The truth of the statement here made may be accepted without hesitation, nor is its interest confined to the translation of the “Dis des Philosophes” to which it is attached, for, as will be seen below, it also materially helps to determine the similar origin of the English version of Christine de Pisan’s “Épître d’Othéa,” which we now have to consider.
If the rubricator had done his work, no doubt the “Epistle of Othea to Hector” would have had this title prefixed in conformity with the MSS. of the French original. As it is, the text begins abruptly without a word of heading three lines from the bottom of the first page, and the only preliminary indication of its nature is furnished by the inscription “The Booke of Knyghthode,” written, apparently by a somewhat later hand, on the old vellum cover, which now serves for a fly-leaf. This alternative title is peculiar to the English version, and is extracted from the translator’s dedicatory preface, to which source we are also indebted for a clue to his identity and the knowledge of the circumstances under which the translation was made. The anonymous patron, “noble and worshipfull among the ordre of cheualrie,” to whom the preface is addressed was obviously a person of some consequence. He was of knightly rank and had won great renown in France and elsewhere[[47]] abroad, having spent most part of his life in “dedys of cheualrie and actis of armis.” He was now, however, sixty years of age, and was compelled by failing strength to seek retirement, and he is thereupon somewhat pointedly reminded that it behoved him to devote the remainder of his days to conflict with those spiritual enemies that war against the soul. If this were all, it might have applied to more than one veteran of the protracted French war which began in 1415; but, when the writer goes on to speak of himself (p. 2) as “I, yowre most humble son Stevyn,” there can hardly be a doubt that, as in the case of the above-mentioned translation of the “Dis des Philosophes,” we have to do with that famous old warrior Sir John Fastolf, K.G., and his stepson[[48]] Stephen Scrope, esquire.
The briefest summary of Fastolf’s military career[[49]] will suffice to show how closely it accords with the writer’s description. Son of a Norfolk squire and born in or about 1378, he appears to have begun active service early in the reign of Henry IV. with that king’s second son, Thomas, afterwards Duke of Clarence. In 1401, though a mere lad of fourteen, Thomas of Lancaster, as he was then called, was appointed his father’s Lieutenant in Ireland. Fastolf was in his train there in 1402, if not before, and on 14th April, 1406,[[50]] he had from him a grant of the office of joint Chief Butler of Ireland during the minority of the Earl of Ormonde. He was still in Ireland when he married Millicent, daughter of Robert, Lord Tiptoft, and widow of the Deputy Lieutenant, Sir Stephen Scrope. The marriage took place on 13th January, 1409, only four months after the death (4th September, 1408) of the lady’s first husband,[[51]] whose son and heir Stephen was a minor ten or twelve years old at the time.[[52]] Besides other advantages, it gave Fastolf the control over lands of his wife and stepson in Yorkshire, at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, and elsewhere, and he seems to have exercised it with little regard to any one’s interest except his own. His earliest service in France probably dated from 1412. He figures in the long muster-roll of esquires who joined the expedition under Clarence in August of that year,[[53]] and before its close he had become Lieutenant of the castle of Bordeaux.[[54]] With the accession of Henry V. his energy and undoubted talent for war found ample scope. His contract in June, 1415,[[55]] to serve the king with ten men-at-arms and thirty archers was speedily followed by Henry’s invasion of France and the siege of Harfleur. Evidently it was not long before he attracted notice, for when the town surrendered on 22nd September he was at once put in command of it under the king’s uncle, Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Dorset.[[56]] This did not prevent him from displaying his prowess a month later at Agincourt; and he was again active in the sieges of Caen and Rouen and in other operations during Henry’s second invasion of Normandy in 1417–1419. Hardly any name in fact of secondary rank more frequently recurs in the chronicles and documents of the war for a quarter of a century. Already knighted before 29th January, 1415–6,[[57]] he was made a knight banneret in 1423 and a Knight of the Garter in 1426; and, only to mention a few of the posts conferred upon him,[[58]] in 1420 he was made Governor of the Bastille of St. Antoine at Paris, in 1422 Master of the Household to John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, and in 1423 Lieutenant of Normandy and Governor of Anjou and Maine. In the minor battles and sieges which made up so much of the desultory warfare of the time he was everywhere conspicuous. On 2nd March, 1423, with the Earl of Salisbury, he recovered Meulan; on 17th August, 1424, he shared in the victory at Verneuil and took the Duke of Alençon prisoner; on 11th October in the same year he captured Sillé le Guillaume, from which he acquired the title of baron; on 