John Fastolf

“ Sir J. Fastolf goes to reside in Norfolk. William Paston now reported to his brother that Sir John Fastolf was about to take his journey into Norfolk within a few days, and proposed to take up his residence at Caister. His going thither must have been regarded as an event not only in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth but even in the city of Norwich. At all events it was highly important to John Paston, whose advice the old knight valued in many matters. ‘He saith,’ wrote William Paston to his brother, ‘ye are the heartiest kinsman and friend that he knoweth. ”

“ Paston had become very intimate with the wealthy knight. Sir John Fastolf, who was probably related to his wife, and who had employed him on several matters of business. In 1459 Sir John died without children, leaving his affairs in rather a tangled condition. In accordance with the custom of the time, he had conveyed many of his estates in Norfolk and Suffolk to trustees, among whom were John Paston and his brother William, retaining the revenues for himself, and probably intending his trustees after his death to devote the property to the foundation of a college. ”

“ Then the other trustees of Sir John Fastolf enfeoffed the same Sir John Paston, Fairfax, and the others in the same way; so that these last became seised to Sir John’s use of the whole property—not merely of the three-eighths originally demised by Yelverton, Jenney, and Howes, but also of the remaining five-eighths—until they were violently disseised by the duke, who enfeoffed thereof Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, William, Bishop of Winchester, Henry, Earl of Essex, Richard Southwell, James Hobert, Richard Darby, clerk, and John York. ”

“ But if we go back to an 118 earlier time, the Paston letters afford ample evidence that every man who had property to protect, if not every well-educated woman also, was perfectly well versed in the ordinary forms of legal processes. Sir John Fastolf had a great deal of property to take care of, and consequently had much more occasion to make use of legal phraseology than other people. ”

“ At all events we find that at the end of the year York was glad to pledge some pieces of jewellery to Sir John Fastolf for a loan of £437, to be repaid next Midsummer.116.1 The transaction is in every way curious, as illustrating the sort of dealings in money matters which were at that time by no means uncommon among knights and noblemen. It is certainly highly characteristic of such a knight as Sir John Fastolf, who, quite unlike the Falstaff of the dramatist, instead of being always needy, was always seeking to increase the wealth that he had amassed by long years of thrift and frugality. ”

“ But on the whole John Paston stood well with his countrymen, and the change of kings was an event from which he 206 had no reason to anticipate bad consequences to himself. Since the death of Sir John Fastolf he had become a man of much greater importance, and he had been returned to Parliament in the last year of Henry VI. as a supporter of the Duke of York. He was now, in the first year of Edward IV., returned to Parliament again. ”

“ Among other things, it was contended that in the autumn of the year 1457, two years before his death, Sir John Fastolf had actually made estate to John Paston of the manor of Caister and other lands in Norfolk, and thereupon given him livery of seisin with a view to the foundation of the college:237.1 also that the will made in 1459 was an imperfect document, in which no executors were named, and to which no seal was attached.237.2 If these allegations were true, there was, after all, no great alteration in Sir John’s intentions during the last two years of his life. ”

“ At the time when Cade and his followers were encamped upon Blackheath, Sir John Fastolf, a noted warrior of the time, of whom we shall have much to say hereafter, was residing at his house in Southwark. He was a man who had not succeeded in standing well with his contemporaries, and the fact may have contributed not a little to the sensitiveness of a naturally irascible character. ”

“ A trustworthy edition of the second part of ‘Henry IV’ also appeared with Falstaff’s name substituted for that of Oldcastle in 1600. There the epilogue expressly denied that Falstaff had any characteristic in common with the martyr Oldcastle. p. 170Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man. But the substitution of the name ‘Falstaff’ did not pass without protest. It hazily recalled Sir John Fastolf, an historical warrior who had already figured in ‘Henry VI’ and was owner at one time of the Boar’s Head Tavern in Southwark ”

