soc.) and in Walsingham's Historia Anglicana. There have been many lives of Oldcastle, mainly based on The Acies and Monuments of John Foxe, who in his turn followed the Briefe Chronycle of John Bale, first published in 1544. For notes on Old castle's early career, consult J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry IV. For literary history see the Introductions to Richard James's 'ter Lancastrense (Chetham Soc., 1845) and to Grosart's edi tion of the Poems of Richard James (188o). See also W. Barske, Old castle-Falstaff in der englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare (Palaestra, I. Berlin, Pm) ; and W. T. Waugh in the English Historical Review, vol. xx.