SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, THE ORIGINAL OF FALSTAFF

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69-17,723 FIEHLER, Rudolph, 1907SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, THE ORIGINAL OF FALSTAFF. [Portions of Text in Latin]. The University of Texas at Austin, Ph.D., 1950 Language and Litera t u r e , general

U n iv e rs ity M ic ro film s , A \EROX. Compa ny , A n n A rb o r, M ic h ig a n

@

RUDOLPH FIEHLER 1965 All Rights Reserved

T H IS D IS S E R T A T IO N HAS BEEN M IC R O FILM ED EXACTLY AS R E C E IV E D . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, THE ORIGINAL OF FALSTAFF

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

By Rudolph Fiehler, A. B . , M. A. Austin, Texas

June, 1950

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SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, THE ORIGINAL OF FALSTAFF

APPROVED:

^ / { / 4# 1r l & £ A___ 3

APPROVED:

cr.fM

a

Dean of the Graduate School

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i i IE LIBRARY T H E UNIVERSITY O F TEXAS

PREFACE

My interest in the story of Sir John Oldcastle was aroused, several years ago when I was so fortunate as to find a copy of Tucker Brooke's collection of the Shakespeare Apocrypha in a second-hand book shop.

In this volume I

found The True and Honorable Hlstorie of Sir John Oldcastle the G-ood Lord Cobham. to which I gave somewhat more attention than to the other dozen plays which at one time or other have been mistakenly attributed to Shakespeare. During the summer of 19^+6, while studying the Henry IV plays with Professor Robert Adger Law at the University of Texas, I devoted my efforts particularly to the problem of tracing the connections between the historical Sir John Oldcastle and Sir John Falstaff.

It appeared that while

Author

was to be found only in th«German of Wilhelm Baeske's

of

of this 116-page study into English was completed by the

Ciff

much had been written on the subject, an adequate treatment

end of the summer.

"Oldcastle-Falstaff in der Engllschen U t e r a t u r bis zu Shakespeare," published in Palaestra for 1905.

Translation

Pursuing my problem further, I undertook to supplement my translation with a summary of more recent scholarship. I found that much additional light had been shed on the historical Oldcastle since the publication of Baeske's study /-v r: f

v

~ v. y

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iv through the researches of English historians, particularly J. H. Wylie, W. T. Waugh, and C. L. Singsford.

I was

Intrigued also by a particular aspect of the problem, that of the series of metamorphoses

by -which the character of Sir

John Oldcastle appears In history and literature successively as a knight, a heretic, a traitor, an outlaw, a clown, a martyr, and finally as a subject for critical investigation. A proper presentation of these interesting changes, I felt, called for a new treatment of the subject, not only so that the new materials could be sore adequately incorporated with the old, but also so that the whole natter might be presented In a more direct fashion than mere translation would allow* The present study Is the result. I am much Indebted to Baeske for a mapplng-out of the field of Investigation, but I hare not followed his points of emphasis.

Baeske's extended consideration of the

Influence of the miles glorlosus on the character of Falstaff has been altogether omitted, and the materials In general have been rearranged according to the successive changes which the character of Oldcastle has undergone in literature. Areas treated only very slightly by Baeske are those of my introductory che.pter, which traces developments in Shakespeare scholarship, and of the chapter on Oldcastle as a knight, for which much material was found In historical studies published after Baeske's work appeared.

New points of

view are introduced In the chapter on Oldcastle as an outlaw,

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V

for which I derived, suggestions from an article by Leslie Mahin Oliver in The Library for 19^-6, and in the chapter on Oldcastle as a clown, where I have developed a thesis stated by James Monaghan In Studies In Philology for 1923-

I have

been rather more critical than was Baeske of the fifteenthcentury chronicle accounts, which are analyzed in the chapter on Oldcastle as a traitor. various chronicle

The comparative study of the

records of Oldcastle has led me to believe

that too much reliance has in the past been placed on the accounts of Walsingham and Titus Livius, from which Holinshed chiefly derived his data, and that perhaps the protestations of John Foxe on behalf of Oldcastle in his Book of Martyrs should be regarded more sympathetically by the historians than they have been in the past. Particular thanks are due Professor Law for the many kindnesses he has shown me in guiding this investigation from beginning to conclusion.

I wish also to express my

especial appreciation for the privilege of freely using the rich resources of the University of Texas Library, without which this study could hardly have been attempted.

April 1,1950.

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CONTENTS

PAG-E CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION: OLDCASTLE IN SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARSHIP. I. Observations of early Shakespeareans on the relation of Sir John Oldcastle to Falstaff . . . . 1 A. The comments of Nicholas Rowe, 1709 1 B. The comments of Lewis Theobald, 1733............ 2 C. The comments of William Warburton, 17^7 ... 3 D. The opinions of “P. T.", 1752 5 1. Onthe line "old lad of the castle1* . . . 6 2. Onthe Oldcastle of the Famous Victories. 8 3. Onthe epilogue of 2 Henry I V ............. 8 b, Onthe prologue to Sip John Oldcastle . . 9 II. Later critical studies of the problem ............ 10 A. The comments of Edward C a p e l l ............... 10 B. The notes in the Johnson and Steevens editions of Shakespeare . . . . . . . . .............. 12 1. In the first edition of 1773 I2 2. In subsequent e d i t i o n s ................. 13 C. The contributions of Edmund M a l o n e ........... 14 1. His discovery of Henslowe's diary . . . . 15 2. His interpretation of the evidence . . . 16 D. The comment of Maurice M o r g a n n ............... 17 E. The summation by J. 0. Halllwell-Phlllips . . 18 1. The question of assigning an exact date to the change of n a m e ................... 20 2. New e v i d e n c e ........................... 21 F. An article by James Gairdner................. 22 1. Fastolf as the original of Falstaff . . . 22 2. The problem of identifying the "page to Thomas Mowbray" ........................ 23 III. Newer studies related to Sir John Oldcastle . . . . 25 A. The work of the historians................... 25 1. JamesT a i t .............................. 25 2. J. H.W y l i e ............................ 25 3 . W. T.W a u g h .............................. 25 B. The essay by Wilhelm Baeske . ............. 26 C. Studies of the play Sir John Oldcastle . . . . 27 1. The dissertation by J. R. Macarthur . . . 27 2. Other editions of the p l a y ............. 27 D. Commentaries on the character of Falstaff . . 28 E. Studies of the sources of Shakespeare's Henry I V ..................................... 29

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vil CHAPTER TWO. OLDCASTLE AS A KNIGHT: HISTORICAL REMAINS FROM HIS OWN TIME. 1. Sources for the history of the true John Oldcastle A. Publications of the Public Record Office • . * 1. The “Rolls Series*'.................. 2. The Calendars of State Papers ........ a. The Close Rolls ................ b. The Patent Rolls • .............. c. The Fine Rolls .................. B. Rymer's "Foedera" ........................ C. Other sources . . . . . . . . . .......... II. Ascertainable facts about Oldcastle*s life . . . A. His origins .............................. 1. Uncertainty as to the date of his birth 2. The date derived from Thomas Elmham . . B. His family and inheritance ................ 1. His ancestors in Herefordshire . . . . 2. The family estates .................. 3 . Probable origin of the family name . . C. His service to Prince Hal against Glendower 1. Background of the Welsh rising . . . . 2. The royal campaign of 14-01 .......... a. The siege of Conway Castle . . . . b. The treason of the Percies . . . . c. Recognition of Oldcastle*s services 3 . The campaign of 14-03 ................ a. The battle of Shrewsbury . . . . . b. Oldcastle a guardian of the King's interests in Wales .............. 4-. Events of 14-04-...................... a. Oldcastle elected to Parliament • b. Oldcastle named Justice of the peace o. Glendower*s fortunes at the zenith d. Oldcastle commissioned to inquire into affairs in Wales ........ 5 . Oldcastle*s last year in Herefordshire a. Guardian of the Welsh possessions of the Earl of March .............. b. Presence at the siege of Aberstwyth D. His marriage and removal to Kent . . . . 1. Resignation of the office of sheriff 2. His bride, Joan de Cobham ........ a. The Cobham line . . ........ b. John de Cobham, her grandfather c. The Cobham inheritance . . . . 3 . The w e d d i n g ............ .. a. Uncertainty as to the date . . b. The Lady Joan's previous marriages

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4. Continuation of the Cobham line . . a. Joan Braybrooke and her issue b. Memorials in Cobham church . . c. End of the succession . . . . E. Oldcastle as a man at arms ............ 1. The tournament at Lille .......... 2. The expedition on behalf of Burgundy a. The occasion for the enterprise b. Success of the expedition . . . c. Effect on relations with Prance 3. Oldcastle's friendship with Prince Hal

47 47 47 48 49 49 49 49 50 50 51

CHAPTER THREE. OLDCASTLE AS A HERETIC: THE ARCHBISHOP'S ACCOUNT. I. The Lollard movement as related to Oldcastle A.Significance of its time in history • • . 1. A parallel with Oldcastle's life .. 2. A parallel with the Great Schism .. B. The life and work of John Wyollf ........ 1. Parliamentary opposition to the Pope 2. Wyclif's part in the dispute . . . . 3 . Condemnation of Wyclif's writings . . 4. Poor preachers and the vernacular Bible C. Lollard activity in Herefordshire . . . . 1. The preaching of William Swynderby • 2. West-country proponents of reform . . II. Oldcastle In the Parliament of 1410 .......... A. Anti-clerical measures proposed ........ 1. The story in the chronicle accounts . 2. The official records .............. B. Counter-measures of the clerical hierarchy 1. Restrictions on Lollard activity • . 2. The ban on churches in Cobham*s demesne a. The marriage of Joan Braybrooke b. The lifting of the ban ........ III. Oldcastle's support‘of the Bohemian Hussites A. Spread of Wyclifite teachings in Bohemia . B. Letters of encouragement from Oldcastle IV. The proceedings for heresy against Oldcastle • A. Evidence of Lollard leanings ............ 1. The matter of the preacher John Lay . 2. Possession of heretical writings . . B. The accusation before the Archbishop . . . 1. Origin of the complaint ............ 2. Thomas Arundel as Judge and prosecutor C. The Archbishop's account of the trial . . 1. As abridged by Thomas WalsIngham . . 2. As translated by John Foxe . . . . . 3 . A note on the passages in the vernacular

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CHAPTER FOUR. OLDCASTLE AS A TRAITOR: THE RECORD OF THE CHRONICLES. I* The evidence of contemporary historical documents . A. The purported abjuration .................... 1. Included in the Fasclcull Zlzanlorum . . 2. Regarded by John Bale as spurious . . . . B. Oldcastle1s escape from the Tower .......... 1. Its effect on his future .............. a. His status as a condemned heretic b. Forfeiture of his property ........ 2. The few details known about the escape a. His confederates .................. b. Information offered by Elmham . . . c. His keeper removed from office . . . 3* The story of the parchment-maker . . . . a. His arrest some time after the event b. His arraignment two years later • . C. The rising at St. Giles, January 10, l4l4 . . 1. Proclamations against unlawful assemblies 2. Documents having to do with the affair a. The commission for an inquiry . . . b. The indictment against Oldcastle . . c. Proclamations for his capture . . . d. Proclamation of pardon, March 28 . . e. Pardon issued to Henry Dene . • . . II. The story of St. Giles as told in the chronicles A. The St. Albans Chronicle .................... 1. Summary of the account ................ 2. Evidence of change and revision ........ a. Nine versions of the chronicle . . . b. Life of the compiler, Walsingham • . c. Identical nature of the account of Oldcastle in three versions . . . . d. Parallels with Otterbourne and Stow B. Otterbourne1s Chronicle .................... 1. Brevity of the account ................ 2. Parallels with the St. Albans, history • . C. The "Chaplain's Account" .................... 1. Thomas Elmham identified as the chaplain 2. The "Pseudo-Elmham" .................... 3. Description of the account ............ a. Florid style ...................... b. Details not found in Walsingham . . D. The Liber Metrlcus .......................... 1. Elmham's bitterness against the Lollards 2. A section paralleling the prose history . 3* Final section dealing with Oldcastle's end a. Offences charged against Oldcastle • b. Fanciful details peculiar to Elmham 4. Parallels with Otterbourne's Chronicle .

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96 96 97 97 97 98 99 100 101 101 102 103 103 104 105 106 106 107 107 107 108 108 109 110 110 110 110 111 111 112

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E. Liber de Illustribus Henrlcls .............. 113 1. The author, John Capgrave............... 113 2. His source, the Liber M e t r l c u s ......... 114 a. Verse apparently turned Into prose • 114 b. Differences In style from the source 114 P. Capgrave's English Chronicle ................ 115 1. Capgrave as a persistent borrower . . . . 115 2. His source, the St. Albans Chronicle . . 115 a. Close adherence to the material . . 115 b. Nothing added at first hand . . . . 116 G-. John Hardyng's Chronicle..................... 116 1. The author's service at Shrewsbury . . . 116 2. The three stanzas telling about Oldcastle 11? a. Loaded with misinformation......... 118 b. Sources not identifiable........... 118 H. Adam of Usk's C h r o n i c l e ..................... 118 1. Differences from preceding accounts . . . 118 a. Mention of Sir Roger A c t o n ......... 118 b. Mention of Ficket f i e l d ........... 118 2. The account as translated by E.M.Thompson 119 a. Reference to Roger Acton's origins . 120 b. Notable facts about the author . . . 120 1) Knowledge of the west country . 120 2) His Journey to Rome . . . . . . 121 I. Titus L l v i u s ................................. 121 1. The Vita Henrlcl Quint 1 ................. 121 a. Commissioned by Henry V's brother . 122 b. Accepted by H o l i n s h e d ............. 123 2. Summary of Livlus's account of Oldcastle 123 a. Oldcastle linked with Roger Acton . 123 b. Relation to the "Chaplain's Account" 123 3. The English translation of 1 5 1 3 ......... 124 a. The author anonymous............... 124 b. Background for the Prince Hal legend 124 J. The Latin B r u t ............................... 124 1. Slight differences from Titus Livius . . 124 a. Acton correctly called Roger . . . . 124 b. Mention of the A r o h b i s h o p ......... 124 c. An erroneous order of events . . . . 125 2. The question which account is the earlier 125 K. A Northern Chronicle......................... 125 1. The text of the account................. 126 a. Parallels with Livius and the Brut • 12 fe» Mention of the carpenter as informer 126 L. The "Pseudo-Elmham" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 1. Correctly appraised by Holinshed . . . . 12? 2. Relation to the account of Titus Livius . 127 a. Acton again incorrectly called John 128 b. Turgidlty of s t y l e ................. 128

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M. Polydore V e r g i l ........................... 128 1. The author and his s t y l e ............ 128 2. His account questioned by John Foxe . . . 129 a. An error in chronology.......... 129 B. A similar error in earlier accounts N. The London C h r o n i c l e s .................... 131 1. Collectively called the '’Brut1 1 ......... 131 2. De Brie's theory concerning them . . . . 131 3 . The brief account in MS. Lambeth 3 0 6 . . 131 0. Davies's Chronlole .......................... 132 1. Named for its editor . ............... 132 2. A parallel with the Latin B r u t ......... 132 3 . An error in chronology . . . ......... 133 P. Gregory1s C h r o n i c l e .............. . . . 133 1. Parallels with MS. Harley 5 3 ........ 1342. Mention of John Brown and John Beverly . 1343 . Reference to a " m u m m i n g " ............ 134 Q,. Fabyan's Chronicle........................ 135 1. Printed at a very early date . . . . . . 135 2. The a u t h o r ................... 135 3 . Parallels with Gregory and S t o w ...... 1 3 6 R. Stow's Chronicle ............................ 136 1. Hitherto not seriously regarded ........ 1 3 6 2. The c o m p i l e r ........................... 137 a. His stature as historian........... 137 b. His s o u r c e s ....................... 137 3 . Line-by-line comparison with Walsingham . 138 4. Conclusions derived from the comparison . 144 a. Nothing of fact added by Walsingham 144 b. Points peculiar to Stow borne out in other chronicles and records . . . . 144 1) The "sign of the Axe" . . . . . 144 2) The Informer Identified . . . . 14-5 3) Oldcastle linked with Acton . . 145 4) Murley not taken at St. Giles . 145 5) Mention of Ficket field . . . . 145 6 ) Few persons taken at St. Giles 145 7) Acton's death on February 10 • 145 8 ) Mention of the priest Beverly . 145 5- An hypothesis concerning Stow's source . 145 a. Indications that one source was used 146 b. Relation to the St. Albans Chronicle 146 c. Line-by-line comparison of another section of the two chronicles • . . 147 S. Summary: Superiority of Stow's account over those in the other c h r o n i c l e s ............ 149

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CHAPTER FIVE. OLDCASTLE AS AN OUTLAW: THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRI THE FIFTH. I. Difficulties in accounting for Oldcastle as an o u t l a w ........................................... 1 5 0 A* Inconsistency with Foxe’s Book of Martyrs . . 150 B. Lack of evidence in historical records . . . . 151 C. Lack of evidence in the chronicles.... 151 II. Oldcastle well suited to become a legendary figure 152 A* A marked man after his e s c a p e ........... 152 B. His favor with the common p e o p l e ......... 152 C. Material for the l e g e n d ......... 153 1. The rising at St. Giles . . ...... 153 2. Discovery of his h i d i n g - p l a c e s .. 153 3 . His summons to his confederates.. 155 4. His alleged compact with the Scots . . . 155 D. A Judicial inquiry held after his death . . . 156 1. Purpose of the I n q u i r y .......... 156 2. Stories told by five suspects.... 157 a. Oldcastle*s appearance in Almeley . 157 b. His conversations with his neighbors 157 c. Hearsay evidence of treason . . . . 157 3 . Inconclusive results of the Inquiry . . .158 E. The capture of Oldcastle..................... 158 1. Lord Powls as a Judas . . . . . . . e - * 158 2. Details of the capture given byElmham . 159 III. Evidence of a growing legend about Oldcastle . . . 159 A. Ballads written about h i m ...............159 1. The ballad of Thomas O c c l e v e ...... 160 a. Time and occasion of the ballad . . 160 b. The author*s position at court . . . 1 6 0 c. The argument of the b a l l a d ......... 160 d. Later editions of Occleve*s poem . . 164 2. A second anonymous ballad .............. 164 B. Association of Oldcastle with the Prince Hal l e g e n d .................................... 16 5 1. The story of the sudden transformation . 1 66 a. Perhaps inspired by Henry’s support of the c l e r g y ..................... 1 6 7 b. As perpetuated in the chronicles . . 1 6 7 2. Additions by the ’’Translator of LiviusM . 168 a. Hal’s robbery of his own receivers . 1 6 8 b. Dismissal of his old companions . . 168 c. The quarrel with his father . . . . 168 3 . The attack on the Chief J u s t i c e ..... 1 6 9 a. As told in Elyot’s The Governour . . 1 6 9 b. Fabyan’s story of Prince Hal . . . . 171 c. Edward Hall's v e r s i o n ......... 171 d. Modification of the story in the Famous Victories .................. 172

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4. Oldcastle'a place In the Prince Hal l e g e n d ................ a. The tale of dismissal from court . . b. Identification of Oldcastle as one of the Prince's old evil companions 5* A shading of history into legend . . . .

