It was not a time when dependents spent their time as they pleased. In a well-ordered household every man had his post and his work. An old Knight who had fought for forty years and commanded armies was not at all likely to be a master of a soft and indulgent kind. There is no greater disciplinarian than the old soldier: no household is more sternly ruled than his. This man had not only commanded armies, he had governed provinces, cities, castles: he had wielded despotic authority: he had found it necessary to master every branch of human activity, including the law and the chicanery of lawyers: as the general in command or the Governor of the Province considered the interests of his master the King before everything, so Fastolf expected his dependents to consider his interests as before everything else. The stern old Captain, I can very well believe, looked to every one of his dependents for his share of work, and I can also very well believe that they feared him as the masterful man is always feared.
One of these dependents calls him 'cruel and vengeful.' But he gives no reasons.
SURREY END OF LONDON BRIDGE, FROM HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK
One does not carry on war for forty years in the midst of spies, traitors, robbers, and all the villainy of a camp without becoming stern and hard. As a soldier he had to harden himself: as a governor he had to observe justice rather than pity: as a judge it was his duty to punish criminals. I picture a stern, determined man, grey and worn, with hard eyes and strong mouth, one who looked for a thing to be done as soon as he commanded it, at the coming of whom his servants became instantly absorbed in work, at whose footstep his secretaries dared not lift their heads.
Next we are told that he was a 'testy neighbour.' The letters are full of complaints about trespass, invasion of his rights, and attempts to over-reach him. How could a man choose but prove a 'testy neighbour' at a time when the law was powerless and every man was trying to enlarge his boundaries at the expense of his next neighbour? The land robber was everywhere moving landmarks and claiming what was not his own. Private persons, simple esquires, had to fortify their houses against their neighbours and to prepare for a siege. 'I pray you,' says Margaret Paston, 'to get some crossebows and wyndace to bind them with, and quarrel'—i.e. bolts—'for your house is so low that ther may no man shoot with no long bow though he had never so much mind.' And she goes on to enumerate the warlike preparations made by her neighbour.
Sir John Fastolf himself orders five dozen long bows, and quarrels for his own house in Norfolk. John Paston complains how Robert Hungerford, Knight, and Lord Moleyne and Alianor his wife, entered forcibly upon his house and manor of Gresham with a thousand people at their heels, and robbed and pillaged, turning his wife and servants into the road.
These are things which do sometimes make neighbours testy.
But he is a 'grasping man of business.'