FASTOLF, John (d.1445), of Great Yarmouth, Norf. and Oulton, Suff.

A member of a prolific family originating from Great Yarmouth, Fastolf is not always easy to identify. A cousin of the famous Sir John Fastolf, KG, his father was a younger son of Hugh Fastolf† of Yarmouth. Add. 39848, no. 208. According to this ped., the Garter Knight was descended from Hugh’s eldest son, John. The family tree in Suckling, ii. 41, mistakenly has the MP as Hugh’s son, rather than his grandson. Richmond, 241, confuses the MP with John of Nacton, who died in Nov. 1447: C139/131/15. It was the Nacton man’s son whose wardship was disputed by Sir John Fastolf and (Sir) Philip Wentworth*; the MP left no surviving male issue. He is often described as ‘of Great Yarmouth’ in the borough’s court rolls, e.g. Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. rolls 1423-5, 1427-8, 1429-30, 1431-2, Y/C 4/133, m. 7; 134, m. 5d; 136, m. 12; 138, m. 10d; 140, m. 9d. but he also sometimes resided a few miles to the south at Oulton in Suffolk where he possessed a manor. Two of the men whom John Fastolf of Oulton named as his executors, Ralph Lampet and Alexander Kyngestone, were subsequently sued in their capacity as the executors of ‘John Fastolf of Great Yarmouth’: Norwich consist. ct. Reg. Wylbey, f. 64; Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll 1459-60, Y/C 4/164, m. 9. Inquisitions held after the death of Nicholas Wychyngham (d.1434) refer to the MP, one of Wychyngham’s feoffees, by both addresses, ‘of Oulton’ and ‘Great Yarmouth’: CIPM, xxiv. 201-4. Elsewhere in Suffolk, he came to hold a small plot of land at Holbrook, south of Ipswich, in the right of his second wife, CP40/731, rot. 327. who may have brought him other interests as well. It is also possible that he had lands at Tunstall in Norfolk, since the Crown distrained a John Fastolf of that parish, which lay near Yarmouth, in 1439. There is no definite evidence for him before the 1420s, although he may have been the John Fastolf who went to France in the retinue of Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in 1415 and returned to England after falling sick at the siege of Harfleur. E101/44/30 (1); 46/24.

If not the soldier, Fastolf was certainly active by 1421. His first ad hoc commission dates from September that year, as does an arrangement by which he and his first wife Margaret were to receive a rent of 13 marks p.a. from the manor of Titchwell in north-west Norfolk. Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Titchwell deeds 78. Titchwell had belonged to Margaret’s previous husband William Lovell, so it would appear that the annuity represented her dower interests in that property. The childless William, who had fought at Agincourt, where he may have died, He was certainly dead by Dec. 1418: Lewis, 6n. was the last male representative of the Norfolk branch of the Lovell family, and his heir was his sister, Margery. Despite a 14th-century entail prescribing the descent of the manor, Margery’s husband, John Roys*, took possession after Lovell’s death and in 1431 (some seven years after Margery’s death) he sold it to Sir John Fastolf. Sir John probably realized that he was taking a chance in making the purchase, since the subject of this biography, one of his councillors, would almost certainly have known of the entail and told him about it. Roys was another of the knight’s councillors, and it is possible that he and his master hoped to hide the existence of the past settlement for their mutual gain. If so, they were unsuccessful, for Sir John later faced a serious challenge for the property from the courtier, Sir Edward Hull*, and Thomas Wake*, who had married the heiresses of the senior, or Titchmarsh, branch of the Lovell family. Lewis, 1-20; Titchwell deeds 2, 12, 46, 75, 82.

