There seem to have arisen no collateral branches of the Falstaff family. The circumstances of the house, generally, make it improbable that there should have been any material provision for its younger sons. These seem usually to have left home, at an early age, to seek fortune; and as there is no record of any of them having found it, we must conclude that the evil genius of their race pursued them, and that they met with various dooms among the bands of free lances, condottieri, Brabançons, crusaders, rapparees, pirates, sheepstealers, rogues, thieves, and vagabonds, with which the history of those ages abounds. III. OF THE TRICK PLAYED BY LITTLE JACK FALSTAFF ON SIR THOMAS MOWBRAY AND HIS FOLLOWING; AND HOW JACK WAS CARRIED AWAY TO LONDON. There is no merrier place in all Merry England--for it shall not lose the well-earned nickname, in spite of commercial enterprise and political economy--than the county of Kent; that rosiest of the fair country’s cheeks, which she so artfully presents on the side whence visitors first approach to salute her; where the giant hops grow like Garagantua’s vineyards, and where the larks fly about the tall corn nearly as big as partridges: the county of all counties, that is famous for fair maids, monstrous cherries, and all things that are ripe, ruddy, and wholesome! Five hundred years ago, in the very heart of this laughing district, Falstaff Castle--or Folly, as it was irreverently styled by the neighbours--stood, at a distance of some twelve miles from the sea, and seven or eight from what was by courtesy called a road from Dover to Canterbury. It was a quaint old building--situated in a wide, flat valley, between low, sloping hills. The site appeared too well chosen to have been the selection of any of the thriftless, blundering race who had held the soil for so many generations. Rumour, indeed, asserted that the estate had been wrested by an early Falstaff (taking advantage of an invasion of the heathen Danes to make war upon the professors of Christianity) from an order of Saxon monks. The rich surrounding plains--nicely watered by a brisk, gurgling stream, on the surface of whose waters the word “trout” was written in letters of burnished silver--and the thickly wooded uplands, certainly made it a very likely looking monastic site. Still, as the building itself presented no trace of ecclesiastical architecture, Rumour might be safely defied on this question.