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CHAPTER SIX. OLDCASTLE AS A CLOWN: THE ORIGINS OF SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. I. Evidence that Oldcastle once stood In the place of Sir John Fal s t a f f ................................. 17^A. Rowe's statement of the m a t t e r ............... 17^ B. The epilogue to Z. Henry I V ................... 17^ C. Evidence in other plays of the t i m e ......... 175 D. Metrical testsof certain lines in X, Henry IV 176 II. The problem of assigning a definite date to the change of name from Oldcastle to F a lstaff......... 177 A. The question of the relation of the two parts of Henry IV to each o t h e r ................... 178 1. The views of Tucker Brooke and R. A. Law 178 2. The views of Tillyard and Dover Wilson . 179 3. M. A. Shaaber's estimate of the evidence 180 B. Offence given to the house of Cobham as the reason for the change of n a m e ............... 181 1. Its bearing on publication of the play . 181 2. The attitude of the p l a y e r s ............. 181 3» Reflections of the matter In The Merry Wives of W i n d s o r ....................... 181 III. Reconstruction of the process by which Oldcastle became Falstaff through comparison of the Famous Victories with Shakespeare's Henry I V ............. 182 A. Comparison of the span of a c t i o n ............. 183 P. Differences between Falstaff and the Oldcastle of the Famous V i c t o r i e s ..................... 183 C. Similarities between Falstaff and the clown Deri eke in the Famous Victories . ............ 185 D. A scene-by-scene comparison of the plays . . . 185 1. Oldcastle's first appearance .......... 186 a. His participation In the robbery . . 186 b. The parallel In 1 Henry IV . . . . . 187 2. Dericke's first entrance .............. 187 a. Dericke as the victim of a robbery . 187 b. The parallel In 1 Henry I V ......... 188 3. Dericke'8 second appearance ............ 188 a. Reenactment of the scene between the Prince and the Chief Justice . . . . 188 b. The remnant of this scene in Shake­ speare's 1 Henry I V ............... 189 c. Reference to the box on the ear in 2 Henry X V ......................... 189

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4.

Oldcastle'a second appearance ......... 190 a. Significance of the delayed entrance 190 b. Echoes of the dialogue of 1 Henry IV 190 5. Dericke's third appearance ........... 190 a. The purpose of this bit ofInterlude 191 b. An echo of this scene in 1Henry IV 191 6. Oldcastle1s last appearance .......... 191 a. His rejection by the Prince . . . . 191 b. A possible reason for omission of this scene from JL Henry I V ...191 c. Inclusion of the scene in 2 Henry IV 191 7. Dericke's fourth appearance ........... 191 a. His service In the Prince's army . . 191 b. Falstaff as his counterpart . . . . 192 8. Dericke as a soldier at Aglncourt . . . . .192 a. His encounter with the Frenchman . . 192 b. A shadow of this scene in 1 Henry IV 192 c. A parallel in Henry V ....... 192 9. Dericke's last a p p e a r a n c e ...... 192 a. His reputation as a "bloody soldier" 192 b. Parallels in the character of Falstaff . i .................. 193 E. Hypothesis regarding the merging of the two roles of Oldcastle and D e r i c k e ......... 193 1. The possibility that the clown Richard Tarlton brought it a b o u t ......... 19^ 2. The reference to a play about Henry V in Tarlton's Jests .......................... 19^ a. Willingness of Tarlton to play more than one p a r t ................ 19^b. Feasibility of doubling the parts of Oldcastle and D e r i c k e .............. 19^ 3 . Complications that must have resulted from a doubling of the p a r t s ............ 195 a. Incongruity of a clownish Oldcastle at A g l n c o u r t ......................... 195 b. Inconsistency of a clownish Old­ castle with the Book of Martyrs and with H o l i n s h e d ....................... 195 4-. Possible means through which the diffi­ culty might have been r e s o l v e d .......... 195 a. A change in the chronology of the p l a y .................................. 195 b. The expedient of giving a different name to the c l o w n ................... 196 5 . The reason for Shakespeare's adoption of Falstaff as a new name for his clown still a matter for c o n j e c t u r e ............ 196

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CHAPTER SEVEN. OLDCASTLE AS A MARTYR: THE ACTS AND MONUMENTS OF JOHN FOXE. I. Effect of the English Reformation on the story of Sir John O l d c a s t l e ............................... 198 II. Oldcastle1s new Protestant defenders ............ 199 A. Robert Redmayne's Hlstorla Henrlcl Qulntl . . 199 1. Purpose of Redmayne's w o r k ..........200 2. His source, Thomas Walsingham........200 3« Alterations made by R e d m a y n e ....... 200 a. Minor changes in the narrative . . . 200 b. Addition of a lengthy speech by Oldcastle before his Judges . . . . 201 B. John Bale and the "brefe c h r o n y c l e " ......203 1. Bale's backgrounds ................... 203 2. His source, the Fasciculi Zizaniorum . . 203 a. Other books collected by Bale . . . 204 b. Allusions to sources in his preface 204 3. Changes and additions made by Bale . . . 205 a. His purpose as Protestant propagand­ ist ............................... 205 b. Historical d a t a ................ 206 1) His own bad g uesses .......... 206 2) His impeachment of Polydore V e r g i l .................... 206 c. Illustrations of Bale's method . . . 207 1) The episode concerning the worship of the c r o s s ...... 207 2) The appeal to the king . . . . 208 3) Comparison of Oldcastle with the martyr S t e p h e n ........ 211 4) Allusions to youthful sin . . . 212 C. John Foxe and the Book of M a r t y r s ....... 212 1. John Foxe's backgrounds............. 212 2. The success of his b o o k ..............213 3. His adoption of John Belle's account . . . 213 a. Additions and modifications . . . . 213 b. Inclusion of a translation of the Archbishop's acoount .............. 213 4. The attack on Foxe by Nicholas Harpsfield 214 a. The Dlalogl S e x ................ 214 b. Harpsfield's a l i a s .............. 215 5. Foxe's reply, the "Defence of the Lord Cobham".............................. 215 a. Identification of his opponent . . . 215 b. Questioning of the r e c o r d ...... 216 1) Improbabilities in the story of the St. G-iles a f f a i r ...... 217 2) A matter of d a t e s .......... 217 c. The polemic tone of Foxe's book . . 218 d. The net effect of his arguments . . 218

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D. John 1. 2. 3.

Weever and the "Mirror of Martyrs" • . . 219 Precedents for the t i t l e ............... 219 Form of the composition................. 219 Subject-matter of the p o e m ............. 219 a. Perpetuation of Bale's bad guesses . 220 b. "Page to Thomas Mo w b r a y " ........... 220 c. Oldcastle*s wife misnamed Margaret . 220 d. Unaccountable episodes ............ 221 e. Imitations of Edmund Spenser . . . . 222

CHAPTER EIGHT. THE RECONSTRUCTED OLDCASTLE: THE "GOOD LORD COBHAM." I. The story of Oldcastle as told by the historians . 223 A. The work of Edward H a l l ..................... 224 1. His source, John B a l e ........ . 224 2. Influence of his work on Holinshed . . . 224 B. Richard Grafton's c h r o n i c l e .................225 1. His avoidance of the Oldcastle story . . 225 2. A possible reason for his attitude . . . 226 C. Raphael Holinshed and his Chronicles......... 226 1. His backgrounds and methods of work . . . 226 2. A transcript of his account of Oldcastle with a full identification of sources . . 2 3 1 II. The play 3lr John Oldcastle . 231 A. Background of the p l a y ....................... 231 1. The record in Henslowe's D i a r y ......... 2 3 1 2. Relation to Shakespeare's Henry IV . . . 2 3 2 3 . The four authors of the play: Drayton, Munday,Wilson, and Hathway . . . 232 4. The lost second p a r t .......... ... 232 B. Sources of the p l a y ......................... 2 3 3 1. Holinshed probably the principal source . 233 2. Evidence that other sources were used . . 233 C. An analysis of the p l a y ..................... 234 1. The prologue and first a c t .......... 234 a. Purpose of the p r o l o g u e ........... 2 3 4 1) Allusion to Falstaff. . . . . 234 2) Allusion to “forged invention" 2 3 4 b. The opening s c e n e ................. 234 1) The fight of Herbertand Powis 235 a) Powis as a J u d a s ......... 235 b) Background of thequarrel 236 c) Resemblance to the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet 237 2) Relation of the quarrel to the p l o t ......................... 2 3 8

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c. Oldcastle blamed for the quarrel • . 2 3 8 1) A characteristically Elizabeth­ an attitude toward religion . . 2 3 8 2) Introduction of the Bishop of Rochester..................... 240 3) The wicked priest Sir John derived from F a b y a n ........... 24-0 d. Oldcastle as the "Good Lord Cobham" 241 1) His charity toward the poor . . 241 2) Harpoole introduced as a foil . 241 e. Oldcastle summoned to the court . . 241 1) A possible suggestion from Bale 242 2) Relation of this episode to the purpose of the p l a y ........... 242 2. The second a c t ......................... 243 a. Rejection of the Bishop*s summons . 243 1) A suggestion from Walsingham . 243 2) The business of forcing the messenger to eat his summons . 244 3) Echoes from Henry I V ......... 244 b. The arrest of Acton, Brown, Beverly, and Murley as conspirators......... 244 1) Evident imitation of 1 Henry IV 245 2) Holinshed and Stow as sources . 245 3) Comedy supplied by Murley • . . 245 c. Oldcastle's appearance before the K 1ng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 6 1; A suggestion in Holinshed •. . 246 2) Purpose of the s c e n e ......246 ................... 247 3 . The third act a. The Cambrldge-Scroop-Gray conspiracy 247 1) Echoes from Shakespeare . . . . 247 2) Oldcastle a party to the plot . 248 a) De Waurin as a source . . 248 b) Adaptation to the play . . 248 b. Preparations for the St. Giles rising 248 1) Murley a parallel for Falstaff 248 2) Holinshed or Stow as the source 248 c. Interlude of Doll and Sir John . . . 249 d. The King moves to meet the riot . . 249 1) Encounter with the wicked priest 249 2) References to Falstaff . . . . 249 ............... 250 4. The fourth act a. The disguised king in his camp . . . 250 1) The wicked priest unmasked . . 250 2) Imitations of Henry V ......... 250 b. The conspirators before the King . . 2 5 0 1) Murley accuses Oldcastle . . . 251 2) Oldcastle vindicates himself . 251 3) Suggestions from Holinshed . . 251

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c. Oldcastle arrested ................ 1) His house searched for books . 2) Titles of the books discovered 3 ) Suggestions for the episode . . d. Oldcastle1s escape from the Tower . 1) Harpoole arranges the escape . 2) A hint in Holinshed........... 5. The fifth a c t ........................... a. Condemnation of the conspirators . . b. Appearance of a murderous Irishman . o. The carriers, recalling i Henry IV . d. Comic business at the i n n ......... e. Oldcastle unjustly accused of murder f. The concluding s c e n e ............... 1) The real murderer sentenced . . 2) Oldcastle turns toward Wales . 3) An echo of Dericke and Falstaff 4) Echoes of the martyr-history .

251 252 252 253 254

254 254 255 255 255 25 5 256 256

257 257 257 257 257

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. I- The various aspects of the character of Oldcastle In literary history .............................. A. Religious changes as an explanation ........ B. The role of circumstance.............. II. The Oldcastle story after 1600 A. No further imaginative detailsadded ......... B. The rediscovery of Oldcastle . III. Other writings about Oldcastle .................. A. Later martyr-historles....................... B. Tennyson* s poem .............. IV. Further research indicated .....................

260 260 260 26l 261 261 26l 262 262

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary sources .................................. Secondary sources ................................

263 270

I n d e x ..........................................

276

Map: Wales and the Welsh Border

. . . . . . .

following

25 9

37

Chart: Derivation of the Story of Sir John Oldcastle in the Chronicles ......... following 100

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I!!'(.■ *.K Y TiJi. [ ,\/\ r . R i lT Y O E TEXAS

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: OLDCASTLE IN SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARSHIP

Sir John Oldcastle, as the original of Sir John Falstaff, sooner or later figures In every extended discussion of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, hut he has a place in English letters also for the reason that for nearly two centuries before these plays were written he was a symbol of religious controversy, a martyr to some, and a traitorous heretic to others.

Thus the literary history of this remarkable

character, extending over more than five hundred years to the present day, is worthy of study on its own account. Nicholas Rowe, the forerunner of modern Shakespeare scholarship, has supplied what is probably the most often quoted assertion that Falstaff was originally called Old­ castle.

It is found in the “Account of the life of Mr.

William Shakespear," the assemblage of fact and tradition which Rowe took pains to gather nearly a century after the death of the dramatist, and which he placed as a preface to his six-volume edition of the plays Issued in 1709.

Here,

after the famous passage in which Rowe tells that Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor at the instance of Queen Elizabeth, who "was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of Henry the Fourth that she commanded him to continue it for one play more,

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and to show him In love," he continues: Upon this occasion It may not be improper to observe that this part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle; some of the family being then remaining, the Queen was pleased to command him to alter it;upon which he made use of Falstaff*1 Shakespeare's next editor, Alexander Pope, passed by the matter of Oldcastle in relation to Falstaff, but Pope's rival and critic in the field, Lewis Theobald, offered evidence to substantiate Rowe's point in his own ten-volume compilation, which appeared in 1733*

With reference to

the line "As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle," i Henry I V , I, 2, Theobald commented: Mr. Rowe took notice of a tradition, that this part of Falstaff was said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle. An ingenious correspondent (whom I know only by his signing himself L. H. ) hints to me, that the passage above quoted from our author proves what Mr. Rowe tells us was a tradition. Old lad of the castle seems to have reference to Oldcastle. Besides if this had not been the fact, (before the change was made to Falstaff) why, in the epilogue to the Second Part of Henr.v IV. where our author promises to continue his story with sir John in it, should he say: "Where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions’ for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." This looks like declining a point, that had been made in objection to him. I'll give a farther matter in proof, which seems almost to fix the charge. I have read an old play, called, The famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, containing the honourable battle of Aglncourt.— - The action of this piece commences about the 14th year of K. Henry the Fourth's reign, and ends with Henry the Fifth's marrying princess Catherine of France. The scene opens with prince Henry's robberies. Sir John Oldcastle is one of the gang, and called Jockle; and Ned and G-adshill are two comrades.— From this old 1

Nicholas Rowe, ed. The Works of Mr. William Shakespear (London, 1709) I, p. lx.

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Imperfect sketch, I have a suspicion, Shakespeare might form his two parts of Henry the Fourth, and his history of Henry the Fifth; and consequently ‘tie not Improbable, that he might continue the mention of sir John Oldcastle, till some descendants of that family moved queen Elizabeth to command him to change the n a m e . 2 Theobald further observed that in the 1600 quarto of the Se cond Part of Henry IV a speech-prefix Old, appears In Act I, Scene 2 before the line '‘Very well, my lord, very well," spoken by Falstaff as he is reproved by the Chief Justice.

