towers now remains. Inside, the ruins are hidden
by fruit-trees, elder-trees, and ivy, but there
are still traces of the ruffling days of brave Sir
John and the letter-writing Pastons who
succeeded him. The old gateway still stands, but
it now leads only to poultry sheds. The bay
window of the hall also exists; you can trace
the gable mark of the roof, and there is still
the tower near the chapel where a priest lived,
to pray for those who nourished him. The
tower is famous for its jackdaw's nest—a great
pile of loose sticks, reaching from the winding
stairs to the window, and expressing years of
industry. On the ground-floor is a small chamber
with groined ceiling and two light foliated
windows, but there is no roof above but the sky,
and the old fireplaces, black against the walls
above, are no longer warmed by friendly fires.
The Sir John Falstolf who built this castle
(one of the earliest fortified brick houses in the
kingdom) was a great warrior in the French
wars of Henry the Fifth and Sixth. It was this
commander who, just before Joan of Arc
appeared to scare the English, left Paris one Lent
with one thousand five hundred men to convey
four hundred waggons of herrings and other
provisions to the English besiegers of Orleans,
just then disheartened by the death of the Earl
of Salisbury, their commander. He was attacked
at Rouvrai by four thousand French and
Scotch cavalry, but surrounding his men with
a rampart of his waggons, he and his archers
repulsed two savage attacks, killed six hundred
of the enemy, and reached triumphantly
the English camp. When Orleans had been
rescued by the maiden of Domremy, the English
forts burned, and the Earl of Suffolk taken
prisoner, Talbot and Falstolf retreated together
towards Paris. At Patay, Talbot, bull-dog as
he was, would retreat no further, so stood at
bay, lost twelve thousand men, and was struck
from his horse and taken. Falstolf refusing,
however, to fight with soldiers demoralised by
the recent loss of three fortresses, left Talbot
there to suffer for his obstinacy. The English,
in a rage at his desertion of Talbot, branded
him as a coward, and condemned him to forfeit
his garter. But the Norfolk worthy calmly
persisted, and proved, to the satisfaction of
the Regent, that nothing but defeat was possible
with soldiers that Jeanne d'Arc had recently
cowed. This Sir John, who died in 1459,
aged eighty, had a mansion also at Yarmouth,
and traded there in corn and wool.

If the crow may be allowed to be for once
biographical, it may not be amiss to here
briefly sketch the career of a gentleman soldier
in the reigns of Henry the Fourth, Fifth, and
Sixth, in order to show the life men led in
those stormy ages. Sir John, born about
1378, was the son of a gentleman of Yarmouth,
renowned for his piety and charity. His father
dying when he was young, John's person
and estate were committed to the guardianship
of John, Duke of Bedford, our regent
in France. It is supposed that when a youth,
learning arms under Thomas of Lancaster, the
second son of Henry the Fourth, the young
Norfolk squire accompanied that noble
(afterwards Duke of Clarence) to Ireland,
whereThomas was lord-lieutenant, and fleshed
his maiden sword against the rough kerns and
savage gallowglasses of Munster and
Connaught. He married, in Ireland, a daughter
of Lord Tibetot, and bound himself, on the
Feast of St. Hilary, which was their marriage
day, in the sum of one thousand pounds, to
pay her one hundred pounds a year for pin
money. Hardened to steel in the wars of
Normandy, Anjou, Mayne, and Guienne, Sir John,
now a knight banneret, and knight companion
of the most noble Order of the Garter, grew
abroad a brave and wise general, and at home
a charitable and hospitable man, a founder of
religious buildings and stately edifices; moreover,
an enlightened patron of worthy and
learned men, and a benefactor to the pious and
poor, especially those of Norfolk. In 1413,
the first year of Henry the Fifth, he had the
castle and domain of Veires, in Gascony, given
him to guard. When his chivalrous young
king landed in France, Sir John joined him at
Harfleur with ten men- at- arms and thirty
archers, and the Earl of Derby then appointed
him governor of the town. At the great
melee at Agincourt Sir John bore himself nobly.
Next we meet Sir John pushing deep into
Normandy, then driven slowly to Harfleur, and
there besieged. For taking Caen, Courcy,
Falaise, and other towns, he was granted the
manor of Friteuse, near Harfleur, and in 1423
was made lieutenant for the king in Normandy.
Many towns he thundered down, at many
barred-up gates he knocked for admittance.
His prowess at the " Battle of the Herrings"
we have before mentioned. After that, the
aging warrior reaped more laurels. He was
an ambassador at the Council of Basle; he led
our succours to the Duke of Britany; he was
our ambassador at the final peace with bellicose
France, and when the Regent died, Sir John was
one of his executors. In 1440, the old warrior
returned to the new moated house at Caistor,
and there hung up his battered helmet and his
cloven target. In 1450, the king ordered
Thomas Danyell, Esq., to pay one hundred
pounds for having seized a ship of Sir John's
called The George of Prussia. He died, worn
out with old man's fever, after a lingering one
hundred and forty-eight days of asthma, on the
Festival of St. Leonard, in the last year of the
reign of Henry the Sixth. The old scarred
hulk was buried with great solemnity under
an arch in the Chapel of our Lady, of his own
building, at the abbey of St. Bennet in the
Holm, Norfolk; and so much was he venerated
in the county, that in the fifteenth of
Edward the Fourth, John Beauchamp
appointed a chantry there, more especially for
the soul of Sir John Falstolf. The old knight
left Caistor to John Paston, eldest son of
Judge Paston, to found, with the manors and
lands, a college of seven priests and seven poor
men. The Duke of Norfolk, however, claimed
Caistor, and in 1469 came before the old
turreted brick mansion with three thousand men