[In the following essay, McAlindon agrees with literary scholars who maintain that Falstaff is a parody of both Sir John Oldcastle and contemporary Puritans. The critic also contends that in addition to creating a humorous caricature of Puritanism in the fat knight, Shakespeare ingeniously transformed “a Puritan butt into an exceptionally appealing character with a quicksilver mind and tongue.”]

I

Few would now deny that in Henry IV the character of Falstaff constitutes a deliberate and audacious caricature of a Protestant hero, the fourteenth-century champion of Wycliffe's doctrines, Sir John Oldcastle, the first Lord Cobham, ‘Lollardus Lollardorum’.¹ Shakespeare's wicked joke, as Ernst Honigmann has called it,² gave offence in his own time not only to Cobham's distinguished titular descendants but also to earnest Protestants such as John Speed (1611), Richard James (c. 1625), and Thomas Fuller (1655),³ to the authors of the anti-Catholic response play, The first part of the true and honorable historie, the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the Good Lord Cobham (1599), and no doubt to many playgoers of like persuasion. Defying the hagiographic efforts of John Bale and John Foxe, Shakespeare in effect took the Catholic side in a sectarian dispute about the character of the nobleman who was burned as a heretic shortly after his friend, the Prince of Wales, became Henry V; and although in Part 2 he changed his reprobate knight's name from Sir John Oldcastle to Sir John Falstaff, his contemporaries would still have recognized his original intention and treated the Epilogue's denial as tongue-in-cheek.

Apart from his friendship with the Prince of Wales, there are a number of parallels between the historiographic and the Shakespearian Sir John, some obvious, some teasingly oblique, most of them already noted by critics. The first Sir John was a reformed sinner who publicly confessed that in his youth he offended grievously in pride, wrath, gluttony, covetousness, and lechery. The second Sir John, ‘my old lad of the castle’ (1:1.2.41), is a lecherous glutton and thief who repeatedly promises to reform and so is nicknamed ‘Monsieur Remorse’ (line 112). The first Sir John based all his religious beliefs on the Bible and according to Bale and Foxe had a masterful knowledge of both the Old and the New Testament; the second specializes in a Puritan idiom whose chief characteristic is an abundance of biblical quotation and allusion (no other Shakespearian character quotes so liberally from the Bible). The first Sir John was condemned for supporting Lollard preachers; the second flaunts his understanding of the godly art (‘Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion, and him the ears of profiting, that what thou speakest may move, and what he hears may be believed’ [lines 143-5]). One of the heresies for which the first Sir John was condemned was his denial of the value of pilgrimages, whether to Canterbury or to Rome; the second Sir John waylays pilgrims en route to Canterbury. Henry V tried hard to get his friend to renounce his Wycliffite beliefs, but he proved righteously immoveable; the second Sir John protests to the Prince that he will ‘be damned for never a king's son in Christendom’ (line 93). The first Sir John was executed for treason as well as heresy; in the play the Prince initially refuses to become a thief, and Sir John threatens: ‘By the Lord, I'll be a traitor then, when thou art king’ (line 137). The first Sir John was executed in a singular manner, being hanged in chains as a traitor and burned as a heretic; the Prince not only teases the second Sir John about being hanged but also calls him a ‘roasted Manningtree ox’ (2.4.457). After he was found guilty, the first Sir John escaped from prison and eluded the authorities for four years before being apprehended and executed; the second Sir John spends the whole of Part 2 engaged in a similar relation with the fangs and snares of the law.

To miss these parallels and the large parodic intention which they underscore is to miss the outrageously satiric dimension and some of the socio-political implications of Shakespeare's greatest comic character. In this article I shall be reinforcing the argument for parodic intent, for my purpose is to show that a central feature of Falstaff's complex comic art was probably inspired by Protestant hagiography's treatment of the way in which Oldcastle answered his theological accusers. As so often happens, parody will be seen as having metamorphosed the object of its mockery into something beguilingly attractive and even admirable.

