The first few decades of the fifteenth century were glorious ones for English arms in France, giving the landed classes the opportunity to follow a traditional and honourable calling and to win fame, if not fortune, across the Channel. In some cases fortunes were made, and successful soldiers like the well-known East Anglian knight, Sir John Fastolf, invested their newly acquired wealth in land at home. Whether Fastolf received a good return from his considerable investments is a matter for debate but he was far from an uninterested landowner. He kept a close eye on the management of his estates and proved a hard, frequently harsh, taskmaster in his dealings with his employees and tenants. One of Fastolf's brothers-in-arms was a fellow East Anglian, his friend and relative, Sir Henry Inglose. Like Fastolf, he enjoyed a successful military career and a litigious and irascible old age. Again like Fastolf, he invested some of his spoils of war in land at home, and a series of accounts for one of his acquisitions, the Norfolk manor of Haveringland, suggests that he took a similarly keen interest in estate management. Unlike Fastolf, he fathered several surviving children, although, perversely, he failed to provide properly for them in his will. In the will he ordered the sale of much of his estates – although not Haveringland – so ensuring that his family slid down the social scale after his death.