John Oldcastle MP (abt. 1370 - 1417)

Born about 1370 in Almeley, Herefordshire, England

Ancestors

Husband of Joan (Pole) Harpeden — married before 18 Jul 1408 (to 15 Dec 1417) in England

Died 15 Dec 1417 at about age 47 in England [uncertain]

Biography

Sir John Oldcastle was a member of the aristocracy in British Isles.

Name Sir John Oldcastle, Baron Cobham

Born Abt 1370^[1]

Father^[2]Sir Richard Oldcastle, b. Abt 1336, of Almeley

Family 1

• Catherine vz Richard ap Jevan, b. Abt 1372

Children

• Maud Oldcastle, b. Abt 1394, d. 1457 (Age ~ 63 years)
• Sir John Oldcastle, b. 1396, d. 1420 (Age 24 years)
• Henry Oldcastle, MP, b. Abt 1398, d. Bef 1480
• Catherine Oldcastle, b. Abt 1400, d.

The son of Sir Richard Oldcastle, he fought for England in the Scottish campaign of 1400 and during the Welsh wars gained the friendship of King Henry IV’s son Henry, prince of Wales. By his marriage in 1408 to Joan, heiress of John, 3rd Lord Cobham, Oldcastle entered nobility and in 1409 was summoned to the House of Lords as a baron.^[3]

In 1413 he was indicted by a convocation, presided over by Archbishop Thomas Arundel of Canterbury, for maintaining both Lollard preachers and their opinions. His amicable relationship with the prince of Wales, now Henry V, earned him special consideration, but he failed to honour the king’s appeals to submit and was brought to trial the same year. Unyielding in his views, he was convicted as a heretic.

His martyrdom made him the subject of some of Shakespeare's plays. Like other subjects of Elizabethan history plays, Sir John Oldcastle ^[4] was an actual person, a soldier and Lollard dissenter who was hanged and burned for heresy and treason in 1417 — thus earning himself a place in the seminal text of the Protestant Reformation in Tudor England, John Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Oldcastle was also a minor character in the early Elizabethan history play the Famous Victories of Henry V (c. 1586?), which is generally thought to have been one of Shakespeare's sources for his plays on Henry IV and Henry V.

Sources

1. ↑ VM Norr: Some Early English Pedigrees P 92
2. ↑ http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/oldcastle-sir-john-1370-1417
3. ↑ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/427362/Sir-John-Oldcastle
4. ↑ Richardson, Ruth Elizabeth, 2007 'Mistress Blanche, Queen Elizabeth I's Confidante', Logaston, p 87-89, see also wwww.blancheparry.com

See also:

• British History online: CObham
• Joan de la Pole, m "before July 18, 1408 (citing Richardson's Royal Ancestry )
• Douglas Richardson, Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 5 vols., ed. Kimball G. Everingham (Salt Lake City, Utah: the author, 2013), Vol. V, pp 406-407
• Camelot International:

Date	Name	Reason for imprisonment	Details
1417	COBHAM Lady Joan	Committed to the Tower (wife of Lord Cobham - Oldcastle).	Released after her husband's death.
1417	OLDCASTLE Sir John	On recapture, charged with same heresy and treasonable offences and sentence.	Taken to St. Giles Field hanged by a chain around his waist, fire kindled beneath him and burned to death on 14 or 15 December 1417.