It is likely that Fastolf helped to arrange the transfer of Titchwell to his distinguished namesake. He was regularly a trustee in East Anglia and elsewhere for the knight, and he was involved in a number of transactions by which the latter augmented his estate. In the late 1420s, a few years before Sir John’s acquisition of Titchwell, he had sold lands in Lothingland to the knight in his capacity as a feoffee to the use of the will of the previous owner, Bernard Beyton of Great Yarmouth. CP25(1)/169/186/48; 188/105; 224/116/9; CPR, 1422-9, p. 483; 1429-36, pp. 368-9; CCR, 1429-35, p. 257; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Caldecotes deeds, 27, 51, 52; Benyers deeds 19; Titchwell deeds 34, 81; Briggs and Boyton deeds 17, 25. Later, in 1434, when Sir John was negotiating to buy the manor of Cotton (also in Suffolk) from William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, Fastolf was one of the councillors who discussed the purchase with the earl’s agents over dinner at Norwich. A.R. Smith, ‘Acquisition of Sir John Fastolf’s Estates’, in Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 142. It seems likely that a bond in statute staple for 100 marks that Fastolf and the other councillors gave to Sir Simon Felbrigg and the very same de la Pole agents, Simon Blyaunt and Robert Rous, in early 1434 was connected with the proposed purchase: C241/228/26. As Sir John’s councillor, Fastolf received expenses for attending council meetings and seeing to other matters. In 1435-6, for instance, he and others went to Norwich to arrest Richard Baxter, the clerk of the knight’s receiver-general, John Kirtling, who owed their master various debts. A.R. Smith, ‘Sir John Fastolf’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1982), 45, 48. By the mid 1430s Fastolf was acting as feoffee for another relative, Edmund Wychyngham, himself one of Sir John Fastolf’s councillors, just as he had done previously for Wychyngham’s father Nicholas. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 9-10; CIPM, xxiv. 201-4. Edmund’s mother, Alice, was the da. of John Fastolf of Fishley: F. Blomefield, Norf. ix. 430; Richmond, 144. Later that decade, he and Edmund were in turn trustees of Ralph Garneys, whose deceased father, William, had chosen Sir John to serve in a similar capacity. CCR, 1435-41, p. 109. Membership of Sir John Fastolf’s circle brought obvious advantages, since Fastolf could expect to benefit from the knight’s patronage. He was also able to turn to him for financial assistance, on one occasion borrowing from him the substantial sum of £150. Fastolf had business concerns (no doubt centred at Great Yarmouth, where he possessed a quay), so he probably used the loan, for which he paid interest at 5 per cent in 1433-4, on a commercial venture. K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 70; Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls 1433-4, 1437-8, Y/C 4/142, m. 15; 146, m. 13d. Whether he was a successful man of business is open to question, since he was in somewhat straitened circumstances at the end of his life.

Given his close links with Sir John, it is possible that Fastolf was the John Fastolf, esquire, who joined the garrison captained by the knight at Caen in April 1432. English Suits Parlement of Paris (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xxvi), 293. It is likely that the MP served as a soldier, since his brass in Oulton church depicted him in armour: Suckling, ii. illust. between pp. 40 and 41. If so, he had returned to England by June the following year, when he attested the return of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1433. C219/14/4. In this return he is described as ‘of Oulton’. The returns of the knights of the shire for Suff. to the Parls. of 1427, 1431 and 1435, and for Norf. to that of 1431, also list a John Fastolf among the attestors (C219/13/5; 14/2, 5), but without such a distinguishing sobriquet, making it impossible to tell whether the MP took part in other elections. By this date, he himself had already sat in the Commons, having represented Great Yarmouth in the Parliament of 1427. He never held any position within Yarmouth other than offices to which he was appointed by the Crown, but no doubt his family connexions with the borough and association with Sir John Fastolf were persuasion enough for its burgesses to elect him.

Active in Yarmouth since the early 1420s, in 1424 Fastolf was involved in a dispute over a messuage in that part of the town known as the Foreland. He claimed that the messuage had belonged to Hugh Fastolf (presumably his grandfather) and was his by hereditary right. A panel of arbitrators, chosen to decide between him and his opponent, the burgess, Geoffrey Pampyng†, made their award in June that year. They decided that Fastolf should have the property, although he was to pay Pampyng (who had evidently been in possession) £10 to compensate him for the money he had spent on it. Fastolf also leased a tenement in the Foreland from the town, from the early 1430s until Michaelmas 1441 when it passed to a new lessee, Ralph Lampet*. He was supposed to pay the borough authorities 20s. p.a. in rent for the tenement, but he owed them £9 in arrears when Lampet took it over. Fastolf also had other properties in Yarmouth during the earlier part of his career, for in 1430 he and his first wife, Margaret, conveyed various lands and buildings there to Ralph Browning*. Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls 1420-4, 1429-30, 1431-2, 1439-40, 1442-3, Y/C 4/130, m. 4; 131, mm. 4d, 9d; 132, m. 1; 133, m. 7; 138, m. 10d; 140, m. 8d; 148, m. 21; 150, m. 1.

