which produced manuscripts in French and English for him. His last years were troubled by litigation and disputes regarding his East Anglian estates, in which he was helped by both John Paston, to whom he was related through Paston's wife, Margaret, and Sir William Yelverton, and by factional fighting at court which ultimately led to the so-called Wars of the Roses. Paston and Yelverton would go on to be two of the main protagonists in the battles over his property after his death. Fastolf was inclined to sympathise with Richard, Duke of York, whom he had known and served in France, but it would be an exaggeration to say that he ever became a "Yorkist". He was a widower throughout the last decade of his life, when he lived at Southwark and Caister, and had no heir. He seems to have been a somewhat lonely figure, and made several attempts to draft a will, establishing a Chantry College at Caister Castle but never legally documented his intentions and effectively died intestate. Death and burial He died at Caister on 5 November 1459. He was buried next to his wife Millicent in St Benet's Abbey in an aisle specially built at his expense on the south side of the abbey church, of which he had been a generous benefactor. During the last decade of his life he was a close political ally and friend of John Paston, who came to fame through the Paston Letters, a collection of over 1,000 items of correspondence between members of the Paston family. Fastolf's deathbed testament naming John Paston as his executor and heir led to many years of litigation. The ruins of St Benet's Abbey may still be visited, as may the ruins of Caister Castle. The Castle never became home to a chantry, as Fastolf intended. Instead, it passed to the Paston family. The bulk of Sir John's fortune passed to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he is remembered as a benefactor, and where there is a Fastolf Society. Cultural portrayals Shakespeare Fastolf appears in Shakespeare's early play Henry VI, Part 1 as a cowardly knight who abandons the heroic Lord Talbot. In the first two folios, the name of the character is given as "Falstaffe" not Fastolf. When Shakespeare came to write Henry IV, Part 1, set in the early years of Fastolf's career, he created a disreputable boon companion for the young