OLDCASTLE, Wenllian (Joan)

  General Notes:

Wenllian's brother, Sir John Oldcastle, was titled Baron Cobham after his marriage to Lady Joan Cobham in 1409. He was an English leader of the Lollards (a dissident Christian sect) and religious martyr. In 1401, while serving in the campaign of King Henry IV to put down the Welsh rebel Owen Glendower, John became a close friend of Henry, Prince of Wales (later King Henry V, King of England). Oldcastle served in the House of Commons in 1404 and in the House of Lords after 1409. Meanwhile, in defiance of royal decrees, he joined the Lollards. In 1413, the year of Prince Henry's accession to the throne, Oldcastle was convicted and condemned to death as a heretic. Young King Henry V granted his old friend a 40 day respite in the hope that he would recant. Oldcastle escaped from imprisonment in the Tower of London, and early in 1414 he led an abortive revolt of the Lollards against the throne. For almost four years thereafter, John continued his Lollardian activities as a fugitive in Herefordshire. Captured on December 14, 1417, Oldcastle was executed the same day by hanging and was burned on the scaffold.

Wenllian married Robert WHITNEY, son of Robert WHITNEY and Mary CROMWELL, about 1409 in Whitney, Herefordshire, England. (Robert WHITNEY was born about 1379 in Whitney, Herefordshire, England and died on 12 Mar 1441 in Whitney, Herefordshire, England.)