I. SIR JOHN FALSTAFF IN EXILE.
CONSEQUENT STAGNATION IN THE COURT OF HENRY THE FIFTH.—THE WINDSOR CAMPAIGN, ITS MOTIVES AND RESULTS.
THE accession of Henry the Fifth to the throne of England was not marked by such lavish and prolonged rejoicings as the people of that time were accustomed to on similar occasions. Things, indeed, seem to have been done on rather a niggardly and puritanical scale. For this there were doubtless many sufficient reasons. The royal treasury was impoverished. The nation had not been engaged in a civil war for several months, and the public mind was getting impatient for the recurrence of that indispensable necessary of national life—which indeed was kindly furnished them by certain patriots who (for lack of better excuse) pretended that King Richard the Second was still alive and a claimant to the throne—a contingency which the statesmanlike policy of the late King Henry had most effectually guarded against. Moreover the newly crowned monarch, having so publicly pledged himself to measures of reform, and the adoption of business-like habits, was in common consistency bound to show signs of moral amendment by setting about the invasion of a foreign country, and torturing to death certain dangerous persons who had ventured to differ with him in religious opinions. The body of Richard the Second had to be exhumed and exhibited for public inspection. The conquest of France had to be undertaken. The exacting spirit of the times, moreover, required that a reward of 337 L. 10s. should be offered by the crown for the apprehension of Sir John Oldcastle *, the supposed leader of a Protestant conspiracy,—a circumstance in itself sufficient, (considering that the accused might have been caught and the reward claimed,) in the then existing state of the exchequer, to indispose the monarch for any exuberance of mirth or expenditure. But unquestionably the arch reason why the coronation festivities should have gone off flatly and without brilliancy or eclat was the absence from court of the man whose gifts and antecedents would naturally have pointed him out as the arbiter elegantiarum for the occasion. The master of the revels—which did not take place—was at the time of their non-occurrence a languishing captive, on an illegal warrant, in the Fleet Prison. The idea of any merriment in the court of Henry the Fifth without the assistance of Sir John Falstaff is simply preposterous. But Henry the Fifth had forsworn merriment and Falstaff together, and taken up with invasion and Smithfield bonfires in their stead. The only remarkable public boons consequent upon the coronation were a wholesale creation of Knights of the Bath—from participation in which honour Sir John Falstaff was of course excluded—and a general jail delivery, whereof, equally as a matter of course, our knight took the most prompt and summary advantage. Sir John and his companions were liberated by royal amnesty after a confinement of twenty-four hours.
* Oldcastle was good enough to keep out of the way, in
return for which considerate behaviour he was let off with a
“grand cursing at St. Paul’s Cross.” He was captured four
years later, and “roasted to death by a fire kindled under
him” at Smithfield—the crown being then in better
circumstances and able to defray the expenses of his
prosecution.
But of what use was the so-called liberty to Sir John Falstaff? It was, after all, but the liberty which you grant to a gudgeon when you unhook him from the end of your fishing line and toss him contemptuously into the nearest corn-field. Was not Sir John an exile from the court? Had not the idol of his misplaced affections, “his king, his Jove,” forbidden him admission to the Olympian circle, where nectar and ambrosia were alone to be found? Had not Henry the Fifth commanded him
“Not to come near our person by ten mile?”
He had indeed! And that cruel radius was a rigid bar at the end of which Sir John was ruthlessly chained ten miles aloof from all that was life, and warmth, and breath to him. It was the very mockery of mercy. It was like saying to a man, “I will only keep your mouth and nostrils ten inches below the surface of the water, but above that altitude you shall never rise.” Mighty like drowning after all!
