company of Henry Bolingbroke, later Henry IV. Fastolf is said to have been squire to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, before the latter was banished in 1398. Fastolf's whereabouts during the Lancastrian coup of 1399 (when Henry IV seized the crown from Richard II) are unknown, but in 1401 he entered the retinue of King Henry IV's second son, Thomas of Lancaster (later Duke of Clarence), under whose service he would remain until 1415. Thomas had been appointed by his father to keep order in Ireland, and it was here that Fastolf first saw military action. Fastolf's commanding officer was Sir Stephen Scrope, whose widow he married after his death in 1408. Hundred Years' War Early service in France From 1415 to 1439, he was in northern France, where he served under Henry V and the king's brother, the Duke of Bedford. He took part in the siege of Harfleur in 1415, but was invalided home and so missed Agincourt, though he returned to defend Harfleur against the French attempt to recapture it in the winter of 1415–1416. He was Bedford's Master of the Household, and was Governor of the province of Maine and Anjou, and on 25 February 1426, created a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Later in this year he was superseded in his command by John Talbot; and he became a somewhat controversial figure after the Siege of Orléans. In 1421, during the English occupation of Paris, he became "governor" (effectively, the warden) of the Bastille, probably for a year. After a visit to England in 1428, he returned to the war, and on 12 February 1429, when in charge of the convoy for the English army before Orléans defeated the French and Scots at the Battle of the Herrings. In his biography of Fastolf The Real Falstaff (2010), Stephen Cooper re-locates this battle from Rouvray-Saint-Denis to Rouvray-Sainte-Croix. Encounters with Joan of Arc During the 1429 Siege of Orléans, the French had planned to abandon the city after they heard rumours (which were true) that John Fastolf was coming with a force to reinforce the English besiegers. Jean de Dunois (known as "The Bastard of Orléans" as he was the illegitimate son of Louis I, Duke of Orléans) decided not to tell Joan of Arc and leave her out of leadership decisions, to which she famously responded: The French leader conceded to