His comment reads:

I had not observed this, when I wrote my note to The First Part of Henry IV. concerning the tradition of Falstaff*s character having first been called Oldcastle. This almost amounts to a self-evident proof of the thing being so; and that the play being printed from the stage manuscript, Oldcastle had been all along altered into Falstaff, except In this single place by an oversight; of which the printers not being aware, continued these initial traces of the original name.3 The foundation of evidence contained in these two notes by Theobald is still basic, as subsequent research has served only to strengthen the framework of the argument. Thus

William Warburton, Pope's editor, who was more often

unfriendly than otherwise toward Theobald, in his 17^7 edition of Shakespeare, produced further evidence from Thomas Fuller's Church History of Britain, first published In 1 6 5 5 *

Warburton noted:

'My old lad of the castle.* This alludes to the name Shakespeare first gave to this buffoon character, which was Sir John Oldcastle: and when he changed the 2

Lewis Theobald, ed. The Works of Shakespeare. IV ,96 note. The letter signed L. H. is in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Cf. S. B. Hemingway, The Vari­ orum Shakespeare. I Henry IV (Philadelphia,193^) P»31»

3

Theobald, IV, 195-

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name, he forgot to strike out the expression that alluded to it. The reason of the change was this, one sir John Oldcastle having suffered in the time of Henry V for the opinions of Wickliffe, it gave offence; and therefore the poet altered it to Falstaff, and endeavours to remove the scandal, in the epilogue to the 2d part of Henry I V . Fuller takes notice of this matter in his church history. — "Stage poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a Jovial royster, and a coward to boot. The best is, Sir John Falstaff has relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place."^ Warburton did not quite complete the quotation from Thomas Fuller.

It may be that he disliked the note of

partisanship in the words with which Fuller ended his para­ graph about Oldcastle:

"but it matters as little what

petulant poets, as what malicious papists, have written against him ." 5

As Warburton knew from histo-y, Sir John

Oldcastle was burned as a heretic in 1417*

For more than

a century the chroniclers consistently pictured him as a traitor not only to the Church but also to the king.

Then,

with the coming of the Reformation, new values were placed upon dissent from Roman Catholic dogma, so that Instead of being any further reviled, Oldcastle was idealized In John Foxe's Book of Martyrs as a man of courage and faith, who had suffered death rather than yield in matters of belief. It was understandably difficult for eighteenth-century ad­ mirers of English Institutions to believe that a person 4

William Warburton, ed. The Works of Shakespeare (London, 1747) IV, 102-103.

5

Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain (London, 1655) P» 168.

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thus revered could ever have been Identified with the glut­ tonous Falstaff.

Skepticism in this regard may have been

encouraged by the fact that Warburton passed over entirely the matter of the tell-tale speech-prefix in 2 Henry I V . and also omitted all mention of Theobald’s notes.

Casual critics

who failed to take note of Theobald’s earlier comments might thus have assumed that the only real evidence for Falstaff's ever having been Oldcastle was contained in the single line on which Warburton chose to comment. A writer signing himself P. T. undertook to revise Warburton18 interpretation of this line, with its reference to "my old lad of the castle," in an article contributed to Gentleman's Magazine in 1752, which has apparently not been noticed hitherto in this connection.^ On the historically shaky premise that Queen Elizabeth, and therefore presumably Shakespeare also, had been primarily concerned with advancing the Protestant Reformation,

this writer argued that Falstaff

could not possibly ever have been Oldcastle: What I say, could Shakespeare make a pampered glutton, a debauched monster, of a noble personage, who stood foremost on the list of English reformers and Protestant martyrs, and that too at a time when reform­ ation was the Queen’s chief study? ’Tls absurd to suppose, ’tls impossible for any man to imagine. 6

7

P. T., "Observations on Shakespeare's Falstaff," G-entleman’s Magazine XX, ^59-^61 (October, 1752). ,rP . T ." was perhaps Sir Peter Thompson (1698-1770), a member of Parliament from 17^-7 to 175^ > and a collector of "books, manuscripts, fossils, and other literary curiosities." Cf. John Nichols, Lit erary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1812) V, 511. Ibid.

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6 P. T. contends that the troublesome line to which Warburton had hitched his comments ought to be reconstructed: As is the honey, m.v old l a d , of the Castle. "honey" being taken to refer to the "sack, or sugar and sack" of an hypo­ thetical inn called the "Castle."

All in all, he is

inclined to trace the source of the whole confusion to some sort of popish plot, maintaining that Oldcastle had been represented as a "ruffian, a robber, and a rebel" by the writers of his time so that they "might not seem wanting in their zeal for holy mother church."

Quotations which

he adduces to reinforce this point are quite unequivocal in linking Oldcastle1s buffoonery to religious prejudice: That I have not misrepresented matters Speed1s words will shew, which are these: ‘’The author of the three conversions hath made Oldcastle a ruffian, a robber, and a rebel, and his authority, taken from the stage players, is more be­ fitting the pen of his slanderous report, than the credit of the Judicious, being only grounded from the papist and his poet, of like conscience for lies, the one overfeigning, and the other ever falsifying the truth. Speed1s Chron, Edit. 11, p. 178. To which I must add what Dr. Fuller says in his worthies of Norfolk, to the same purpose: * Sir John Oldcastle was first made a thrasonical puff, an emblem of mock valour, a make-sport of all plays for a coward. It is easily known, continues Fuller, out of what purse this black penning feic)y came, The papists railing on him for a heretlck, therefore he must also be a coward."1 Fuller's Worthies, p. 253* From whence it appears Sir John Oldcastle was the common droll, the buffoon general of the Roman cathollck poets during, or for the greatest part of their reign upon the English stage. ® 8

P. T's. sources are to be identified as follows: A Treatise of Three Conversions of England, by the Jesuit Robert Parsons, published in 1603-04, was directed almost wholly against John Foxe and his

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The passage derived from Thomas Fuller will bear closer examination, as the complete quotation does not altogether bear out P. T's. contention that Oldcastle never was Falstaff.

In that section of the Worthlee devoted to

the County of Norfolk, the following material appears con­ cerning Sir John Fastolf: To avouch him by many arguments valiant, is to maintain that the sun is bright, though, since the stage hath been over-bold with his memory, making him a thras­ onical puff, and an emblem of mock-valour. True it is, Sir John Oldcastle did first bear the brunt of the one, being made the make-sport in all plays for a coward. It is easily known out of what purse this black penny came; the Fapists railing on him for a heretic, and therefore he must also be a coward, though indeed he was a man of arms, every inch of him, and as valiant as any in his age. Now as I am glad that Sir John Oldcastle is put out, so I am sorry that Sir John Fastolfe is put in, to relieve his memory in that base service, to be the anvil of every dull wit to strike upon. Nor is our comedian excusable, by some alteration of his name, writing him Sir John Falstaff (and making him the property of pleasure for king Henry the Fifth, to abuse), seeing the vicinity of sounds entrench on the memory of that worthy knight, and few do heed the inconsiderable difference in the spelling of the name. 9 P. T . , it must be admitted, severely edited his evidence in his effort to supply an alibi for Shakespeare's alleged defamation of a popular Protestant hero.

Turning next to

the problem of the Famous Victories, while recognizing that this play was antecedent to Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, Book of Martyrs. — Cf. his book (London, 19^0) edition of John Speed's was published in l6l4. the Worthies of England 9

J. F. Mozley, John Foxe and pp. 176-77* The second History of Great Brltalne Thomas Fuller's History of was first published in 1662.

The History of the Worthies of England. Nuthall (London, 1890) II, 455 .

ed. P. A.

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he rejects the rather obvious corollary that the Oldcastle of the Famous Victories was correspondingly related to Falstaff: This antlent antiquated piece Shakespeare had before him, no doubt on It, when he wrote the 1st part of Hen. IV. and Oldcastle being the droll of the play gave the hint, and occasioned Shakespeare’s raising out of his own brain, the most compleat, the most Incomparable buffoon that ever was, the inimitable FalstaffJ . . . It appears, upon the whole of the matter, that all the alteration Shakespeare made, with regard to names, amounts to this and no more, viz. He gave the name Falstaff to the new buffoon character he introduced upon the stage, In the room of the old one. Turning the argument the other way, P. T. finds in the Oldcastle of the Famous Victories a satisfactory explanation for the allusion to the martyr Oldcastle in the epilogue of 2 Henry IV: It is plain, as any thing can be . . . that after Falstaff had appeared on the stage, In the 1st part of Henry IV, those persons that remembered, or had heard, or had read, any thing of the former buffoon character, looked upon Shakespeare’s new Falstaff of the Roman catholicks, though new modeled and new named; and it was not wonder they did so, seeing he appeared in the room of the mock Oldcastle, amongst his set of companions, Prince Henry, Ned and G-ads-Hill. To obviate which opinion, Shakespeare tells his audience in his epilogue, for any thing he knows, Falstaff shall die of a sweat (i. e. the pox) unless already he be killed with their hard opinions (i. e. unkind unfair opinions) "for Old­ castle died a martyr, and this is not the man." In plainer terms, it is said, says Shakespeare, my Falstaff Is Oldcastle (meaning the mock Oldcastle) but I say, the opinion is hard, it is wrong; for Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man. Wherein, not denying but there might be some reason for the opinion, he brings himself off, as well as he can, by the help of an almost hidden equivocation. Thus, with the aid of equivocation, the.entirely sound contributions in the matter of Rowe and Theobald are swept

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aside before the logic of P. T*s. argument. The notion that Shakespeare could not possibly have written the part of Falstaff originally for Oldcastle was based, at least in part, on the mistaken supposition that Shakespeare was also the author of a play entitled The True and Honorable History of Sir John Oldcastle. the G-ood Lord Cobham.

This play, fully discussed in Chapter VIII, follow­

ing, survives in two quarto editions, both dated 1600, one of them bearing the words "By William Shakespeare" on the title page.

With six other doubtful plays (The London

Prodigal, A Yorkshire Tragedy. Pericles. Locrlne. Thomas lord Cromwell. and The Puritan),

this dramatic vindication

of Sir John Oldcastle was Included in a second issue of the Third Shakespeare Folio of 1664- and also in the Fourth Folio of l685« ‘*’1

Rowe in 1709 included all seven of the apoc­

ryphal plays in his edition of Shakespeare, and it remained for Alexander Pope, in his edition of 1?23, to drop them from the canon.

At the very beginning of Sir John Oldcastle.

in the prologue, the character of the martyr-hero is pointed­ ly dissevered from that of Falstaff: 10

11

The two quarto editions were carefully compared by John Robertson MacArthur, in The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle (University of Chicago thesis, 1907)• The date of the quartos is a forgery. Cf. William J. Neidig, "The Shakespeare Quartos of 1619," Modern Philology VIII, IA5 -I 63 (October, 1910); and for earlier discussions, A. W. Pollard, "Shakespeare in the Remainder Market," Academy LXX, 528-29 (June 2, 1906, and W. W. Greg, "On Certain False Dates in Shakespearian Quartos," The Library, New Series, No. 3^, IX, 113-131 and 381-409 (April, October, 1908). Cf. T. R. Lounsbury, The Text of Shakespeare (New York, 1906) p. 70.

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The doubtful title (Gentlemen) prefixed Upon the argument we have In hand May breed suspense, and wrongfully disturb The peaceful quiet of your settled thought. To stop which scruple, let this brief suffice; It is no pampered glutton we present, Nor aged counselor to youthful sin, But one whose virtues shone above the rest, A valiant martyr and a virtuous peer; In whose true faith and loyalty expressed Unto his sovereign, and his country1s weal, We strive to pay that tribute of our love Your favours merit. Let fair truth be graced, Since forged invention former time defaced.I2 P. T. had protested,

"Whatl I say could Shakespeare

make a pampered glutton . . .

of a noble personage who

stood foremost on the list of English reformers and Prot­ estant martyrs?"

The phrase pampered glutton quite certainly

must have come from this prologue, which P. T. had in mind as he wrote, and which

no doubt supported his opinion that

Shakespeare could not possibly have written the part of Falstaff under the name of Oldcastle.

This view of the

matter seems to have been an accurate reflection of the then prevailing opinion among critics, or else P. T's. article had a very decided influence in shaping such opinion, for the three most prominent editors of Shakespeare in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Capell, Steevens, and Malone, all maintained with more or less positiveness that Falstaff had never been Oldcastle. Edward Capell, in his 1767 edition of Shakespeare, 12

The text of Sir John Oldcastle here used is that in The Shakespeare Apocrypha, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke (Oxford, 1908) pp. 158 ff.

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forebore to place his comments at the foot of the various pages of his text, but rather compressed his observations Into an Introduction.

Here P. T ‘s. opinions are found to

be closely paralleled: "The famous Victories of Henry the fifth" . . . it is my firm belief, was prior to Shakespeare1s "Henries" and the identical "displeasing play" mentioned in the epilogue to "2 Henry IV;“ for that such a play should be written after his, or received upon any stage, has no face of probability. There is a character in It ealled sir John Oldcastle; who holds there the place of sir John Falstaff, but his very antipodes in every other particular, for it is all dulness; and it is to this character that Shakespeare alludes, in those much-disputed passages; one in his 1 Henry IV and the other in the epilogue to his second part; where the words "for Old­ castle died a martyr," hint at this miserable performance, and its fate, which was — damnation. ^3 Further observations were offered by Capell In his N o tes, printed In 177^ > shortly after the appearance of the first edition of Johnson and Steevens*s Shakespeare.

Here he

suggests, somewhat hastily, that "if the passages in which the word Falstaff occurs be attended to by those who have ears, they will give abundant conviction . . . that Oldcastle never stood in the place of Falstaff."

Interestingly, a

more recent critic has proposed the same metrical test to bolster a conclusion which is exactly the opposite. 13

1^

Edward Capell, Introduction to Mr. William Shakespeare His Comedies Histories and Tragedies (London, 1767) I, 5^-55• Edward Capell, Notes and Various Readings to Shake­ speare (London, 177^) P» 170. This 177^ edition of Capell!s animadversions Is rare because the impres­ sion was recalled by the author. A three-volume edition, under the same title, was issued in 1783*

15

A. E. Morgan.

Cf. Chapter VI.

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The much-disputed question of the relation between Oldcastle and Falstaff was fully aired In the successive editions of Johnson and Steevens's annotated Shakespeare. The first edition of 1773> in ten volumes, was reprinted 1773 and reedlted In 1785 by Isaac Reed.

In

Steevens pre­

pared a fifteen-volume edition in 1793> which Reed reissued in twenty-one volumes with additional notes left by Steevens in 1803 and again in 1813* In his first edition, Steevens reproduced the comments of Theobald and Warburton in connection with "old lad of the castle," and then added a rather too-abrupt note of his own: Sir John Oldcastle was not a character ever intro­ duced by Shakespeare, nor did he ever occupy the place of Falstaff. The play in which Oldcastle's name occurs is not the work of our poet. He quoted without comment Theobald's observation about the mistaken speech-prefix in the quarto of 2 Henry I V . but reserved his final word for a note to Henry V.

There, after

identifying "another play on the subject," obviously the Famous Victories, as the "displeasing play" alluded to in the epilogue to 2 Henry IV,

he concludes flatly:

When the prince of Wales in 1 Henry IV calls Fal­ staff my old lad of the castle. it is probably but a sneering allusion to the deserved fate which this per­ formance met with; for there is no proof that our poet was ever obliged to change the name of Oldcastle into that of Falstaff. 16

Samuel Johnson and George Steevens, The Plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1773) V, 232.

17

Ibid., VI, 8.

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13 But the matter was not to he set at rest thus easily. In subsequent editions Steevens expanded his observations to Include references to the prologue of Sir John Oldcastle and to several other allusions which were new to the dis­ cussion: Old lad of the castle. is the same with old lad of Castile. a Castilian. Meres reckons Oliver of the castle among his rcmsnces, and Gabriel Harvey tells us of “Old lads of the castell with their rapping babble" — roaring boys — This is therefore no argument for Falstaff1s appearing first under the name of Oldcastle. There is however a passage in a play called Amends for Ladies, by Field the player, 1618, which may seem to prove it, unless he confounded the different performances. 11 Did you never see The play where the fat knight hight Oldcastle Did tell you truly what this honor was?" 1° This last bit of testimony, coming from a playwright who was contemporary with Shakespeare, and rather definitely attributing to Oldcastle the famous discourse on honor which is put into the mouth of Falstaff In 1 Henry I V , V, i, must almost have induced Steevens to reconsider his earlier assertion that Oldcastle had never occupied the place of Falstaff.

Still he persisted in countering

Theobald's opinion that the mistaken speech-prefix amounted to a "self-evident proof": I am unconvinced by Mr. Theobald's remark. Old, might have been the beginning of some actor's name. Thus we have Kemp and Cowley instead of Dogberry and Verges in the quarto edition of Much Ado etc.