A little over a decade later, Fastolf had become bailiff of the earl of Suffolk’s manor of Costessey, and among his associates at this date was John Belley, a retainer of the earl. The John Fastolf who was party to a conveyance of manors in Cookley, Suff., in 1441 could well have been the MP, since these were de la Pole properties: CP25(1)/224/117/23; Suckling, ii. 204. It is therefore likely that he was the John Fastolf whom another of de la Pole’s followers, Miles Stapleton*, appointed his executor in a will of 1442. PCC 16 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 123d-125). In the event, Stapleton easily outlived the MP. His links with de la Pole could have stretched back some years, for at one stage the earl and Sir John Fastolf had been on good terms with each other, and the likes of John Roys had served on the councils of both men. Fastolf’s connexion with the earl necessitated something of a balancing act, given that de la Pole had fallen out with Sir John Fastolf in the late 1430s. There is no reason to suppose that the MP distanced himself from the knight by entering the earl’s service, since he was associated with Sir John’s old friend, comrade-in-arms and councillor, Sir Henry Inglose*, as a plaintiff in a trespass suit heard in the court of King’s bench in Michaelmas term 1443. Richmond, 135; KB27/730, rot. 92d.

Fastolf drew up his will just over a year later, on 12 Jan. 1445. He asked to be buried in the chancel of the parish church of St. Michael, Oulton, and appointed four executors, Ralph Lampet, John Wareyn (a de la Pole servant), Alexander Kyngestone (a burgess of Great Yarmouth) and Thomas Fastolf of Ipswich. Evidently worried about his finances, he asked first that his executors should use his goods and the issues of his lands to pay his debts. They were also to provide his daughters and heirs Margaret and Joan (probably his children by his first wife) with dowries of £20 each, or more if his estate could support such a charge. As for his lands, his manor at Oulton and other properties in Lothingland, he directed that his second wife Katherine should receive seisin of them three years after his death and then hold them for life. If his debts were still unsettled when she died, John Belley was to sell them, and any money left after the sale was to go to charity and his daughters’ marriages. Should such a sale prove unnecessary, his elder daughter, Joan, was to inherit the properties, provided she gave her sister 100 marks towards her marriage; if Joan died childless, Belley and the executors were to sell them. Fastolf died on 31 Jan. 1445 and his will was proved in the following September. Reg. Wylbey, f. 64.

In the event, the reversion of the manor of Oulton was sold – not without difficulty – in Katherine’s lifetime. During her widowhood an unidentified writer of a letter of uncertain date claimed to have paid 600 marks for the reversion and the hand of his wife (perhaps Fastolf’s daughter Joan), of which 300 marks had been rebated when they married, from the MP’s executors Lampet and Kyngestone, only for them to renege on the deal by making a new sale to William Jenney*. Yet it seems unlikely that Jenney did acquire the reversion, since in due course Katherine (who appointed him one of her executors) would sell it to James Hobart† for £240. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 268; Reg. Gelour, f. 221; C1/53/57. Apparently addressed to John Paston*, the letter was probably composed not later than 1461. Katherine, who outlived the MP by many years, made her will on 20 Nov. 1478. In the will she chose to refer to herself as the former wife of John Fastolf and sought burial beside him at Oulton, suggesting that she remembered him with greater affection than her previous husband, John Sampson. Katherine also ordered a new slab for Fastolf’s tomb, directing her executors to place the one already there on the grave of her dead son, Thomas Sampson. She specified that the new stone should cost seven or eight marks and depict the arms of both her husbands, of her father Roger Welsham and of the Bedingfields, her mother’s family. Among the lands mentioned in her will were properties her first husband had bought in Oulton, Flixton and Gunton, and she asked that Simon, one of her sons by Sampson, should have the opportunity to buy those not otherwise bequeathed. Another of her children by her first marriage, Eleanor (who subsequently married William Jenney), was to have a messuage at Gunton. Reg. Gelour, f. 221; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, v. 60; Richmond, 222n. Eleanor was the wid. of Robert Inglose (d.1475), the son of Sir Henry Inglose. After her death on 4 Jan. 1479, a fine brass depicting herself and Fastolf (he fully armoured except for a helmet) was placed on their tomb, but this was stolen in 1857. Suckling, ii. 40-41; Richmond, 222n.