Changes and Counter-changes

Appeal of two widows.We have but a word or two to say as to matters affecting the family history of the Pastons during this brief interval. At the siege of Caister two men of the Duke of Norfolk’s were killed by the fire of the garrison. The duke’s council, not satisfied with having turned the Pastons out, now prompted the widows of these two men to sue an ‘appeal’257.3against John Paston and those who acted with him. A true bill was also found against them for felony at the Norwich session of June 1470, in which Sir John Paston was included as an accessory; but the indictment was held to be void by some of Paston’s258friends on the ground that two of the jury would not agree to it. This objection I presume must have been held sufficient to quash the proceedings in this form, of which we hear no more.258.1The ‘appeal,’ however, remained to be disposed of, as we shall see by and by.Compromise touching Fastolf’s will.With respect to the title claimed by Sir John Paston in Caister and the performance of Fastolf’s will, a compromise was arranged with Bishop Waynflete, who was now recognised as sole executor. It was agreed that as the whole of Fastolf’s lands in Essex, Surrey, Norfolk, and Suffolk had been much wasted by the disputes between the executors, the manors should be divided between Sir John Paston and the bishop, the former promising to surrender the title-deeds of all except the manor of Caister. The project of a college in that place was given up, and a foundation of seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalen College, Oxford, was agreed to in its place.258.2Soon afterwards the Duke of Norfolk executed a release to the bishop of the manor of Caister and all the lands conveyed to him by Yelverton and Howes as executors of Sir John Fastolf, acknowledging that the bargain made with them was contrary to Fastolf’s will, and receiving from the bishop the sum of 500 marks for the reconveyance. The duke accordingly sent notice to his servants and tenants to depart out of the manor as soon as they could conveniently remove such goods and furniture as he and they had placed in it.258.3Thus by the mediation of Bishop Waynflete the long-standing disputes were nearly settled during the period of HenryVI.’s brief restoration. But, probably in consequence of the disturbed state of the country and the return of EdwardIV., the duke’s orders for the evacuation of Caister were not immediately obeyed, and, as we shall see hereafter, the place remained in Norfolk’s possession for the space of three whole years.Elizabeth Poynings remarries.About this time, or rather, perhaps, two years later, Sir John Paston’s aunt, Elizabeth Poynings, terminated her widowhood by marrying Sir George Browne of Betchworth Castle in Surrey. We have already seen how she was dispossessed of259her lands soon after her first husband’s death by the Countess of Northumberland. They were afterwards seized by the Crown as forfeited, and granted by patent to Edmund Grey, Earl of Kent, but without any title having been duly found for the king. The Earl of Kent after a time gave up possession of them to the Earl of Essex, but this did not make things pleasanter for Elizabeth Poynings; while other of her lands were occupied by Sir Robert Fenys in violation, as she alleged, of her husband’s will.259.1The date of her second marriage was probably about the end of the year 1471.259.2These matters we are bound to mention as incidents in the history of the family. Of Elizabeth Paston, however, and her second husband we do not hear much henceforward; in the Letters after this period the domestic interest centres chiefly round the two John Pastons, Sir John and his brother.246.3The story that the Earl of Warwick had gone to France to negotiate the marriage of Edward with Bona of Savoy, when Edward frustrated his diplomacy by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, is certainly not in accordance with facts. But the doubts of some modern historians that the project of such a match was ever entertained are quite set at rest by the evidence of two letters which have been recently printed in some of the publications of the Société de l’Histoire de France, to which attention is called by Mr. Kirk in hisHistory of Charles the Bold(vol. i. p. 415 note, and ii. p. 15 note). It appears that although the earl had not actually gone to France, he was expected there just at the time the secret of the king’s marriage was revealed. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt—indeed there is something like positive evidence to prove—that the first cause of the Earl of Warwick’s alienation from the king arose out of this matter. I ought to add that the merit of placing before us for the first time a clear view of the consequences of EdwardIV.’s marriage, in its bearing alike on the domestic history of England and on Edward’s relations with France and Burgundy, is due to Mr. Kirk.247.1W. Worc., 513-14.247.2Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 551.248.1The two eldest daughters of EdwardIV.were born in the years 1465 and 1466; the third, Cecily, in the latter end of 1469.SeeGreen’sPrincesses, vol. iii.; also an article by Sir Frederic Madden, in theGentleman’s Magazinefor 1831 (vol. ci. pt. i., p. 24).248.2He seems to have left Norwich on the 21st. There are Privy Seals dated on that day, some at Norwich and some at Walsingham.248.3Contin. Chron. Croyl.p. 542.249.1Seethe petition printed by Halliwell in his notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 47-51.249.2Seethe proclamation immediately preceding the above petition in the notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 46-7.249.3No. 719.249.4No. 714.250.1Contin. Chron. Croyl.pp. 542, 551. There are Privy Seals dated on the 2nd August at Coventry; on the 9th, 12th, and 13th at Warwick; and on the 25th and 28th at Middleham.250.2No. 736.250.3At least William Worcester, in hisItinerary, p. 321, seems to indicate in very bad Latin that the siege began on the Monday before St. Bartholomew’s Day, which in 1469 would be the 21st August. Yet a very bewildering sentence just before would imply that the siege began either on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (15th August) or on St. Bartholomew’s Day itself (24th August), and that it lasted five weeks and three days. But we know that the castle surrendered on the 26th September, so that if the duration of the siege was five weeks and three days it must have begun on the 19th August, a different date still. William Worcester’s habit of continually jotting down memoranda in his commonplace books has been of very great service to the historian of this disordered epoch; but his memoranda reflect the character of the times in their confusion, inconsistency, and contradictions.251.1Itin.W. de Worc., 325.251.2No. 720.252.1No. 720.253.1722-6.253.2No. 725.254.1Square pyramids of iron which were shot out of crossbows. The word is of French origin and was originallyquarreaux.254.2Nos. 730, 731.254.3The modern confusion of this word withlivelihood—a word which properly means a lively condition—is one of the things that would be unpardonable did not usage pardon everything in language.254.4Nos. 733, 737, 738.255.1No. 737.255.2No. 710.255.3No. 713.256.1No. 721.256.2Nos. 721, 736, 737.257.1Rolls of Parl.vi. 232.257.2SeeNos. 742, 743.257.3An appeal of murder was a criminal prosecution instituted by the nearest relation of the murdered person, and a pardon from the king could not be pleaded in bar of this process.258.1Nos. 740, 746, 747.258.2Nos. 750, 755, 767.258.3Nos. 763, 764.259.1Nos. 461, 627, 692, 693.259.2On the 18th November 1471, Edmund Paston speaks of her as ‘my Aunt Ponynges.’ Before the 8th January 1472 she had married Sir George Browne. Nos. 789, 795.Changes and Counter-changesReckless government of EdwardIV.Within the space of ten brief years EdwardIV.had almost succeeded in convincing the world that he was no more capable of governing England than the rival whom he had deposed. Never did gambler throw away a fortune with more recklessness than Edward threw away the advantages which it had cost him and his friends so much hard fighting to secure. Just when he had reached the summit of his prosperity, he alienated the men to whom it was mainly due, and took no care to protect himself against the consequences of their concealed displeasure. The Earl of Warwick took him prisoner, then released him, then stirred up a new rebellion with impunity, and finally, returning to England once more, surprised and drove him out, notwithstanding the warnings of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. HenryVI.was proclaimed anew, and the cause of the House of York seemed to be lost for ever.260It was not so, however, in fact. Adversity quickened Edward’s energies in a manner almost miraculous, and in a few months he recovered his kingdom as suddenly as he had lost it. But it was not easy to believe, even after his most formidable enemy had been slain at Barnet, that a king who had shown himself so careless could maintain himself again upon the throne. Besides, men who desired a steady government had rested all their hopes in the restoration of HenryVI., and had found the new state of matters very promising, just before Edward reappeared. The king, it might have been hoped, would be governed this time by the Earl of Warwick, and not by Queen Margaret.The Pastons favour HenryVI.The Pastons, in particular, had very special reasons