18

Johnson and Steevens.

19

Ibid. , V, 459.

n

Edition of 1785> V, 281.

D

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To this, Joseph Ritson, Steevens*s most persistent and acid critic, replied in 1783: Mr. Steevens still remains unconvinced, and adds that Old, might have been the beginning of some actor's name. An objection which would have served equally well, if the name of Oldcastle had, in that edition stood at ' length, instead of Falstaff, throughout the whole play.2® It is somewhat extraordinary for Mr. Steevens to assert that Shakespeare was not the author of the old play of Henry V in which Oldcastle appears to have been first introduced upon the stage. Nobody ever said or thought he was. 2-*It seems that some degree of heat had arisen in the question whether Shakespeare had, or had not, at one time made Old­ castle a clown. The question was at least partly resolved when the true authorship of Sir John Oldcastle was established by Edmund Malone.

The play had been Included by Malone in his 1780

"supplement" to Johnson and Steevens*s 1778 edition, but the patent contradiction between the Oldcastle of this apoc­ ryphal drama and the Falstaff of Shakespeare had, already in 1790, led him to a discerning surmise concerning its author­ ship.

In his Supplement he noted:

The sarcasm which this prologue contains on some writer who in a preceding drama had exhibited a pampered glutton and an aged counselor to youthful sin (by which description either Sir John Oldcastle, a character in the old King Henry V or Sir John Falstaff seems to have been pointed at") induced me on a former occasion to doubt whether Shakespeare was the author of the present play. The apparent allusion also to the prologue in the 20 Joseph RItson, Remarks. Critical and Illustrative . of the last edition of Shakespeare (London, 1783) P« 97• 21

Ibid., p. 89.

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15 epilogue to the Second Part of King Henry IV ("for Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the m a n " ) appeared to me a strong circumstance against the authenticity of this piece. I am still of the same opinion; nor do I see how it could have been the pro­ duction of an author who had before exhibited Sir John Falstaff on the stage. The present play was written I believe, after the representation of the First Part and before that of the Second Part of King Henry J.V. 22 - The hypothesis thus set forth was borne out and proved, some time before 1790, through Malone's discovery and inter­ pretation of Philip Henslowe's diary and account book. Malone revealed his discovery with a reference to "very curious papers lately discovered in Dulwich College" in the preface to his own 1790 edition of Shakespeare: With respect to the other contested plays, Sir John Oldcastle. The London Prodigal. & c., which have now for hear two centuries been falsely ascribed to our author, the manuscripts above mentioned completely clear him from that imputation; and prove that while his great modesty made him set but little value on his own inimit­ able production, he could patiently endure to have the miserable trash of other writers publickly imputed to him, without taking any measure to vindicate his fame. Sir John Oldcastle. we find from indubitable evidence, though ascribed in the title-page to "William Shakespeare," and printed in the year 1600, when his fame was in its meridian, was the Joint production of four other poets, Michael Drayton, Anthony Mundy, Richard Hathwaye, and Robert Wilson. 23 Notwithstanding the new light thus shed on the relation of the epilogue of 2. Henry IV to the prologue of Sir John Oldbastle, Malone still

lent his weight to the general opinion

that Shakespeare must be defended

against the charge

that

22

Supplement to the edition of Shakespeare1s plays published in 1778 (London. 1780) II, 267.

23

Malone's preface may be found in Isaac Reed's 1803 edition, from which this section is quoted. 1,^82-83.

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16 lie had made a clown of Oldcastle.

In the course of time,

he found much to add to the already considerable mass of evidenoe, but In his comments he refuses to "give the smallest credit" to the Idea that the part of Falstaff had been written originally under the name of Oldcastle.

To show how he

reconciled various difficulties of his position, it is neces­ sary to reproduce some of his notes at length: From the following passage in The Meeting of Gallants a£ fin Qrdlnarle, o n J&e %aj,kg in Powls.su quarto, 1604, it appears the Sir John Oldcastle (not, I conceive, the Lord Cobham) was represented on the stage as a very fat man. - "Now signiors, how like you mine host? did I not tell you he was a madde round knave and a merry one too? and if you chaunoe to talke of fatte Sir John Oldcastle, he will tell you, he was his great grandfather, and not much unlike him in paunce." — The host, who is here de­ scribed, returns to the gallants, and entertains them with telling them stories. After his first tale, he says: "Nay gallants, I'll fit you, and now I will serve in another, as good in vinegar and pepper to your roast beefe." Slgnior Kickshawe replies: "Let's have it, let's taste on it, mine host, my noble fat actor." The cause of all the confusion relative to these two characters, and of the tradition mentioned by Rowe, that our author changed the name from Oldcastle to Falstaff, (to which I do not give the smallest credit) seems to be this. Shakespeare appears evidently to have caught the idea of the character of Falstaff from a wretched play entitled The famous Victories of King Henry V. (which had been exhibited before 1589) in which there is a Sir John Oldcastle, ("a pamper'd glutton, and a debauohee," as he is oalled in a piece of that age) who appears to be the character alluded to in the passage above quoted from The Meeting of Gallants &c. Shakespeare probably never intended to ridicule the real sir John Oldoastle, lord Oobham, in any respect, but thought proper to make Falstaff in imitation ofhis proto­ type, the Oldoastle of the old King Henry £, a mad round knave also. From the first appearance of our author's King Henry IV. the old play in which this sir John Old­ castle had been exhibited, was probably never performed. Hence, I conceive, it is, that Fuller says, "Sir John Falstaff has relieved the memory of sir John Oldcastle,

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17

and of late la substituted buffoon in his place"; which being misunderstood, probably gave rise to the story, that Shakespeare changed the name of his character. Falstaff having grown out of, and immediately suc­ ceeding, the other character, having one or two features in common with him, and being probably represented in the same dress, and with the same fictitious belly as his predecessor, the two names might have been indiscriminate­ ly used by Field and others, without any mistake or in­ tention to deceive. Perhaps, behind the scenes, in consequence of the circumstances already mentioned, Oldoastle might have been a cant-appellation for Falstaff, for a long time. Hence the name might have crept, in some play-house copy, into, one of the speeches of The Second Part of Henry XV. ^ Malone was possibly betrayed by a trick of memory.

The

expression "a pamper'd glutton, and a debauchee" can not be found in the Famous Victories: the prologue to Sir John Oldcastle has "pamper'd glutton," but P. T ‘s. article has "a pampered glutton, a debauched monster."

Very likely

Malone was echoing what had been written for Gentleman1s Magazine three decades before. Not everyone in this period of vigorous Shakespeare scholarship was so determined to maintain that the part of Falstaff could never have been written under the name of Oldcastle.

An exception was Maurice Morgann, who in 1777

wrote his classic Inquiry into the question whether or not Falstaff was a coward.

His Essay on the dramatic character

of Sir John Falstaff is notable because it sounds a romantic note which was to be taken up by a succession of later writers, that Falstaff is not really a base, vile coward, but rather that his Jesting is a oloak which conceals a better character, Zk

Isaac Reed's I8 0 3 edition, XI, 196-98.

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18

and that "Shakespeare has contrived to make a secret Im­ pression on

us of courage In favor of a character which

was held up

for sport and laughter on account of actions

of apparent

cowardice and dishonor.*

In the whole of the

somewhat lengthy discussion, Oldcastle receives

only

passing mention, but Morgann proffers an opinion regarding the relation of Oldcastle to Falstaff in a sagacious foot­ note that might well have provoked Malone to an expression of disagreement: I believe the stage was in possession of some rude outline of Falstaff before the time of Shakespeare, under the name of Sir John Oldcastle; and I think it probable that this name was retained for a period in Shakespeare's Hen. 4th, but changed to Falstaff before the play was printed. 25 Any doubt among Shakespeare scholars whether or not the part of Falstaff had originally been written for Oldcastle was quitted by the appearance, in 1841, of another essay similarly titled Oq the character of Sir John Falstaff. written by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips.

Here full

acceptance was given to the original pronouncement of Rowe, whom HaQlwell accepted as an authority, since "at least two of Rowe's traditional notes —

those which refer to the

embarrassed circumstances of John Shakespeare and to the name of Oldoastle — 25 26

have been verified by modern research. 8

Maurice Morgann, essay £& $h£ dramatic j^rapJgc of Sir John Falstaff (London. 177?) P* ^8. The materials in Halliwell's essay were later incorp­ orated by him into his two-volume Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (London, 1882), from which the following quotations are taken.

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19

The Oldcastle-Falstaff relationship is reconstructed thus: The First Part of Henry the Fourth, the appearance of which on the stage may conveniently he assigned to the spring of 1 5 9 7 » was followed immediately, or a few months afterward, by the composition of the Second Part. It is recorded that both of these plays were very favourably received by Elizabeth, tfcu Queen especially relishing the character of Falstaff, and they were most probably amongst the dramas represented before that sovereign in the Christmas holidays of 1597-98* At that time, or then very recently, the jrenowned hero of the Boar's Head Tavern had been introduced as Sir John Oldcastle, but the Queen ordered Shakespeare to alter the name of the char­ acter. This step was taken in consequence of the representations of some member or members of the Cobham family, who had taken offence at their illustrious ancestor, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, the Protestant Martyr. The great dramatist himself, having nominally adopted Oldoastle from a character who is one of Prince Henry's profligate companions in a previous drama, a composition which had been several years before the public, and had not encountered effective remonstrance, could have no idea that his appropriation of the name would have given so much displeasure. The subject, however, was viewed by the Gobhams in a very aerious light. This is clearly shown, not merely by the action taken by the Queen, but by the anxiety exhibited by Shakespeare, In the Epilogue to the Second Part, to place the matter beyond all doubt by the expedient declaration that there was in Falstaff no kind of association. satirical or otherwise, with the martyred Oldcastle.^7 To Halllwell's summation of the matter might be added the surmise that the person who complained to the Queen about the clownish Oldcastle of the stage was Henry Brooke, the eighth Lord Cobham, rather than his father, who before his death on March 5> 1597 "was Lord Chamberlain of the House27

Halllwell, Outlinea of the Life of Shakespeare. I, 141-4-2. This exposition of the OldcastleFalstaff matter has, in general, been accepted by more recent scholars. See, for example, J. Q. Adams, Life of William Shakespeare (Boston, 1925) pp. 228—231 a and G-. L. Kittredge, Sixteen Plays of Shakespeare (Boston, 1946) p. 508.

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20

hold, and would not have required the word of the Queen, since he himself would have been In a position of authorityover against the

p l a y e r s .

^8

The effort to assign an exact date to the change of name is not without its difficulties.

It is to be assumed

that Shakespeare made the change sometime before February 25» 1598, when Henrv the Fourth, “with the conceipted mirthe of Sir

John FfalstaffM was entered inthe Stationers'

Register.

However, there is a puzzling reference to a

play called Sir John Oldcastle in a letter dated March 8 , 1599- 1600: All this weeke the lords have been in London, and past away the tyme in feasting and plaies; for Vereiken dined upon Wednesday with my Lord Treasurer, who made him a roiall dinner; upon Thursday my Lord Chamberlain feasted hym, and made hym very great, and a delicate dinner, and there in the afternoone his plaiers acted before Vereiken, Sir John Old Castell. to his great contentment.29 Halliwell believes it unlikely that the play referred to here, presented as it was before the ambassador of a late cardinal, the Archduke of Austria, could have been the Protestant-flavored effort of Michael Drayton and his col­ laborators, but Shakespeare

by that time had already changed

the name of his comic character to Falstaff, so the play presumably was not Henry IV either.

Halliwell therefore

assumed that the play acted before Vereiken had been lost.3° 28

Cp. E. K. 1930) I, 29 Halliwell, Sydney. 30 Halliwell,

Ghambers, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 383* o p . clt.. II, 3 5 2 . (Roland Whyte to Robert In Sydney Letters» ed. 17^6, II, 175)* II, 3 5 2 .

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21

Of the evidence brought forward for the first time by Halliwell on the question of the relation of Oldcastle to Falstaff, the most striking is the testimony of Richard . James, the friend and librarian of the antiquarian Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, in his Legend and Defence of the noble Knight and Martyr, Si£ John Oldcastle. written about 1625, less than ten years after Shakespeare's death.

James'.s

work, of which Halliwell found "several copies" in the author*s handwriting, was an annotated edition of a ballad about Sir John Oldcastle written in 1^15 by Thomas Occleve.

In a

dedicatory epistle addressed to Sir Henry Bourchier, James related that in Shakespeare*s first shew of Harrle the Fift the person with which he undertook to play the buffone was not Falstaffe, but Sir Jhon Oldoastle; and that offence being worthily taken by personages descended from his title, as peradventure by manie others allso who ought to have in honourable memorie, the poet was put to make an ignorant shifte of abusing Sir Jhon Fastolphe, a man not inferior in vertue, though not so famous in pietie as the other. 3 2 The historic Sir John Fastolf, best known perhaps from the Paston letters, had been generally overlooked in the discussion about the

change of name, and Halliwell wrote

that it was "in the highest degree unlikely" that Shakespeare had meditated any reference whatever to him* ^3

already

in 1709 Nicholas Rowe had called attention to the name in a 31

The ballad is discussed in Chapter V.

32 33

Halliwell, II, 351 Itold,, II, 353-

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22

way that might have suggested further investigation: The present offence was indeed avoided; but I don't know whether the Author may not have been somewhat to blame in his second choice, since it is certain that Sir John Falstaff, who was a Knight of the G-arter, and a Lieutenant-G-eneral, was a name of distinguished merit in the wars in J?rance in Henry the Fifth's and Henry the Sixth's times, 31* The historical point thus invitingly set forth was discussed at length by James G-airdner in an artiole published in Fortnightly Review for March, 1873* 35

G-alrdner pointed out

that Sir John Fastolf, who appears briefly in Shakespeare's 1 Henry V I . where he forfeits the Order of the Garter because of his cowardice, could very well have been the model for the cowardly Falstaff of the stage.

Further, the Sir John

Fastolf of history was known as a Lollard, though he did not, like Oldcastle, endure persecution on that account. Shakespeare's Falstaff, G-airdner suggested, definitely identifies himself as a Lollard, protesting that, as pursetaking is his calling, 1,1 tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation," and “that as he has more flesh than another man, he cannot help having more frailty."

G-alrdner conceded

that Sir John Oldcastle was probably the original of Falstaff, but he insisted also that Shakespeare's character reflects something of this other Lollard, who, as the Paston letters show, was once the owner of the Boar's Head Tavern in Southwark/^ 3 ^- Nicholas Rowe, Introduction to the Works of Mr.

William I, p. lx. 35 James G-airdner, "On the Historical Element in Shakespeare's Falstaff," Fortnightly Review XIX,

333-34- (March, 1873). 36 Ibid. , p. 339-

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23

A point which becomes an issue with G-airdner*s article concerns the line, spoken by Shallow in 2 Henry IV. II, 2, telling that Falstaff as a boy had been "page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk*" 37

History tells that Thomas

Mowbray, who appears prominently in Shakespeare*s chronicle his­ tory play Richard

was one of the "appellants11 who sought

to abridge the power of that unfortunate king in 1386*

He

might possibly have had Oldoastle as his page, as Halliwell pointed out in arguing that Falstaff had originally been Oldcastle, but G-airdner, in opposition to Halliwell, pointed out that the first edition of Blographlca Britannia, pub­ lished in 17^9, states very definitely that it was Sir John Fastolf who had been page to Thomas Mowbray.

The article

in Blographlca Britannia was written by the antiquarian William Oldye, who gave the source of his information as "Mr. Blomefield in a letter dated Sept* 26, 17^9 from Nor­ wich. “38

Galrdner was very confident that Oldys wrote

from trustworthy information, since "it is well known that Blomefield had access to an immense mass of Mss., which have 37 38

Cf. Rudolph Fiehler, "I Serve the Good Duke of Nor­ folk," Modern Language X, 3 64-66 'September, 19^9)• The first published edition of Blographlca Brit­ annia ended abruptly with the article on Sir John Fastolf. In the preface to the second edition, the editor, Dr. Andrew Kippis, noted, "The curious life of Sir John Fastolf, which was elaborately, but awkwardly written by Mr. Oldys, Riohard Gough, Esq. has condescended entirely to new-model • • • with muoh additional information, arising from his superior and eminent knowledge in whatever related to Antiquarian Literature."

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Zk since been dispersed, relating to Norfolk worthies and Norfolk county history*"

The contradictory fact that

most of Fastolf s biographers, following Thomas Fuller, have stated that Fastolf was the ward of John, Duke of Bedford, third son of Henry IV, was dismissed by Gairdner as "evidently a mistake, and a very absurd one.*39 The question regarding this service to the Duke of Norfolk is made more complicated by a reference in the "Mirror of Martyrs,* written in 1599 by John Weever, in which Oldcastle Is made to say, "I was made Sir Thomas Mowbraies page."^

Barring the exceedingly remote possi­

bility that both Oldcastle and Fastolf were pages at one time or other to Thomas Mowbray, it is clear that either John Weever in 1599 or Blomefield in 17^9 must have derived the Information regarding their respective heroes from Shallow’s speech in 2 Henry IV.

