Sir John selected such men as he considered desirable for the King’s service from the levies provided for him; accepted a brief repast, and departed, having promised Master Shallow to renew their acquaintance on the termination of the wars, in a second visit to that gentleman’s hospitable mansion, extracting in return a half-promise from its owner to accompany him to court. It is strange that Justice Shallow, gifted, as we have seen him, with a remarkably retentive memory, should have forgotten how costly a luxury he had found the honour of Sir John Falstaff’s patronage in early youth. But it is the constant failing of very foolish old gentlemen to imagine they have grown wiser with age.
In the present day, when so much of the public attention is directed to the question of raising recruits for the British army, a glance at the way in which such matters were regulated in the fifteenth century may not prove uninstructive. It will be seen that the modes of actual levying differed materially from those at present in vogue. But it may silence cavillers to learn that our ancestors—whose wisdom may not be disputed—were fully in accord with the opinion of modern rulers as to the class of men to whom the fighting of their country’s battles might be with the greatest propriety entrusted.
I will show you how Sir John Falstaff, with the assistance of Justice Shallow, recruited the diminished armies of King Henry the Fourth.
Sir John on his arrival at the justice’s mansion, having exchanged a few hasty civilities and remarks on the weather with his host and the scarcely audible, visible, or tangible Master Silence, proceeded to business.
“Gentlemen,” he inquired, “have you provided me here half a dozen of sufficient men?”
Master Shallow replied in the affirmative, and requested his guest to be seated.
Sir John took a chair, and begged that the recruits might be brought before him.
