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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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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.

“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.”

ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING.

To Sir John Falstaff, Knight, be this deliverred.

“Sir Edward Poins grieves that his many duties as a humble but diligent servant of King Henry (whom Heaven preserve!) may not permit him to enjoy the pleasure of Sir John Falstaff’s company at Windsor Castle, whereof his Most Gracious Majesty hath been pleased to appoint Sir Edward for a time custodian. It is not, however, in Sir Edward’s nature to refuse a service to any one. If Sir John Falstaff is anxious for himself or friends to obtain the privilege of viewing the improvements in progress as well as the tapestries and pictures of the palace, Sir Edward will give instructions to the wardens and porters of the building to admit Sir John and friends to the same (within the hours allotted to the admission of the public) with the assurance that Sir John and friends will be treated with right due courtesy.

“P.S. It is entreated that no largesse or drink money shall be given to any of the Castle servitors—the same subjecting such servitors to immediate dismissal.”

That Sir Edward Poins—always a faithful imitator, to the best of his ability, of King Henry the Fifth—should have thus behaved towards his early friend and patron will surprise no student of human nature. This coolness and ingratitude, however, of a supposed friend had no other effect than to induce Sir John Falstaff during his residence in the neighbourhood to choose his associates exclusively from the middle classes—the lesser landowners, clergy, and even small traders of extra-palatial Windsor. In such unassuming society Sir John passed his time for the most part agreeably enough, and not altogether unprofitably—though with many serious drawbacks to his comfort, dignity, and finances.

On the whole, I confess, I feel no temptation whatever to expatiate upon this portion of my hero’s rapidly closing career. The Windsor adventures of Sir John Falstaff, forming as they do the basis of one of the most admirably faithful and picturesque of Shakspeare’s historical studies, present, after all, but an exceptional and, in my opinion, most painful episode in the knight’s history. They show us the harrowing spectacle of a great man in his decline. Many thoughtless commentators have pronounced the portrait of Sir John Falstaff, as drawn in the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” to be wanting in verisimilitude, and have therefore called its authenticity into question. No discerning mind can mistake the likeness. It is the same man whom we have so often seen drawn by the same master-hand under more favourable circumstances—but how changed, how fallen! The features are all unmistakeably there; but the expression, bearing, and complexion, how sadly deteriorated! Age, disappointment, and suffering have done their work. Sir John can no longer hold his ground against the most contemptible adversary. The victor is vanquished—the biter bitten. The more than match for the keen-witted Harry Monmouth—the conqueror of Gascoigne and the terror of Poins—becomes the easy dupe of a couple of practical-joking Berkshire housewives. It is distressing to contemplate a man—whom we have seen cross swords with Douglas; capture Colevile of the Grange; and who, after all (as hath been demonstrated), there is strong reason to believe, was the actual slayer of the terrible Henry Percy—sunk so low as to receive without resentment a sound cudgelling administered, in a fit of insensate jealousy, by a bourgeois inhabitant of Peascod Street, Windsor—who, for aught I can discover to the contrary, may have been a retired grocer. * It may be urged that Sir John Falstaff, in justice to his knightly standing, could not challenge an ignoble curmudgeon like Ford to mortal combat; and that he acted becomingly in preferring the more appropriate vengeance of keeping that citizen’s money—intrusted to him for an avowedly immoral purpose. This was all very well in its way, but did not wipe out the original outrage. That shameful business of the buck-basket, also, was an indignity to which Sir John in the heyday of his powers could never have submitted. “Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at him” with a vengeance, at this time, and the meanest are permitted to do so with impunity. His very retainers turn against him (always excepting the faithful Bardolph, who relieves his master, when under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, of the cost of his maintenance, by turning tapster and waiting on the knight at another person’s expense). He is even braved by Pistol; and that “drawling, affecting rogue,” Nym, refuses to carry his messages. He is cajoled, hoaxed, bamboozled. He suffers himself to be “made an ass” in Windsor Park, where he exposes himself in a tom-fool disguise, and gets pinched by all the charity boys and girls in the parish, believing them to be avenging fairies. He is bound to admit that his wit has been “made a Jack a Lent of.” A Cambrian parson, even, dares to laugh at him; and he is “not able to answer the Welsh flannel.” It is a sad business.

I repeat that I have no heart to dwell upon these painful details. Shakspeare has not scrupled to particularise them, and the curious are referred to his able but pitiless pages. My good friend GEORGE CRUIKSHANK also—an amiable man in the social relations of life, but who when there is a stern truth to be recorded pictorially, has no more feeling than the sun peering through a photographic lens—has added his testimony to the principal features of the case. Let my feelings be spared—for I sympathise with poor Sir Jack, and, with all his faults, love him.

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There is this excuse to be urged for Sir John Falstaff’s submitting to all kinds of temporary inconvenience and degradation at the hands of the contemptible citizens of Windsor. His mind was occupied with more exalted subjects. He still contemplated the possibility of his restoration to Court favour. He was sixty-three, it is true, and prematurely broken in constitution. But a courtier and statesman must be very old and shaken indeed to renounce his hopes of power and advancement. Sir John watched his opportunity, and was willing to abide his time. You will be willing to abide your time, reader, at the age of a hundred (Heaven send you may live to it!) and never suspect for a moment that your “time” will be out in the early part of next autumn.

Sir John’s opportunity (as he imagined) at length arrived. King Henry the Fifth prepared for his memorable invasion of France, by demanding, from the French king, the hand of the Princess Katherine, and a concession of territory sufficiently unreasonable to ensure the refusal desired by the English crown. The Dauphin Louis answered the application by his memorable present of a cask of tennis balls, which he assured King Henry “were fitter playthings for him, according to his former course of life, than the provinces demanded.” * The British cabinet was nonplussed, there being nobody in office capable of replying to a joke. This was Sir John Falstaffs opportunity.

Sir John, who had, of course, his agents posted about the Court, heard of the dilemma. He despatched the following private note to His Majesty, having securely arranged for its certain delivery into the royal hands:—

A TIMELY WORD TO THE KING FROM ONE PERCHANCE THOUGHT DEAD **

“King Hal: thou hast forgotten me, but not I thee. Thou wilt not relieve me from my difficulty. Lo! I relieve thee of thine.

“Write back to the French fellow, thus:—

“‘These balls shall be struck back with such a racket as shall force open Paris gates.’

“The thought is thine, for I give it to thee. Pay me for it by remembrance that I still live and can bear armour, or not, as thou listest.

“John Falstaff.

“Note.—Observe well the clench upon racket***, which meaneth both hurly-burly noise and tennis bat.

“At the Garter, Windsor,

“30 March, 1415, 3 H. V.”

In the course of a few days Sir John learnt that his witticism (unacknowledged) had been made use of as a rejoinder to the insolent message of the dauphin. He accepted this as a recognition of renewed friendly dispositions towards him on the king’s part. He hastily raised such funds as his powers of persuasion could induce his Windsor acquaintances to supply him with, and struck his tent. In defiance of the royal edict he presented himself at the Court of Westminster in the thick of the active preparations for the coming French campaign and solicited a command.