to rejoice in Henry’s restoration. They had a powerful friend in the Earl of Oxford, whose influence with Henry and the Earl of Warwick stood very high. Owing partly, perhaps, to Oxford’s intercession, the Duke of Norfolk had been obliged to quit his hold of Caister, and Sir John Paston had been reinstated in possession.260.1The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk sued to Oxford as humbly as the Pastons had been accustomed to sue to them, and the earl, from the very first, had been as careful of the interests of this family as if they had been his own. Even in the first days of the revolution—probably before Edward was yet driven out—he had sent a messenger to the Duchess of Norfolk from Colchester when John Paston was in London on a matter which concerned him alone. The family, indeed, seem at first to have built rather extravagant expectations upon the new turn of affairs, which John Paston felt it necessary to repress in writing to his mother. ‘As for the offices that ye wrote to my brother for and to me, they be for no poor men, but I trust we shall speed of other offices meetly for us, for my master the Earl of Oxford biddeth me ask and have. I trow my brother Sir John shall have the constableship of Norwich Castle, with £20 of fee. All the lords be agreed to it.’260.2Certainly, when they remembered the loss of Caister, which they had now regained—when they recalled his inability261to protect them against armed aggression, and the disappointment of their expectations of redress against the Duke of Suffolk for the attack on the lodge at Hellesdon—the Pastons had little cause to pray for the return of EdwardIV.They were completely committed to the cause of Henry; and Sir John Paston and his brother fought, no doubt in the Earl of Oxford’s company, against King Edward at Barnet.Sir John Paston and his brother in the battle of Barnet.A.D.1471.Both the brothers came out of the battle alive, but John Paston was wounded with an arrow in the right arm, beneath the elbow.261.1His wound, however, was not of a very serious character, and in little more than a fortnight he was able to write a letter with his own hand.261.2A more serious consideration was, how far the family prospects were injured by the part they had taken against what seemed now to be the winning side. Perhaps they might be effectually befriended by their cousin Lomner, who seems to have adhered to Edward, and who had promised them his good offices, if required. But on the whole the Pastons did not look despondingly upon the situation, and rather advised their cousin Lomner not to commit himself too much to the other side, as times might change. ‘I beseech you,’ writes Sir John Paston to his mother, ‘on my behalf to advise him to be well aware of his dealing or language as yet; for the world, I ensure you, is right queasy, as ye shall know within this month. The people here feareth it sore. God hath showed Himself marvellously like Him that made all, and can undo again when Him list, and I can think that by all likelihood He shall show Himself as marvellous again, and that in short time.’261.3In point of fact, Sir John Paston, when he wrote these words, had already heard of the landing of Queen Margaret and her son in the west, so that another conflict was certainly impending. His brother John, recovering from his wounds, but smarting severely in pocket from the cost of his surgery, looked forward to it with a sanguine hope that Edward would be defeated. ‘With God’s grace,’ he writes, ‘it shall not be long ere my wrongs and other men’s shall be redressed, for262the world was never so like to be ours as it is now. Wherefore I pray you let Lomner not be too busy yet.’262.1The issue, however, did not agree with his expectations.The battle of Tewkesbury.Four days later was fought the battle of Tewkesbury,262.2at which Margaret was defeated, and her son, though taken alive, put to death upon the field. Shortly afterwards she herself surrendered as a prisoner, while her chief captain, Somerset, was beheaded by the conqueror. The Lancastrian party was completely crushed; and before three weeks were over, King Henry himself had ended his days—no doubt he was murdered—within the Tower. Edward, instead of being driven out again, was now seated on the throne more firmly than he had ever been before; and the Paston brothers had to sue for the king’s pardon for the part they had taken in opposing him.Caister retaken by the Duke of Norfolk.Under these circumstances, it was only natural that the Duke of Norfolk, who had been forced to relinquish his claim to Caister under the government of HenryVI., should endeavour to reassert it against one who was in the eye of the law a rebel. On this occasion, however, the duke had recourse to stratagem, and one of his servants suddenly obtained possession of the place on Sunday, the 23rd June.262.3It is remarkable that we have no direct reference in the letters either to this event, or to the previous reinstatement of Sir John Paston during the restoration of HenryVI.; but a statement in the itinerary of William Worcester and Sir John Paston’s petition to the king in 1475262.4leave no doubt about the facts. After about six months of possession the Pastons were again driven out of Caister.262.5The Pastons had need of friends, and offers of friendship263were made to them by Earl Rivers, formerly Lord Scales.Earl Rivers offers his friendship.The engagement of Sir John Paston to Rivers’s kinswoman, Anne Haute,263.1still held; and though there was some talk of breaking it off, the earl was willing to do what lay in his power in behalf both of Sir John and of his brother. The latter was not very grateful for his offer, considering, apparently, that the earl’s influence with the king was not what it had been. ‘Lord Scales,’ he said, for so he continued to call him, ‘may do least with the great master. But he would depart over the sea as hastily as he may; and because he weeneth that I would go with him, as I had promised him ever, if he had kept forth his journey at that time, this is the cause that he will be my good lord, and help to get my pardon. The king is not best pleased with him, for that he desireth to depart; insomuch that the king hath said of him that whenever he hath most to do, then the Lord Scales will soonest ask leave to depart, and weeneth that it is most because of cowardice.’263.2Earl Rivers, in fact, was at this time meditating a voyage to Portugal, where he meant to go in an expedition against the Saracens, and he actually embarked on Christmas Eve following.263.3His friendship, perhaps, may have been unduly depreciated by the younger brother; for within twelve days John Paston actually obtained the king’s signature to a warrant for his pardon. This, it is true, may have been procured without his mediation; but in any case the family were not in the position of persons for whom no one would intercede. They had still so much influence in the world that within three months after he had been a second time dispossessed of Caister, Sir John made a serious effort to264ascertain whether the Duke of Norfolk might not be induced to let him have it back again.Sir J. Paston petitions the Duke of Norfolk to give back Caister.This he did, as was only natural, through the medium of his brother John, whose former services in the duke’s household gave him a claim to be heard in a matter touching the personal interests of the family. John Paston, however, wisely addressed himself, on this subject, rather to the duchess than to the duke; and though he received but a slender amount of encouragement, it was enough, for a few months, just to keep his hopes alive. ‘I cannot yet,’ he writes, ‘make my peace with my lord of Norfolk by no means, yet every man telleth me that my lady sayeth passing well of me always notwithstanding.’ This was written in the beginning of the year 1472, just seven months after Sir John’s second expulsion from Caister. But the Pastons continued their suit for four years more, and only recovered possession of the place on the Duke of Norfolk’s death, as we shall see hereafter.264.1260.1Seepreliminary note to Letter No. 879.260.2No. 759.261.1No. 774.261.2No. 776.261.3No. 774.262.1No. 776.262.2In connection with this battle, we have in No. 777 lists of the principal persons killed and beheaded after the fight, and of the knights made by King Edward upon the field. This document has never been published before.262.3W. Worc.Itin., 368.262.4No. 879.262.5Although the fact of this expulsion could not be gathered from the letters of this date, some allusion to it will be found in Letter 778, by which it seems that a horse of John Paston’s had been left at Caister, which the family endeavoured to reclaim by pretending that it was his brother Edmund’s. John Paston, however, seems to have preferred that the duke’s men should keep the animal, in the hope that they would make other concessions of greater value.263.1A transcript of an old pedigree with which I was favoured by Mr. J. R. Scott during the publication of these letters long ago, confirmed my conjecture that Anne Haute was the daughter of William Haute, whose marriage with Joan, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, is referred to in theExcerpta Historica, p. 249. She was, therefore, the niece of Richard, Earl Rivers, and cousin-german to EdwardIV.’s queen. It appears also that she had a sister named Alice, who was married to Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Treasurer