2nd August, 1425, again with Salisbury, he received the surrender of Le Mans[[59]]; and on 12th February, 1429, when in command of a convoy of much needed supplies for the English camp before Orleans, he signally defeated a far stronger force of French and Scots at Rouvray St. Denis in the famous “Battle of the Herrings.” Up to this point, so far as is known, he had met with almost uninterrupted success; but after the advent of Jeanne Darc had caused the raising of the siege of Orleans, when the English were routed and Lord Talbot was taken prisoner at Pataye on 18th June following, he barely succeeded in escaping from the field. Unfortunately for his fame with posterity, the charge of cowardice on this occasion made against him in Monstrelet’s Chronicle was repeated by Hall and Holinshed and has been perpetuated in the “First Part of Henry VI.”[[60]] The effect of the charge at the time was, however, transient at most, and there is no need to dwell upon it here, either on its own account or in its bearing upon the question whether he was the original of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. It is contradicted by the chronicler Wavrin, who fought in the battle under him, and it is out of keeping with his whole career; moreover, Talbot, who was his bitterest accuser, was already on ill terms with him and, having flouted his advice just before the battle, in his chagrin at defeat was perhaps only too ready to make him a scapegoat. The Regent Bedford’s action in the matter is significant; for, although Fastolf was at first badly received by him, after a formal inquiry he was again taken into favour and the Garter, of which he is said to have been deprived, was restored to him in spite of Talbot’s protests. Nor was less use made of his services afterwards. Thus, between 1430 and 1434 we find him Lieutenant of Caen and of Alençon and Captain of Fresnay, and in 1431 he relieved Vaudemont and captured the Duke of Bar. As late as 1435 he is spoken of as Governor of Anjou and Maine,[[61]] and until the Duke of Bedford’s death on 14th September of that year he continued at the head of his household, being so described both in a list of the Regent’s retinue in 1435 and in a highly interesting report on the conduct of the war which he himself drew up about the same time.[[62]] Bedford’s confidence in him to the last is also clear from the fact that he named him one of the executors of his will. Notwithstanding the loss of so powerful a patron and his own advancing years, Fastolf was plainly in no hurry to put off his armour; for, with the exception of occasional visits to England as before, he remained abroad for at least five years longer. His retirement is generally fixed in 1440, but there is evidence of his being in Maine in the following year.[[63]] On 12th May, 1441, the Duke of York, Bedford’s successor as Regent, granted him a yearly pension of £20 for his services,[[64]] and probably therefore it was not very long before or after that date that he finally turned his back upon the country from whose unhappy distractions he had won fame and fortune.
It is at this stage of his life that we get a glimpse of him in the dedication of the “Epistle of Othea.” From its language this was written soon after he finally returned home; in fact it gives his age, no doubt somewhat loosely, as sixty, whereas even in 1440 he was probably sixty-two. During the greater part of the period which elapsed before his death on 5th November, 1459, he seems to have resided chiefly in Southwark, where he was within easy reach of a summons to the King’s Council, of which he was a member; and there is something attractive in the picture which Stephen Scrope’s words suggest of the war-worn old soldier beguiling his leisure with literary studies. Nor are the “Epistle of Othea” and the “Sayings of the Philosophers” the only two translations made at his “commaundement” and for his “contemplacion and solas.” In 1481 Caxton printed an English version, rendered from the French of Laurence de Premierfait, of Cicero’s “De Senectute.”[[65]] On the question of its authorship I shall have some remarks to make further on; but meanwhile it deserves notice that its preface states that it “was translated and thystoryes openly declared by the ordenaunce and desyre of the noble auncyent knyght Syr Johan Fastolf of the countee of Norfolk banerette, lyuyng the age of four score yere, excercisyng the warrys in the Royame of Fraunce and other countrees, ffor the diffence and vnyuersal welfare of bothe royames of englond and ffraunce by fourty yeres enduryng, the fayte of armes hauntyng, and in admynystryng justice and polytique gouernaunce vnder thre kynges, that is to wete Henry the fourth, Henry the fyfthe, Henry the syxthe, and was gouernour of the duchye of Angeou and the countee of Mayne, Capytayn of many townys, Castellys and fortressys in the said Royame of ffraunce, hauyng the charge and saufgarde of them dyuerse yeres, ocupyeng and rewlynge thre honderd speres and the bowes acustomed thenne, and yeldyng good acompt of the forsaid townes castellys and fortresses to the seyd kynges and of theyr lyeutenauntes, Prynces of noble recomendacion, as Johan regent of ffraunce Duc of Bedforde, Thomas duc of excestre, Thomas duc of clarence & other lyeutenauntes,” etc.
