It might be urged that Sir John—being in the main a good fellow, with a sense of justice lying somewhere or other at the bottom of his heart, and only a bit of a rogue upon expediency—in coming to such a resolution might have been actuated by other motives than such as we have suggested; that he might have thought the demands of the rebels were rather reasonable than otherwise (which they were), and that it might have gone against his conscience to aid and abet an intolerable crowned ruffian like Henry the Fourth, an assassin, an usurper, a kidnapper, a widow and orphan spoiler; and, to crown all, the man who enjoyed the distinguished honour of having introduced the practice of burning religious reformers (to which order he himself had once professed to belong) in this country—in his designs against better men and truer patriots than himself. To accept this theory would be a confession of weakness on Sir John Falstaff’s part, classing him among mere contemptible well-meaning persons—wholly destructive to those claims to the great souled or heroic CHARACTER which it has been my aim to establish for him from the very commencement of these pages. So I will follow the invariable custom of gentlemen of my calling, and adopt the view that best suits me.
It must not be supposed that Sir John FalstafF went, at once, over with all his forces to the enemy’s ranks. This would have been difficult, because, in the first place (which may forestal all further considerations), he had no forces. His general orders from head-quarters were that “he was to take up soldiers in the counties as he went.” Upon this Sir John built a most effective stratagem.
The reader who has not been lately at school (the remark will apply equally to the reader who has not yet gone there) is requested to cast his eye over a work, not so well-known in this country as it might be,—the map of England. Let him there study the relative positions of London and Yorkshire. If gifted with an intellect never so little logical, he will divine from his observations that the shortest way from the metropolis to the great northern county would not lie through Gloucestershire; and that the journey performed via that part of England would necessitate some considerable loss of time. Yorkshire being the centre of warlike operations, and the necessity for giving immediate battle to the rebels being imminent, it will be credited that reinforcements arriving via Gloucestershire would not be of material service to the Royalist cause—which, through having been relied on, their non-appearance, in time, might indeed be calculated to injure. Accordingly Sir John Falstaff, to whom a carte blanche of counties for his recruiting had been somewhat rashly given, decided that he would go round by Gloucestershire.
And Sir John did go round by Gloucestershire. That is certain. Also is it that he lost considerable time by so doing. This is proved by the fact that he did not come up with the King’s troops in Yorkshire till just at the close of the battle of Gualtree Forest (in which the rebels had been unaccountably routed without his assistance), and that in a “travel-tainted” condition. As we can only judge of men’s motives by their acts, we have a right to assume (as I have done) that Sir John Falstaff delayed his arrival purposely—to give advantage to the enemy, with whom he secretly sympathised—by withholding his terrible presence.
And yet there may have been another motive. Let us look at all possible sides of the question. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Sir John’s feelings towards the cause of Henry were not those of hostility but of mere indifference; and that he felt a not uncharacteristic preference for indulging in the gratification of his own pleasure and advantage, to swelling the victories of an ungrateful monarch. Let us suppose that he bent his northern course a little westward, for the purpose of touching at his favourite Coventry. Why his favourite Coventry? Because he once marched through that city with a disgraceful retinue? Reader, I am surprised at your ignorance. Do you not know that near to the city of Coventry stood the manor of Cheylesford, the private residence of Prince Hal, appertaining (Heaven knows why) to the Duchy of Cornwall, where the Prince and his comrades performed the wildest of their mad pranks; that it was “thither,” according to the chronicler Walsingham, “resorted all the young nobility as to a king’s court, while that of Henry the Fourth was deserted; that it was here the Prince and some of his comrades (of course, Falstaff among them) were laid by the heels by John Hornesby, the Mayor of Coventry, for raising a riot?” If you do not know all this, reader, let me tell you that I do; and it is of no consequence to you when I came by the information—whether years before I commenced this elaborate historical study, or only the day before yesterday.
Who then so likely to be a popular man in Coventry as Sir John Falstaff—the master, par excellence, of the Princely Revels? What town in the kingdom so likely to be endeared to Sir John’s affections as Coventry? Why, the knight’s repugnance to run the gauntlet of the gibes of his familiars, admirers, and butts, when at the head of his ragged regiment, is at once explained! What a joke for the pages and courtiers hanging about the inn-doors! What giggling from the tavern wenches! What grim chuckling and rubbing of hands from the long-account-keeping tradesmen! Above all, what triumph for the malignant soul of John Hornesby, Mayor of Coventry!
