Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham

Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham (22 November 1564 – 24 January 1618 (Old Style)/3 February 1619 (New Style)) was an English peer who was implicated in the Main Plot against the rule of James I of England.

The son of William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, by second wife Frances, daughter of Sir John Newton, he was educated at King's College, Cambridge. In 1597 he succeeded his father as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports under Queen Elizabeth. Shortly after the accession of James I, he was implicated in the 'treason of the main' in 1603. His brother George was executed, and Henry was imprisoned in the Tower of London by James I, probably in an attempt to obtain the Cobham estates for the Duke of Lennox.

He was the second husband of Lady Frances Howard, daughter of Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham and Katherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham.

He may have been the subject of a number of Elizabethan satires such as Thomas Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, and may have been the model of Shakespeare's Falstaff, who was originally given the name "Oldcastle". Sir John Oldcastle was an ancestor of Lord Cobham. Though Falstaff is more likely modeled on his father William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham (also descended from John Oldcastle) who was married to Frances Newton, whose family name was originally Caradock; referenced in 2 Henry IV when Falstaff sings "The Boy and the Mantle," a ballad in which Sir Caradoc's wife comes away with her fidelity and reputation intact (McKeen 1981). This could point to William Brooke, being married to a Caradock such as the Sir Cacadoc in the ballad sung by Falstaff, as the model for Falstaff rather than Henry, being the son of a Caradock.

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