John Weever ( 1631 ) also names Robert Langland, as does David Buchanan ( 1652 ).

John Weever says, “ Kelly ( otherwise called Talbot ) that famous English alchemist of our times, who flying out of his own country ( after he had lost both his ears at Lancaster ) was entertained with Rudolf the second, and last of that Christian name, Emperor of Germany .” Most accounts say that he first worked as an apothecary's apprentice.

* John Weever – The Mirror of Martyrs, or The Life and Death of Sir John Oldcastle

John Weever has been suggested as author of the first play ; the satirist Joseph Hall has been seen as an influence on — if not the author of — the other two, though recent statistical tests bring Hall's authorship into question.

In 1601 a narrative poem, The Mirror of Martyrs, by one John Weever, was published ; it praises Oldcastle has a " valiant captain and most godly martyr.

John Weever in 1631

John Weever ( 1576 – 1632 ), was an English poet and antiquary.

He may be the son of the John Weever who in 1590 was one of thirteen followers of local landowner Thomas Langton put on trial for murder after a riot which took place at Lea Hall, Lancashire.

In his preface Weever calls it the " first trew Oldcastle ," perhaps on account of the fact that Shakespeare's character Falstaff first appeared as ' Sir John Oldcastle '.

* David Kathman, ‘ Weever, John ( 1575 / 6 – 1632 )’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004