As I reflect on this view of the case, I find myself imperceptibly framing a new theory which tempts me to reject my former one. Yes, I have decided. I will assert an Englishman’s privilege of doing what he likes with his own, and throw it over altogether.
I am disposed, then, to maintain that, on this occasion, Sir John Falstaff entered Coventry more scantily, but more creditably attended than on the last; and took up his quarters at his favourite inn (the one where his bill was the shortest) with no intention of moving until the urgencies of war should absolutely compel him. Here he would be surrounded by old Cheylesford cronies, hangers-on to the palace—with their hangers-on and their hangers-on with the hangers-on of the latter—and so on dwindling into indefinite perspective. I can fancy Sir John, the true master of the situation—dispensing the last court scandal—retailing the last town jests—disposing of the rebellion, the King’s state of health, the Queen’s avarice and last rumoured act of sorcery, the Prince’s designs; in a word, laying down the law generally.
I can conceive him fighting the battle of Shrewsbury over again,—killing Percy by the cruellest of deaths, after the most protracted of sanguinary encounters,—and inflicting upon the absent Earl of Douglas what that gallant warrior, throughout his life, had never been accustomed to receive wounds aimed at him from behind his back. The rare honours Sir John found awaiting him on his return to London—the feasts prepared for him—and the precious gifts of gold, jewels, and costly raiment, showered upon him—all these would doubtless be displayed to the minds’ eyes of an admiring audience; their original value multiplied an hundredfold by the compound-interest afforded by the exhaustless bank of Sir John Falstaff’s golden imagination—in the mint attached to which establishment most of them had, indeed, been fabricated. Plow he would strike envy to the souls of exiles from the court—palace intendants, stewards, gentlemen-at-arms, and the like, sent to Coventry, and kept there, by duty or difficulties,—men stagnating for lack of news, and fain to follow the fashions “afar off like spies,”—how would he overwhelm them with glowing accounts of the last Venetian sleeve, the newest Saracenic hood, (for our Crusading fathers robbed the Paynims not merely of their heads but also of their turbans!) and the last Ferrarese device in armour—many costly specimens of which he would carelessly allude to as following him at leisure, with the bulk of his baggage, to be worn when the wars should be concluded—rough homespun, tough leather, and British iron being good enough for blood-stains and battle-smoke! How would he silence Detraction—wishing to know whereby Sir John Falstaff, after all his brilliant achievements, had escaped court preferment—by frowns and sighs, and mysterious innuendoes! Who knows but that the name of Queen Joanna of Brittany—a comely dame, scarce past her middle age, still capable of inspiring the tender passion—may have been covertly mentioned in connection with this delicate subject? Was not the king old, ailing, and jealous? Had not Duke Edward of York been already consigned, a hopeless captive, to the dungeons of Pevensey, for no greater offence than the inditing a not very brilliant copy of verses to her Breton and Britannic Majesty? Had not the bilious monarch, moreover, shown his mistrust of all persons favoured by his attractive (but supposed demon-leagued) consort—by the wholesale exile of “all French persons, Bretons, Lombards, Italians and Navarrese, whatsoever” * attached to the Queen’s establishment, with the exception of a cook, a few chambermaids, two knights, and their esquires (doubtless elderly and ill-favoured), and a strong body of Breton washerwomen? Is it improbable that the presence, about the court, of a personable and renowned warrior like Sir John Falstaff,—one who, even to the limits of maturity, retained so many of the graces of his youth,—should have been looked upon by the suspicious king as perilous to his conjugal felicity? At any rate, is it improbable that Sir John Falstaff should have thought so—or, whether he thought so or not, that he should have striven to impress his Coventry audience with a conviction that such was the case? Sir John may or may not have submitted such probabilities as these to the consideration of his hearers. Be this as it may, there is one topic he could not possibly, being situated as I have imagined him, have failed to enlarge upon. Depend upon it, the recent conduct of the Lord Chief Justice would be held up to such public scorn and indignation as to render that official’s next assize-visit to Warwickshire a somewhat perilous excursion!
* Parliamentary Rolls, 5 Henry IV., p. 572.