Both have been oited as au­

thorities on this point, and the Dictionary

National

Biography Impartially observes of both Oldcastle and Fastolf, In articles respectively by James Tait and James Gairdner, that each of these Lollard knights was said to have been "page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk."

In somewhat

round-about fashion, it may be argued that the tradition attached originally to Oldcastle, because Mine Host in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, who shares Falstaffs proclivities 39

Gairdner, op. clt.. p. 3^0.

40

Cf. Chapter VII.

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25

toward poaching and thievery, announces repeatedly that he serves the "good11 Duke of Norfolk, a phrase which by assoc­ iation would seem to fit with the “good1* Lord Cobham.^ It seems likely that no very sharp distinctions were made between Oldcastle, Falstaff, and Fastolf by the playgoers whose plaudits impelled Shakespeare to continue the story of fat Sir John beyond the Henry IV plays. A thoroughgoing study of the actual history of Sir John Oldcastle was made more readily possible during the last half of the nineteenth century through the publication by the British government, particularly in the Rolls Series, of historical documents hitherto Inaccessible.

The first

study of this kind seems to have been made by Professor James Tait of Oxford University, whose article on Oldcastle in the Dictionary of National Biography appeared in 1895 as one of a long series of biographical sketches which he wrote for that work.

h,0

At the time Professor Tait's article was published, James H. Wylie, who was 3ater also to lecture at Oxford, must have been putting the final touches to the considerably more detailed account of Oldcastle in the third volume of his History of England under H?nry IV, the preface of which Is dated November, 1895 > and which was put into print the next y e a r . ^3 A still more extended treatment of Oldcastle*s history 4-2 43

Fiehler, op. cit., p. 3 6 6 . Dictionary of National Biography XVI, 980-87* James H. Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth (London, 1896).

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26 appeared in the English Historical Review for 1 9 0 5 . ^ This was written by William Templeton Waugh, then Just turned twenty-one, who was to become well known in later years as a professor of history in England and in Canada.

Waugh

referred to James Talt’s article as "by far the most scholar­ ly treatment of Oldcastle that has yet appeared, and he made very scant mention of Wylie's history; but it is interesting to note that when Wylie died, in 1914, it was Professor Waugh who carried to completion his unfinished Reign of Henry V, the third and final volume of which was published in 1929. The newly available historical materials about Oldcastle were first systematically related to Shakespeare scholarship in the study "Oldcastle-Falstaff in der Englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare," by Wilhelm Baeske, xyhlch appeared in Palaestra for 1905*

Baeske acknowledges his indebtedness

to the article in the Dictionary of National Biography. but he does not mention the materials gathered by Wylie, nor the articles by Waugh, both of which sources appear to have escaped him.

Baeske1s study has generally been accepted

as authoritative;

it is cited in the Encyclopaedia Brltannlca

in its article on Oldcastle, and also in the Variorum Henry the Fourth. Part O n e . ^

Nevertheless, it has its limitations.

Aside from th® fact that it no longer represents an adequate summary of the materials which have accumulated, it suffers 44

W. T. Waugh, "Sir John Oldcastle," English Historical Review XX, 434-456 and 637-658 (1905).

45

The Variorum Shakespeare. Henry the Fourth. Part One. ed. S. B. Hemingway (Philadelphia, 193^) PP* 453-55»

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27

from a distortion of perspective through the author's insist­ ence that Falstaff is a character in the tradition of the miles glorlosuB.

Baeske wrote, for instance, that Just as

the buffoon of the Italian comedy was followed by a ridicu­ lous entourage, so also Oldoastle, in the Famous Victories of Henry V was followed by his boy Hobble.^

Actually, the

reference in the Famous Victories is to a horse, and the word is bay.

It may be found also, especially by students

who do not read German easily, that Baeske*s presentation is often excessively wordy. In 1907 the play Sir John Oldcastle was treated in a doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago by John Robertson MacArthur,

writing

under the direction of Pro­

fessor J. M. M a n l y . ^7

This study is valuable for its

careful collation of the

two quarto versions of the play,

which is reprinted in full, and for its careful analysis of internal evidence in an effort to determine which

parts of

the play might have been written by each of the four col­ laborators.

In 1908 the play was reprinted in C. F. Tucker

Brooke's edition of plays falsely ascribed, at one time or other, to Shakespeare.

Eleven earlier editions, including

those of Rowe, Theobald, Steevens, and Malone are here if8

compared in presenting a definitive text.

The most recent

Wilhelm Baeske, “Oldcastle-Falstaff in der Englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare,“Palaestra L (1905)p*76. ly? ^8

J . R. MacArthur. His EfJCS.t.ESCl o£ Sic «lpfeB Qjji^astlg. (Chicago, 1907). The Shakespeare Apocrypha, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke. (Oxford, 1908) pp. 158 ff.

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28

reprinting of the play is to be found, with generous notes, in J. W. Hebei1s edition of Michael Drayton*s complete works, issued in 1 9 3 1 * ^ Through the years, incidental mention of Oldcastle has been made by the succession of writers on Shakespeareana who have undertaken to analyze the character of Sir John Fal­ staff.

Conspicuous among these writers is E. E. Stoll,

whom Logan Pearsall Smith has called the leading exponent of the "hhrd-boiled" school in the interpretation of Shake­ s p e a r e . P r o f e s s o r Stoll has no sympathy with Maurice Morgann*s opinion that Falstaff*s Jesting is a cloak that conceals a better character, a view which, he points out, has been echoed many times —

by Coleridge, Swinburne, Hazlitt,

Maginn, and "most subtly of all" by Professor A. C. Bradley. To him all this is romantic fallacy, and Falstaff is rather, in the words of Samuel Johnson, "old, fat, merry, cowardly, drunken, amorous, vain, and lying." Stoll bases his argument partly on the fact that the character of Falstaff was derived from that of Oldcastle, who, as representative of an unpopular cause, a parallel to the "Christian" as a stock figure of comedy in the later Greek mimus, must inevitably have been loaded down with all 49 50 51

The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. W. Hebei (Oxford, 1931) Vol. V. Logan Pearsall Smith, 0 & Reading Shakespeare (New York, 1933) P* 25E. E. Stoll. "Falstaff," Modern Philology XII, 197240 (1914).

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29

the more conspicuous vices. In that d a y of unanalytlcal hut prodigally copious characterization, whereby on the stage, or as in the case of Machiavelli, Luther, or Oldcastle himself, in popular tradition, a villain engrosses all criminal traits and a professional comic character all vicious ones, Falstaff (as clown) already a cheat, a liar, a boaster, a glutton, a lecher, and a thief, could hardly help being a coward as well.” The character of Sir John Oldcastle has figured also in discussions of the exact relationship of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays to the sources.

Interest In the question was

stimulated when A. W. Pollard and John Dover Wilson

sug­

gested in the London Times Literary Supplement for January 9 , 1 9 1 9 that, contrary to the generally accepted opinion,

The Famous Victories of Henry V, long regarded as the source from which Shakespeare derived the idea for his original clownish Oldcastle, was Itself derived from another older play, no longer extant, which was also the basis for Shakespeare's plays. The matter was elaborated by A. E. Morgan in Some Prob­ lems of Shakespeare's Henry 12, a paper read before the Shakespeare Association on November 23, 1922. ^3

Morgan

recapitulated his thesis thus: 52

Stoll, ££. clt.. p* 212. The name of Professor George Lyman Kittredge might be added to the list of notable defenders of Falstaff. Cf. his intro­ duction to Tjl£ First Part o£ King Henry t&g £ourt& (Boston, 19^0) p. xiii.

53

Arthur E. Morgan, Some Problems of Shakespeare's, Henry IV (Shakespeare Association, 1923).

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30

My belief is (1) that an early Henry V play (or plays) existed by 1588; (2) that this play (or plays) was the common original of The Famous Victories and Shakespeare's first play on the theme of Henry V; (3) that both parts of Henry IV as we know them, are re­ vised versions of earlier Shakespearean forms; (40 that in the early form there was less comic element: (5) that the comic element was mainly in verse; (6) that at the revision the historical element was abridged; (?) that in the early version of Sir John Oldcastle was the pale foreshadowing of the richly humorous . Falstaff, who is in reality a triumphant afterthought. *4 The ready hypothesis of a "lost play" antedating the plays in which Falstaff appears can, of course, be neither proved nor disproved, but the proposal is at least a half-century older than Morgan's essay. Finally, there has been a continuing interest among Shakespeare enthusiasts in the legend of Prince Hal as a roistering highwayman who had Sir John Oldcastle in his entourage.

This aspect of the Oldcastle history has recent­

ly been discussed in the pages of Library. Sir John Oldcastle has been so variously regarded by litterateurs and historians writing about him in different times and circumstances that it would be difficult to find

54

Morgan,

55

The case for an antecedent version of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays was discussed in an anonymous article, "The Early Authorship of Shakespeare," in North British Review LII, 78 ff•, (April, 1870). John Dover Wilson, "The Origins and Development of Shakespeare's Henry IV," The Library. Fourth Series, XXVI, 2-16 (194-5)Leslie Mahin Oliver, "Sir John Oldcastle: Legend or Literature?" The Library. Fifth Series, 1,179183 (1946). Cf. also D. T. Starnes, "The Prince Hal Legend," Philological Quarterly XV, 358-366 (October, 1936).

56

clt.. pp. 42-43.

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a parallel for the series of protean changes which have made him successively a heretic, a rebel, an outlaw, a clown, and a martyr.

In the light of the sources, Sir John

Oldcastle appears first as a valiant west-country knight, who contracted what might have been a singularly fortunate marriage with a wealthy heiress in Kent.

He had, however,

espoused the reform program of John Wycllf,and

his un­

swerving loyalty to this cause procured for him

the enmity

of the leaders of the realm, both in Church and in state. After his death he was remembered as an outlaw until, in the days of the Reformation, be came to be honored as a martyr to his faith.

In Elizabethan times, cross-currents

of opinion about him created so much confusion that play­ goers were quite ready to see him as a clown. It is the thesis of this present study that the metamorphoses of Sir John Oldcastle are understandable in the light of their historical development.

In the pages

following, separate chapters are devoted to each of dominant aspects of his literary character.

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the

CHAPTER II Oldcastle as a Knight: Historical Remains of his own Time

The figure of Sir John Oldcastle which emerges from a study of historical remains dating from his own lifetime seems poorly suited to become a pattern for Sir John Falstaff. It Is not the figure of a Jolly roisterer, nor of a highwayman, nor of one who is either fat or old.

Rather It Is that of a

valiant knight at arras. A great deal of historical information about Sir John Oldcastle has been pieced together from the great store of source material that has been made available through publi­ cations of the British Public Record Office, which was estab­ lished by Parliament in I 8 3 8 , and those of the earlier record commissions. ^

Among these publications, the most important

ones to be cited in this chapter are the following: 1) Chronicles and Memorials of Oreat Britain and Ireland, better known as the “Rolls Series" comprising ninety-nine separate works, mostly medieval chronicles, published under nominal direction of the Master of the Rolls between 1858 and 1911* 2) TheCalendars of State Papers. summarizing in English a great number of original historical documents, Including. a) The Close Rolls, containing enrolments of mandates, letters, and writs of a private nature, such as were addressed in the k i n g ^ name to individuals, and were folded or closed up; 1

Cf._V. H. Galbraith, A& Introduction to the use of Public Records (Oxford, 193*0 PP» 66 ff.

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33

b) The Patent Rolls. comprising the “Litterae Patentee," or letters patent, of which they are the formal enrolments. c) The Fine Rolls« listing payments to the king of oblations or fines for charters, or for the enjoy­ ment of land or privileges.2 References to the Calendars of State Papers in the following pages are identified through numbers assigned to the original parchment membranes, as they are in the Record Office publications, page numbers and volume designations according to years being added to facilitate reference. Quotations, of course, are not from the original documents, which are mostly in Latin or French, but from the English translations in the Record Office compilations, which are often summaries rather than full translations of. the originals. Many of the documents referred to might be found in the original Latin in Thomas Rymer's Foedera, Conventlones, Litterae et oujuscumque generis Acta Publlca inter reges Angllae et alios auosvls lmperatores. reges. etc., published in twenty-one volumes during the years 170^ to 1735*

This

compilation of old treaties and state documents was not available for this study, and references to it are therefore Identified through Sir T. D. Hardy's syllabus to that work, a publication of the Record Office.-^ 2

Cf. M. S. A. G-luseppi, A 0-ulde to tfrff Manuscripts Preserved in the Public Record O f f i c e (London, 1923-24).

3

Sir Thomas D. Hardy, Syllabus of documents in “Ryner1s Foedera11 (London, 1869-1885)•

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34

Likewise not available to the present writer were extensive source materials about Oldcastle cited by James Tait in the Dictionary of National Biography, by W. T. Waugh in English Historical Review, and by J. H. Wylie in his histories of the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V.

Numer­

ous secondary references are therefore made in the following pages to the work of these historians.^ The date of Oldcastle*s birth is not known.

At least,

there is no historical basis for the notion that he was an old man when Henry was Prince of Wales —

"an aged counselor

to youthful sin," as the prologue to Sir John Oldcastle has it.

Something can perhaps be Inferred from the fact that

a son, John, was born to him in 1394, ^

and from the inform­

ation that he was already twice a widower when, sometime in 1408, he married the Lady Joan de Cobham, heiress to the rich Cobham estates in Kent. origin,

His first wife, of Welsh

was Katherine, daughter of Richard ap Yevan, and

the mother of his first son.

His second wife, whose name is

unknown, bore him a second son, Henry, and three daughters, Kate, Joan, and Maud.^ 4

5 6

James Tait, article on Sir John Oldcastle in Dictionary of> National Biography XVI, 980-87; W. T. Waugh, "^Slr John Oldcastle," English Historical Review. XX, and 6 3 7 - 6 5 8 (1905); J. H. Wylie, The History of England under Henry the Fourth (London, 1896) III, 288-299; J. H. Wylie, The Reign of Henry V (Cambridge, 1914-1929) I, 2 3 ^ 2 5 7 and III, 87-96. Waugh, op. cit., p. 2 3 5 Wylie, England under Henry the Fourth, III, 293; Waugh"/ p. 437.

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35

One slender clue for the year of Oldcastle1s birth is found in the bitterly hostile Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto, compiled by Thomas of Elmham, vicar-general of England and Scotland at the time of Oldcastle*s execution. Elmham identifies Oldcastle with the beast of the Apocalypse, Revelation 13:11-18, and gives this formula for dating the year of his birth: Nomine sexcenti sunt, sexaginta slmul sex; Extrahe quod remanent, his sua vita datur. ‘ In an accompanying gloss Elmham explains: Est, lnquit, numeris bestiae sexcenti sexaginta sex: tantus enim numeris continetur per llteras numerales in nomine Johannls Oldcastel; et ultra hoc, anni qui suae aetati in eodem anno refereuntur. Hie enim natus est in eodem anno quos schisma incepit, tempore UrbanigSextl, per electlonem Clementis Anno Domini mccclxxvlij. This would place the date of Oldcastle*s birth in 1378, when Clement VII was elected at Avignon as French counter­ pope to Urban VI at Rome. The numerology is explained thus: From the numeral letters of the two words Jon Oldcastel (I,L,D,C,L) Elmham derives a total of 701.

If Oldcastle

was born in 1378, he was thirty five years old in the year when he was convicted of heresy. 666, the number of the beast. 9

Thirty-five from 701 leaves Elmham*s authority on this

point might be discounted because of his fondness for Just

7

Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto. In

Memorials of

Henry the Fifth, ed. C. A. Cole (London: Rolls Series, 1857) P. 96. 8

Ibid.

9

Waugh, p. 4-36, note.

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36 such puns and devices.

If Oldcastle had a son already in

1394, then it would seem that he must have been born earlier than 1378. The first recorded historical reference to Oldcastle, which oocurs in 1400 In connection with an action at law, shows him as one of the lesser gentry of western Hereford­ shire, a knight, possessed of the manor of Almeley.

The

Almeley estates, located within five miles of the Welsh border, had been in the family for at least three generations. Sir John's great-grandfather Peter, the first Oldcastle of whom any record is to be found, lived early in the fourteenth century.

His grandfather, John, represented Herefordshire

in the parliaments of 1 3 6 8 and 1372.

His father, Richard,

was the first of the family to be knighted.

Thomas Oldcastle,

member of the parliaments of 1390 and 1 3 9 3 » was sheriff of the county in 1 3 8 6 and 1391, was probably his uncle.'1'0 The family name is thought to have been derived from an ancient fortification, left perhaps from the Roman occu­ pation, and in present times reduced to a mound, which is located beside the present church at Almeley.

A small village

In the north-east section of the Almeley estates was also called Oldcastle. ^

Today the old mound beside the church

is still known as Oldcastle Twt, and is described officially as a "mount and bailey earthwork," but the village once called 10

Waugh, pp. 435-36.