“ But the great lawsuit about Fastolf’s will remained still undecided, and he left to his son Sir John an inheritance troubled by a disputed claim. He died on the 21st or 22nd May233.1 1466. His remains were carried down into Norfolk and buried with great magnificence in Bromholm Abbey.233.2
Of his character we see fewer indications than might have been expected in a correspondence extending over more than twenty years, and perhaps we are in danger of judging him too much from the negative point of view. ”

“ Fastolf, Sir John, a distinguished soldier of Henry V.'s reign, who with Sir John Oldcastle shares the doubtful honour of being the prototype of Shakespeare's Falstaff, but unlike the dramatist's creation was a courageous soldier, and won distinction at Agincourt and at the “Battle of the Herrings”; after engaging with less success in the struggle against Joan of Arc, he returned to England and spent his closing years in honoured retirement at Norfolk, his birthplace ”

“ He was the son of Sir Stephen Scrope, by his wife Lady Milicent, who married Fastolf after her husband’s death. At the time of this second marriage of his mother, young Scrope was about ten or twelve years of age, and being heir to a considerable property, his stepfather had the management of his affairs during his minority. Bitterly did he complain in after years of the 154 manner in which Sir John had discharged the trust. According to the unfeeling, mercenary fashion in which such matters were then managed, Fastolf sold his wardship to Chief-Justice Gascoigne for 500 marks ”

“ Shakespeare was possibly under the misapprehension, based on the episode of cowardice reported in 'Henry VI,' that the military exploits of the historical Sir John Fastolfe sufficiently resembled those of his own riotous knight to justify the employment of a corrupted version of his name. It is of course untrue that Fastolfe was ever the intimate associate of Henry V when Prince of Wales, who was not his junior by more than ten years, or that he was an impecunious spendthrift and gray-haired debauchee. ”

“ Item, my Lord wylle in any wyse that ye kepe welle all the lyvelod that ye have of Sir John Fastolff, and that ye suffyr no man to entre no lond nor place, lord nor other personys, what sum ever they be. Ye may veryly thynke he ys your speciall god lord, and that ye shall knowe in tyme comyng. I understand that Calle dothe passyngly welle in your maters in the spirituall lawe, as his letter makyth mencion, &c. Wretyn at London the Satyrday before Seynt Lawrens day. Your servaunt, John Daubeney. ”

“ I. i. 124. flew. The Folios have the easy misprint 'slew' (with long s) , which a very few editors are quixotic enough to champion.
I. i. 131. Sir John Fastolfe. This episode of Fastolfe's cowardice is four times employed in the play. Cf. I. iv. 35-37; III. ii. 104-109; IV. i. 9-47. Modern historians represent Fastolfe as a general of distinction and of unblemished valor, but the chroniclers of Shakespeare's day accepted the libel incorporated in the play. The chief interest of the figure here is his connection with the great Falstaff of the Henry IV plays. ”

“ The latter is the volume which Oldys, in his life of sir John Fastolfe, in the Biographia Britannica 1750, has described at p. 1907 as a "quarto book some time in the custody of the late Brian Fairfax esquire, one of the Commissioners of the Customs," and of which Oldys attributes the collection to the son of William of Worcestre, because a dedicatory letter from that person to king Edward the Fourth is prefixed to the volume. ”

“ All of Falstaff's speeches are one crescendo of phrases; each seems to breed the next one, and they swarm in his fancy like gnats in a broad sun. Bardolph's red features are very tropics to yield spicy railing to him. The ginger of it is hot in the mouth. He never sees that face but he thinks upon hell-fire, and Dives in his purple, burning. ”

“ But when he reflected what indulgent, beneficent masters—if, indeed, parents were not the fitter word—his ancestors had always been to their tenants:—no! for the sake of human nature, he could not believe in such black ingratitude as to suppose Falstaff had come to any harm. It would still be in his power to give his friends a cordial welcome. He led the way almost cheerfully, deploring only that the journey must be performed on foot.
At the first opportunity he whispered Bardolph, “Slip on before us, borrow a horse, steal an ass, or run like mad. ”

