Sir John Fastolf (6 November 1380 – 5 November 1459) was a late medieval English soldier, landowner, and knight who fought in the Hundred Years' War from 1415 to 1439, latterly as a senior commander against Joan of Arc, among others. He has enjoyed a more lasting reputation as the prototype, in some part, of Shakespeare's character Sir John Falstaff, although their careers are very different. Many historians argue, however, that he deserves to be famous in his own right, not only as a soldier, but as a patron of literature, a writer on strategy and perhaps as an early industrialist.
Coming from a minor gentry family in Norfolk, John Fastolf was born on 6 November 1380 at the manor house of Caister Hall, a family possession which he later turned into Caister Castle, of which a tower and part of the curtain wall remains, as well as the partly filled in moat. The son of Sir John Fastolf (died 1383) and Mary Park (died 2 May 1406), he belonged to an ancient Norfolk family originally seated at Great Yarmouth, where it is recorded from the thirteenth century. Notable members of the family in earlier generations included Thomas Fastolf, Bishop of St David's, and his brother, Nicholas Fastolf, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Many of the name had been bailiffs of Great Yarmouth since the time of Edward I, and a certain Hugh Fastolf was sheriff of Norfolk in 1390.
On 13 January 1409, in Ireland, Fastolf married Millicent Tiptoft (1368–1446), daughter and co-heiress of Robert, Lord Tiptoft, and widow of Sir Stephen Scrope (son of Richard, Lord Scrope). This marriage brought him significant amounts of land, including the manors of Castle Combe and Bathampton in Wiltshire, Oxenton in Gloucestershire, and several properties in Somerset and Yorkshire. These lands brought him an income of £240 per annum, a considerable sum which amounted to five times the revenue Fastolf gained from his own estates. He settled an amount of £100 a year on his wife for her own use, but otherwise held her estates for himself until his death, at the expense of Millicent's son by her first marriage, Stephen Scrope (Fastolf's stepson). Fastolf's wife was significantly older than he was. The couple had no children.
According to Fastolf's biographer Stephen Cooper, given his family's background Fastolf must have received an appropriate education for the standards of the time. In a court testimony given in France, 1435, he claimed to have visited Jerusalem as a boy, between 1392 and 1393, which must have been in the company of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV. Fastolf is said to have been squire to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, before the latter was banished in 1398.
Fastolf's whereabouts during the Lancastrian coup of 1399 (when Henry IV seized the crown from Richard II) are unknown, but in 1401 he entered the retinue of King Henry IV's second son, Thomas of Lancaster (later Duke of Clarence), under whose service he remained until 1415. Thomas had been appointed by his father to keep order in Ireland, and it was there that Fastolf first saw military action. Fastolf's commanding officer was Sir Stephen Scrope, whose widow he married after Scrope's death in 1408.
From 1415 to 1439, he was in northern France, where he served under Henry V and the king's brother, the Duke of Bedford. He took part in the siege of Harfleur in 1415, but was invalided home and so missed Agincourt, though he returned to defend Harfleur against the French attempt to recapture it in the winter of 1415–1416.
He was Bedford's Master of the Household, and was Governor of the province of Maine and Anjou, and on 25 February 1426, created a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Later in this year he was superseded in his command by John Talbot; and he became a somewhat controversial figure after the Siege of Orléans.
In 1421, during the English occupation of Paris, he became "governor" (effectively, the warden) of the Bastille, probably for a year.
After a visit to England in 1428, he returned to the war, and on 12 February 1429, when in charge of the convoy for the English army before Orléans, defeated the French and Scots at the Battle of the Herrings. In his biography of Fastolf The Real Falstaff (2010), Stephen Cooper relocates this battle from Rouvray-Saint-Denis to Rouvray-Sainte-Croix.
During the 1429 Siege of Orléans, the French had planned to abandon the city after they heard rumours (which were true) that John Fastolf was coming with a force to reinforce the English besiegers. Jean de Dunois (known as "The Bastard of Orléans" as he was the illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans) decided not to tell Joan of Arc and leave her out of leadership decisions, to which she famously responded:
Bastard, Bastard, in the name of God I command you that as soon as you hear of Fastolf's coming, you will let me know. For if he gets through without my knowing it, I swear to you that I will have your head cut off. The French leader conceded to her, and she successfully lifted the siege.
She went on to take towns in the Loire Valley, including Jargeau on 12 June 1429, even though Fastolf had attempted to reinforce with troops and gunpowder weapons. After a result of this string of unexpected sudden defeats, Talbot and Fastolf resolved to confront the French in battle to put an end to their success, thus leading to the Battle of Patay on 18 June 1429. Joan was leading this army and was present in the battle, although how much of a role she had in it is disputed.
The Battle of Patay and Fastolf's reputation
Patay was a serious defeat for the English; 200–300 men were killed and over 2000 captured, including Talbot. Fastolf, however, escaped. According to the French historian Jehan de Waurin, who was present, the disaster was due to Talbot's rashness, and Fastolf only fled when resistance was hopeless. Other accounts charge him with cowardice, and it is true that John, Duke of Bedford, suspended him from the Order of the Garter and he was subject to accusations of cowardice from Talbot. Eventually, in 1442, an inquiry was convened by the Order of the Garter, probably at Fastolf's insistence. This found in Fastolf's favour and he was honourably reinstated to the order. This incident was unfavourably depicted by Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 1 (act IV scene I). In all, it took Fastolf thirteen years to clear his name, and even then his reputation was still tainted.
Fastolf continued to serve with honour in France, and was trusted both by Bedford and by Richard of York. Despite the scandal associated with the Patay incident, he held a number of military commands, including captaincies of Honfleur (1424–34), Verneuil (1429), and Caen (1430–37).
In 1435, he drafted a document variously referred to as a report or memorandum proposing a new strategic approach to the war in France. In it, he criticizes current policy based on a war of sieges and proposes instead an offensive strategy based on large scale chevauchées. The document is a rare surviving example of military strategic thinking by a professional soldier of the Middle Ages.
He only came home finally in 1440, when past sixty years of age. But the scandal against him continued, and during Cade's rebellion in 1450 he was charged by the rebels with having been the cause of the English disasters through "diminishing the garrisons of Normandy".
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