11

Tait, op. clt.

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37

Oldcastle is forgotten.

The parish church at Almeley,

basically unchanged in architecture since the fourteenth 12 century, does not memorialize any of the Oldcastles, and the name appears otherwise to have survived in this locality only in Old Castle farm, at Kinnersley, about two miles south of Almeley.1-^ The geographical location of the Almeley estates made it inevitable that Sir John Oldcastle should take up arms in behalf of Prince Hal,

The Welsh border, only a few

miles away, flared intoactivity soon after 1 3 9 9 , future Henry V was named Prince of Wales upon of his father after the deposition of Richard.

when the

the accession Owen Glendower,

taking advantage of long-rankling Welsh discontents, roused his countrymen to a revolt, which in its early stages was brilliantly successful, and Herefordshire quickly became the base of operations against the rebels.

The Scots also caused

trouble for the new regime, being incited by the king of France, who regarded Henry of Lancaster as a usurper.

On

June 9, 1400, Henry assembled his forces for an operation against Scotland, and Oldcastle Joined the expedition in the retinue of Lord Grey of Codnor, who, it may be noted, held possessions in Kent adjoining the lands which later became Oldcastle1s through his marriage to the Cobham heiress.^ 12

An Inventory of the Hi storlcal Monuments in Here­

13

fordshire (London, 193^) Hi", 4— 6. Ibid. , p. 100.

14

Waugh, p. 436.

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WALES AND THE WELSH BORDER

■^Bangor # C o n w a y •Carnarvon

Powlaland

•Shrewsbury

Welshpool

iJ r'^f»Ludlow /

• Bui 1th

• Almeley •Hereford

• Brecon i \

Abergavenny

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38

In the next year, 14-01, Oldcastle's aid was to be enlist­ ed directly against the Welsh rebels, whose successes in arms by that time were threatening to undo completely the admin­ istrative authority in the

area of the young Prince of Wales,

then not yet fourteen years old.

Prince Hal's control

seemed dangerously imperiled when in April the enemy captured Conway castle, near the seacoast in Carnarvon.

This strong­

hold had represented royal authority and prestige ever since it had been built a century before by Edward I following his conquest of Wales. abdicated in

It was In this castle that Richard had

favor of Henry of Lancaster.

Now it was occu­

pied without a fight by two-score Welshmen, who had gotten in by a ruse while the defenders were at church. King Henry started for Wales at the end of May, but by the time he reached Worcester, his Privy Council was urging him to return to L o n d o n . C o n w a y castle was being success­ fully besieged by Henry Percy, Shakespeare's Hotspur, at that time still loyal to the king, and the surrender of the place seemed imminent. The stirrender came soon enough, but Hotspur, indignant over his having to bear the expense of the siege himself, entered into traitorous negotiations with G-lendower.

The

depredations of the rebels continued through the summer and fall, and on September 18 a summons was issued from Westminster 15

J« E. Lloyd, Owen G-lendower (Oxford, 1932 ) p. 3 ?•

16

Proceedings and ordinances of the Privy Council of England, ed. Sir Harry Nicholas (London, 1834-) I, W -

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39

for a fresh attack on Wales.^ By October 8, Henry’s forces had reached Bangor and Carnarvon, but G-lendower, while in­ flicting considerable damage on the royal forces, shrewdly refused battle.

On October 15 the king was back across

the border at Shrewsbury, and in November he returned to Westminster.

18

Oldcastle must have rendered significant service in this campaign.

With other Herefordshire gentlemen, he was

commissioned during this time to raise the posse comltatus against certain of the rebels who were being sought for mischief done in the southern Welsh border

a r e a .

^*9

In Nov­

ember the Privy Council, considering the affairs of Hle pays de Gales de la quelle nostre selgnur le Roy est Ja tarde retournez," recognized Oldcastle as guardian for the King of the castle of Bullth, well within the Welsh border, some miles up the River Wye from Almeley.^0 Glendower's best chance for a decisive victory came in 1^03 t when on July 21 the royal army engaged the forces of the rebellious Percies and defeated them in the battle of Shrewsbury.

Either because he mistrusted his allies, or

because he could not get to the battlefield in time, the Welsh chieftain failed to support the Percies and thus let slip his greatest opportunity.

Notwithstanding the prominent

17 18

Hardy, Syllabus of R ymer»s Foedera. II, 5^3• Wylie, England under Henry the Fourth. Ill, 2^3.

19

Patent Rolls, 2 Henry IV, memb l M

20

Ordinances of the Privy Council. I, 1^-?.

(1399-1^-01, p.518).

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association of Shakespeare's Falstaff with the battle of Shrewsbury, there is no historical evidence that his proto­ type Sir John Oldcastle fought there.

It may be that Old­

castle was separately occupied in making countermoves against the wily G-lendower.

At any rate, he was soon afterwards

commissioned to act as the King's agent over a considerable part of subjugated Wales.

On September 21, 1^-03, there was

granted to him, together with John ap Henry and John Fairford, clerk, full power to receive into the King's grace any Welsh rebels in the areas of Brecknock, Builth, Hay, G-lynbough, and Dynas, on condition that they surrender their bows, arrows, swords, and other armor, offensive and defens­ ive, and take oaths of loyalty, forfeiture of their lands and goods being reserved to the king. 2-1In 1404, Sir John Oldcastle represented Herefordshire as one of the two knights from his district in a lengthy Parliament which was marked by a struggle over appointment of war treasurers.

He was allowed thirty pounds in March

22 for expenses of seventy-five days' attendance, and was named one of the collectors of a tax which had been levied to meet the cost of the wars in Scotland, the rebellion In Wales, and the safeguarding of the French coast.^3

Shortly after the

end of the parliament he was named one of eight commissioners

21 22 23

Patent Rolls. k Henry IV, Rotulus Vlagi, memb. 22 '(1401-1405, p. 299). Close Rolls. 5 Henry IV, ii, memb. lOd (1402-1405, p. 367). Fine R o lls, 5 Henry IV, memb. 6 (1399-1405, p. 258).

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41

of the peace for Herefordshire, and he was again so named oh,

in February of the following year. ^

G-lendower at this time was at the height of his power. In July, 1404, he concluded a treaty with the king of France against Henry.

English fears of an invasion were reflected

in the minutes of the Privy Council, and Edward Charlton, Lord Powis, who thirteen years later was to hand Oldcastle over to Parliament for execution, protected his holdings by making a private truce with the Welsh chieftain.

In

August of this year the Privy Council recognized Oldcastle and John ap Henry as guardians of the castles and towns of Hay and Brecon,^

and to Oldcastle was committed also the

keeping of the priory of Craswell or Carswalle for the duration of the war with France.

In October, "John

Oldecastell, chevalier" is named first among five Hereford­ shire gentlemen commissioned to inquire into a report that some of the King's subjects living in the Welsh march had bought victuals from the rebels, giving armament and artil­ lery in

e x c h a n g e .

^7

That this inquiry brought results may

be Inferred from the fact that a year later Oldcastle was 2^ 25

Patent Rolls. Henry IV, Vol. II, appendix (14011405, P. 517). Ordinances of the Privy Council. I, 237; Patent Rolled Henry IV, i, memb. 2 7 .

26

Fine Rolls, 5 Henry IV, memb. 6 (1399-1^05, P* 249).

27

Patent Rolls, 7 Henry IV, i, memb. 30d (l405-l408, p. 14971

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42

a member of a commission empowered with oyer and terminer to deal with persons who had been Involved in this traffic. 28 The fortunes of Owen G-lendoxyer began a sudden decline when in April, 1406 he was severely beaten in battle and one of his sons was killed.

Thereafter the royal authority was

quickly reasserted over most of the areas which had been in revolt.

Early in 1407 Oldcastle was made guardian

by the

king's authority over the Welsh possessions of the late Earl of March during the minority of the Earl's son and heir. 29 During the summer Prince Henry won back the stronghold of Aberystwtyth, which had been lost three years before, and although G-lendower shortly retook it, the royal forces took final possession on November 1 after a long siege.

Oldcastle

was one of the witnesses to an agreement made on September 12 between the besiegers and the hard-pressed occupants of the castle. 30 It appears that Oldcastle left Herefordshire somewhat abruptly in November of l407*

He had served as sheriff of

the county during the preceding twelve months, bearing the re3ponsibilities of the office even while he was away in Wales. 31 On November 30, 1407, a commission was Issued to his successor, Richard Arundell, with an accompanying order to "John Olde28 29

Patent R o l l s . 7 Henry IV, 1, memb. 30d (1405-1408, P. 149). Fine Rolls. 8 Henry IV, memb. 14 (1405-1413, p. 66).

30

The S t . Albans Chronicle. 1406-1420. Edited from Bodley Ms. 462 by V. H. Galbraith (Oxford, 1937) P»23*

31

Fine Rolla,-8-Henry IV, memb. 22 (1405-1413, p. 52); Patent Rolls. 9 Henry IV, Part I, memb 6 (l405-l408, p. 407).

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^3

castell, chivalier, late sheriff1* to deliver the

county to

Richard by indenture. The reason for Oldcastle*s sudden removal, from his ancestral estates was, no doubt, his impending marriage to the Lady Joan de Cobham, thrioe-widowed heiress in Kent. In becoming her fourth husband, Oldcastle*s stature as an individual was to be enormously increased.

Henceforth he

was to be known as the Lord Cobham and was to be summoned to Parliament as a peer.

But his Wyclifite leanings were

also to be brought under close scrutiny, probably because of his new prominence.

Six years later he was to be an

outlaw with a price on his head, a condemned heretic, a schismatic, and an enemy of the church and of the realm. The title which Oldcastle thus briefly enjoyed was one of ancient and expansive prestige.

The Cobhams had been

prominent in Kent since the time of the first Plantagenets. Henry de

Cobham had been an Itinerant Judge, one of the

recognltoreg magnae asslsaaf in the first year of King John; and four Kentish gentlemen named Cobham accompanied Edward I on his victorious expedition Into Scotland at the end of the thirteenth century.^

John de Cobham, who brought the fam­

ily fortune to its highest point, died only a few months before his granddaughter and sole surviving heir was married 32

Fine Rolls, 9 Henry IV, memb. 26 (1405-1413, p. 87).

33

Llewellyn Jewitt and S. C. Hall, The Stately Hpqea of England (New York, after 1874) p. 39; also Baronial Halls and Ancient Picturesque gdlflgas o£ England, ed. S. C. Hall (London, 1881) II, 100.

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44

to Sir John Oldcastle. In later years Sir John Oldcastle was persistently confused with this Lord Gobham^who was his wife's grand­ father, and It Is probably In part due to this confusion that Oldcastle, and also Falstaff, were thought to have been old men.

John de Cobham had been prominent In the reign of

Richard II.

He was one of the two barons on the council of

the young king upon his accession, and In 1 3 8 7 - 8 8 he was one of the king's commission before whom charges against Richard's favorites were appealed.

For this service he was Impeached

in 1397 by the Commons, and by prosecution of the Duke of Lancaster was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. King Richard, however, commuted this sentence to one of forfeiture and banishment to Jersey, from which place he was recalled upon the accession of Henry IV.

Thereafter he

lived quietly at Cobham manor until his death at an advanced age on January 10, 1408. public spirit and enterprise.

He left many monuments to his These Included Cooling

castle, built for protection of the marsh country on the south shore of the Thames, and a bridge over the Medway be­ tween Rochester and Strood, on the route followed by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.

He also enlarged the parish

church at Cobham, and founded a college there for five chap­ lains. 3^ 34

It is interesting to note that Sir John Fastolf Cf. Dictionary &f National Biography, XI, 1 5 5 -1 5 6 ; also Wylie, England under Henry the Fourth. Ill, 288-89.

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45

had business dealings with him.35 John de Cobham left no male heir.

He outlived his

daughter Joan and also her husband, Reginald de la Pole. His granddaughter, Joan de la Pole, who chose Sir John Old­ castle as the fourth of her five husbands, passed the In­ heritance on to the child of her second marriage, Joan Braybrooke.

Thus for three generations the Cobham line was

carried on through a daughter named Joan.

The estates

attaching to the Inheritance were immense, Including besides Cooling castle, six manors in Kent, a manor in Norfolk, two in Northamptonshire, two In Wiltshire, and a house known as Cobham*s Inn, in the eastern part of L o n d o n . 3^ Oldcastle*a marriage to the Cobham heiress took place in 1408, some time between February 15 and July 18.

On the

first of these dates the Lady Joan is named without mention 37

of her husband in the matter of a property settlements

On

the latter date Ralph de Hemenhall of Suffolk, cousin and heir of the Lady Joan's deceased third husband, by quitclaim granted his manor of Burnham County, Norfolk, to "John Oldecastelle knight lord Cobham and Joan his wife.“3®

Writs were

issued on October 26, 1409, summoning Oldcastle to attendance 35

Close Rolls. 5 Henry IV, 1, memb. lOd (1402-1405, p. 304)

36

Waugh, p. 4 3 8 .

37

Close Rolls. 9 Henry IV, memb. 28 (1405-1409, PP. 307-30?n Ciase Rolls. 9 Henry IV, memb. 5d (1405-1409, p. 404).

38

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46

in the upper house of Parliament.

It has been debated

whether this summons meant that a new baronry had been created in Oldcastle1s favor or whether he had been summoned by reason of his marriage, so that the Cobham interests might not lack representation.-^ The thrice-widowed Joan had first been married at what must have been a very early age to Sir Robert Hemenhall, a Norfolk knight, and she must still have been very young when Sir Robert died in 1391.

Her second husband was Sir

Reginald Braybrooke, who died at Middleburgh, in the Nether­ lands, on September 20, l405»

Within a few months she was

married again, this time to Sir Nicholas Hauberk.

Sir

Nicholas had served in the Welsh wars, and had been one

of Prince Henry's bodyguard during the battle of Shrewsbury, 40 so it might be surmised that he knew Oldcastle, and that through him Oldcastle might have become acquainted with the Lady Joan.

In any case, it is striking that within a very

few weeks after Sir Nicholas died at Cooling castle on October 9> 1407,^

Oldcastle resigned his office as sheriff,

thereby announcing his Intention of leaving Herefordshire. 39

40

Tait, OEuclt. . maintained that Oldcastle was made a peer in his own right, as no summons to the House of Lords was ever Issued to the Lady Joan's fifth husband, Sir John Harpeden. Wylie contends that Oldcastle was summoned .lure uxor is, and is supported by the evidence of a list of bnomina baronum Jure uxoruffl," assigned to the year 1 5 7 2 , published in the Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Anoaster by the Historical Manuscripts Commission (London, 1907) p. 502. This list includes sir John Oldcastle. Wylie, England under Henry the Fourth, III, 290-91. Ifcld., p. 291.

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47

A monumental brass to the Lady Joan in Cobham church, one of thirteen such memorials In that place, identifies her as "Iohanna Domlna de Cobham quondam uxor doialne Reginaldi Braybrooke mllitio," and gives 1433 as the year of her death.

There are monumental brasses also to Sir Reginald

and to her third husband, Sir Nicholas Hauberk.; but there is no memorial to Sir John Oldcastle nor to her fifth hus­ band, Sir Nicholas Harpeden, who was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Other inscriptions mark the burial places of two

sons, Reginald and Robert, who died in infancy.

h,2

The only

one of her children to outlive her was Joan Braybrooke, the issue of her second marriage, the third and last in the succession of heiresses named Joan. Joan Braybrooke became the wife of Thomas Brooke of Somersetshire, and through this marriage the Cobham line was most prosperously continued.

The match may have been

arranged by Oldcastle, for there is a record, dated at Westminster on February 25, 1410, of a recognizance for 1300 marks given to Oldcastle, with provision for defeasance in case either Thomas, son of Thomas Broke, or Joan, daughter of Joan, wife of Oldcastle, should die before they should be married together.

The document is noted to have been can­

celled upon p a y m e n t . ^3

in later years a white marble

42. John Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments within the United Monarchy of Qreat Brltalne. Ireland and the Islands adjacent (London. 1 6 3 1 ) pp. 328-29. 4 3 Close Rolls. 11 Henry IV, memb.

24d (1409-1413, p.81).

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48

tomb was erected to the memory of Sir Thomas Brooke and his lady.

On a black slab the knight and dame lay In effigy,

while on either side were the figures of five of their sons, those of their four daughters being carved on the monument.

the ends of

The eldest of the sons was called to Parlia­

ment in the time of Henry VI, and in 1559 Sir William Brooke, a descendant of the line, entertained the recently crowned 44 Queen Elizabeth In her progress through Kent. The succession came to an abrupt end in the reign of James I with Sir Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, who shared the misfortunes of Sir Walter Raleigh, If he was not actually the chief contributor to Raleigh's downfall and his own.

The

case against Raleigh, tried November 17, 1603, rested largely on letters purportedly written by Cobham, admitting complic­ ity in the so-called Watson plot to depose the new king and to set up the Lady Arabella Stuart in his place.

