Sir John, a distinguished English officer, born at Yarmouth in Norfolk in 1377. He held many places of trust and importance in Ireland, and afterwards in France. For his bravery at Agincourt, where he was wounded, he received a grant of land in Normandy. After distinguishing himself at the siege of Orleans he fled ignominiously from the field of Patay before the victorious Joan of Arc. For this inglorious conduct he was temporarily degraded, but afterwards restored to his honours. On returning to England he signalized himself by his encouragement of literature, bestowing large sums on Cambridge, and endowing Magdalen College with special liberality. He died in 1459 at the age of eighty. It is merely a gratuitous supposition to imagine, as some writers have done, that Shakespeare had this officer in his eye in delineating the character of Sir John Falstaff. There was not the most distant resemblance between the moral, physical, or intellectual characteristics of the two men.