[Two subordinate officers belonging to a class described by the convertible terms of “knaves,” “villains,” or “varlets.”]
5. Nym, Corporal.
[The Corporal in our time is distinguished by two stripes. In those days a deserving officer was more liberally treated; Corporal Nym having marks to show for a thousand. Neither Nym nor Pistol make their appearance till rather late in the Falstaff annals; each doubtless having his period of time to serve in another sphere of action.]
6. Robin, Page.
[Also a late acquisition to the Falstaff forces, to be noticed more particularly in his fitting place.]
The knight-errant had the privilege of putting up, with his retinue, at the most hospitable mansion he found in his way.
He never paid rent.
Formerly this billet system was applied to the mansions of powerful barons. A succession of anti-chivalric monarchs had weakened the hospitable resources of these establishments. Taverns were their modern substitutes. Our hero, even as the commercial traveller in the present day (latest type of the knight-errant) is fain to put up with Railway carriages, where he once enjoyed his own gig,—accommodated himself to the change. But, whatever alteration had taken place around him, he himself was still true to the traditions of his order. Yes! John Falstaff could lay his hand on his heart and say,—that he never entered the meanest hostelry without treating the host and hostess exactly as, two hundred years earlier, he would have treated a baron and his lady. The favoured mansion at present enjoying his high consideration in this respect, was the renowned Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap—of which more anon.
The knight-errant of old occasionally acted as the tributary vassal to a powerful prince. Herein is the vast superiority of Falstaff manifest. He made the most powerful prince of his time act as tributary vassal to him.
Yes; it is not the smallest laurel in the Falstaffian crown, that our hero alone, of all men that ever lived, could boast of having conquered the Conqueror of Agincourt. That he did so is unquestionable. The prince himself, like a true Englishman, who never knows when he is beaten, was not aware of the fact himself. Those who may be inclined to doubt it, are requested to study the lives of the two men, and to decide calmly whether, in the long run, Sir John Falstaff had or had not decidedly the best of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry the Fifth.