What is the essence of Falstaff's comic character, what is it about him that most commands admiration and delight? Dryden was the first critic to address the question. ‘That wherein he is singular’, he explained, are ‘those things he says praeter expectatum, unexpected by the audience; his quick evasions when you imagine him surpriz'd’; and he added that Falstaff's unwieldy mass seems to intensify the unexpected and extremely diverting nature of his verbal evasions.⁴ Subsequent attempts to define the essential Falstaff endorse this explanation and elaborate on it in ways which are useful for my purposes. In the nineteenth century, Henry Hudson emphasized the immense self-confidence with which Sir John handles himself when cornered by Hal and Poins; indeed he infers from Falstaff's incomprehensible lies that he deliberately invites being cornered, ‘partly for the pleasure he takes in the excited play of his faculties, partly for the surprise he causes by his still more incomprehensible feats of dodging’.⁵ In this century E. E. Stoll distinguished between Falstaff's evasions and those of other braggart soldiers such as Bobadill, noting that the latters' are ‘mere excuses and subterfuges’ whereas Falstaff's are ‘gay, aggressive, triumphant … Falstaff carries things with a high hand, and expects to bear down all before him’.⁶ H. B. Charlton asked, ‘What then is … the ruling passion, the distinctive quiddity of Sir John Falstaff?’, and in his answer he too stressed the immense self-confidence with which Falstaff courts and triumphs over the threat of censorious entrapment. ‘Fundamentally, it is his infinite capacity for extricating himself from predicaments … So adept is he in this art of extrication that he revels in creating dilemmas for himself to enjoy the zest of coming triumphantly out of them.’⁷

There is no obvious model or archetype for Falstaff's primary characteristic and its associated tendencies. Critics looking at antecedents have variously and correctly noted that there is something in him of the mythical buffoon, the Vice, the picaro, the braggart soldier, and the Elizabethan clown, all of whom are adept in evasive trickeries of one kind or another. Nevertheless, as an extremely quickwitted and intelligent knight, equipped with a sumptuous store of biblical, theological, mythological, and literary knowledge, and majestically confident of his ability to confound his moralizing accusers, Shakespeare's Sir John seems remarkably unlike these prototypes. Nor do I detect his genius for the self-justifying smart answer either in Martin Marprelate, with whom he has also been compared, or in the colourless figure who shares his original name in the earlier Famous Victories of King Henry the Fifth (1594). So let us return to the first Sir John, or more precisely, to one of the first Sir Johns.

II

The most comprehensive account of Oldcastle's life and death, and the one we might assume was of most use and interest to Shakespeare, is that given in the expanded 1570 edition of John Foxe's Actes and Monuments. Together with much material from other sources, this account incorporates most of John Bale's pioneer treatise, A brefe Chronycle concernynge the Examinacyon and death of the blessed martyr of Christ, Sir Johan Oldecastell the lorde Cobham (Antwerp, 1544).⁸ But what was of most interest to Bale, namely the interrogation of Oldcastle on the charge of heresy, constitutes less than a quarter of Foxe's lengthy account; moreover, as in the shorter narrative contained in the 1563 edition, where Bale's contribution is proportionately greater, Bale's explicitly defined conception of Oldcastle's examination is obscured.⁹

