CHAP. II. unmerited, the calumnious aspersions cast upon his character by Monstrelet, who affirms that the Duke of Bedford deprived him of the order of the garter on account of his disgraceful flight, has blackened his name with the brand of cowardice, and Shakspeare who was probably acquainted with the charge, but ignorant of the vindication, selected the slandered warrior for the craven voluptuary who makes so conspicuous a figure in dramas which will live for ever. The historians of Sir John Fastolfe have written very long and able arguments to prove the improbability of his ever having incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Bedford, who did not possess the power either to take away the garter which the sovereign had presented, or to restore it again, as Monstrelet and other authors declare that he did "upon apparent cause of good excuse." The degradation of a knight never took place without previous trial, and was always accompanied by circumstances of great solemnity; the ceremonies observed being particu larly imposing, and calculated to impress the minds of all who aspired to the high distinction conferred by the garter, with the salutary dread of incurring similar dishonour. It would be needless to follow these zealous friends through their somewhat prolix defence, the wellattested fact of the subsequent favour which Fastolfe uninterruptedly enjoyed from the regent, being sufficient to exonerate him from the imputation of ever having forfeited the gallant Bedford's good opinion. In 1430, the year after the battle of Patay, Fastolfe was appointed lieutenant of Caen, in Normandy; in the following year he accompanied CHAP.II. the regent into France, and was soon afterwards dispatched to the council of Basle, in the honourable office of ambassador. He obtained with Lord Willoughby, the joint command of a force which the English government sent to the assistance of the Duke of Bretagne against the Duke of Alençon, and having been employed by his steady patron the Duke of Bedford, until the latest hour of that hero's existence, received the dying testimony of the undeviating attachment of his illustrious friend, by being appointed one of the executors of his will. The high estimation in which Fastolfe was held by Richard Duke of York, when succeeding to the command in Normandy, was evinced by a grant from his personal estate of twenty pounds yearly, bestowed upon the knight as a mark of regard and the reward of his merits; and at length in 1440, after having borne arms in the service of his country during the period of forty years, he retired to the estate bequeathed to him by his ancestors covered with his well earned laurels, and laden with the treasure which he had accumulated in the war. Upon his final settlement at Caister, in Norfolk, Sir John Fastolfe employed a portion of his wealth in the erection of a castle, which he furnished very magnificently, his natural love of splendour being in all probability improved by the taste acquired during his long residence in France. He possessed also a house in Southwark, but fixed his abode chiefly at Caister, where to the stirring tumult of a soldier's life succeeded the cares, anxieties, and petty warfare attendant upon the management of CHAP.II. property, continually endangered by the incursions of marauding, and the arts of insidious neighbours. A country gentleman in these troublesome and lawless times could scarcely hope for domestic repose; and Sir John Fastolfe seems to have been exposed to every variety of annoyance (with the exception of the regular siege of his castle, which did not take place until after his death,) which the licentious state of society and the weakness of the government combined to produce. The brief notices of passing events which occur in the Paston letters, depict the habits, manners and disposition of the knight and his associates very forcibly, and from these authentic sources we may form a lively and accurate idea of the conduct and mode of living of the gentry of England. Sir John Fastolfe was celebrated for his hospitality and his munificence; he was a generous friend, a liberal master, a bounteous patron of the clergy, and a benefactor of the poor. Yet while sharing in all the virtues of the age he escaped not untinctured by its vices. A letter preserved in the Paston collection addressed by him to Sir Thomas Howes, rector of Castlecombe, besides directions for the good rule of Caister, contains one of those profane oaths for which the English of every rank were at that period so disgracefully notorious; a reproach still applied with too much justice at the present moment to classes above the vulgar. The epistle runs thus-" Trusty and well beloved friend I greet you well, and I pray you send me word who dare be so hardy to knock against you in my right, and say to them on my behalf that they shall be quiet as far as law and reason will, and if they will not dread CHAP. II. nor obey that, then they shall be quiet by Blackbeard and Whitebeard, that is to say by God and the Devil, and therefore I charge you send me word whether such as have been mine adversaries before this time continue still in their wilfulness." Another trait in Fastolfe's character is developed in a letter which displays his eager anxiety to procure the wardship of a young heir, the management of the minor's estate, and the profit which would accrue from the negociation of his marriage; being the sordid motives of a man who was childless, having lost his only son by death, and whose ample fortune, apparent by the ready money and rich effects found in his houses, and the writ of inquiry into the lands and estates which he possessed at his decease, ought to have rendered him careless of an acquisition which could scarcely have been made of importance by honest means. The unjust advantages openly gained by the rapa cious men, who by dint of strong interest were appointed the guardians of rich wards is evident from the circumstance frequently mentioned in Dugdale's Baronage, as an act of especial favour emanating from the sovereign, the grant of the livery of his lands to a young heir, without obliging him to make proof of his age. It was not to be expected that a man thus keenly attentive to his own interests should patiently submit to the loss of any part of the riches won by his glorious toils, and no blame can be attached to the desire which he manifested in a third letter, also extant, to obtain his share of the ransom of the CHAP. II. Duke of Alençon; but when contemplating those vast possessions accumulated in the wars of France, the order of the garter bestowed as a testimony of the sovereign's regard to his merit, and the rank of banneret likewise conferred by royal favour, the reader cannot fail to be surprised at the plea which Fastolfe urges in behalf of a suit to the Lords of Canterbury and Winchester, whom he directs his cousin, John Paston, " to move," that he may have license to found a college to the health of his soul, without any great fine," in recompence of his long services, done unto the king and to his noble father, never yet guerdoned or rewarded." Some of the domestic troubles with which the knight was vexed in his retirement are enumerated in a second letter to Sir Thomas Howes. Right trusty and well |