Henry's

estates were confiscated, and a younger brother George was executed.^

According to tradition, the disgraced lord

lived in poverty and misery on the lands that had formerly been his, and when he died in 1619, he was burled in a simple grave, away from the church that housed the memorial 4 brasses of his ancestors. u 44

C. S. Hall, Baronial Halls and Ancient Plcturesoue Edifices of England. II, 106.

45

Cf. Edward Edwards, Life of Sir Walter Raleigh (London, 1908) pp. 342 ff.

46

Hall, og. cit., p. 101.

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49 In the feudal society of the early fifteenth century Sir John Oldcastle must have been a thoroughly acceptable husband for the heiress to the Cobham estates.

He appears

to have been foremost among the chivalry of England, for early in 1410, just before Parliament assembled, he was one of three English knights who crossed the Channel to oppose three Frenchmen in a tournament at Lille.

The contestants

were the guests for three days of the Count de Nevers, who acted as lavish host and master of ceremonies.^ Toward the end of 1411 Sir John Oldcastle figured even more importantly as a man at arms.

In September of that

year Prince Henry, now practically acting as viceroy for his sick father, undertook to aid the Duke of Burgundy against the King of France.

An English force under the Joint com­

mand of Oldcastle and three others crossed to the continent and very shortly decided the struggle in favor of the Duke. The affair is of special interest here because It had to do with the rift between Prince Hal and his father which Is reflected in the Famous Victories and in 2 Henry IV. The fullest account of the matter is given in the 4ft chronicle of Thomas Otterbourne. w Here it is related that the Duke of Burgundy in 1411 essayed to increase his holdings at the expense of the young Duke of Orleans, who 47

Waugh, p. 439.

48

Printed In Duo Rerum Angllcarum Scrlotores Veteres. ed. Thomas Hearne ^London, 1732T*Of." pp. 268-272.

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50

father had recently died.^9

He therefore appealed to the

King of England for help in hla design, offering his daughter in marriage to the Prince of Wales.

He received no encourage­

ment from the King, but shortly afterwards the Count Arundel, the Count of Warwick, Sir John Cornwall, Gilbert Umphraville, and Sir John Oldcastle were sent to aid the Duke.

They

engaged the forces of Orleans near St. Lo and won a decisive victory.

In the next year, 1412, the Duke of Orleans sent

representatives to King Henry, who received them favorably, and now resolved on his own account to press the war against the Burgundians on behalf of Orleans.

But because of the

King's poor physical condition, the nobles Insisted that his son Thomas be placed in charge of the enterprise.

Prince

Hal was offended by this turn of events, and it is recorded that he wrote letters to refute detractions which had been made against him.

Shortly afterward he called on his

father with his entourage and was graciously received.-^0 Thus for a time English foreign policy seems to have hinged on the divergent ambitions of Prince Hal and his father with respect to France.

The ultimate resolution of

the matter in favor of the Prince was climaxed by the disastrous defeat of the Orleanlst forces at Aglncourt In 1415.

The fact

that Oldcastle aided the Prince lii this struggle seems to 49

The Duke of Orleans was murdered in 1407 by the Instigation of the Duke of Burgundy.

50

The chronicle of Thomas Walsingham briefly chronicles the affair without mentioning the conflict between father and son. Cf. HIstoria Anglicana (London, 1858) II, 285-88.

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51

show that the two were on terms of close friendship.

Old­

castle, at least, was by no means out of favor when the Prince ascended the throne in 1*H3.

There is a record of payment

made by the King after his coronation, on July 20, 1^13, to Oldcastle and several, other gentlemen, who were given four hundred marks for a brooch or buckle.-^1

Though nothing

else is known of this transaction, the fact of payment suggests that the rejection of Oldcastle by the 'newly-crowned king occurred under conditions other than those suggested by the Famous Victories and Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV.

51

Hardy, Syllabus of Rymer1s Foedera, II, 575*

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CHAPTER III

Oldcaatle as a Heretic: The Archbishop*a Account

It was Sir John Oldcastle's Identification with Lollardy that ultimately made him prominent. the cause of John Wyclif,1

Had he not espoused

his most notable monument today

might well be another brass in the floor of Cobham church, and probably very little would ever have been written about him.

Still, the steps by which he became a partisan of

the Lollards are by no means clear. It Is reasonable to assume that Oldcastle embraced Lollardy while he was still at Almeley, the home of his ancestors near the Welsh border, but It is remarkable that no evidence is to be found of religious protest on his part while he still lived there In Herefordshire, and that he does not appear as a defender of the Lollards until after his removal to Kent,where he lived between London and Canterbury.

It may be that Herefordshire, remote from

these centers of temporal and ecclesiastical authority, was somewhat less hostile to Wycllflte dissent than was Kent, where the Archbishop lived, or It may be that Oldcastle simply made no open profession of his beliefs so long as he lived In the west country. 1

The spelling Wyclif has the support of W. W. Shirley, editor of the Fasciculi Zlzanlorum, to which extended reference Is made In this chapter.

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53

The years of Oldcastle1s life coincide quite appropri­ ately with the rise and subsidence of Lollardy as an organized movement, and conversely, with the decline and subsequent resurgence of organizational integrity in the Roman Catholic Church that accompanied the G-reat Schism.

At the time of

Oldcastle*s birth, a budding nationalism in England was presenting increasingly effective resistance to papal demands, and the time seemed ripe for John Wyclif, the master at Oxford, to press his demands for reform, but in the year of Oldcastle1s death the prestige of the papacy was again at a high point in England, and the Lollards had ceased to be an effectively organized group. As has been noted in the foregoing chapter, Thomas of Elmham dates Oldcastie's birth in 1378, the year in which the schism of the Church began.

In that year, upon the

death of Pope G-regory XI, the college of cardinals, meeting in Rome, chose as supreme pontiff an Italian, Urban VI; but the French cardinals soon afterward found occasion to name one of their own countrymen, Clement VII, as anti-pope, a development that is understandable in light of the fact that the papal residence had been transferred from Avignon to Rome only a few years before with the ending of the “Babylon­ ish Captivity.”

The French king and nation supported the

anti-pope, and this fact was enough to secure recognition of the Italian pope in England and Flanders, while Scotland and the Spanish kingdoms followed the French in adherence to Clement.

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54

Thus divided in head and members, the Church was in no position to deal effectively with the apostasy which threatened in England.

Shortly before the beginning of the

schism, in 1374, Wyclif abbetted English defiance of papal authority through his polemic Determlnatlo quaedam de domino.

The occasion for this tract was the renewal of

a papal demand for payment by England of an annual tribute of a thousand marks, which had been Instituted in the days of King John.

Payment had regularly been made in the

feeble reigns of Henry III and Edward II, but It had been refused by Edward I and by his grandson.

When Parliament

met in 1^66, during the reign of Edward III, to consider the pope's demand for thirty-three years of arrears of the tribute, the foreign situation made it Inevitable that the demand should be resisted.

The Pope, then living at Avignon,

was regarded as an ally of France, with which England had already been at war for almost thirty years; and only shortly before Parliament had reaffirmed the statute of Praemunire, providing that no tax Imposed by any religious persons should be sent out of the country. Wyclif, then at Oxford, supported Parliament in its stand, and thus soon became a figure of prominence.

In April

of 1374, the year of his Determlnatlo quaedam de domino. he was presented by the crown to the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, and in July he was named as one of the royal envoys to Bruges to confer with papal representatives

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on the question of "provisions," having to do with control over ecclesiastical appointments.

2

Wyclif proposed that the Pope, instead of exacting tribute, ought rather to emulate Christ, who abjured all earthly possessions, and that chosen laymen ought rather to administer the temporalities of the church.

He argued

further that whereas Christ is the Lord in chief who grants to every creature that which he needs, and whereas lordship, as he asserted, is dependent on grace, the superfluity of ecclesiastical wealth ought to be distributed to the poor. Supported by John of Gaunt and the seculars at Oxford, he defied a papal bull of May 22, 1377, which denounced him as a heretic and cited him to Rome.

About 1379 he began open­

ly to speak and preach against the accepted doctrine of transubstantiation, the teaching that the elements of the eucharist, the bread and the wine, are altogether trans­ formed during the rite of consecration into the physical body and blood of Christ.

Such direct denial of Catholic

dogma, along with a general suspicion that Lollard activity had been responsible for the Peasants1 Revolt of 1381, cost him the support of John of Gaunt. In 1382 a council presided over by William Courtenay, then Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned twenty-four of Wyclif1s "conclusions," ten of them as heresies, and fourteen 2

Cf. W. W. Shirley, preface to Fasciculi Zlzanlorum (London: Rolls series, 1858) p. xvili*

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56

as errors.

Points of heresy included:

1) that the substance

of material bread and wine remains after consecration in the sacrament of the altar; 4) that if a bishop or priest lives in mortal sin, he may not ordain, nor officiate, nor baptize; 5) that if a sinner is properly contrite, all outward con­ fession is for him superfluous, as well as useless; 10) that it is against holy Scripture for men of the church to have temporal possessions.3

In spite of this official condem­

nation, Wyclif continued as parish priest of Lutterworth until he died in 1384.

Not the least of his achievements was

the translation of the Bible into English.

The itinerant

preachers, or Lollards, whom he instructed and sent far and wide as poor priests, continued to spread the influence of his thought and practice after his death. The Lollards were notably active in Herefordshire, where Sir John Oldcastle lived.

Nicholas of Hereford, who assisted

Wyclif in translating the Old Testament, was probably born there, and Wyclifite teachings were assiduously propagated in the area through William Swynderby, a persistent unlicensed preacher who escaped the fagot only through timely recantation. Swynderby first attracted notice by his unsanctioned preaching not far from Lutterworth, where Wyclif himself was then yet living.

Forbidden to preach by the Bishop of Lincoln, he

collected crowds on the highways, relying on the good-will of his people to back up his defiance. 3

He was promptly cited

Fasciculi Zlzanlorum. p. 278.

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for heresy, and only the Intervention of John of Gaunt, and a promise of public disavowal of his preaching saved him from belng burned at stake. After nine years, during which he preached for a time In Coventry, Swynderby appeared in Herefordshire.

He must

have been active In Oldcastle*3 Immediate neighborhood, for when he was complained of to the ecclesiastical authority, he was cited to appear for a hearing at Kington, which Is only a few miles from Alraeley, where the Oldcastle manor was situated.

Appearing before the Bishop of Hereford

according to summons on June 14, 1391, Swynderby was given until the last of the month to make answer to the articles against him.

Accordingly, on the 30th, he again appeared

before the bishop, and this time offered a lengthy written reply, and eince he had been promised complete freedom not only to come but also to go, he withdrew without being held to answer for his defiance.-*

Swynderby*s behavior on this

occasion was paralleled by that of Oldcastle twenty-two years later, except that when Oldcastle essayed a written reply before the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was summarily clapped Into prison. The fact of Swynderby*s preaching in the neighborhood of Alraeley suggests that Oldcastle became a partisan of the b

James Gairdner, Lollard.v and the Reformation In England (London, 1908) I, 28—29.

5

Cf. John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments (London, 1870) III, 113 ff-

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58

Lollards while he was still living in Herefordshire.

He

would not have been alone among the west country knights in favoring reform.

Sir John Clanvow^ of Cusop Castle,

not far from Almeley, is mentioned in the chronicle of Thomas WalsIngham as an early patron of the Lollards,^ and the G-reyndores, who had extensive possessions in the west, are singled out by Thomas Elmham as Instigators of a pro­ posal for confiscation of ecclesiastical holdings.?

Cer­

tainly, a movement toward expropriation of property held V‘\V'

by the church was quite in accord with Wyclif's oft-stated tenet that temporal

endowments had corrupted the purity

of Christ's institution. Oldcastle probably was responsible, at least in part, for the anti-clerical spirit of the first session of Par­ liament which he attended as a member of the upper house, O from January until May 1410. At any rate, this parliament is conspicuous in the chronicles of the time for a proposal that certain properties of the clergy and the church be turned over to the crown.

Details of the proposal are

missing from the minutes of that session, the record apparent­ ly having been removed, but the story is given at some length in the St. Alban's Chronicle of Thomas Walsingham, from which 6 7

Thomas WalSingham. Hlstorla Angllcana (London: Rolls Series, 1 8 6 3 -64) If/ 159* Thomas Elmham, Liber Metrlous de Henrioi Qulnti. In Memorials of Henry V. ed. C. A. Cole (London: Rolls Series, 18^58) p. 148.

8

J. H. Wylie, in his History 2l England under. ELgnpy the Fourth, has a chapter entitled "Oldcastle's Parliament." Ill, 282-316.

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it found its way into Holinshed and thence into the opening scene of Shakespeare*s Henry V. Walslngham tells that the "mllltes parllamentalies (vel, ut dicamus varius, satellites Pilatales),“ intent on spoiling the church of G-od, presented a bill in which they set forth that confiscation of the temporalities of the clergy would enable the king to new earls, 1 , 5 0 0

provide for fifteen

knights, and 6,200 esquires, and to found

a hundred almshouses besides.

When the authors of the pro­

posal were asked whence all the necessary money could be derived, they broke down utterly, and thereupon the king bade them to mention the matter again.

for­

Thus foiled in

their purpose, the coetus execrablls petitioned that clerks convicted of secular offences should thenceforth be handed over to the prisons of the king and the temporal lords.

Being denied this, they further petitioned that the

Statuum de haeretlco oomburendo be modified, but they were warned that any alteration of the statute would be in the direction of greater severity, whereupon they abandoned the o attack. ^ The numbers thus given appear to have been derived from a condemned tract of John Purvey, the friend and associate of Wyclif.

The same figures appear in Holinshed in an

entry for the second year of Henry V, 1^-15» telling that 9

10

Historla Angllcana II, 283.

Fasciculi Zlzanlorum. p. 393*

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in this year there was a movement to revive the bill whioh had been exhibited in Parliament in the eleventh year of Henry IV, that is, in 14-10.

Thus Shakespeare, deriving

his material from Holinshed, mentions the bill with exactly the same figures in the opening scene of Henry 3£, which has to do with plans for Henry's expedition into Prance. The official records of the Parliament of 1^10 only partly substantiate Walslngham1s story.

Petitions are

recorded from the lower house asking for modification of the Statutum de haerQtlco. and also that half of the revenues of absentee Incumbents and of livings which had been ap­ propriated under false pretenses be seized into the king's hands, on the ground that the treasury had been impover­ ished through continual w a r s . H

It seems possible that

this last proposal might have been the basis for Walslngham*a story of a scheme for wholesale confiscation of church property.

The Statutum de haeretlco, originally passed in

1^01, had given the clergy power to make arrests on their own initiative.

Modification of the statute would there­

fore have made it less easily possible for ecclesiastical officials to extend their Jurisdiction to matters cognizable at common law. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, being thus under attack, was fighting back vigorously. 11

The Lollards, as the obvious

Wylie, III, 316. Cf. Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, An exact abridgement of the records in the Tower of London (London. 1657) p. ¥ 72 ".

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instigators of the movement for curtailing the privileges of the Church, were hemmed in by new and stringent restrict­ ions.12

In January, 14-08, a convocation of the clergy at

St. Paul's cathedral, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, promulgated a series of fourteen "constitutions" or statutes against the sort of activities which had come to be Identified with Lollardy.

Of the four­

teen pronouncements, the one which was soonest to bring Oldcastle into difficulties was the tenth: 12

Measures which were invoked against the Wyclifites are recorded at length in two collections of docu­ ments: (1) Fasciculi Zlzanlorum Maglstrl Wjcllf cum Tritico. ed. Walter W. Shirley (London, Rolls Series, 1858), and (2) Concilia Magnae Brltannlae et Hiberniae. ed. David Wilkins (London, 1737)• Thomas Netter of Saffron Walden, who assembled In the Fasciculi Zlzanlorum a collection of miscel­ laneous documents relating to the Lollards, of whom he was a fiery enemy, personally took part in the trial of Sir John Oldcastle for heresy. The unique manuscript copy of the Fasciculi Zlzan­ lorum has had an Interesting history. Its earliest known owner was John Bale, dramatist and propogandist for Protestantism in the first half of the sixteenth century, who added to it Indices and marginal notes in his own handwriting; it was lent by him to his friend John Foxe, the martyrologist, and after passing through the hands of Sir Thomas Bodley and Anthony Wood, it was used by Bishop David Wilkins, who incorporated much of it Into his Concilia. Cf. Shirley's preface, p. Ix. Bishop Wilkins (1685-174-5), whose Concilia, or records of church councils, Is truly enormous in scope, based his work on an earlier collection by Sir Henry Spelman (1564-1641), the two-volume Concilia, deereta, leges, constltutlones in ££ ecoleslum gjfrJLs Brltannlol. Issued in 1 6 3 9 . A projected revision of the whole compilation, of which three volumes appeared in 1869, has not been carried aajhras the time of the Conquest.

