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“If I be not ashamed of my soldiers I am a soused gurnet. I have misused
“the king’s press most damnably. I have got, in exchange for a hundred
“and fifty soldiers, three hundred and I press me none but good
“householders, yeomen’s sons: inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as
“had been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves as
“had as lief hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caviler
“worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such
“toasts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads,
“and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge
“consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies, slaves
“as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton’s dogs licked
“his sores: and such indeed as were never soldiers; but discarded unjust
“serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters and
“ostlers trade-fallen; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten
“times more dishonourably ragged than an old-faced ancient: and such have I
“to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you
“would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come
“from swine-keeping, from eating chaff and husks. A mad fellow met me
“on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the
“dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through
“Coventry with them, that’s flat:—Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt
“the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, indeed, I had the most of them out
“of prison. There’s but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half
“shirt is two napkins tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a
“herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from
“my host at St. Alban’s, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry; but that’s
“all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.
The above profound reflections (which every officer of irregular infantry would do well to lay to his heart) were made by Sir John Falstaff, on the occasion of a review of his troops near Coventry—at which the Prince of Wales and the Earl of Westmoreland assisted. I am inclined to fix the date of this important military display on the third day previous to the battle of Shrewsbury. The Royalist forces were proceeding towards that city by forced marches. Sir John Falstaff, as is well known, came upon the field in ample time to give battle to the rebels; and it is improbable that any system of forcing could have got him over sixty miles of ground in less than three days.
Whether or not the knight found the hedgerows of Warwick, Stafford, and Salop of such fruitfulness—in the matter of linen—as he had anticipated, the historian has no means of ascertaining. The shirt in those days, it should be stated, was a comparatively recent invention—nor had the art of the laundress been brought to its present perfection.
VI. HOW SIR JOHN FALSTAFF WON THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY.
EVEN had the Royalist side been deprived of the immense weight of Sir John Falstaff’s counsels and support, the issue of the struggle could not have been doubtful. Fortune seemed to have declared against the rebels from the outset. The Earl of Northumberland was taken ill at Berwick, and unable to join his gallant son in the field. The Welsh under Glendower did not come up in time for the battle. All the efforts of their gallant and patriotic chieftain to bring his troops past the neighbouring cheese districts of the border county of Chester had proved ineffectual.
Nevertheless the rebels determined on giving battle, which was perhaps a superfluous piece of generosity on their part, as the king, the princes, and Sir John Falstaff had come determined to take it. Hotspur—the warmth of whose heels would not seem to have produced in him any remarkable coolness of head—sent, on the eve of the engagement, an epistle to the king, which is strikingly illustrative of the knightly courtesy of the period. In this document he accuses Henry of murder, perjury, illegal taxation, obtaining money under false pretences, kidnapping, and bribery at elections. * The crimes of garrotting and stealing drinking vessels from the railings of private dwellings were not then known, or it is more than probable that these too would have entered into the wholesale list of accusations. Such a document, it will be admitted, was not calculated to dispose the king to leniency or placability. He was a monarch of the bilious temperament, and not at any time remarkable for excessive amiability or good humour. A popular historian has informed us that “he was subject to fits, which bereaved him for a time of reason.” ** The effect of such a communication on a monarch so constituted may be imagined.