New Zealand.—In 1898 a bill, introduced by the Rt. Hon. R. J. Seddon, premier, became law which provided for the payment of an old-age pension out of the consolidated fund (revenue of the general government) to persons duly qualified, without contribution by the beneficiaries. The claimants must be 65 years of age, resident in the colony, and have so resided for 25 years. They must be free from conviction for lesser legal offences for 12 years, and for more serious breaches of the law for 25 years, previous to the application. They must be of good moral character and have a record of sobriety and respectability for five years. Their yearly income must not exceed £52, and they must not be owners of property exceeding in value £270. Aliens, aborigines, Chinese and Asiatics are excluded. The pensions are for £18 per annum, but for each £1 of yearly income over and above £34, and also for each £15 of capital over and above £50, £1 is deducted from the amount of the pension. Applications have to be made to the deputy registrars of one of 72 districts into which the colony is for this purpose divided. The claim is then recorded and submitted to a stipendiary magistrate, before whom the claimant has to prove his qualifications and submit to cross-examination. If the claim is admitted, a certificate is issued to the deputy registrar and in due course handed to the claimant. Payment is made through the local post-office as desired by the pensioner. The act came into force on the 1st of November 1898. An amending act of 1905 increased the amount of the maximum pension to £26 a year. See further. New Zealand. The authors of the measure maintain that it is a great success, while others point to the invidious character of the cross-examination required in proving the necessary degree of poverty, and allege that the arrangement penalizes the thrifty members of the poorer class, and is a direct incentive to transfer of property, of a more or less fraudulent character, between members of a family.
Victoria.—By the Old-Age Pensions Act 1900, £75,000 was appropriated for the purpose of paying a pension of not more than 10s. per week to any person who fulfilled the necessary conditions, of which the following were the principal: The pensioner must be 65 years of age or permanently disabled, must fill up a declaration that he has lived twenty years in the state; has not been convicted of drunkenness, wife-desertion, &c.; that his weekly income and his property do not exceed a given sum (the regulation of this and other details is intrusted to the governor in council). Further sums were subsequently appropriated to the purposes of the act.
Authorities.—Report and Evidence of Select Committee on National Provident Insurance (1887); Report of Royal Commission on Aged Poor (1895); Report of Lord Rothschild’s Committee (1898); Report of the Select Committee on Aged Deserving Poor (1899); Report of Departmental Committee, &c., about the Aged Deserving Poor (1900); J. A. Spender, The State and Pensions in Old Age (1892); George King, Old Age Pensions (1899); Reports of Poor Law Conferences; Annual Reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies; E. W. Brabrook, Provident Societies and the Public Welfare (1898), ch. viii. For: Charles Booth, The Aged Poor in England and Wales (1894); Old Age Pensions (1899); Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, “The Labour Question,” Nineteenth Century (November 1892); Speeches (21st April 1891 and 24th May 1899); Rev. J. Frome Wilkinson, Pensions and Pauperism (1892): Publications of the National Providence League. Against: C. J. Radley, Self-Help versus State-Pensions (3rd edition); Plea for Liberty (1892); Report of Royal Commission from a Friendly Society Point of View, reprint from Oddfellows’ Magazine (1895); The Foresters’ Miscellany (February 1902); Unity, a Monthly Journal of Foresters, &c. (February 1902); C. S. Loch, Old-Age Pensions and Pauperism (1892); Reply of Bradfield Board of Guardians to circular of National Provident League (1891); Publications of the Charity Organization Society.
OLDBURY, an urban district in the Oldbury parliamentary
division of Worcestershire, England, 5 m. W. of Birmingham,
on the Great Western and London & North-Western railways
and the Birmingham canal. Pop. (1901) 25,191. Coal, iron and
limestone abound in the neighbourhood, and the town possesses
alkali and chemical works, railway-carriage works, iron, edge-tool,
nail and steel works, maltings, corn-mills, and brick and
tile kilns. The urban district includes the townships of Langley
and Warley.