of the Household to EdwardIV.This Sir John Fogge was the man whom RichardIII., having previously regarded him as a deadly enemy, sent for out of sanctuary, and took publicly by the hand at his accession, in token that he had forgotten all old grudges.263.2No. 778.263.3Nos. 793, 795.264.1Nos. 781, 796, 802.The Paston BrothersRoyal pardon to John Paston.John Paston obtained a ‘bill of pardon’ signed by the king, on Wednesday the 17th July. This, however, was not in itself a pardon, but only a warrant to the Chancellor to give him one under the Great Seal. The pardon with the Great Seal attached he hoped to obtain from the Chancellor on the following Friday. Meanwhile he wrote home to his mother to let no one know of it but Lady Calthorpe, who, for some reason not explained, seems to have been a confidante in this particular matter.264.2Perhaps this was as well, for as a matter of fact the pardon was not sealed that Friday, nor for many a long week, and even for some months after. It seems to have been promised, but it did not come. At Norwich some one called John Paston traitor and sought to pick quarrels with him; and how far he could rely upon the protection of the law was a question not free from anxiety. His brother, Sir John, urged him to take steps to have the pardon made sure265without delay; but it was only passed at length upon the 7th of February following, nearly seven months after the king had signed the bill for it. His brother, Sir John, obtained one on the 21st December.265.1The appeal of the widows.But John Paston stood in another danger, from which even a royal pardon could not by law protect him. The ‘appeal’265.2of the two widows still lay against him. The blood of their husbands cried for vengeance on the men who had defended Caister, and especially upon the captain of the garrison. Their appeal, however, was suspected to proceed from the instigation of others who would fain have encouraged them to keep it up longer than they cared to do themselves. Sir John Paston had information from some quarter which led him to believe that they had both found husbands again, and he recommended his brother to make inquiry, as in that case the appeals were abated. With regard to one of them, the intelligence turned out to be correct. A friend whom John Paston asked to go and converse with this woman, the widow of a fuller of South Walsham, reported that she was now married to one Tom Steward, dwelling in the parish of St. Giles in Norwich. She confessed to him that she never sued the appeal of her own accord, ‘but that she was by subtle craft brought to the New Inn at Norwich. And there was Master Southwell; and he entreated her to be my lord’s widow265.3by the space of an whole year next following; and thereto he made her to be bound in an obligation. And when that year was past he desired her to be my lord’s widow another year. And then she said that she had liever lose that that she had done than to lose that and more; and therefore she said plainly that she would no more of that matter; and so she took her an husband, which is the said Tom Steward. And she saith that it was full sore against her will that ever the matter went so far forth, for she had never none avail thereof, but it was sued to her great labor and loss, for she had never of my lord’s council but barely her costs to London.’265.4266The other widow, however, had not married again as Sir John had imagined. With her the right of appeal still remained, and she was induced to exercise it. In this she seems to have been encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk, simply for the sake of giving trouble to Sir John Paston; for though it was his brother and the men with him who were the most direct cause of her husband’s death, the appeal was not prosecuted against them, but against him only. In the following January the widow went up to London, and 100 shillings were given her to sue with. What came of the affair then we have no further record. Sir John Paston was warned of his danger both by his mother and by his brother; so perhaps he found the means to induce her to forbear proceeding further. An argument that has often enough stopped the course of justice would doubtless have been efficacious to put an end to such a purely vexatious prosecution. But it may be that the case was actually heard, and Sir John Paston acquitted.266.1Great mortality.In a social point of view the year of EdwardIV.’s restoration was not one of gladness. The internal peace of the kingdom was secured by the two sharp battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and by the execution of the Bastard Falconbridge after his attempt on London, but the land was visited with pestilence and the mortality was severe. Hosts of pilgrims travelled through the country, eager to escape the prevailing infection or to return thanks for their recovery from illness. The king and queen went on pilgrimage to Canterbury; and never, it was said, had there been so many pilgrims at a time.266.2‘It is the most universal death that ever I wist in England,’ says Sir John Paston; ‘for by my trouth I cannot hear by pilgrims that pass the country that any borough town in England is free from that sickness. God cease it when it pleaseth Him! Wherefore, for God’s sake let my mother take heed to my young brethren, that they be in none place where that sickness is reigning, nor that they disport not with none other young people which resorteth where any sickness is; and if there be any of that sickness dead or infect in Norwich, for God’s sake let her send them to some friends267of hers into the country, and do ye the same by mine advice. Let my mother rather remove her household into the country.’267.1The plague continued on till the beginning of winter. Margaret Paston does not seem to have removed into the country, but in writing to her son John in the beginning of November she notes the progress of the enemy. ‘Your cousin Berney of Witchingham is passed to God, whom God assoyle! Veyl’s wife, and London’s wife, and Picard the baker of Tombland, be gone also. All this household and this parish is as ye left it, blessed be God! We live in fear, but we wot not whither to flee for to be better than we be here.’267.2In the same letter Margaret Paston speaks of other troubles.Money matters.She had been obliged to borrow money for her son Sir John, and it was redemanded. The fortunes of the family were at a low ebb, and she knew not what to do without selling her woods—a thing which would seriously impair the value of Sir John’s succession to her estates, as there were so many wood sales then in Norfolk that no man was likely to give much more than within a hundred marks of their real value. She therefore urged Sir John in his own interest to consider what he could do to meet the difficulty. Already she had done much for him, and was not a little ashamed that it was known she had not reserved the means of paying the debts she had incurred for him. Sir John, however, returned for answer that he was utterly unable to make any shift for the money, and Margaret saw nothing for it but the humiliation of selling wood or land, or even furniture, to meet the emergency. ‘It is a death to me to think upon it,’ she wrote. She felt strongly that her son had not the art of managing with economy—that he spent double the money on his affairs that his father had done in matters of the same character, and, what grieved her even more, that duties which filial pride ought to have piously discharged long ago had been neglected owing to his extravagance. ‘At the reverence of God,’ she writes to his younger brother John, ‘advise him yet to beware of his expenses and guiding, that it be no shame to us all. It is a268shame and a thing that is much spoken of in this country that your father’s gravestone is not made.John Paston’s gravestone.For God’s love, let it be remembered and purveyed in haste. There hath been much more spent in waste than should have made that.’ Apparently direct remonstrances had failed to tell upon Sir John otherwise than to make him peevish and crusty. She therefore wrote to his younger brother instead. ‘Me thinketh by your brother that he is weary to write to me, and therefore I will not accumber him with writing to him. Ye may tell him as I write to you.’268.1Sir John Paston and Anne Haute.Thriftless, extravagant, and irresolute, Sir John Paston was not the man to succeed, either in money matters or in anything else. No wonder, then, that his engagement with Anne Haute became unsatisfactory, apparently to both parties alike. The manner in which he speaks of it at this time is indeed ambiguous; but there can be no doubt that in the end both parties desired to be released, and were for a long time only restrained by the cost of a dispensation, which was necessary to dissolve even such a contract as theirs. It would not have been surprising, indeed, if on the restoration of EdwardIV.Lord Rivers and the queen’s relations had shown themselves unfavourable to a match between their kinswoman and one who had fought against the king at Barnet. But whether this was the case or not we have no positive evidence to show. Only we know that in the course of this year the issue of the matter was regarded as uncertain. In September Sir John Paston writes that he had almost spoken with Mrs. Anne Haute, but had not done so. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this next term I hope to take one way with her or other. She is agreed to speak with me and she hopeth to do me ease, as she saith.’268.2A.D.1471, Oct.Six weeks later, in the end of October, the state of matters269is reported, not by Sir John Paston but by his brother. ‘As for Mrs. A. Haulte, the matter is moved by divers of the queen’s council, and of fear by R. Haulte; but he would it should be first of our motion, and we would it should come of them first—our matter should be the better.’269.1A.D.1472, Feb.In February following Sir John was admitted to another interview with the lady, but was unable to bring the matter to a decisive issue. ‘I have spoken,’ he says, ‘with Mrs. Anne Haulte at a pretty leisure, and, blessed be God, we be as far forth as we were tofore, and so I hope we shall continue. And I promised her that at the next leisure that I could find thereto, that I would come again and see her, which will take a leisure, as I deem now. Since this observance is overdone, I purpose not to tempt God no more so.’269.2A year later, in April 1473, he says that if he had six days more leisure, he ‘would have hoped to have been delivered of Mrs. Anne Haulte. Her friends, the queen, and Atcliff,’ he writes, ‘agreed to common and conclude with me, if I can find the mean to discharge her conscience, which I trust to God to do.’269.3But the discharge of her conscience required an application to the Court of Rome, and this involved a very unsentimental question of fees. ‘I have answer again from Rome,’ he writes in November following, ‘that there is the well of grace and salve sufficient for such a sore, and that I may be dispensed with; nevertheless my proctor there asketh a thousand ducats, as he deemeth. But Master Lacy, another Rome runner here, which knoweth my said proctor there, as he saith, as well as Bernard knew his shield, sayeth that he meaneth but an hundred ducats, or two hundred ducats at the most; wherefore after this cometh more. He wrote to me alsoquod Papa hoc facit hodiernis diebus multociens(that the Pope does this nowadays very frequently).’269.4Here we lose for a while nearly all further trace of the matter. Nothing more seems to have been done in it for a long time; for about fourteen months later we find Sir John Paston’s mother still wishing he were ‘delivered of Mrs.270Anne Haulte,’270.1and this is all we hear about it until after an interval of two years more, when, in February 1477, Sir John reports that the matter between him and Mrs. Anne Haulte had been ‘sore broken’ to Cardinal Bourchier, the Lord Chamberlain (Hastings), and himself, and that he was ‘in good hope.’270.2Finally, in August following, he expects that it ‘shall, with God’s grace, this term be at a perfect end.’270.3After this we hear nothing more of it. The pre-contract between Sir John and Anne Haulte seems therefore to have been at last annulled; and what is more remarkable, after it had been so, he was reported to be so influential at Court that another marriage was offered him ‘right nigh of the Queen’s blood.’270.4His mother, who writes to him on the subject in May 1478, had not been informed who the lady was, and neither can we tell the reader. We only know for certain that such a marriage never took effect.John Paston’s love affairs.John Paston, too, had his love affairs as well as his brother, but was more fortunate in not being bound helplessly to one lady for a long series of years. In the summer of 1471, he seems to have been endeavouring to win the hand of a certain Lady Elizabeth Bourchier; but here he did not prosper, for she was married a few months later to Lord Thomas Howard—the nobleman who more than forty years after was created Duke of Norfolk by King HenryVIII.for his victory over the Scots at Flodden.270.5As to his further proceedings in271search of a wife, we shall have occasion to speak of them hereafter.A.D.1472.Property was at all times a matter of more importance than love to that selfish generation; it was plainly, avowedly regarded by every one as the principal point in marrying.The Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester.In the royal family at this very time, the design of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to marry the widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, awoke the jealousy of his brother Clarence. For the lady was a younger sister of Clarence’s own wife, and co-heir to her father, Warwick the Kingmaker; and since the death of that great earl at Barnet, Clarence seems to have pounced on the whole of his immense domains without the slightest regard even to the rights of his widow, who, indeed, was now in disgrace, and was living in sanctuary at Beaulieu. The idea of being compelled to share the property with his brother was a thing that had never occurred to him, and he could not endure the thought. He endeavoured to prevent the proposed marriage by concealing the lady in London.271.1Disputes arose between the two brothers in consequence, and though they went to Sheen together to pardon, it was truly suspected to be ‘not all in charity.’ The king endeavoured to act as mediator, and entreated Clarence to show a fair amount of consideration to his brother; but his efforts met with very little success. ‘As it is said,’ writes Sir John Paston, ‘he answereth that he may well have my lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no livelode,’—the elder sister was to have all the inheritance, and the younger sister nothing! No wonder the writer adds, ‘So what will fall can I not say.’271.2What did fall, however, we know partly from the Paston Letters and partly from other sources. The Duke of Gloucester married the lady in spite of his brother’s threats. The dispute about the property raged violently more than two years, and almost defied the king’s efforts to keep his two brothers in subjection. In November 1473 we find it ‘said for certain that the Duke of Clarence maketh him big in that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester; but the king intendeth, in eschewing all inconvenients,272to be as big as they both, and to be a styffeler atween them. And some men think that under this there should be some other thing intended, and some treason conspired.’ Sir John Paston again did not know what to make of it, and was driven to reiterate his former remark, ‘So what shall fall can I not say.’272.1He only hoped the two brothers would yet be brought into agreement by the king’s award.272.2This hope was ultimately realised. Clarence at last consented with an ill will to let his sister-in-law have a share in her father’s lands; and an arrangement was made by a special Act of Parliament for the division of the property.272.3To satisfy the rapacity of the royal brothers, the claims of the Countess of Warwick were deliberately set aside, and the Act expressly treated her as if she had been a dead woman. So the matter was finally settled in May 1474. Yet possibly the Countess’s claims had some influence in hastening this settlement; for about a twelvemonth before she had been removed from her sanctuary at Beaulieu272.4and conveyed northwards by Sir James Tyrell. This, it appears, was not done avowedly by the king’s command; nevertheless rumour said that it was by his assent, and also that it was contrary to the will of Clarence.272.5Even so in the Paston family love affairs give place at this time to questions about property, in which their interests were very seriously at stake. Not only was there the great question between Sir John and the Duke of Norfolk about Caister, but there was also a minor question about the manor of Saxthorpe, the particulars of which are not very clear. On the 12th July 1471, Sir John Paston made a release of Saxthorpe and Titchwell and some other portions of the Fastolf estates, to David Husband and William Gyfford;272.6but this was probably only in the nature of a trust, for it appears that he did not intend to give up his interest in the property.A.D.1472, Jan.In January following, however, William Gurney entered into Saxthorpe and273endeavoured to hold a court there for the lord of the manor.John Paston interrupts the Manor Court at Saxthorpe.But John Paston hearing of what was doing, went thither accompanied by one man only to protect his brother’s interest, and charged the tenants, in the presence of Gurney himself and a number of his friends, to proceed no further. The protest was effective so far as to produce a momentary pause. But when it was seen that he had only one man with him, the proceedings were resumed; on which John Paston sat down by the steward and blotted his book with his finger as he wrote, and then called the tenants to witness that he had effectually interrupted the court in his brother’s right.273.1Gurney, however, did not give up the game, but warned another court to be kept on Holy Rood day (May 3rd, the Invention of the Holy Cross), when he would have collected the half-year’s rents from the tenants. The court was held, but before it was half over John Paston appeared again and persuaded him to stay proceedings once more, and to forbear gathering money until he and Sir John Paston should confer together in London. It seems to have required some tact and courtesy to get him to consent to this arrangement; for Henry Heydon, the son of the old ally of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, had raised a number of men-at-arms to give Gurney any assistance that might have been necessary, but the gentle demeanour of John Paston left him no pretext for calling in such aid.273.2The real