Jessie Crosland

You can spell his name with or without an "e" on the end, but whatever you do, don't call him "Falstaff."

Sir John Fastolfe was probably the most important non-noble military commander during Henry V's and the Duke of Bedford's phase of Hundred Years' War. He held important administrative posts under Bedford, he won the so-called "Battle of the Herrings," and he rescued what he could after the Battle of Patay. He then went home to live off his winnings, surviving long enough to see the House of Lancaster go into decline but not quite long enough to see it overthrown.

His superiors seem to have respected him, but nobody liked him much. He was cranky and he was tight-fisted. And he had a lousy public relations machine, and a lot of people blamed him for Patay even though almost everyone now thinks it was the Old Talbot's fault. But Fastolfe found himself in Henry VI, Part I as a failure, and then, possibly, Shakespeare distorted his name to produce 'Falstaff." (Let it be clear that there is no similarity between the two except the name.)

This book is a very brief overview of Fastolfe's life. Such a book is welcome, but this one really is too thin. It is true that we don't have the best sources for this period -- but there could be a serious analysis of Patay, for instance, or the Battle of the Herrings, or Fastolfe's relationship with his royal masters, and there isn't much. There is discussion of his building of Caister Castle -- but except for telling us that it was new and modern, there is very little about Caister, even though the ruin of the castle, and the intact tower, are still there. There is a mention of what happened when he died without a written will, but no real discussion of what this meant, legally.

In the end, Fastolfe was almost as much a mystery to me after reading this book as before. The only thing I really learned was how tight-fisted he was -- a fact which without doubt affected the rest of his life, and explained his troubled relationships with his family. It might even explain why he had no children -- just how bad were his relations with his wife? But I don't know. That last sentence might almost serve as the entire content of this review.

As far as I can tell, at the time this was written more than half a century ago, there were no other books available about Fastolfe, so it was useful despite its lack of depth. But there is at least one newer book, Stephen Cooper's The Real Falstaff: Sir John Fastolf and the Hundred Years' War. I haven't seen it (yet), but it might be a better place to start.… (més)