Sir John Oldcastle ("Epistle to Sir Harry Bourchier", c. 1625) and Thomas Fuller ("Worthies of England," 1662). It is also indicated in details in the early texts of Shakespeare's plays. In the quarto text of "Henry IV, Part 2" (1600), one of Falstaff's speech prefixes in Act I, Scene ii is mistakenly left uncorrected, "Old." instead of "Falst." In III,ii,25-6 of the same play, Falstaff is said to have been a "page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk" — which was true of the historical Oldcastle. In "Henry IV, Part 1", I,ii,42, Prince Hal calls Falstaff "my old lad of the castle." Iambic
Sir John Oldcastle it is generally thought, because of political pressure: the historical Oldcastle was not only a Protestant martyr, but a nobleman with powerful living descendants in Elizabethan England. These were the Lords Cobham: William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham (died 6 March 1597), was Warden of the Cinque Ports (1558–97), Knight of the Order of the Garter (1584), and member of the Privy Council (1586–97); his son Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham, was granted the paternal post of Warden of the Cinque Ports upon his father's death, and made a Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1599. Even more so,