The present book, the last and saddest of our history! will be, of necessity, a short one. The public career of Sir John Falstaff may be said to have terminated with the catastrophe recorded in the last chapter. The remaining months of his existence he passed in retirement—would I could add in prosperity!—as a private gentleman. There is a completeness and consistency in the life of this remarkable man almost without parallel in history. He was born in difficulties; he lived sixty-three years in embarrassed circumstances; and died in hot water. And yet throughout the whole of this trying pilgrimage Sir John was never once tempted to depart from his guiding principles. What were Sir John Falstaff’s guiding principles? the inconsiderate reader may ask,—yielding to the popularly received opinion that the knight never had any, than which a greater mistake can scarcely be imagined. Who shall accuse of irregularity a man who, for upwards of three-score years, based his every act upon the rigid observance of two rules of life? These were, firstly, never to let his business interfere with his pleasure; secondly, on no occasion to suffer his income to exceed his expenditure; principles which, it will be admitted, Sir John adhered to in the teeth of no common or unfrequent temptations to their abandonment. It must not be supposed that Sir John Falstaff for a moment believed that King Henry the Fifth intended to fulfil his promise of allowing his banished associates a sufficiency for “competence of life” still less that his majesty, among his other “startling effects” of reformation, meditated keeping his word upon so delicate a matter. There is reason to believe that a nominal pension of three hundred pounds a year was conferred upon our knight, but not the slightest to suppose that any measures were ever thought of for paying as much as the first quarterly instalment. Henry the Fifth had at least profited by Falstaff’s training in this respect, that he managed through life to make his liabilities exceed his resources, and contrived to secure an immense deal of éclat and enjoyment without troubling himself to pay for it. He endowed his beautiful young wife, Katherine of Valois, out of the private fortune of his step-mother (whom he had previously incarcerated in Pevensey Castle on a charge of witchcraft). The whole of the young queen’s household, with numerous pensioners of her family, were suffered to help themselves out of the same convenient fund. In the year of his marriage Henry drew upon the treasury of the captive dowager for a hundred marks, which he graciously presented to the Abbess of Sion. Soon afterwards he provided for the maintenance of his dearly beloved cousin Dame Jake * (otherwise the Princess Jaqueline of Hainault) by the moderate allowance of a hundred pounds a month, also to be paid from the “profits” of the dower of Joanna, late Queen of England.
* Rymer’s Fodera, vol. x. p. 134.
The historic parallel to these liberal disbursements suggested by Sir John Falstaff paying Bardolpli arrears of wages, liquidating tavern scores for Ancient Pistol, and bestowing money on new liveries for little Robin (with perhaps a gallant souvenir for old Mistress Ursula, and some pretty toys for the young Whittingtons) out of the unfortunate Master Shallow’s thousand pounds, is most striking. A few years later we find Sir William Bardolf, lieutenant-governor of Calais, complaining bitterly in a letter to the king, that his garrison had only received 500 L.. in the two last years, himself having had to make up the deficiency requisite for their maintenance. There is still extant a letter, apparently written by a public scrivener of the time, in the name of one Francis, a drawer at the “Old Boar’s Head” tavern, addressed to Sir John Falstaff, at the sign of “YE NAKED LADYE ON HORSEBACK” at Coventry, praying the knight to transmit by carrier the sum of forty-eight marks seven shillings and three-farthings, the price of lodging and entertainment afforded to Corporal Nym and others of “the worshipful knight his following,” which the said drawer asserts he has been compelled by his mistress * to pay out of his own earnings. History delights in these startling coincidences!
* Fits of splenetic economy of this description were by no
means of unfrequent occurrence with good Mrs. Quickly. For
the original of the document here alluded to, (the discovery
of any answer to which has hitherto baffled the researches
of antiquarians,) vide the Potter MSS. vol. viii. p. 397a.