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Statuimus etiam et deoernimus, ut nullus capellanus admittatur ad celebrandum in aliqua diocesi nostrae Cantuariensis provlnclae, in qua ordinandua sive ordinatUB non fuerit, nisi deferat secum literas ordlnum suorum, atque literas commendatltlas diocesani sui, et nlhilominus allorum epi8coporum, in quorum diocesi interim per magnum tempus conversatus fuerit; in quibus expresse caverl volumus et mandamus, de morlbus et conversations ejusdem, et an sit diffaraatus de, et super aliqulbus novis oplnlonibus, in fide oatholica aut bonis moribus male sapientibus, vel sit de eisdem omnlno immunls; alioquln tam ipse celebrans, quam ipsum sic celebrare permittentes, ad arbltrlum ordinarll acriter punlantur. 13 The provisions of this statute were invoked against Oldcastle during the three-week Easter recess of the Parlia­ ment of 1410, which began on March 15* ^

The circumstances

under which action was pressed must have been peculiarly embarrassing, as the marriage of Oldcastle1s stepdaughter, Joan Braybrooke, to the son and heir of Sir Thomas Brooke of Somerset County was about to take place.

It was an

opportune moment for the ecclesiastics to make an assertion of authority. On April 3, 14-10, the Archbishop of Canterbury directed a letter to his diocesan at Rochester imposing the interdict on the churches of Hoo, Halstoo, and Cowling.

The letter

began by reviewing the regulation governing the licensing of preachers, by which no person was to preach in the province of Canterbury unless he were first approved by the archbishop or by the diocesan in his locality, and could show for inspection such letters as the curate in his own locality 13 14

Wilkins, op.cit., III, 314. Cf. Wylie, III, 303.

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should require.

Notwithstanding this, the letter continued,

a certain Sir John, pretending himself a chaplain, together with Sir John Oldcastle, had dared to preach in the churches now to be placed under the interdict, thereby spreading poison, tares, heresy, and errors repugnant to the holy mother church, and especially had this been done in the church of Cowling.

The aforesaid chaplain Sir John, then in hiding,

was to be publicly cited to appear before the Archbishop twelve days hence to show cause why he should not be duly punished.15 These drastic measures must have evoked some kind of imnedlate response, for the interdict on Cowling church was lifted only two days later by the terms of another letter from the Archbishop which made it very clear that the mar­ riage of Joan Braybrooke was to be solemnized by a priest in good standing.

The letter, dated April 5> relaxed the

ban on the church for three days, and was addressed to the rector at Cowling, who was to perform the marriage three days h ence.^

The Archbishop must have been afterward satis­

fied also regarding the matter of unlicensed preaching, for there is another letter, apparently undated, totally and entirely relaxing the interdict. ^7

The matter, so far as

it concerned Sir John Oldcastle, appeared to be closed. 15 Wilkins, Concilia. Ill, 3 2 9 . 16 Ibid., p. 3 3 0 . 17 Ibid..

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Apparently, Oldcastle was not ready openly to defy the power of the Archbishop.

However, he seems to have

been regarded as a bulwark of Lollardy and to have persisted In his increasingly hazardous activities on behalf of Wycllfite reform.

This appears from a letter which he

directed to the Bohemian Hussites in September of the same year. Wyclif*s doctrines had been most favorably received In Bohemia.

There Wenceslaus IV, known to history as Wenzel,

had troubles with his nobles that paralleled those of his unfortunate contemporary and brother-in-law, Richard II of England.

The marriage of Wenzel's sister Anne to Richard

in 1383 must have helped to spread English ideas of reform in the land of the Czechs.

At any rate, Wyclif*s philo­

sophical works were brought to Bohemia while their author was still alive, that is, before 1 3 8 4 , and they were well received at the University of Prague through Stanislav of Znojrao, the teacher of John Hus.1^

in 1 3 9 8 Jerome of Prague

18

The Cambridge Medieval History. VIII. 48 (New York, 1936). Also S. H. Thomson,"Pre-Hussite Heresy in Bohemia, * English Historical Review, XLVTII, 23-42 (January, 1933).

19

It is not possible to establish exactly how the teachings of Wyclif were first spread in Bohemia. Professor Johann Loserth, in his authoritative Wvclif and Hus (London, 1884) pp. 69-74* states that a contemporary chronicler of the Hussite disturbances, Ludolph of Sagan, in his Tractatua de longevo aofalsmate. declared he did not know who brought the heretical writings to Prague, but that a half century later various writers are found asserting with positiveness the names of certain individuals as having been responsible.

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came to Oxford to make copies of Wyclifs Dialogue and Trlalogus.

Returning to the Bohemian capital In l407>

he became closely associated with John Hus.

In July, 1410

Hus was excommunicated as a heretic, and some five years later both he and Jerome were burned by the order of the Council of Constance. The letter which Oldcastle wrote to the reforming party in Prague on September 8, 1410, appears to have been one of several, such communications from him.

Written in

Latin, it has been summarized by Professor Wylie as follows: He thanked God for having put into their hearts to struggle for the Justice of His law. His soul re­ joices that the pomp of Antichrist has not affrighted them, and he prays that they may stand firm,- — even unto death. He is moved with indignation against the priests of Antichrist, who were strangling God's law. This was no time for the Friends of Truth to be spending the strength and passion upon fleshly sins and worldly causes. Let them think upon Phlneas, and Daniel, and the Maccabees, and all who had a zeal for God. Why should they fear to lose an empty name and fleeting wealth, or boggle at a bug in the cause of Christ, who gave such great benefit to them? It was fear, pride, and worldly wealth that blinded their eyes. It was not enough to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in the heart; they must confess Him openly with their lips. He was the author of their salvation. He suffered cruel pains and death to noise abroad His law. Why should they fear the idle excommunications of men? Let all stand staunch for Truth. If they endured to the end, the Lord of Truth would never oheat them of their due answer. But, even if He deigned not the help they hoped, they must be minded never to draw back from Truth, even unto death.20 Oldcastle's letter must have been part of a considerable packet of messages directed at this time to the reformers in 20

J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth. Ill, 462.

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Prague, for it bears the same date as another letter* written directly to John Hus by Richard Wyche, who was burned for heresy in 1440, twenty-three years after Oldcastle; further, it seems likely that both letters may have been carried to Prague with several Lollard tracts known to have been brought from Scotland to Bohemia about this time.^1 Some eighteen months later, in March, 1^12, the Arch­ bishop was once more pained to note that Sir John Oldcastle, far from bending himself in obedience to the Church, was again encouraging unlicensed preachers.

At a convocation

of the clergy in St. Paul*s of London, on March 6, notice was taken of a certain chaplain there present who was suspect ed of heretical pravity.

On being questioned, this chaplain

Identified himself as John Lay, ordained in the diocese of Lincoln, where he had been attached to a church in Not­ tingham.

He had, he said, celebrated that very day before

the Lord Cobham, but when he was asked for such credentials as were required of preachers in Canterbury, he was unable to produce them.22 But the matter of John Lay became of secondary import­ ance in the face of further developments.

The Archbishop

continued the convocation to the sixth of June, further meetings being held in the parish church at Lambeth.

Here

21

R. L. Poole, "On the Intercourse between English and Bohemian Wyckliffites,■ English Historical Review. VII, 309 (1892).

22

Wilkins, Concilia, III, 338.

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sweeping Judgment was passed on some three hundred and more tracts, which were declared to he erroneous and heretical, and ordered forthwith to he burned.

Other heretical

writings were brought to the attention of a provincial synod in Kent in July of the next year.

Among these were

a number of tracts In the form of an unbound quarto, dis­ covered in the possession of a "lymnore" or illuminator In Pater-noster Row, London, who asserted that they belonged to Sir John Oldcastle.

Certain passages from these tracts

were read before the King at Kennington, Oldcastle being present, and the King, greatly horrified, pronounced the tracts to be the worst against the faith and the church that he had ever heard.

Oldcastle himself confessed that he had

read but two pages of the t r a c t s . ^3 Intensified efforts were made about this time to suppress all forms of unlicensed preaching.

On August 21 a royal

proclamation was made that "no chaplains of whatsoever degree, estate, or condition0 were to "hold, preach, or defend the pestilent seed of Lollardy and evil doctrine," particularly since a number of unlicensed preachers had lately attracted large numbers of people, whence had arisen "murmurlngs and seditions to the no small disturbance of the peace.^

Just

three weeks after this proclamation was ordered to be made, on September 11, Oldcastle was cited to appear before the 23

Wilkins, Concilia. III. 352.

2k

Close Rolls. 1 Henry

V, meab. 22d.

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Archbishop for having still continued to receive, favor, refresh, and defend heretical preachers, encouraging them in their activities to the subversion of the faith and of the Church?'* From the beginning, the chief figure in the prosecution of Sir John Oldcastle for heresy was the militant Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel.

He was a brother of the

Earl of Arundel, one of the appellants against the boy-king Richard, and one of the central figures in the complex struggle for power which culminated in the deposition of Richard in 1399.

The Earl was executed at Richard*s

instigation in 1 3 9 7 > and his brother, the future archbishop, was exiled, to share the triumphant

return, two years later,

of the Duke of Lancaster, who succeeded to the throne as Henry IV. It is by no means clear whether or not Sir John Old­ castle was himself involved in this struggle for power. John de Cobham, his wife’s grandfather, had been a member of Richard’s council of state, and with the reversal of that king’s fortunes, he had for a time been under sentence of death.

There is room for speculation in Walslngham*s story

that Oldcastle, facing his Judges on the day of his execution, defiantly asserted that his rightful liege, Richard, was yet alive in Scotland.^

Suggestive also is the fact that

25

Wilkins, Concilia, loc. clt.

26

Hlstorla Anglloana. II, 3 2 8 .

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69

Thomas Mowbray, with whose name Oldcastle Is linked in a rather slender tradition, was advanced by the king to be Duke of Norfolk after he had apparently contrived the death of the Earl of Arundel.

Whether or not some recollection

of things past influenced the attitude of the murdered Earl's brother toward Oldcastle cannot be established on the basis of evidence which is now available. It might be pointed out, however, that the Church favored the rule of Henry of Lancaster and held the adherents of Richard in bad odor.

Early in his reign the common

people had learned to look to Richard for help, while at the same time the privileged classes found him utterly distasteful.

During the peasant uprising of 1381, in the

face of violence, and while his three uncles were absent from London, the young king undertook to meet the insurgent peasants at Smlthfleld, and there made verbal promises and Issued charters designed to improve their lot.

All this was

set aside by Parliament at the end of the year, dominated as it was by the clergy, the monasteries, and the landlords. Contemporary accounts of the revolt, written in the cloisters, portrayed the affair as utterly iniquitous, but the common people held Richard in grateful remembrance, even after his demise.^

In 1*1-02 a number of poor friars who persisted In

spreading the notion that Richard was yet alive were hanged 27

Cf. A. D. Innes, History of England and the British Empire (London, 1922) I, 371-7**.

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at Tyburn, and their heads were placed on London Bridge for all to see. 2® The Archbishop's own account of the trial of Sir John Oldcastle is contained in a letter dated October 10, 1413, and directed to the bishops with specific directions that it be read in the churches.

This account was abridged by Thomas

Walslngham in the St. Albans Chronicle, from which it was copied by later historians.

It was also Included by Thomas

Netter of Walden in his Fasciculi Zlzanlorum. which was used by John Bale in manuscript when

he contrived the imaginative

account that John Foxe later included in his Booh of Martyrs. Because of the importance of the Archbishop's account for the history of Sir John Oldcastle, and because of the light it sheds on the man's character, it has been thought worth while to present it here in full, paralleled by a translation which John Foxe Included in his Acts and Monuments along with Bale's elaborated version.

In this way it also

has become possible to show exactly how the Archbishop's account is abridged in the St. Albans Chronicle.

This has

been done by underlining the words which were taken over into the Chronicle from the original. 2^ 28 29

Euloglum Hlatorarlum. ed. F. S. Haydon (London: Rolls Series, 1858) III, 392. The Archbishop's account is taken from Fasciculi Zlzanlorum, pp. 433-449. It may be found also in Wilkins *s Concilia. Ill, 351-57, and in Rymer's Foedera. Walslngham's abridgement is taken from Hlstorla Anglicana. II, 291-96. Foxe's English translation is found in Joslah Pratt's edition of The Acts and Monuments (London, 1870) III, 342-48.

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71 3fo& AgglUtelflftop’ja A&gojm fc

John Foxe*a Translation

(Words of the abridgement in the St* Albans Chronicle are underlined, and parenthe­ sized if they are not also in the original). Reverendo in Christo To the reverend father in patri ac domino domino Christ, and lord, the lord Roberto, Dei gratia HereRobert, by grace of Cod, bish­ fordensi episoopo, Rioardus op of Hereford, Richard, by permissions divlna Londonpermission of Cod, bishop of lensls eplsoopos, salutem et London, health, and continual slnoerae dilectionls continu­ increase of sincere love: We um lnorementum* have of late received the Literas reverendisslml letters of the reverend father in Christo patrls et domlnl in Christ, and lord, the lord domlnl Thomae, Dei gratia Thomas, by grace of Cod arch­ Cantuarlensls archlepiscopi, bishop of Canterbury, primate totius Angllae prlmatls, et of all England, and legate apostolloae sedls legati, of the apostolic see. To nuper reoepimus in haeo our reverend brother the verba. lord Richard bishop of London, Thomas perralsalone health and brotherly love divlna Cantuarlensls arohle- in the Lord. plsoopos, totius Angllae prlmas, et apostolloae sedls legatus, venerablll fratri nostro domino Ricardo, Del gratia Londonlensi eplscopo, salutem et fraternam in Domino oarltatem. Nuper It was lately concluded ooram nobis, in convocati­ before us, in the convo­ ons praelatorum et clerl cation of prelates and olergy nostrae Cantuarlensls proof our province of Canterbury vinciae in eoolesla vestra last celebrated in our S. Pauli ultimo oelebrata, church of St. Paul, in cum eisdem praelatls et treating amongst other things clero, super unlone et re­ with the said prelates and formations ecolesiae Angliolergy upon the union and canae, tractantlbus; inter reformation of the church of cetera per nos ac eosdem England, by us and the said praelatos et olerum oonprelates and clergy; that olusum exstitlt quasi pro it was almost impossible imposslblll, sclssuram to amend the whole of our tunloae Domini inoonsutllis Lord*s coat which was without reformare, nisi prius certl seam, unless, first of all, magnates regni, auotores, certain nobles of the realm, fautores, proteotores, who are authors, favourers,

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72

defensores, et receptorea horum haeretloorum qul dlountur Lollardl, assent rigidi reprehensl, ac, si opus fuerit, per oensuras eccleslae, una cum Invocations ‘brach.il secularls, a suis devils revocati. Et facta suhsequenter in eadem oonvocatione inter proouratores cleri et alios, qul de singulis dioeoeslbus ejusdem nostrae provlnoiae Ibidem in magno numero lnterfuerunt, inqulsitione diligenti, repertum fuit inter eosdem, ac nobis deteotum et delatusm, quod domlnus Johannes Oldcastell, miles, fuerat (Eo tempore facta I mgEAjsa Am

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praedictl Jahaanja, r.apeytum fait quod Idqm Iqhaflqqs .gait) Si eat Principalis geoept.at.or. isl) Ifl&tor, protector §£ defsflBor eorundum CLall§£d2£H3 ££.7 ao saqd B rae.aar&to I n

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asnlsnai, B 2 f£asal, a l Ssxsf ordens 1 . jp.aaa, Lfillacd&a, 2 & ordinarlla slSJL jHaaasslanla locorum alnlPA lloentlatoa. contra oonstltutlonem provincialem lndfi f&Q-tam, &d praedicandum transmlslt. ac eorum praedloatlonlbus nefarils lnffiCfltiJt. SSL 22Rftre&Lg£gcftft» a l s x m zsssnerat. minis et terrorlbus ao gladli eo.qulflrlft potentla (potentate) o_ojttP.ego.ult: aaserens et affirmans, inter cetera, auod nos (Cantuarlensis arohlepls oopus) et oonfratres nostri (e.lus) suffragenel nostrae provlnoiae, non habuimua (haberunt), neo habemus (habent) .po.tes.ta.tem allquam hu.1usmodl &onstA.tqtlonem faolendi. Allteroue

protectors, defenders, and receivers of those heretics called Lollards, were sharply rebuked, and, if need were, by censures of the church and the help of the secular power, they be revoked from their errors. And afterwards, having made diligent inquisition in the convo­ cation amongst the proctors of the olergy and others of our province, it was found out amongst others, that air John Oldcastle, knight, was, and is, the principal receiver, favourer, pro­ tector, and defender of them; and that, especially in the dioceses of London Rochester, and Hereford, he had sent the said Lollards to preach, not being licensed by the ordinaries and bishops of the dioceses or places, contrary to the provincial constitutions in that behalf made, and hath been present at their wicked sermons, grievously punishing with threatenlngs, terrors, and the power of the secular sword, such as did withstand him:

alleging and affirming amongst others, that we and our fellow-brethren, suffragans of our provinces, had not, neither have, any power to make any such consti­ tutions: also he hath holden and doth hold

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73

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