Fastolf, Sir John, a distinguished soldier of Henry V.'s reign, who with Sir John Oldcastle shares the doubtful honour of being the prototype of Shakespeare's Falstaff, but unlike the dramatist's creation was a courageous soldier, and won distinction at Agincourt and at the “Battle of the Herrings”; after engaging with less success in the struggle against Joan of Arc, he returned to England and spent his closing years in honoured retirement at Norfolk, his birthplace; he figures in the “Paston Letters” (1378‒1459).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Fasti * Fata Morgana