With such pressing claims upon his purse (or rather upon the purses of other people at his disposal), as those above alluded to, it would have been unreasonable to suppose that the king would put himself—or even any one else—out of the way to meet his pecuniary engagements with a disgraced favourite. Sir John Falstaff at once understood that he had little to hope from the royal bounty or good faith. With his usual philosophy he determined to make the best of his position. Having nothing to live on but the king’s promise he determined to live upon that—and appears to have succeeded in doing so pretty comfortably. For we find him in the autumn of 1414, with a goodly retinue of followers and a stud of horses, “sitting at ten pounds a week” at the Garter Inn, Windsor—a liberal scale of accommodation for which Sir John’s assumed “expectations” were doubtless accepted as permanent security.
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Much idle dissertation has been wasted in Sir John Falstaff’s probable motives for making Windsor his residence at this juncture of his career. The motives live on the surface. The court was in London. The atmosphere of a kingly residence was, as has been shown, indispensable to Sir John Falstaff. The neighbourhood of Windsor Castle was the most convenient locality of that description—beyond the prescribed limits of his banishment from the royal person. Moreover, your true knight errant must be ever wandering in search of new fields for adventure. The resources of Oxford, Coventry, and other country districts our knight had doubtless long since exhausted. Windsor was virgin soil to him. Here he was unknown, and—as we have seen—trusted.
There was an additional inducement for Sir John to visit Windsor. It must not be supposed that he had relinquished all hope of restoration to court favour—what deposed favourite ever did? To the end of his days he was constantly occupied in diplomatic schemes for the recovery of his forfeited position. He left no stone unturned in the fruitless endeavour to regain the royal ear. He deluged his courtly acquaintances with unavailing letters on the subject. He intrigued with secretaries, grooms-in-waiting, pages, lacqueys, and even the lords of the bedchamber and equerries. I am afraid he was rapidly becoming a nuisance.
It is to be regretted that the preserved fragments of the Falstaff correspondence, in connection with this most interesting phase of our knight’s fortunes, are confined to two specimens.* These, however, consisting of a letter and its answer, it would be difficult to estimate at their adequate value. Their transference to these pages will sufficiently explain the motive for Sir John’s visit to Windsor last alluded to.
“Ned, and be hanged in thine own garter or drowned in thine own bath, according as thou needest most trussing or washing.
“They told me in London thou hadst grown great at Windsor, and I hastened hither post to witness the marvel with mine own eyes—mistrusting other testimony. Lo, I am convinced! I saw thee this morning strutting on Wykeham’s Tower—marshalling the workmen with thy wand of office, and noted that thou hadst become fat. At length, then, I may greet thee as an equal—the more, as it would seem I myself have so dwindled to thy former proportions that thou didst not know me; but when I sought to catch thine eye, twirledst thy chain and soughtest quarrel with a knave who was miscarrying a hod of mortar. Since, then, thou art so puffed up and I so crushed and flattened—what should be the difference between us? If there be any, I pri’ thee, lessen it. If at length thou hast grown to outweigh me, slice thyself down and throw me the parings. I but claim to compound a debt. I will cry quits for the wit I have lent thee if thou wilt give me the superabundance of favour and dignity which in truth thou seemest still somewhat too spindle-shanked of spirit to carry with grace. Nay, I will throw thee a good thing into the bargain. Thou lackest humility—a commodity whereof more than I know what to do with hath been of late forced upon me. Thou shalt have it all.
“Indite me to dinner at the Castle by ten o’clock to-morrow. Till then I will be tongue-tied. If thou failest to send for me and to prove over many a pottle-pot that thou hast still the memory of old times and that thou hast but assumed the guise of a strutting feathered jackdaw as formerly thou didst that of a very owl of wisdom—on grounds of policy to be forgiven—then will I make it known by the town-crier of Windsor what an ass thou really art and ever will be. ‘Tis a secret worth hushing and known to none better than thine, forgivingly,
“John Falstaff.
“[In sober earnest, dear Ned, thou mayest serve me near him thou wottest of. I pri’ thee forget not old friends and comrades. Thou couldst not know me this morning—for reasons I guess at. But see me and it shall bring thee to no harm. J. F.]
“At the Garter Inn, Friday, 1414. 2. H. V.”