claimant of the manor against Sir John Paston was Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, of whom, almost immediately after this, Henry Heydon bought both Saxthorpe and Titchwell. Sir John Paston, apparently, had been caught napping as usual, and knew nothing of the transaction. His mother wrote to him in dismay on the 5th June. Young Heydon had already taken possession. ‘We beat the bushes,’ said Margaret Paston, ‘and have the loss and the disworship, and other men have the birds. My lord hath false counsel and simple that adviseth him thereto. And, as it is told me, Guton is like to go the same way in haste. And as for Hellesdon and Drayton, I trow it is there it shall be. What shall fall of the remnant God knoweth,—I trow as evil or worse.’273.3274John Paston in like manner writes on the same day that Heydon was sure of Saxthorpe, and Lady Boleyn of Guton.274.1Sir John Paston was letting the family property slip out of his fingers, while on the other hand he was running into debt, and in his straitened circumstances he was considering what he could sell. His mother had threatened if he parted with any of his lands to disinherit him of double the amount;274.2so he was looking out for a purchaser of his wood at Sporle, which he was proposing to cut down.274.3But by far the most serious matter of all was Caister; ‘if we lose that,’ said Margaret Paston, ‘we lose the fairest flower of our garland.’ To her, too, it would be peculiarly annoying, for she expected to have little comfort in her own family mansion at Mautby, if the Duke of Norfolk had possession of Caister only three miles off.274.4Sir John Paston seeks to get Caister restored to him.On this subject, however, Sir John Paston does not appear to have been remiss. It was the first thing that occupied his thoughts after he had secured his pardon. In the beginning of the year he had been with Archbishop Nevill, who, though he had been in disgrace and committed to the Tower just after the battle of Barnet, seems at this time again to have had some influence in the world, at his residence called the Moor. By the archbishop’s means apparently he had received his pardon, and had spent a merrier Christmas in consequence; and he wrote to his mother that if he could have got any assurance of having Caister restored to him, he would have come away at once.274.5But it was not long before the archbishop again got into trouble. He was once more conducted to the Tower, and two days afterwards at midnight he was put on board a ship and conveyed out to sea.274.6Nothing more therefore was to be hoped for from the archbishop’s friendship; but Sir John Paston did not cease to use what means lay in his power. His brother made incessant applications on his behalf to the Duchess of Norfolk, and to the duke’s council at Framlingham. To be reinstated Sir John was willing to275make the duke a present of £40, an offer which the council acknowledged was ‘more than reasonable.’ If the matter were their own, they gave John Paston to understand, they could easily come to an understanding with him, but my lord was intractable. The duchess herself declined to interfere in the matter until my lord and the council were agreed, and the latter said that when they had mooted it to the duke ‘he gave them such an answer that none of them all would tell it.’ They suggested, however, that the duke might be swayed by more influential opinions, and that if Sir John could get my Lord Chamberlain Hastings, or some other nobleman of mark, to speak to the duke in his favour, there was great probability that he would attain his object.275.1The Duchess of Norfolk.A favourable opportunity, however, presented itself shortly afterwards for urging a petition for justice on the duke himself. After ten years or more of married life the Duchess of Norfolk was at length with child. Duke and duchess received everywhere congratulations from their friends and dependants. Among the rest Sir John Paston offered his to my lady herself, in a vein of banter that seems slightly to have offended her, though not perhaps so much by its grossness, which was excessive, as by the undue familiarity exhibited in such a tone of address.275.2The Duke of Norfolk was going to be with his wife on the occasion of her lying-in, and John Paston, as an old servant of the family, went to give his attendance at Framlingham. It was resolved that the utmost should be made of the opportunity. John Paston drew up a petition in behalf of his brother to present to the duke, while Sir John Paston himself, then in London, obtained letters from the king to both the duke and duchess, and also to their council. The king seems to have been particularly interested in the case, and assured Sir John that if his letters were ineffectual justice should be done in the matter without delay. The letters were despatched by a special messenger, ‘a man of worship’ in high favour with the king himself. With such powerful influence engaged on his behalf, most probably Sir John did not care to ask for letters from Lord Hastings, which his brother was276even then expecting. But he suggested, if my lady’s lying-in should be at Norwich instead of Framlingham, that his mother might obtain admittance to her chamber, and that her persuasions would be of considerable use.276.1Birth of a daughter.The duchess was confined at Framlingham, and gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of Anne. Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, came down to christen the child, and he, too, took an opportunity during his brief stay to say a word to my lady about Caister and the claim of Sir John Paston to restitution. But exhortations, royal letters, and all were thrown away upon the Duke of Norfolk. My lady promised secretly to another person to favour Sir John’s suit, but the fact of her giving such a promise was not to be communicated to any one else. John Paston was made as uncomfortable as possible by the manner in which his representations were received. ‘I let you plainly wit,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘I am not the man I was, for I was never so rough in my master’s conceit as I am now, and that he told me himself before Richard Southwell, Tymperley, Sir W. Brandon, and twenty more; so that they that lowered now laugh upon me.’276.2Sir John Paston seeks to enter Parliament.But although all arts were unsuccessful to bend the will of the Duke of Norfolk on this subject, Sir John Paston seems to have enjoyed the favour and approval of the duchess in offering himself as a candidate for the borough of Maldon in the Parliament of 1472. His friend James Arblaster wrote a letter to the bailiff of Maldon suggesting the great advantage it would be to the town to have for one of their two burgesses ‘such a man of worship and of wit as were towards my said lady,’ and advising all her tenants to vote for Sir John Paston, who not only had this great qualification, but also possessed the additional advantage of being in high favour with my Lord Chamberlain Hastings.276.3There was, however, some uncertainty as to the result, and his brother John suggested in writing to him that if he missed being elected for Maldon he might be for some other place. There were a dozen towns in277England that ought to return members to Parliament which had chosen none, and by the influence of my Lord Chamberlain he might get returned for one of them.277.1In point of fact, I find that Sir John Paston was not returned for Maldon to the Parliament of 1472; and whether he sat for any other borough I am not certain, though there is an expression in the correspondence a little later that might lead one to suppose so.277.2But that he went up to London we know by a letter dated on the 4th November;277.3and though he went to Calais, and even visited the court of the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy at Ghent early in the following year, when Parliament was no longer sitting, he had returned to London long before it had ended its second session in April 1473.277.4It is also clear that he took a strong interest in its proceedings; but this was only natural. That Parliament was summoned avowedly to provide for the safety of the kingdom. Although the Earl of Warwick was now dead, and Margaret of Anjou a prisoner at Wallingford,277.5and the line of HenryVI.extinct,Fear of Invasion.it was still anticipated that the Earl of Oxford and others, supported by the power of France, would make a descent upon the coast. Commissions of array were issued at various times for defence against apprehended invasion.277.6Information was therefore laid before Parliament of the danger in which the kingdom stood from a confederacy of the king’s ‘ancient and mortal enemies environing the same,’ and a message was sent to the Commons to the effect that the king intended to equip an expedition in resistance of their malice.277.7278The result was that, in November 1472, the Commons agreed to a levy of 13,000 archers, and voted a tenth for their support, which was to be levied before Candlemas following.278.1An income and property tax was not a permanent institution of our ancestors, but when it came it pressed heavily; so that a demand of two shillings in the pound was not at all unprecedented. A higher tax had been imposed four years before, and also in 1453 by the Parliament of Reading. Still, a sudden demand of two shillings in the pound, to be levied within the next four months, was an uncomfortable thing to meet; and