As he himself indicates, Bale's version of the examination is based partly on the brief and anonymous Examination of the honorable knyght sir Jhon Oldcastell Lorde Cobham (Antwerp, ?1530),¹⁰ but mainly on the official report of the process made for Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury.¹¹ His own editorial hand, however, is at work from the start, guiding his readers' responses to question and answer in accord with an interpretation of the whole procedure which he provides in his Preface. He refers briefly in the Preface to Oldcastle's career as a distinguished servant of the crown in Wales: ‘In all adventurous acts of worldly manhood was he ever bold, strong, fortunate, doughty, noble, and valiant’ (7). And after he deals with the examination, condemnation, and execration of Oldcastle he pays tribute to the great fortitude with which he met his cruel death. But his purpose is not to exalt the passive heroism of the martyr over the active courage of the soldier, nor even to focus intently on his final torment in the usual hagiographic manner. In his interpretation, Oldcastle's great triumph is oral, rhetorical, intellectual. Oldcastle, he says, was ‘never so worthy a conqueror as in this present conflict with the cruel and furious frantic kingdom of antichrist’ (7); and by this present conflict he means primarily the inquisition in which Oldcastle stands alone against a team of theologians led by the Archbishop of Canterbury: four bishops and twelve doctors of the church in all. In the end, Oldcastle allows his interrogators to prove him a heretic; but as Bale makes clear, he triumphantly demonstrates in his responses that what they call heresy is the true Christian faith as grounded in the scriptures. ‘His courage was of such value that it gave him the victory over them by the clear judgment of the scriptures, what though the world's judgments be far otherwise’ (13). It is they who are outwitted and defeated, not he. Says Bale: ‘He that hath judgment in the spirit shall easily perceive by this treatise … what influence of grace this man of God had from above concerning his answers’ (6). In other words, prepare to read inspired answers to questions which are top-heavy with learning, authority and malicious intent. Nevertheless, suggests Bale, Oldcastle's surprising victory in this ostensibly onesided battle of wits is exactly what the scriptures should lead us to expect. ‘Most surely fulfilled Christ his promise in him which he made to his apostles: “Cast not in your mind aforehand … what answer ye shall make when these spiritual tyrants shall examine you in their synagogues … For I will give such utterance and wisdom in that hour, as all your enemies shall never be able to resist you”’ (6).¹² Bale is here adapting and giving central significance to one of the secondary topoi of Christian hagiography, the wisdom derived from sanctity. The most famous example of this topos occurs in the legend of the virgin martyr, St Katherine of Alexandria, whose spectacular triumph over the physical torments with which pagans seek to break her faith in Christ is preceded by a display of divinely inspired eloquence in response to the arguments of a team of philosophers aimed at getting her to renounce her faith.¹³

Before Oldcastle is even brought to examination, the Archbishop publicly denounces him as ‘that seditious apostate, that schismatic, that heretic, that troubler of the peace, that enemy of the realm and great adversary of all holy church’. But he is undeterred by these ‘hateful names’ (19) and, like St Katherine, answers his inquisitors with an air of serene and often disdainful self-confidence. His first response is a written exposition of what he believes, composed in reply to the official accusation of heresy. Before being examined by the theologians, he presents this document to the King as proof that he is a true Christian, assuring him that if he is taught a better belief he will most reverently and at all times obey it (22); thus from the outset he seems to shift defiantly from defence to attack. When confronted by the theologians, he refuses at first to go beyond what he has written and state ‘more plainly’ his position on the eucharist, penance, pilgrimages, and the power of Rome. The implication is clear: anything not dealt with in his scripturally grounded confession of faith is irrelevant. Thus he informs them that he will gladly both believe and observe whatsoever the holy church instituted by Christ has determined, but he denies that popes, cardinals, and prelates have the power to determine such matters as stand not with God's word. With this aggressively evasive strategy, says Bale, the bishops and prelates ‘were in a maner amazed and wonderfully disquieted’ (26).¹⁴

At the end of the first examination he is dispatched to the Tower, the frustrated bishops having determined to pin him down by giving him a precise list of the church's teaching on the disputed matters and requiring him to affirm or deny belief in each of them. Reading the document, ‘he marvelled greatly of their mad ignorance … and deep errors’ and perceived their malicious intent ‘purposed against him howsoever he should answer’ (28). He now decides, however, to put his trust in God and engage fully with their questions and accusations; and a few days later, says Bale, he is led from the Tower ‘as a lamb among wolves, to his examination and answer’ (29). But his assurance does not desert him and he matches thrust with counter-thrust. The Archbishop begins by telling him he stands accursed for his contumacy. ‘Then spake the Lord Cobham with a most cheerful countenance, and said: “God saith by his holy prophet, maledicam benedictionibus vestris”’.¹⁵ Which may be construed as a succinct way of saying, ‘I would rather be cursed by you and blessed by God than vice versa.’ His Lordship is apparently discomfited by this retort, for he chooses to ignore it and tries a softer approach; but with no more success. Says Bale, ‘The archbishop made then as though he had … not heard him’ but ‘continued forth in his tale’, saying: ‘Sir, at that time I gently proffered to have assoiled you, if ye would have asked it. And yet I do the same, if ye will humbly desire it in due form and manner as holy church ordained.’ Adding injured innocence to audacity, Oldcastle responds, ‘Nay, forsooth, I will not, for I never yet trespassed against you’ (29).

