CONSEQUENT STAGNATION IN THE COURT OF HENRY THE FIFTH.--THE WINDSOR
CAMPAIGN, ITS MOTIVES AND RESULTS.
The accession of Henry the Fifth to the throne of England was not marked
by such lavish and prolonged rejoicings as the people of that time were
accustomed to on similar occasions. Things, indeed, seem to have been
done on rather a niggardly and puritanical scale. For this there were
doubtless many sufficient reasons. The royal treasury was impoverished.
The nation had not been engaged in a civil war for several months,
and the public mind was getting impatient for the recurrence of that
indispensable necessary of national life--which indeed was kindly
furnished them by certain patriots who (for lack of better excuse)
pretended that King Richard the Second was still alive and a claimant
to the throne--a contingency which the statesmanlike policy of the late
King Henry had most effectually guarded against. Moreover the newly
crowned monarch, having so publicly pledged himself to measures
of reform, and the adoption of business-like habits, was in common
consistency bound to show signs of moral amendment by setting about the
invasion of a foreign country, and torturing to death certain dangerous
persons who had ventured to differ with him in religious opinions. The
body of Richard the Second had to be exhumed and exhibited for public
inspection. The conquest of France had to be undertaken. The exacting
spirit of the times, moreover, required that a reward of 337 L. 10s.
should be offered by the crown for the apprehension of Sir John
Oldcastle *, the supposed leader of a Protestant conspiracy,--a
circumstance in itself sufficient, (considering that the accused might
have been caught and the reward claimed,) in the then existing state of
the exchequer, to indispose the monarch for any exuberance of mirth
or expenditure. But unquestionably the arch reason why the coronation
festivities should have gone off flatly and without brilliancy
or _eclat_ was the absence from court of the man whose gifts and
antecedents would naturally have pointed him out as the _arbiter
elegantiarum_ for the occasion. The master of the revels--which did
not take place--was at the time of their non-occurrence a languishing
captive, on an illegal warrant, in the Fleet Prison. The idea of any
merriment in the court of Henry the Fifth without the assistance of Sir
John Falstaff is simply preposterous. But Henry the Fifth had forsworn
merriment and Falstaff together, and taken up with invasion and
Smithfield bonfires in their stead. The only remarkable public boons
consequent upon the coronation were a wholesale creation of Knights of
the Bath--from participation in which honour Sir John Falstaff was of
course excluded--and a general jail delivery, whereof, equally as a
matter of course, our knight took the most prompt and summary advantage.
Sir John and his companions were liberated by royal amnesty after a
confinement of twenty-four hours.
* Oldcastle was good enough to keep out of the way, in
return for which considerate behaviour he was let off with a
“grand cursing at St. Paul’s Cross.” He was captured four
years later, and “roasted to death by a fire kindled under
him” at Smithfield--the crown being then in better
circumstances and able to defray the expenses of his
prosecution.
But of what use was the so-called liberty to Sir John Falstaff? It was,
after all, but the liberty which you grant to a gudgeon when you unhook
him from the end of your fishing line and toss him contemptuously into
the nearest corn-field. Was not Sir John an exile from the court?
Had not the idol of his misplaced affections, “his king, his Jove,”
forbidden him admission to the Olympian circle, where nectar and
ambrosia were alone to be found? Had not Henry the Fifth commanded him
“Not to come near our person by ten mile?”
He had indeed! And that cruel radius was a rigid bar at the end of which
Sir John was ruthlessly chained ten miles aloof from all that was life,
and warmth, and breath to him. It was the very mockery of mercy. It
was like saying to a man, “I will only keep your mouth and nostrils ten
inches below the surface of the water, but above that altitude you shall
never rise.” Mighty like drowning after all!
The present book, the last and saddest of our history! will be, of
necessity, a short one. The public career of Sir John Falstaff may
be said to have terminated with the catastrophe recorded in the
last chapter. The remaining months of his existence he passed in
retirement--would I could add in prosperity!--as a private gentleman.
