Oldcastle, SIR JOHN

Oldcastle, SIR JOHN, once popularly known as the 'good Lord Cobham,' whose claim to distinction is that he was the first author and the first martyr among the English nobility, was born in the reign of Edward III.; the exact year is not known. He acquired the title of Lord Cobham by marriage with the heiress of the line, and signalised himself by the ardour of his attachment to the doctrines of Wyclif. At that time there was a party among the English nobles and gentry sincerely, even strongly, desirous of ecclesiastical reform, whose leader was 'old John of Gaunt—time-honoured Lancaster.' Oldcastle was active in the same cause, and took part in the presentation of a remonstrance to the English Commons on the subject of the corruptions of the church. At his own expense he got Wyclif's works transcribed, and widely disseminated among the people, and paid a large body of preachers to propagate the views of the Reformer throughout the country. In 1411, during the reign of Henry IV., he commanded an English army in France, and forced the Duke of Orleans to raise the siege of Paris; but in 1413, just after the accession of Henry V., he was examined by Archbishop Arundel, and condemned as a heretic. He escaped from the Tower into Wales, but after four years' hiding was captured. He was brought to London, and—being reckoned a traitor as well as a heretic—was hung up in chains alive upon a gallows, and, fire being put under him, was burned to death, December 1417. Oldcastle wrote Twelve Conclusions addressed to the Parliament of England, several monkish rhymes against 'fleshly livers' among the clergy, religious discourses, &c. Halliwell-Phillips first proved in 1841 that Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff was originally Sir John Oldcastle—a view endorsed in Gairdner and Spedding's Studies (1881).