He then proceeds to evaluate the Archbishop's offer of absolution in a surprising manner, and in so doing strikes obliquely at both the spiritual arrogance of his accusers and the sacrament of penance, one of the doctrines at issue. He gets down on his knees, raises his hands to heaven, and shrives himself loudly to the eternal living God, confessing that in his frail youth he offended most grievously in pride, wrath, lechery and so on. This confession of a very sinful past is regularly noted by Shakespearian scholars (usually as a parallel with Falstaff's lifestyle), but its purpose and the spirit in which it is made are never remarked on. It is in fact a theatrical move in a rhetorical contest; and by no means does it signify defensiveness. For having made his public confession to God Himself (who alone, he implies, can absolve him), Oldcastle rises and turns to all those who have assembled to witness the inquisition, pointing out—‘Lo good people, lo’—that his accusers have condemned him for breaking their own laws and traditions but not for his grievous violation of God's great laws and commandments.¹⁶ Whereupon, says Bale, ‘the archbishop and his company were not a little blemished’ (29-30).

They fare even worse when they try to catch him out on the the eucharist and transubstantiation. Questioned on this, he summarizes correctly all the relevant passages from the New Testament and on this basis affirms his belief that the consecrated host is Christ's body in the form of bread. But is it still bread? Yes, he answers, it is visible bread; the body of Christ is seen only by the eye of faith. ‘Then smiled they each one upon other … And with a great brag divers of them said: “It is foul heresy”’ (31). Some among them, however, feel it necessary to ask if he believes the bread to be material bread or not. ‘The Lord Cobham said unto them: “The scriptures make no mention of this word material, and therefore my faith hath nothing to do therewith”’ (32). When one of the bishops insists that after the sacramental words are spoken it is bread no longer, he replies: ‘Saint Paul the apostle was (I am sure) as wise as ye be now, and more godly learned: and he called it bread writing to the Corinthians.’ ‘Paule must be otherwise understanded’, they protest; to take him literally would be heresy. How can they justify this claim?, he inquires. Because, they reply, it has been so determined by Holy Church and its holy doctors. ‘I know none holier than Christ and his apostle’, responds the knight drily. ‘A most Christian answer’, exclaims Bale from the margin; but it is too much for the holy doctors: when Oldcastle proceeds to amplify his provocative point, ‘Then asked they him, to stop his mouth therewith’ (32).

When the interrogation resumes, the Carmelite prior engages with Oldcastle and makes the mistake of saying that Matthew 7 forbids judging one's superiors. But ‘the sameself chapter of Matthew’, explains Oldcastle, warns us against false prophets, appear they never so glorious; as does John 7 and 10, Deuteronomy 1, and Psalm 61. The Prior foolishly persists: ‘Unto whom the Lord Cobham thus answered. It is well sophistried of you forsooth. Preposterous are your judgements evermore. For, as the prophet Esay saith …’ When Oldcastle completes this crushing rebuttal, John Bale, as it were, cannot contain himself, and applauds once more from the margin: ‘A perfect answer’, he writes (34).