owing either to its unpopularity or the difficulty of arranging the machinery for its collection, it was not put in force within the time appointed.A.D.1473.But in the following spring, when the Parliament had begun its second session, collectors were named throughout the country, and it was notified that some further demands were to be made upon the national pocket. On the 26th March, John Paston writes that his cousin John Blennerhasset had been appointed collector in Norfolk, and asks his brother Sir John in London to get him excused from serving in ‘that thankless office,’ as he had not a foot of ground in the county. At the same time the writer expresses the sentiments of himself and his neighbours in language quite sufficiently emphatic: ‘I pray God send you the Holy Ghost among you in the Parliament House, and rather the Devil, we say, than ye should grant any more taxes.’278.2Unfortunately, before the Parliament ended its sittings, it granted a whole fifteenth and tenth additional.278.3Family jars.At this time we find that there was some further unpleasant feeling within the Paston family circle. Margaret Paston had several times expressed her discontent with the thriftless extravagance of her eldest son, and even the second, John, did not stand continually in her good graces. A third brother, Edmund, was now just coming out in life, and as a preparation for it he too had to endure continual reproofs and remonstrances from his mother. Besides these, there were at home three other sons and one daughter, of whom we shall speak hereafter. The young generation apparently was a little too much for the lone widow;279and, finding her elder sons not very satisfactory advisers, she did what lone women are very apt to do under such circumstances—took counsel in most of the affairs of this life of a confidential priest. In fact, she was a good and pious woman, to whom in her advancing years this world appeared more and more in its true character as a mere preparation for the next. She had now withdrawn from city life at Norwich, and was dwelling on her own family estate at Mautby. Bodily infirmities, perhaps—though we hear nothing explicitly said of them—made it somewhat less easy for her to move about; and she desired to obtain a licence from the Bishop of Norwich to have the sacrament in her own chapel.279.1She was also thinking, we know, of getting her fourth son Walter educated for the priesthood; and she wished her own spiritual adviser, Sir James Gloys,279.2to conduct him to Oxford, and see him put in the right way to pursue his studies creditably. She hoped, she said, to have more joy of him than of his elder brothers; and though she desired him to be a priest, she wished him not to take any orders that should be binding until he had reached the age of four-and-twenty. ‘I will love him better,’ she said, ‘to be a good secular man than a lewd priest.’279.3Sir James Gloys.But the influence of this spiritual adviser over their mother was by no means agreeable to the two eldest sons. John Paston speaks of him in a letter to his brother as ‘the proud, peevish, and ill-disposed priest to us all,’ and complains grievously of his interference in family affairs. ‘Many quarrels,’ he writes, ‘are picked to get my brother Edmund and me out of her house. We go not to bed unchidden lightly; all that we do is ill done, and all that Sir James and Pecock doth is well done. Sir James and I be twain. We280fell out before my mother with “Thou proud priest,” and “Thou proud squire,” my mother taking his part; so I have almost beshut the bolt as for my mother’s house; yet summer shall be done or I get me any master.’280.1John Paston, in fact, was obliged to put up with it for some months longer, and though he afterwards reports that Sir James was always ‘chopping at him,’ and seeking to irritate him in his mother’s presence, he had found out that it was not altogether the best policy to rail at him in return. So he learned to smile a little at the most severe speeches, and remark quietly, ‘It is good hearing of these old tales.’280.2This mode of meeting the attack, if it did not soften Sir James’s bitterness, may have made Margaret Paston less willing to take his part against her son. At all events we hear no more of these encounters. Sir James Gloys, however, died about twelve months later.280.3

Appeal of two widows.We have but a word or two to say as to matters affecting the family history of the Pastons during this brief interval. At the siege of Caister two men of the Duke of Norfolk’s were killed by the fire of the garrison. The duke’s council, not satisfied with having turned the Pastons out, now prompted the widows of these two men to sue an ‘appeal’257.3against John Paston and those who acted with him. A true bill was also found against them for felony at the Norwich session of June 1470, in which Sir John Paston was included as an accessory; but the indictment was held to be void by some of Paston’s258friends on the ground that two of the jury would not agree to it. This objection I presume must have been held sufficient to quash the proceedings in this form, of which we hear no more.258.1The ‘appeal,’ however, remained to be disposed of, as we shall see by and by.Compromise touching Fastolf’s will.With respect to the title claimed by Sir John Paston in Caister and the performance of Fastolf’s will, a compromise was arranged with Bishop Waynflete, who was now recognised as sole executor. It was agreed that as the whole of Fastolf’s lands in Essex, Surrey, Norfolk, and Suffolk had been much wasted by the disputes between the executors, the manors should be divided between Sir John Paston and the bishop, the former promising to surrender the title-deeds of all except the manor of Caister. The project of a college in that place was given up, and a foundation of seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalen College, Oxford, was agreed to in its place.258.2Soon afterwards the Duke of Norfolk executed a release to the bishop of the manor of Caister and all the lands conveyed to him by Yelverton and Howes as executors of Sir John Fastolf, acknowledging that the bargain made with them was contrary to Fastolf’s will, and receiving from the bishop the sum of 500 marks for the reconveyance. The duke accordingly sent notice to his servants and tenants to depart out of the manor as soon as they could conveniently remove such goods and furniture as he and they had placed in it.258.3Thus by the mediation of Bishop Waynflete the long-standing disputes were nearly settled during the period of HenryVI.’s brief restoration. But, probably in consequence of the disturbed state of the country and the return of EdwardIV., the duke’s orders for the evacuation of Caister were not immediately obeyed, and, as we shall see hereafter, the place remained in Norfolk’s possession for the space of three whole years.Elizabeth Poynings remarries.About this time, or rather, perhaps, two years later, Sir John Paston’s aunt, Elizabeth Poynings, terminated her widowhood by marrying Sir George Browne of Betchworth Castle in Surrey. We have already seen how she was dispossessed of259her lands soon after her first husband’s death by the Countess of Northumberland. They were afterwards seized by the Crown as forfeited, and granted by patent to Edmund Grey, Earl of Kent, but without any title having been duly found for the king. The Earl of Kent after a time gave up possession of them to the Earl of Essex, but this did not make things pleasanter for Elizabeth Poynings; while other of her lands were occupied by Sir Robert Fenys in violation, as she alleged, of her husband’s will.259.1The date of her second marriage was probably about the end of the year 1471.259.2These matters we are bound to mention as incidents in the history of the family. Of Elizabeth Paston, however, and her second husband we do not hear much henceforward; in the Letters after this period the domestic interest centres chiefly round the two John Pastons, Sir John and his brother.246.3The story that the Earl of Warwick had gone to France to negotiate the marriage of Edward with Bona of Savoy, when Edward frustrated his diplomacy by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, is certainly not in accordance with facts. But the doubts of some modern historians that the project of such a match was ever entertained are quite set at rest by the evidence of two letters which have been recently printed in some of the publications of the Société de l’Histoire de France, to which attention is called by Mr. Kirk in hisHistory of Charles the Bold(vol. i. p. 415 note, and ii. p. 15 note). It appears that although the earl had not actually gone to France, he was expected there just at the time the secret of the king’s marriage was revealed. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt—indeed there is something like positive evidence to prove—that the first cause of the Earl of Warwick’s alienation from the king arose out of this matter. I ought to add that the merit of placing before us for the first time a clear view of the consequences of EdwardIV.’s marriage, in its bearing alike on the domestic history of England and on Edward’s relations with France and Burgundy, is due to Mr. Kirk.247.1W. Worc., 513-14.247.2Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 551.248.1The two eldest daughters of EdwardIV.were born in the years 1465 and 1466; the third, Cecily, in the latter end of 1469.SeeGreen’sPrincesses, vol. iii.; also an article by Sir Frederic Madden, in theGentleman’s Magazinefor 1831 (vol. ci. pt. i., p. 24).248.2He seems to have left Norwich on the 21st. There are Privy Seals dated on that day, some at Norwich and some at Walsingham.248.3Contin. Chron. Croyl.p. 542.249.1Seethe petition printed by Halliwell in his notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 47-51.249.2Seethe proclamation immediately preceding the above petition in the notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 46-7.249.3No. 719.249.4No. 714.250.1Contin. Chron. Croyl.pp. 542, 551. There are Privy Seals dated on the 2nd August at Coventry; on the 9th, 12th, and 13th at Warwick; and on the 25th and 28th at Middleham.250.2No. 736.250.3At least William Worcester, in hisItinerary, p. 321, seems to indicate in very bad Latin that the siege began on the Monday before St. Bartholomew’s Day, which in 1469 would be the 21st August. Yet a very bewildering sentence just before would imply that the siege began either on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (15th August) or on St. Bartholomew’s Day itself (24th August), and that it lasted five weeks and three days. But we know that the castle surrendered on the 26th September, so that if the duration of the siege was five weeks and three days it must have begun on the 19th August, a different date still. William Worcester’s habit of continually jotting down memoranda in his commonplace books has been of very great service to the historian of this disordered epoch; but his memoranda reflect the character of the times in their confusion, inconsistency, and contradictions.251.1Itin.W. de Worc., 325.251.2No. 720.252.1No. 720.253.1722-6.253.2No. 725.254.1Square pyramids of iron which were shot out of crossbows. The word is of French origin and was originallyquarreaux.254.2Nos. 730, 731.254.3The modern confusion of this word withlivelihood—a word which properly means a lively condition—is one of the things that would be unpardonable did not usage pardon everything in language.254.4Nos. 733, 737, 738.255.1No. 737.255.2No. 710.255.3No. 713.256.1No. 721.256.2Nos. 721, 736, 737.257.1Rolls of Parl.vi. 232.257.2SeeNos. 742, 743.257.3An appeal of murder was a criminal prosecution instituted by the nearest relation of the murdered person, and a pardon from the king could not be pleaded in bar of this process.258.1Nos. 740, 746, 747.258.2Nos. 750, 755, 767.258.3Nos. 763, 764.259.1Nos. 461, 627, 692, 693.259.2On the 18th November 1471, Edmund Paston speaks of her as ‘my Aunt Ponynges.’ Before the 8th January 1472 she had married Sir George Browne. Nos. 789, 795.Changes and Counter-changesReckless government of EdwardIV.Within the space of ten brief years EdwardIV.had almost succeeded in convincing the world that he was no more capable of governing England than the rival whom he had deposed. Never did gambler throw away a fortune with more recklessness than Edward threw away the advantages which it had cost him and his friends so much hard fighting to secure. Just when he had reached the summit of his prosperity, he alienated the men to whom it was mainly due, and took no care to protect himself against the consequences of their concealed displeasure. The Earl of Warwick took him prisoner, then released him, then stirred up a new rebellion with impunity, and finally, returning to England once more, surprised and drove him out, notwithstanding the warnings of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. HenryVI.was proclaimed anew, and the cause of the House of York seemed to be lost for ever.260It was not so, however, in fact. Adversity quickened Edward’s energies in a manner almost miraculous, and in a few months he recovered his kingdom as suddenly as he had lost it. But it was not easy to believe, even after his most formidable enemy had been slain at Barnet, that a king who had shown himself so careless could maintain himself again upon the throne. Besides, men who desired a steady government had rested all their hopes in the restoration of HenryVI., and had found the new state of matters very promising, just before Edward reappeared. The king, it might have been hoped, would be governed this time by the Earl of Warwick, and not by Queen Margaret.The Pastons favour HenryVI.The Pastons, in particular, had very special reasons to rejoice in Henry’s restoration. They had a powerful friend in the Earl of Oxford, whose influence with Henry and the Earl of Warwick stood very high. Owing partly, perhaps, to Oxford’s intercession, the Duke of Norfolk had been obliged to quit his hold of Caister, and Sir John Paston had been reinstated in possession.260.1The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk sued to Oxford as humbly as the Pastons had been accustomed to sue to them, and the earl, from the very first, had been as careful of the interests of this family as if they had been his own. Even in the first days of the revolution—probably before Edward was yet driven out—he had sent a messenger to the Duchess of Norfolk from Colchester when John Paston was in London on a matter which concerned him alone. The family, indeed, seem at first to have built rather extravagant expectations upon the new turn of affairs, which John Paston felt it necessary to repress in writing to his mother. ‘As for the offices that ye wrote to my brother for and to me, they be for no poor men, but I trust we shall speed of other offices meetly for us, for my master the Earl of Oxford biddeth me ask and have. I trow my brother Sir John shall have the constableship of Norwich Castle, with £20 of fee. All the lords be agreed to it.’260.2Certainly, when they remembered the loss of Caister, which they had now regained—when they recalled his inability261to protect them against armed aggression, and the disappointment of their expectations of redress against the Duke of Suffolk for the attack on the lodge at Hellesdon—the Pastons had little cause to pray for the return of EdwardIV.They were completely committed to the cause of Henry; and Sir John Paston and his brother fought, no doubt in the Earl of Oxford’s company, against King Edward at Barnet.Sir John Paston and his brother in the battle of Barnet.A.D.1471.Both the brothers came out of the battle alive, but John Paston was wounded with an arrow in the right arm, beneath the elbow.261.1His wound, however, was not of a very serious character, and in little more than a fortnight he was able to write a letter with his own hand.261.2A more serious consideration was, how far the family prospects were injured by the part they had taken against what seemed now to be the winning side. Perhaps they might be effectually befriended by their cousin Lomner, who seems to have adhered to Edward, and who had promised them his good offices, if required. But on the whole the Pastons did not look despondingly upon the situation, and rather advised their cousin Lomner not to commit himself too much to the other side, as times might change. ‘I beseech you,’ writes Sir John Paston to his mother, ‘on my behalf to advise him to be well aware of his dealing or language as yet; for the world, I ensure you, is right queasy, as ye shall know within this month. The people here feareth it sore. God hath showed Himself marvellously like Him that made all, and can undo again when Him list, and I can think that by all likelihood He shall show Himself as marvellous again, and that in short time.’261.3In point of fact, Sir John Paston, when he wrote these words, had already heard of the landing of Queen Margaret and her son in the west, so that another conflict was certainly impending. His brother John, recovering from his wounds, but smarting severely in pocket from the cost of his surgery, looked forward to it with a sanguine hope that Edward would be defeated. ‘With God’s grace,’ he writes, ‘it shall not be long ere my wrongs and other men’s shall be redressed, for262the world was never so like to be ours as it is now. Wherefore I pray you let Lomner not be too busy yet.’262.1The issue, however, did not agree with his expectations.The battle of Tewkesbury.Four days later was fought the battle of Tewkesbury,262.2at which Margaret was defeated, and her son, though taken alive, put to death upon the field. Shortly afterwards she herself surrendered as a prisoner, while her chief captain, Somerset, was beheaded by the conqueror. The Lancastrian party was completely crushed; and before three weeks were over, King Henry himself had ended his days—no doubt he was murdered—within the Tower. Edward, instead of being driven out again, was now seated on the throne more firmly than he had ever been before; and the Paston brothers had to sue for the king’s pardon for the part they had taken in opposing him.Caister retaken by the Duke of Norfolk.Under these circumstances, it was only natural that the Duke of Norfolk, who had been forced to relinquish his claim to Caister under the government of HenryVI., should endeavour to reassert it against one who was in the eye of the law a rebel. On this occasion, however, the duke had recourse to stratagem, and one of his servants suddenly obtained possession of the place on Sunday, the 23rd June.262.3It is remarkable that we have no direct reference in the letters either to this event, or to the previous reinstatement of Sir John Paston during the restoration of HenryVI.; but a statement in the itinerary of William Worcester and Sir John Paston’s petition to the king in 1475262.4leave no doubt about the facts. After