At the same time, there was another side to Fastolf’s character, which is revealed in that mine of curious information on the social life and manners of the time, the well-known Paston Letters. Through his intimacy with John Paston,[[66]] who was ultimately his executor and principal heir, many of his private letters and papers are there preserved, and they certainly do not exhibit him in a favourable light.[[67]] Hot-tempered, arbitrary and rapacious, harsh and mean to his dependents, an exacting creditor and a rancorous litigant, he was the reverse of Chaucer’s type of the “verray perfight, gentil knight.” Wealthy as he was and childless, he was still bent on making gain, partly no doubt to pay for the building of his great castle at Caister in Norfolk, the ruins of which may still be seen. No one perhaps knew him better or had suffered more from his hard dealing than his stepson. Some years later than the present work Stephen Scrope drew up a formal statement of his wrongs,[[68]] in which he not only complained that in the disposal of his wardship Fastolf had bought and sold him “as a beast,” but even charged him with being the cause of illnesses which had marked him for life[[69]] and with having at a later period used him so scurvily that he was compelled to sell his manor of Hever in Kent and take service with the Duke of Gloucester. Apparently this sign of independence did not meet Fastolf’s views, for he soon managed to get him into his own retinue, and, as the other admits, at this time he showed him “good fatherhood,” employing him at Honfleur and elsewhere, probably in a civil capacity,[[70]] until he returned home in pique at some slight. Fastolf’s dealings with regard to Scrope’s inheritance are somewhat obscure, but by some arrangement he contrived to secure Castle Combe for life.[[71]] As Lady Fastolf died in 1446, her son by her first marriage, to whom it should have then come by right, was thus kept out of it for thirteen years longer, only enjoying it from his stepfather’s death in 1459 until his own in 1472. But in spite of differences the two were apparently not altogether on bad terms; otherwise neither this translation nor that of the “Dis des Philosophes” would have been made, and still less would Scrope have spoken of Fastolf as he here does. His language indeed is something more than respectful and laudatory. While he fully endorses Wavrin’s description of Sir John as “moult sage et vaillant chevallier,”[[72]] there is a tone of humility which makes it difficult to realize that the writer was upwards of forty years of age and at least Fastolf’s equal by birth. The nature of their relations may be gathered from a singular letter to the latter about 1455 from Sir Richard Bingham, Justice of the King’s Bench, whose daughter Stephen Scrope had recently married.[[73]] In imploring help for him the writer says[[74]]:
“... My saide son is and hath be, and will be to hys lifes ende, your true lad and servaunt, and glad and well willed to do that myght be to your pleaser, wirschip and profit, and als loth to offend yow as any person in erth, gentill and well disposid to every person. Wherfore I besech your gode grace that ye will vouchesafe remember the premissez, my saide sons age, his wirschipfull birth, and grete misere for verrey povert, for he hath had no liflode to life opon sithen my lady his moder deed, safe x. marc of liflode that ye vouched safe to gife hym this last yer, and therffore to be his good maister and fader. And thof he be not worthy to be your son, make hym your almesman, that he may now in his age life of your almesse, and be your bedeman, and pray for the prosperite of your noble person....”