Repeatedly subjected to Oldcastle's masterful command of the Bible, the leaders of the English church are thus, says Bale, ‘confounded in their learning’. In desperation, one of them plucks out of his bosom a copy of the document they had sent with him to the Tower, ‘thinking thereby to make shorter work of him. For they were so amazed with his answers … that they knew not well how to occupy the time, their wits and sophistry … so failed them that day’ (37). They demand brief responses to what is written in this bill of belief. His answers are calm and sardonic; he knows they will inculpate him, but before his accusers condemn him he makes sure to treat them in kind. One of the last questions put to him asks his view of the pope; and in attending to his answer we must note that his examination has been moved from the Chapter House in St Paul's to the Dominican Friary. ‘The Lord Cobham answered … he and you together maketh whole the great anti-christ. Of whom he is the great head, you bishops, priests, prelates, and monks are the body, and the begging friars are the tail, for they cover the filthiness of you both with their subtle sophistry’ (38). Before bringing the proceedings to a conclusion, the Archbishop understandably accuses Oldcastle of having ‘spoken here many wonderful words to the slanderous rebuke of all the whole spirituality’. Injured innocent to the last, however, Sir John loftily responds: ‘Much more have you offended me than ever I offended you, in thus troubling me before this multitude’ (40).

III

‘You have misled the youthful Prince’, says the Lord Chief Justice to Shakespeare's Sir John. ‘The young Prince hath misled me’, retorts the knight. ‘Well, God send the Prince a better companion!’, continues the Chief Justice. ‘God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him’, answers Sir John (2:1.2.145-7, 201-2).

This encounter provides a convenient point of return to Henry IV for a more exact reminder of Falstaff's characteristic comic procedure. In Part 1 as in Part 2, he is under attack from the outset, enduring Hal's good humoured but energetic denunciation of his sinful way of life, a diatribe prompted by his opening question about the time of day. By way of response, Sir John slides into a distractingly graceful conceit about Phoebus and the moon, but then counterattacks Puritan-wise with an accusation that will resonate in a two-part play dense with ideas about sin, redemption, and the lost grace or sanctity of kingship: ‘God save thy grace—majesty I should say, for grace thou wilt have none … No, by my troth. Not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter’ (1:1.2.17-21). Pertinent here is the fact that Falstaff not only poses from time to time as a godly, bible-quoting and self-righteous Protestant, but is also endowed with a secular form of the extraordinary grace which, according to Bale, inspired the first Oldcastle's responses (because of its concern with the nature of kingship and true nobility, there is in fact a notable continuity in Henry IV between theological and secular notions of grace). Says Sir John to the Chief Justice concerning one of his aggressively defensive rejoinders: ‘This is the right fencing grace, my lord—tap for tap’ (2:2.1.194-6).¹⁷

The scene in Part 1 which opens with Hal's indictment of Falstaff—1.2—concludes with preparations for the Gad's Hill escapade; and the whole purpose of that adventure is to create a situation in which Sir John will be compelled to admit that he is a coward and a liar. Occurring in most editions in 2.4, the scene of accusatory ensnarement—Falstaff on trial, as it were—constitutes the climax of the play's comic action. The gloating conviction of Hal and Poins that they can at last extract from him an abject confession of guilt, together with the presence of an excited on-stage audience (cf. ‘Lo good people, lo’), generates suspense and focuses all our attention on the moment when Falstaff produces the answer that frustrates his accusers. The answer is too well known to quote here, but what I must quote is his answer when accused a second time in this same scene. In the playlet, Hal as King rebukes Falstaff as Prince: ‘Swearest thou, ungracious boy? … Thou art violently fallen away from grace. There is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man … Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts …’ And so on, at length: Hal's demonizing invective, his catalogue of what Bale called ‘hateful names’ (cf. ‘that seditious apostate, that … that … that …’) is relentless. Nevertheless, Falstaff deflates it by responding with an air of exquisitely polite incomprehension which is innocence itself: ‘I would your grace would take me with you. Whom means your grace?’ (lines 443-4).

