Fastolfe, and was by him bequeathed through a friend to Magdalen
College, Oxford. This must not be confused with the Boar's Head of
Shakespeare, which stood in Eastcheap on the other side of the
river, though it is a remarkable coincidence that it was in the
latter inn the dramatist laid the scene of Prince Hal's merrymaking
with the Sir John Falstaff we all know. The earliest reference to
the Southwark Boar's Head occurs in the Paston Letters under date
1459. This is an epistle from a servant of Fastolfe to John Paston,
asking him to remind his master that he had promised him he should
be made host of the Boar's Head, but whether he ever attained to
that desired position there is no evidence to show. The inn makes
but little figure in history; by 1720 it had dwindled to a-mere
courtyard, and in 1830 the last remnants were cleared away.

[Illustration: COURTYARD OF BOAR'S HEAD INN, SOUTHWARK.]

Inevitably, however, the fact that the Boar's Head was the property
of Sir John Fastolfe prompts the question, what relation had he to
the Sir John Falstaff of Shakespeare's plays? This has been a topic
of large discussion for many years. There are so many touches of
character and definite incidents which apply in common to the two
knights that the poet has been assumed to have had the historic
Fastolfe ever in view when drawing the portrait of his Falstaff. The
historian Fuller assumed this to have been the case, for he
complains that the "stage have been overbold" in dealing with
Fastolfe's memory. Sidney Lee, however, sums up the case thus:
"Shakespeare was possibly under the misapprehension, based on the
episode of cowardice reported in 'Henry VI,' that the military
exploits of the historical Sir John Fastolfe sufficiently resembled
those of his own riotous knight to justify the employment of a