There is a completeness and consistency in the life of this remarkable
man almost without parallel in history. He was born in difficulties; he
lived sixty-three years in embarrassed circumstances; and died in hot
water. And yet throughout the whole of this trying pilgrimage Sir John
was never once tempted to depart from his guiding principles. What were
Sir John Falstaff’s guiding principles? the inconsiderate reader may
ask,--yielding to the popularly received opinion that the knight never
had any, than which a greater mistake can scarcely be imagined. Who
shall accuse of irregularity a man who, for upwards of three-score
years, based his every act upon the rigid observance of two rules of
life? These were, firstly, never to let his business interfere with his
pleasure; secondly, on no occasion to suffer his income to exceed his
expenditure; principles which, it will be admitted, Sir John adhered
to in the teeth of no common or unfrequent temptations to their
abandonment. It must not be supposed that Sir John Falstaff for a moment
believed that King Henry the Fifth intended to fulfil his promise of
allowing his banished associates a sufficiency for “competence of life”
still less that his majesty, among his other “startling effects” of
reformation, meditated keeping his word upon so delicate a matter. There
is reason to believe that a nominal pension of three hundred pounds a
year was conferred upon our knight, but not the slightest to suppose
that any measures were ever thought of for paying as much as the
first quarterly instalment. Henry the Fifth had at least profited by
Falstaff’s training in this respect, that he managed through life to
make his liabilities exceed his resources, and contrived to secure an
immense deal of éclat and enjoyment without troubling himself to pay for
it. He endowed his beautiful young wife, Katherine of Valois, out of the
private fortune of his step-mother (whom he had previously incarcerated
in Pevensey Castle on a charge of witchcraft). The whole of the young
queen’s household, with numerous pensioners of her family, were suffered
to help themselves out of the same convenient fund. In the year of
his marriage Henry drew upon the treasury of the captive dowager for a
hundred marks, which he graciously presented to the Abbess of Sion. Soon
afterwards he provided for the maintenance of his dearly beloved cousin
_Dame Jake_ * (otherwise the Princess Jaqueline of Hainault) by the
moderate allowance of a hundred pounds a month, also to be paid from the
“profits” of the dower of Joanna, late Queen of England.
* Rymer’s Fodera, vol. x. p. 134.
The historic parallel to these liberal disbursements suggested by Sir
John Falstaff paying Bardolpli arrears of wages, liquidating tavern
scores for Ancient Pistol, and bestowing money on new liveries for
little Robin (with perhaps a gallant souvenir for old Mistress Ursula,
and some pretty toys for the young Whittingtons) out of the unfortunate
Master Shallow’s thousand pounds, is most striking. A few years later
we find Sir William Bardolf, lieutenant-governor of Calais, complaining
bitterly in a letter to the king, that his garrison had only received
500 L.. in the two last years, himself having had to make up the
deficiency requisite for their maintenance. There is still extant a
letter, apparently written by a public scrivener of the time, in the
name of one Francis, a drawer at the “Old Boar’s Head” tavern, addressed
to Sir John Falstaff, at the sign of “YE NAKED LADYE ON HORSEBACK”
at Coventry, praying the knight to transmit by carrier the sum of
forty-eight marks seven shillings and three-farthings, the price of
lodging and entertainment afforded to Corporal Nym and others of “the
worshipful knight his following,” which the said drawer asserts he has
been compelled by his mistress * to pay out of his own earnings. History
delights in these startling coincidences!
* Fits of splenetic economy of this description were by no
means of unfrequent occurrence with good Mrs. Quickly. For
the original of the document here alluded to, (the discovery
of any answer to which has hitherto baffled the researches
of antiquarians,) _vide_ the Potter MSS. vol. viii. p. 397a.
With such pressing claims upon his purse (or rather upon the purses of
other people at his disposal), as those above alluded to, it would have
been unreasonable to suppose that the king would put himself--or even
any one else--out of the way to meet his pecuniary engagements with a
disgraced favourite. Sir John Falstaff at once understood that he had
little to hope from the royal bounty or good faith. With his usual
philosophy he determined to make the best of his position. Having
nothing to live on but the king’s promise he determined to live upon
that--and appears to have succeeded in doing so pretty comfortably. For
we find him in the autumn of 1414, with a goodly retinue of followers
and a stud of horses, “sitting at ten pounds a week” at the Garter Inn,
Windsor--a liberal scale of accommodation for which Sir John’s assumed
“expectations” were doubtless accepted as permanent security.