The centrality of this scene's chief comic procedure to Shakespeare's conception of Falstaff is confirmed in Part 2, where the same pattern of accusation and response is repeated with slight variation. As in 1.2 of Part 1, Falstaff in 1.2 here is under attack, this time from the Lord Chief Justice, Hal's mentor-to-be; and once again he relies on a general air of self-righteousness together with the right fencing grace of counter-thrust. The attempted shaming and condemnation again constitutes the climax of the comic action and occurs in the same position as before—2.4 in most editions. Once again, too, the moralistic hubris of Hal and Poins and the presence of an eager audience maximize the effect of Sir John's responses to accusation. The charge of degeneracy, ‘Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost thou lead’, is cheekily deflated in one sentence (with a mock-contemptuous glance at Hal's disguise): ‘A better than thou: I am a gentleman, thou art a drawer’ (lines 290-1). His answer to the more damaging accusation of slandering a prince—a crime for which, as Hal points out, the statutory punishment was the loss of both ears—involves a wily assumption of both childlike innocence and adult wisdom, its effectiveness being greatly enhanced by Hal's sneering expectation that it will be a mere repetition of the cocksure answer given after the Gad's Hill affair:

FALSTAFF
(to Prince Henry) Didst thou hear me [abusing you]?
PRINCE Henry
Yea, and you knew me as you did when you ran away by Gad's Hill; you knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to try my patience.
FALSTAFF
No, no, no, not so, I did not think thou wast within hearing.
PRINCE Henry
I shall drive you, then, to confess the wilful abuse, and then I know how to handle you.
FALSTAFF
No abuse, Hal; o'mine honour, no abuse.
PRINCE Henry
Not? To dispraise me, and call me ‘pantler’ and ‘bread-chipper’, and I know not what?
FALSTAFF
No abuse, Hal.
POINS
No abuse?
FALSTAFF
No abuse, Ned, i'th'world, honest Ned, none … I dispraised him before the wicked that the wicked might not fall in love with him; (to Prince Henry) in which doing I have done the part of a careful friend and a true subject, and thy father is to give me thanks for it. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none.

(2.4.309-28)

Sir John's puritanism—dissociating himself from ‘the wicked’—is not forgotten as he adroitly converts his sin to virtue.

In the end, of course, Falstaff's chief accuser, now the supreme figure of authority, condemns and passes sentence upon him. But there is a suggestion that he succeeds in doing so, not because he wins the argument, but because he prudently denies the accused the right of response. The new king's ‘Reply not to me with a fool-born jest’ (5.5.554) recalls what the holy doctors said in desperation when overcome by the sardonic fluency of the first Sir John: ‘[S]top his mouth.’

We are so familiar with Falstaff that it is difficult to imagine him other than he is. And yet if we had been in at the start of his creation and knew that Shakespeare intended to debunk the godly-Protestant view of Prince Henry's executed friend, our best guess would have been that he would caricature Oldcastle's biblical babbling (as Thomas Hoccleve conceived it in 1415)¹⁸ and would present him as a Puritan hypocrite and a cowardly soldier;¹⁹ which he does. But we would not have anticipated Falstaff's characterization as a reprobate who habitually wrongfoots his interrogators and accusers with incomparable rejoinders, perfect answers. That dominant characteristic, I suggest, follows from the felicitous marriage of Shakespeare's parodic imagination and John Bale's conception of the first Oldcastle as an apostle of truth whose answers had such ‘influence of grace from above’ that all the cunning and malice of his accusers was brought to nought. What results then is not a simple piece of anti-Puritan satire but a form of comedy which turns a Puritan butt into an exceptionally appealing character with a quicksilver mind and tongue.

Notes

1. For a thorough consideration of the evidence in favour of Shakespeare's satiric intention, see Gary Taylor, ‘The Fortunes of Oldcastle’, Shakespeare Survey 38 (1985), pp. 85-100. See also E. A. J. Honigmann, ‘Sir John Oldcastle: Shakespeare's Martyr’, in ‘Fanned and Winnowed Opinions’: Shakespearean Essays Presented to Harold Jenkins (London and New York, 1987), pp. 118-32; Kristen Poole, ‘Saints Alive! Falstaff, Martin Marprelate, and the Staging of Puritanism’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 46 (1995), 47-95.

2. ‘Sir John Oldcastle: Shakespeare's Martyr’, p. 126.