The result of this appeal, and of more to the same effect, is not recorded, but that Fastolf could be gracious enough in words is evident from the only letter from him to Scrope which is included in the Paston Letters,[[75]] written on 30th October, 1457. It is addressed, “Worschepeful and my right wel beloved sone,” and, after thanking him for his “good avertismentys and right well avysed lettres,” begs him to recommend to his father-in-law, Justice Bingham, a suit in which the writer was interested, and the tone throughout is unexceptionable. There is, however, another letter in the History of Castle Combe (p. 270), written from Calais, and, according to the editor, about 1420, which is not so amiable. After Scrope’s second marriage he and his stepfather no doubt lived apart, but at the time when the “Epistle of Othea” was translated they were probably under the same roof, and as late as 1454, when Caister Castle was completed and Fastolf was about to take up his residence there, it is expressly stated that Scrope would live with him.[[76]]
While there is little doubt that he was incapacitated by weak health from military service and that he was deficient also in force of character, it cannot be said that, so far as we can judge from his two translations from the French, he possessed much literary ability. There is nothing original in either of them except the short preface to the “Epistle of Othea” here printed, and, interesting as this is in other respects, its style is so involved that in places it is hardly intelligible. Nor is the writer more fortunate in his account of the French work which he translated; for by some strange misunderstanding he deprives its authoress of the credit of it and makes out (p. 3) that it was compiled by doctors of the University of Paris merely at the instance and prayer of the “fulle wyse gentylwoman of Frawnce called Dame Cristine.” It is curious that a very similar statement is made as to her works generally in a marginal note in the “Boke of Noblesse,”[[77]] with reference to a passage taken from her “Livre des faits d’armes,” which, however, is wrongly spoken of as the “Arbre des batailles.” It is there said that Christine was a lady of high birth and character, who dwelt in a house of religious ladies at Passy (Poissy?) near Paris, that she maintained with exhibitions several clerks studying in the University of Paris and caused them to compile divers virtuous books, such as the “Arbre des batailles,” and that the doctors in consequence attributed the books to Christine herself. As this note is in the hand of the well-known William Worcester or Botoner, who was servant and secretary to Fastolf, the two statements no doubt had a common origin, coming perhaps from Sir John himself.
From the prominent way in which Scrope mentions the Duke of Berry it is reasonable to conclude that the French MS. which supplied him with the original text contained a dedicatory address by the authoress to that famous royal bibliophil, who, as we know, was one of her special patrons. In the inventory of his library, among the MSS. acquired soon after 1401, there is in fact the entry,[[78]] “Item le livre de l’espitre que Othéa la deesse envoia à Ethor (sc. Hector), compilé par damoiselle Christine de Pizan, escript en françois de lettre de court, très bien historié .... le quel livre la dicte Cristine a donné à mon dit seigneur”; and the probability is that on Fastolf’s return to England he brought with him either this identical MS. or a transcript of it, together with a copy of De Tignonville’s “Dis des philosophes.” Existing copies of the “Épître d’Othéa” are not uncommon. In the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris there are twelve,[[79]] and Koch (p. 59) mentions six others at Brussels, while the British Museum possesses four. One of these is included in the fine collection of Christine’s poems and other works in Harley MS. 4,431. It is the MS. “H,” readings from which are given here in the notes, and the collotype frontispiece, which depicts the goddess Othea personally handing her letter to Hector, is reproduced from the second of its numerous miniatures, one of which precedes each of the hundred “textes.” The collection, which is of the highest importance, including pieces found nowhere else,[[80]] was made by Christine herself, apparently about 1410–1415, for the French queen, Isabella of Bavaria, the MS. beginning with an introductory poem of ninety-six lines addressed to her.[[81]] Probably it came into the possession of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, in 1425[[82]] among other MSS. from the royal library of the Louvre; for the signature “Jaquete” of his second wife, Jacquetta of Luxemburg, is written on the fly-leaf, together with that of Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, her son by her second marriage, in 1437, with Sir Richard Wydeville, who was created Earl Rivers in 1466. As we have already seen, Anthony, Earl Rivers, translated the “Dis des philosophes,” and he also made an English version, printed by Caxton in 1478, of Christine’s “Proverbes moraux,” the text of which he no doubt obtained from this MS. After he perished on the scaffold in 1488, the volume passed by some means to Louis de Bruges, Sieur de Gruythuyse, created Earl of Winchester in 1472, whose motto and name, “Plus est en vous. Gruthuse,” appear on the same page. In 1676 it belonged to Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and no doubt it found its way into the Harley collection by the marriage of his grand-daughter Lady Henrietta Cavendish-Holles in 1713 to Edward Harley, Lord Harley, second Earl of Oxford in 1724. That it was known to Fastolf, when Master of the Household to the Regent Bedford, is likely enough; but the copy of the “Épître d’Othéa” included in it can hardly have been the one used by Scrope, as it is dedicated, not to the Duke of Berry, but to his nephew Louis, Duke of Orleans. After some lines of apostrophe to the “Fleur de lis” and to “Seigneurie,” which begin,
“Tres haulte flour, par le monde louee,