John Oldcastle

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John Oldcastle (born around 1378 in Herefordshire , † December 14, 1417 in London ) was a leader of the English lollards .

Oldcastle was a son of Richard Oldcastle. Under Henry IV he took part in campaigns to Scotland and Wales from 1400, during which he acquired the friendship of the Crown Prince, who later became Henry V, in 1404 Oldcastle was appointed to Parliament as a representative of the county of Herefordshire . In 1408 he acquired a seat in the House of Lords through the marriage of the heiress of the title Lord Cobham . He was the only follower of the teachings of John Wyclif in that congregation. The Crown Prince appointed him in 1411 as leader of an expeditionary army that was supposed to support Burgundy in Flanders .

Oldcastle's advocacy of the teachings of Wyclif, coupled with his high level of personal education, led to sharp disputes with the Church, particularly with Archbishop of York Thomas Arundel . In 1413 Oldcastle was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to death. Henry V pushed through a postponement of the execution by 40 days, which the convict used to escape from the Tower of London .

Oldcastle contacted other lollards. Whether he actually planned to capture the king is still a matter of dispute. What is undisputed, however, is that Oldcastle gathered an armed group around it, which was crushed by royal troops. He himself escaped to Herefordshire and was involved in several conspiracies (such as the Southampton conspiracy ) in the following years . In 1417 he was arrested in November, sentenced to death on December 14 for heresy , hanged the same day and then burned. Oldcastle was the model for William Shakespeare's drunk and gobble character Falstaff . In response, in turn, the Shakespeare-rival theater company Admiral's Men performed the play The Life of Sir John Oldcastle in late 1599 , in which Oldcastle is a martyr driven by his conscience.

Remembrance day

literature

  • WT Waugh: Sir John Oldcastle , The English Historical Review, 1905

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilfrid Braun (Ed.): King Henry IV, Part I. King Heinrich IV., Part I. English-German study edition. Stauffenberg, Tübingen 2010, p. 22f.
  2. ↑ by Robert Wilson , Michael Drayton , Anthony Munday and Richard Hathwaye , written between October and December 1599; published as a book the following year
  3. ^ John Oldcastle in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
personal data
SURNAME Oldcastle, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soldier, politician, leader of the Lollards
DATE OF BIRTH around 1378
PLACE OF BIRTH Herefordshire
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1417
Place of death London