14
December 1417 A.D. John
Oldcastle, a Wycliffite, executed.
Wikipedia offers a glimpse.
Sir John Oldcastle (died 14 December
1417), English Lollard leader. Being a friend of Henry V, he long escaped prosecution for heresy. When convicted, he escaped from the Tower of London and then led a rebellion against the King. Eventually, he was captured and
executed in London. He formed the basis for William Shakespeare's character John Falstaff, who was originally called John Oldcastle.
Contents
Family
Oldcastle's date
of birth is unknown, although dubious and possibly apocryphal sources place it
variously at 1360 or 1378.[1] His father was
Richard Oldcastle of Almeley in northwest Herefordshire. His grandfather, also called John Oldcastle, was Herefordshire's MP during
the latter part of the reign of King Richard II.
Early life
In 1408 he married
Joan, the heiress of Cobham — his third
marriage, and her fourth.[2] This resulted in
a significant improvement of his fortune and status, as the Cobhams were
"one of the most notable families of Kent".[3] The marriage
brought Oldcastle a number of manors in Kent, Norfolk, Northamptonshire and Wiltshire, as well as Cooling Castle, and from 1409 until his accusation in 1413 he was summoned to parliament
as Lord Cobham.[3]
At some point in
his military career Oldcastle became a trusted supporter of Henry, Prince of
Wales, later to become King Henry V, who regarded Sir John as "one of his most trustworthy
soldiers".[4] Oldcastle was a
member of the expedition which the young Henry sent to France in 1411 in a
successful campaign to assist the Burgundians in the Armagnac-Burgundian
Civil War.[4]
Lollardy
Lollardy had many supporters in Herefordshire, and Oldcastle himself 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 Henry V prevented any decisive action until convincing evidence was found in one
of Oldcastle's books, which was discovered in a shop in Paternoster Row,
London. The matter was brought before the King, who desired that nothing should
be done until he had tried his personal influence. Oldcastle declared his readiness
to submit to the king "all his fortune in this world" but was firm in
his religious beliefs.
When Oldcastle
fled from Windsor Castle to his own castle at Cowling, Henry at last
consented to a prosecution. Oldcastle refused to obey the archbishop's repeated citations, and it was only under a Royal Writ that he at last
appeared before the ecclesiastical court on 23 September 1413.
In a confession of
his faith he declared his belief in the sacraments and the necessity of penance and true confession, but he would not assent to the orthodox doctrine of
the sacrament as stated by the Bishops, nor admit the necessity of confession
to a priest. He also called the veneration of images was "the great sin of
idolatry". On 25 September he was convicted as a heretic.
King Henry V was still anxious to find a way of escape for his old comrade, and granted
a respite of forty days. Before that time had expired, Oldcastle escaped from
the Tower by the help of one William Fisher, a parchmentmaker of Smithfield.[5]
Open rebellion
Oldcastle now put
himself at the head of a widespread Lollard conspiracy, which assumed a
definite political character. The plan was to seize the King and his brothers
during a Twelfth-night mumming at Eltham, and establish
some sort of commonwealth. Oldcastle was to be Regent, the king, nobility and clergy placed under
restraint, and the abbeys dissolved and their riches shared out. King Henry,
forewarned of their intention by a spy, moved to London, and when the Lollards
assembled in force in St Giles's
Fields on 10 January they were easily dispersed by the king and
his forces.[6]
John Oldcastle
being burnt for insurrection and Lollard heresy
Oldcastle himself
escaped into deepest northwest Herefordshire, and for nearly four years avoided capture.
Apparently he was
privy to the Southampton Plot in July 1415, when he stirred some movement in the Welsh Marches.[citation needed] On the failure of the scheme he went again into hiding.
Oldcastle was no doubt the instigator of the abortive Lollard plots of 1416,
and appears to have intrigued with the Scots also.[citation needed]
Capture and death
In November 1417
his hiding-place was at last discovered and he was captured by Edward
Charleton, 5th Baron Cherleton. Some historians
believed he was captured in the upland Olchon Valley of western Herefordshire adjacent to the Black Mountains,
Wales, not far from the village of Oldcastle itself in his
family's old heartlands.[citation needed] Oldcastle who was "sore wounded ere he would be
taken", was brought to London in a horse-litter. Modern historians believe
that he was hiding with some Lollard friends at a glade on Pant-mawr farm in
Broniarth, in Wales called Cobham's Garden.[citation needed] The principal agents in the capture were four of the
tenants of Edward
Charleton, 5th Baron Cherleton, Ieuan and Sir Gruffudd Vychan, sons of Gruffudd ap Ieuan, being two of them.[citation needed] The reward for his capture was awarded to Edward
Charleton, 5th Baron Cherleton, but he died
before receiving it, though a portion was paid to his widow in 1422.
On 14 December he
was formally condemned, on the record of his previous conviction, and that same
day was hanged in St Giles's Fields, and burnt "gallows and all". It
is not clear whether he was burnt alive.
Literary portrayals
His heretical
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 companion. When Shakespeare
adapted that play in Henry IV, Part 1, Oldcastle still appeared, but when the play was printed in 1598, the name
was changed to Falstaff (modelled after John Fastolf), in deference to one of Oldcastle's descendants, 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. In Henry IV, Part 2 an epilogue emphasises that Falstaff is not Oldcastle: "Falstaff
shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for
Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." In 1599, another play, Sir John
Oldcastle, presented
Oldcastle in a more kindly light.
Bibliography
The record of
Oldcastle's trial is printed in Fasciculi
Zizaniorum (Rolls series) and in David 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 Actes and Monuments of John
Foxe, who in his turn followed the Briefe Chronycle of
John
Bale, first published in 1544.
For notes on
Oldcastle's early career, consult James
Hamilton Wylie, History of
England under Henry IV. For literary history see the Introductions to Richard James's Iter Lancastrense (Chetham Society, 1845) and to Grosart's edition of the Poems of Richard James (1880). See also W. Barske, Oldcastle-Falstaff in der englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare
(Palaestra, 1. Berlin, 1905).
Notes
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in
the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Cooper, Stephen (2010), The
Real Falstaff, Sir John Fastolf and the Hundred Years War, Pen &
Sword .
- Riley,
Henry Thomas (1868), Memorials of London and London Life, a series of
Extracts from the City Archives, 1276–1419 .
- Desmond Sweard, Henry V as
Warlord, London: Sidgwick & Jacskon, 1987.
- Waugh, WT (1905), "Sir John
Oldcastle", The English Historical Review 20 (79): 434–56 .
External links
No comments:
Post a Comment