OLDCASTLE, SIR JOHN (d. 1417), English Lollard leader, was son of Sir Richard Oldcastle of Almeley in Herefordshire. He is first mentioned as serving in the expedition to Scotland in 1400, when he was probably quite a young man. Next year he was in charge of Builth castle in Brecon, and serving all through the Welsh campaigns won the friendship and esteem of Henry, the prince of Wales. Oldcastle represented Herefordshire in the parliament of 1404. Four years later he married Joan, the heiress of Cobham, and was thereon summoned to parliament as Lord Cobham in her right. As a trusted supporter of the prince, Oldcastle held a high command in the expedition which the young
Henry sent to France in 1411. Lollardy had many supporters in Herefordshire, and Oldcastle himself had adopted Lollard
opinions before 1410, when the churches on his wife’s estates
in Kent were laid under interdict for unlicensed preaching.
In the convocation which met in March 1413, shortly before the
death of Henry IV., Oldcastle was at once accused of heresy.
But his friendship with the new king prevented any decisive
action till convincing evidence was found in a book belonging to
Oldcastle, which was discovered in a shop in Paternoster Row.
The matter was brought before the king, who desired that nothing
should be done till he had tried his personal influence. Oldcastle
declared his readiness to submit to the king “all his fortune
in this world,” but was firm in his religious beliefs. When he
fled from Windsor to his own castle at Cowling, Henry at last
consented to a prosecution. Oldcastle refused to obey the
archbishop’s repeated citations, and it was only under a royal
writ that he at last appeared before the ecclesiastical court on
the 23rd of September. In a confession of his faith he declared
his belief in the sacraments and the necessity of penance and
true confession; but to put hope, faith or trust in images was
the great sin of idolatry. But he would not assent to the orthodox
doctrine of the sacrament as stated by the bishops, nor
admit the necessity of confession to a priest. So on the 25th of
September he was convicted as a heretic. Henry was still anxious
to find a way of escape for his old comrade, and granted a respite
of forty days. Before that time had expired Oldcastle escaped
from the Tower by the help of one William Fisher, a parchment-maker
of Smithfield (Riley, Memorials of London, 641). Oldcastle
now put himself at the head of a wide-spread Lollard
conspiracy, which assumed a definitely political character.
The design was to seize the king and his brothers during a
Twelfth-night mumming at Eltham, and perhaps, as was alleged,
to establish some sort of commonwealth. Henry, forewarned
of their intention, removed to London, and when the Lollards
assembled in force in St Giles’s Fields on the 10th of January
they were easily dispersed. Oldcastle himself escaped into
Herefordshire, and for nearly four years avoided capture.
Apparently he was privy to the Scrope and Cambridge plot in
July 1415, when he stirred some movement in the Welsh Marches.
On the failure of the scheme he went again into hiding. Oldcastle
was no doubt the instigator of the abortive Lollard plots of 1416,
and appears to have intrigued with the Scots. But at last his
hiding-place was discovered and in November 1417 he was
captured by the Lord Charlton of Powis. Oldcastle who was “sore wounded ere he would be taken,” was brought to London in a horse-litter. On the 14th of December he was formally condemned, on the record of his previous conviction, and that same day was hung in St Giles’s Fields, and burnt “gallows and all.” It is not clear that he was burnt alive.
Oldcastle died a martyr. He was no doubt a man of fine quality, but circumstances made him a traitor, and it is impossible altogether to condemn his execution. His unpopular opinions and early friendship with Henry V. created a traditional scandal which long continued. In the old play The Famous Victories of Henry V., written before 1588, Oldcastle figures as the prince’s boon companion. When Shakespeare adapted that play in Henry IV., Oldcastle still appeared; but when the play was printed in 1598 Falstaff’s name was substituted, in deference, as it is said, to the then Lord Cobham. Though the fat knight still remains “my old lad of the Castle,” the stage character has nothing to do with the Lollard leader.
Bibliography.—The record of Oldcastle’s trial is printed in Fasciculi Zizaniorum (Rolls series) and in Wilkins’s Concilia, iii. 351-357. The chief contemporary notices of his later career are given in Gesta Henrici Quinti (Eng. Hist. Soc.) and in Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana. There have been many lives of Oldcastle, mainly based on The Actes and Monuments of John Foxe, who in his turn followed the Briefe Chronycle of John Bale, first published in 1544. For notes on Oldcastle’s early career, consult J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry IV. For literary history see the Introductions to Richard James’s Iter Lancastrense (Chetham Soc., 1845) and to Grosart’s edition of the Poems of Richard James (1880). See also W. Barske, Oldcastle-Falstaff in der englischen Literatur bis zu Shakespeare (Palaestra, l. Berlin, 1905). For a recent Life, see W. T. Waugh in the English Historical Review, vol. xx. (C. L. K.)
