disasters through "diminishing the garrisons of Normandy". Property, investments, and inventory Fastolf, like other English soldiers, profited from the wars in France by obtaining lands in the conquered territories. He was given Frileuse near Harfleur by Henry V and went on to build a considerable property portfolio in Normandy, including four manors in the Pays de Caux worth £200 per annum. Later, he became the Baron of Sillé-le-Guillaume and therefore a member of the peerage there, a position he never attained at home. But the instability of English rule cost him much in lost revenues. His Pays de Caux manors had an income of only £8 after the Norman revolt of 1435. He began in the 1430s to sell off his properties but he still in 1445 held properties in France worth £401, including 10 castles, 15 manors and an inn. All this was lost in the French reconquest. A detailed inventory was made of Fastolf's personal goods after his death. It includes silver plate, equipment for his chapel, the clothes and tapestry in his wardrobe at Caister, his armour, and the furnishings of several rooms at Caister. "Cruel and vengible he hath been ever…" In the 1950s the Oxford academic K. B. McFarlane showed that Fastolf made large sums of money in France, which he managed to transfer back to England and invest in land and property. At the time, his reputation was mixed. One servant wrote of him: "cruel and vengible he hath been ever, and for the most part without pity and mercy" (Paston Letters, i. 389); and this remark has become famous because it was recorded in the letter. Besides his share in his wife's property he had large estates in Norfolk and Suffolk, a house at Southwark in London and where he also owned the Boar's Head Inn. The site of his house at Southwark, known as Fastolf Place or Palace, was excavated in the 1990s, but only a few pieces of revetment were found. From 1435, and more so in retirement, he was the author of numerous memoranda, which he fired off to the government of the day, about the strategy and policy to be pursued with regard to the war in France. These were preserved by his secretary William Worcester and eventually published by the Reverend Joseph Stevenson in the nineteenth century. He also sat at the centre of an important literary circle,