[Illustration: 273]
Much idle dissertation has been wasted in Sir John Falstaff’s probable
motives for making Windsor his residence at this juncture of his career.
The motives live on the surface. The court was in London. The atmosphere
of a kingly residence was, as has been shown, indispensable to Sir John
Falstaff. The neighbourhood of Windsor Castle was the most convenient
locality of that description--beyond the prescribed limits of his
banishment from the royal person. Moreover, your true knight errant must
be ever wandering in search of new fields for adventure. The resources
of Oxford, Coventry, and other country districts our knight had
doubtless long since exhausted. Windsor was virgin soil to him. Here he
was unknown, and--as we have seen--trusted.
There was an additional inducement for Sir John to visit Windsor. It
must not be supposed that he had relinquished all hope of restoration to
court favour--what deposed favourite ever did? To the end of his days
he was constantly occupied in diplomatic schemes for the recovery of his
forfeited position. He left no stone unturned in the fruitless endeavour
to regain the royal ear. He deluged his courtly acquaintances with
unavailing letters on the subject. He intrigued with secretaries,
grooms-in-waiting, pages, lacqueys, and even the lords of the bedchamber
and equerries. I am afraid he was rapidly becoming a nuisance.
It is to be regretted that the preserved fragments of the Falstaff
correspondence, in connection with this most interesting phase of our
knight’s fortunes, are confined to two specimens.* These, however,
consisting of a letter and its answer, it would be difficult to
estimate at their adequate value. Their transference to these pages will
sufficiently explain the motive for Sir John’s visit to Windsor last
alluded to.
[Illustration: 287]
“Ned, and be hanged in thine own garter or drowned in thine own bath,
according as thou needest most trussing or washing.
“They told me in London thou hadst grown great at Windsor, and
I hastened hither post to witness the marvel with mine own
eyes--mistrusting other testimony. Lo, I am convinced! I saw thee this
morning strutting on Wykeham’s Tower--marshalling the workmen with thy
wand of office, and noted that thou hadst become fat. At length, then, I
may greet thee as an equal--the more, as it would seem I myself have so
dwindled to thy former proportions that thou didst not know me; but when
I sought to catch thine eye, twirledst thy chain and soughtest quarrel
with a knave who was miscarrying a hod of mortar. Since, then, thou
art so puffed up and I so crushed and flattened--what should be the
difference between us? If there be any, I pri’ thee, lessen it. If at
length thou hast grown to outweigh me, slice thyself down and throw me
the parings. I but claim to compound a debt. I will cry quits for the
wit I have lent thee if thou wilt give me the superabundance of
favour and dignity which in truth thou seemest still somewhat too
spindle-shanked of spirit to carry with grace. Nay, I will throw thee a
good thing into the bargain. Thou lackest humility--a commodity whereof
more than I know what to do with hath been of late forced upon me. Thou
shalt have it all.
“Indite me to dinner at the Castle by ten o’clock to-morrow. Till then
I will be tongue-tied. If thou failest to send for me and to prove over
many a pottle-pot that thou hast still the memory of old times and that
thou hast but assumed the guise of a strutting feathered jackdaw as
formerly thou didst that of a very owl of wisdom--on grounds of policy
to be forgiven--then will I make it known by the town-crier of Windsor
what an ass thou really art and ever will be. ‘Tis a secret worth
hushing and known to none better than thine, forgivingly,
“John Falstaff.
“[In sober earnest, dear Ned, thou mayest serve me near him thou wottest
of. I pri’ thee forget not old friends and comrades. Thou couldst not
know me this morning--for reasons I guess at. But see me and it shall
bring thee to no harm. J. F.]
“At the Garter Inn, Friday, 1414. 2. H. V.”