3. For James and Fuller, see David Bevington, ed. Henry IV, Part 1 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 6-8; for Speed, see S. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: a Compact Documentary Life (Oxford, 1977), p. 193.

4. The New Variorum Henry the Fourth Part I, ed. Samuel Burdett Hemingway (Philadelphia and London, 1936), p. 403.

5. Variorum, Part I, p. 421.

6. Variorum, Part I, p. 431.

7. Variorum, Part I, p. 441.

8. An undated reprint was issued in London a few years later. This is contained in Bale's Select Works, ed. Henry Christmas, Parker Society Publications (Cambridge, 1849). My references are to this edition.

9. It is, however, detectable in Foxe; so it is just possible that Shakespeare acquired it indirectly from Foxe without having read Bale's original version.

10. STC 24045. It may have been edited by William Tyndale. No pagination.

11. Arundel's Magnus Processus is contained in the Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wycliff cum tritico, the only contemporaneous account of the rise of the Lollards. The Fasciculi is reprinted as vol. 5 of the Rolls Series, ed. W. W. Shirley (London, 1858). Bale and Foxe ascribe the authorship of this collection to Thomas Netter of Walden, a leading opponent of the Lollards.

12. There is no hint of any of this in The examinacion. But Bale was clearly inspired by the defiance with which in this account Cobham responds to his inquisitors, and owes to it some of the more impressive retorts which he imputes to his hero.

13. This legend in particular shows Bale's closeness to hagiographical tradition. Katherine is compared to the apostles armed with Christ's assurance that they should have no anxiety as to what they must say when brought before kings and princes; such indeed is the power of God's grace in her responses to the pagan philosophers who challenge her faith that they are filled with awe and completely overcome (The Life of St Katherine … with its Latin Original, ed. E. Einenkel, Early English Texts Society, No. 80 [London, 1884]), pp. 31, 58, 61-2; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legende, trans. William Caxton [1493], sigs. y3v-7). As Hippolyte Delehaye has shown, late-classical rhetoric played an important part in the growth of the martyr legend; he regards Katherine's debate with the pagan philosophers as an ingenious amplification of the standard interrogation of the martyr: see Les passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Brussels, 1921), p. 169. Having been a Carmelite friar, Bale was steeped in hagiography and had in fact compiled his own collection of saints' lives for the benefit of his fellow Carmelites. See Leslie P. Fairfield, John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, Indiana, 1976), pp. 21-7.

14. In neither the Examinacion nor the Magnus Processus is there any warrant for Bale's repeated emphasis on the helpless confusion to which the inquisitors are reduced by Cobham's answers. This is a hagiographical motif which appealed to his dramatic instinct.

15. This answer is taken from the Examinacion. The ‘most cheerful countenance’ is Bale's characteristic addition, as is the following reference to the Archbishop's embarrassment. The original answer possibly marks the point at which Bale conceived the idea for his own version of Oldcastle's ‘history’.

16. The confession is in the Examinacion, but the appeal to an audience is a typical example of Bale's theatrical heightening.

17. Cf. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528), trans. Sir Thomas Hoby (1561) (London: Dent, 1966), p. 150: ‘But among other merry sayings, they have a verie good grace, that arise when a man at nipping talke of his fellow, taketh the verie same words in the self same sense, and returneth them backe again, pricking him with his owne weapon’. Castiglione, it should be noted, likens perfect grace in speech and behaviour to divine grace: it is mysterious, not acquired by effort, ‘the gift of nature and the heavens’ (32, 44).

18. ‘Hit is unkyndly for a knight / That shuld a kynges castel kepe, / To bable the Bibel day and night’ (Ballade). Cited in Wilhelm von Baeske, Oldcastle-Falstaff in der englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare (Palaestra, 1), p. 34.

19. Bale notes as a typical Romish slander Polydore Vergil's assertion in his Anglica Historica that Oldcastle ‘cowardly fled’ when he and other rebels were confronted by the King in person (A Brief Chronicle, p. 10).