Courtier: Sir John Fastolf, 1380-1459

Sir John Falstaff, the rollicking buffoon of Shakespeare's Henry V, is one of his more memorable characters.   Falstaff may have been based in part on a real man with a similar name, Sir John Fastolf, KG, 1380-1459, courtier, soldier, landowner and man of letters, among other things.  He was born in Norfolk, of a country gentry family.  As a boy, he may have journeyed to Jerusalem in the company of Henry of Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV.  This would account for the three cockleshells on his coat of arms, shells being the sign of a pilgrim.  Young John served as a squire to the Duke of Norfolk and later under Thomas of Lancaster, Duke of Clarence, in Ireland in 1405-6. 

John married well, Millicent Tiptoft, which brought him a healthy yearly income.  He served in Gascony and later in northern France, though in 1415 he was at the Siege of Harfleur and thus missed Agincourt.  He became the Duke of Bedford's Master of the Household and was made a Knight of the Garter in 1426.  He was also a Knight of the Golden Fleece.  He was dispatched by the Duke of Bedford in 1429 to reinforce the English besieging Orleans, where Joan of Arc was spoiling for her first encounter with the enemy.  She was said to have told the French commander that if he didn't let her know of Fastolf's coming she would have his head cut off.  Jeanne and Fastolf would cross each other's paths several times battling for control of the Loire valley. 

The Battle of Patay in 1429 was a disaster and Fastolf was accused of cowardice after his men broke and fled the battlefield.  Ineptitude by more senior commanders was more likely the cause of the catastrophe, but Bedford blamed Fastolf and had him suspended from the Order of the Garter.  It would take him until 1442 to clear his name formally and be reinstated to the Order, but the scandal lingered for the rest of his life.  Personally, both Bedford and Richard of York continued to trust Fastolf with important commands and he continued to serve in France.  He returned to England in 1440.  During Cade's Rebellion in 1451, he was charged by the rebels with having contributed to the losses in the Hundred Years War through diminishing the garrisons in Normandy.  Part of what created the suspicions against him was that he had managed to become quite wealthy during the war, liquidating his properties in Normandy and transferring those funds home to England before losing them to the eventuality of French victory.

Besides being thought of as avaricious and cowardly, he was considered to have had a cruel and vengeful disposition.  How much of any of this was true and how much was slanders from enemies will never bee known for certain.  He was distantly related to the Paston family, and used his influence at court to help the Pastons in their land and legal disputes with the Duke of Norfolk, and also with Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk, something that probably didn't win him very many friends.  Not that he cared, Fastolf had managed his own and his wife's assets such that he was a wealthy man who could work his way through the intrigues of the Wars of the Roses without losing his money or his life.  Though he privately sympathized with the Yorkists, he was careful to keep on the side of the Lancastrians when that was necessary.  He was fond of writing memoranda on military strategy and giving unsolicited advice to government officials in London, he also patronized scholars and had several manuscripts created specifically for his own library.  He finally died in 1459 at Caistor Castle in Norfolk, never knowing how famous he'd become through Shakespeare's character and the preservation of the Paston Letters.