“ Besides his property in Suffolk and in Norfolk, where he had fine houses both at Norwich and Yarmouth, Fastolf had a residence at Southwark, and his wife's property at Castle Combe, Wiltshire, was largely under his control. He seems in the early days of his retirement to have chiefly spent his time at Southwark, where he maintained a large establishment. ”

“ This was very kind of Maître Jean, for it made Lady Alice smile. And the poor mother stood in need of some such diversion, however passing.
“Now, lads,” said Mowbray. “Whip and spur with a vengeance. No rest this side of Canterbury. And for London, ho!”
“For London, ho!” shouted Jack Falstaff, with a beaming face, looking more like a jovial young prince riding to tournament, than a rescued purloiner of animal food flying the constable. ”

“ He would try, he said, like Falstaff, "but with a modification almost as large as himself," less to speak himself than to be the cause of speaking in others. "Much in this manner they exhibit at the door of a snuff-shop the effigy of a Highlander with an empty mull in his hand, who, apparently having taken all the snuff he can carry, and discharged all the sneezes of which he is capable, politely invites his friends and patrons to step in and try what they can do in the same line." ”

“ But the talent itself has descended; and Falstaff may be regarded as the mighty progenitor of the American knack at exaggerating, into which imagination must enter either to make it witty or simply ludicrous. We can match the felicities of Falstaff from every State of the Union. Indeed, we are of opinion that emigration, which has impaired the physical fulness of the Anglo-Saxon man, has not depleted the vein of his humor: our romancing talent is as vast as the country which nourishes it by all enterprises and ambitions. We have not fallen away vilely; we do not bate, do not dwindle. ”

“ Many thoughtless commentators have pronounced the portrait of Sir John Falstaff, as drawn in the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” to be wanting in verisimilitude, and have therefore called its authenticity into question. No discerning mind can mistake the likeness. It is the same man whom we have so often seen drawn by the same master-hand under more favourable circumstances—but how changed, how fallen! ”

“ A late visitor—especially one making such formidable announcement of his arrival as that which disturbed Sir John Falstaff from his comfortable after-supper nap, and sent Master Shallow’s little dried walnut of a heart leaping into his mouth, like a parched pea from a shovel up the chimney—was not only a source of astonishment but of alarm. It might be a robber at the head of a forest-band come to levy what we should term an execution on the goods and chattels ”

“ Our hero reviewed his position.
“I don’t quite know what to do with them, now I have got them,” he meditated. “I am afraid they won’t find the Falstaff Estates quite up to my representations. I must make it out that I have been robbed by servants during my exile. At any rate, one thing is decided. They don’t go WITHOUT PAYING FOE IT.”
Bardolph returned running, with yellow cheeks, purple lips, and a blue nose,—altogether a remarkable facial chromatic phenomenon.
His tidings were startling.
The lads of Kent had risen in open rebellion, and were devastating the land with fire and sword. ”

“ They had had his trash a dozen times already.
“Aha! what’s this?” said the gladiator poet. “One tired of life? A worm ‘neath Ajax’s foot. Writhe hence or be crushed.”
To make the scene brief, a cudgelling match ensued. The waterman was vanquished, and the poet resumed his swaggering antics with renewed extravagance.
Jack Falstaff walked home, musing as follows:—
“At the Court Gate to-morrow. The Court will all come out in procession to the tilt-yard. All the lads will be there. That fellow for all his swagger and bulk knows no more about cudgel-play than a pig. ”

“ Monstrelet admits that Fastolf was quickly restored to his honours, ‘though against the mind of Lord Talbot.’ There can be no doubt that Fastolf was employed after the battle of Patay in as responsible offices as before. ”

“ For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.”
At this juncture a retreat was sounded, proving that the fortune of war had decided in favour of the Royalist faction. The two princes hastened to their father’s tent, Sir John Falstaff following, with the body of Hotspur on his back, soliloquising as follows:
“I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, Heaven reward him! If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.” ”