To your mercy wold ye me take, Yif your will were for to do, Explicet amor p. ducem Ebor. nup. fact.] : SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE, LORD COBHAM. THE abolition of taste and literature was not the slightest abuse proceeding from popery; the revival of letters was one of the principal services effected by the reformation. The Romish clergy feared, that if men read, they would think it is no less true, that the moment they thought, they wrote. The first author, as well as the first martyr among our nobility, was sir John Oldcastle, called the good lord Cobham: a man whose virtues made him a reformer, whose valour a martyr, whose martyrdom an enthusiast'. He was much esteemed by Henry the fifth, and had served him with great zeal, at a time when the church was lighting its holy fires for Lollards, or the disciples of [He was sheriff of Herefordshire in 8 Henry IV. and had summons to parliament amongst the barons of the realm, in 11, 12, and 14 of that king's reign. Dugdale's Baronage, tom. ii. p. 67.] [Lollardy, says Ritson, a word of uncertain derivation, is well known to mean with us the doctrine propagated by John Wickliffe and his followers. Ancient Songs, p. 62. This doctrine, according to the statute 2 Hen. V. was to subvert the Christian faith, the laws of God, the church and the realm. Ib.] Wickliffe. Henry at first, with sense and goodness, resisted insinuations against the lord Cobham, whom he tried to save by gentle exhortations but as the peer was firm, it naturally made the prince weak, and he delivered the hero over to the inquisitors. Lord Cobham was imprisoned, but escaped. The clergy, however, with great zeal for the royal person, informed the king, then lying at Eltham, that 20,000 Lollards were assembled at St. Giles's, for the destruction of him and his brothers. The brave young monarch immediately headed a troop, and arriving at ten at night, at the sign of the Axe without Bishopsgate, took the man of the house and seven others prisoners, which closed his first campaign. Fourscore more were seized about St. Giles's, and some of them being induced (as Rapin guesses) to confess a design of murdering the royal family, and making the lord Cobham protector; the king no longer doubted of the conspiracy, but ordered about half of them to be executed, and [Rapin seems to draw his information from the public acts, in which some deposed that after the murder of the king and princes they intended to make Oldcastle regent of the kingdom: but the historian declares it hardly conceivable, how a prince so judicious as Henry could suffer himself to be imposed upon by so gross a fiction. Hist. of Eng. 14 Hen. V.] |