about six months of possession the Pastons were again driven out of Caister.262.5The Pastons had need of friends, and offers of friendship263were made to them by Earl Rivers, formerly Lord Scales.Earl Rivers offers his friendship.The engagement of Sir John Paston to Rivers’s kinswoman, Anne Haute,263.1still held; and though there was some talk of breaking it off, the earl was willing to do what lay in his power in behalf both of Sir John and of his brother. The latter was not very grateful for his offer, considering, apparently, that the earl’s influence with the king was not what it had been. ‘Lord Scales,’ he said, for so he continued to call him, ‘may do least with the great master. But he would depart over the sea as hastily as he may; and because he weeneth that I would go with him, as I had promised him ever, if he had kept forth his journey at that time, this is the cause that he will be my good lord, and help to get my pardon. The king is not best pleased with him, for that he desireth to depart; insomuch that the king hath said of him that whenever he hath most to do, then the Lord Scales will soonest ask leave to depart, and weeneth that it is most because of cowardice.’263.2Earl Rivers, in fact, was at this time meditating a voyage to Portugal, where he meant to go in an expedition against the Saracens, and he actually embarked on Christmas Eve following.263.3His friendship, perhaps, may have been unduly depreciated by the younger brother; for within twelve days John Paston actually obtained the king’s signature to a warrant for his pardon. This, it is true, may have been procured without his mediation; but in any case the family were not in the position of persons for whom no one would intercede. They had still so much influence in the world that within three months after he had been a second time dispossessed of Caister, Sir John made a serious effort to264ascertain whether the Duke of Norfolk might not be induced to let him have it back again.Sir J. Paston petitions the Duke of Norfolk to give back Caister.This he did, as was only natural, through the medium of his brother John, whose former services in the duke’s household gave him a claim to be heard in a matter touching the personal interests of the family. John Paston, however, wisely addressed himself, on this subject, rather to the duchess than to the duke; and though he received but a slender amount of encouragement, it was enough, for a few months, just to keep his hopes alive. ‘I cannot yet,’ he writes, ‘make my peace with my lord of Norfolk by no means, yet every man telleth me that my lady sayeth passing well of me always notwithstanding.’ This was written in the beginning of the year 1472, just seven months after Sir John’s second expulsion from Caister. But the Pastons continued their suit for four years more, and only recovered possession of the place on the Duke of Norfolk’s death, as we shall see hereafter.264.1260.1Seepreliminary note to Letter No. 879.260.2No. 759.261.1No. 774.261.2No. 776.261.3No. 774.262.1No. 776.262.2In connection with this battle, we have in No. 777 lists of the principal persons killed and beheaded after the fight, and of the knights made by King Edward upon the field. This document has never been published before.262.3W. Worc.Itin., 368.262.4No. 879.262.5Although the fact of this expulsion could not be gathered from the letters of this date, some allusion to it will be found in Letter 778, by which it seems that a horse of John Paston’s had been left at Caister, which the family endeavoured to reclaim by pretending that it was his brother Edmund’s. John Paston, however, seems to have preferred that the duke’s men should keep the animal, in the hope that they would make other concessions of greater value.263.1A transcript of an old pedigree with which I was favoured by Mr. J. R. Scott during the publication of these letters long ago, confirmed my conjecture that Anne Haute was the daughter of William Haute, whose marriage with Joan, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, is referred to in theExcerpta Historica, p. 249. She was, therefore, the niece of Richard, Earl Rivers, and cousin-german to EdwardIV.’s queen. It appears also that she had a sister named Alice, who was married to Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Treasurer of the Household to EdwardIV.This Sir John Fogge was the man whom RichardIII., having previously regarded him as a deadly enemy, sent for out of sanctuary, and took publicly by the hand at his accession, in token that he had forgotten all old grudges.263.2No. 778.263.3Nos. 793, 795.264.1Nos. 781, 796, 802.The Paston BrothersRoyal pardon to John Paston.John Paston obtained a ‘bill of pardon’ signed by the king, on Wednesday the 17th July. This, however, was not in itself a pardon, but only a warrant to the Chancellor to give him one under the Great Seal. The pardon with the Great Seal attached he hoped to obtain from the Chancellor on the following Friday. Meanwhile he wrote home to his mother to let no one know of it but Lady Calthorpe, who, for some reason not explained, seems to have been a confidante in this particular matter.264.2Perhaps this was as well, for as a matter of fact the pardon was not sealed that Friday, nor for many a long week, and even for some months after. It seems to have been promised, but it did not come. At Norwich some one called John Paston traitor and sought to pick quarrels with him; and how far he could rely upon the protection of the law was a question not free from anxiety. His brother, Sir John, urged him to take steps to have the pardon made sure265without delay; but it was only passed at length upon the 7th of February following, nearly seven months after the king had signed the bill for it. His brother, Sir John, obtained one on the 21st December.265.1The appeal of the widows.But John Paston stood in another danger, from which even a royal pardon could not by law protect him. The ‘appeal’265.2of the two widows still lay against him. The blood of their husbands cried for vengeance on the men who had defended Caister, and especially upon the captain of the garrison. Their appeal, however, was suspected to proceed from the instigation of others who would fain have encouraged them to keep it up longer than they cared to do themselves. Sir John Paston had information from some quarter which led him to believe that they had both found husbands again, and he recommended his brother to make inquiry, as in that case the appeals were abated. With regard to one of them, the intelligence turned out to be correct. A friend whom John Paston asked to go and converse with this woman, the widow of a fuller of South Walsham, reported that she was now married to one Tom Steward, dwelling in the parish of St. Giles in Norwich. She confessed to him that she never sued the appeal of her own accord, ‘but that she was by subtle craft brought to the New Inn at Norwich. And there was Master Southwell; and he entreated her to be my lord’s widow265.3by the space of an whole year next following; and thereto he made her to be bound in an obligation. And when that year was past he desired her to be my lord’s widow another year. And then she said that she had liever lose that that she had done than to lose that and more; and therefore she said plainly that she would no more of that matter; and so she took her an husband, which is the said Tom Steward. And she saith that it was full sore against her will that ever the matter went so far forth, for she had never none avail thereof, but it was sued to her great labor and loss, for she had never of my lord’s council but barely her costs to London.’265.4266The other widow, however, had not married again as Sir John had imagined. With her the right of appeal still remained, and she was induced to exercise it. In this she seems to have been encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk, simply for the sake of giving trouble to Sir John Paston; for though it was his brother and the men with him who were the most direct cause of her husband’s death, the appeal was not prosecuted against them, but against him only. In the following January the widow went up to London, and 100 shillings were given her to sue with. What came of the affair then we have no further record. Sir John Paston was warned of his danger both by his mother and by his brother; so perhaps he found the means to induce her to forbear proceeding further. An argument that has often enough stopped the course of justice would doubtless have been efficacious to put an end to such a purely vexatious prosecution. But it may be that the case was actually heard, and Sir John Paston acquitted.266.1Great mortality.In a social point of view the year of EdwardIV.’s restoration was not one of gladness. The internal peace of the kingdom was secured by the two sharp battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and by the execution of the Bastard Falconbridge after his attempt on London, but the land was visited with pestilence and the mortality was severe. Hosts of pilgrims travelled through the country, eager to escape the prevailing infection or to return thanks for their recovery from illness. The king and queen went on pilgrimage to Canterbury; and never, it was said, had there been so many pilgrims at a time.266.2‘It is the most universal death that ever I wist in England,’ says Sir John Paston; ‘for by my trouth I cannot hear by pilgrims that pass the country that any borough town in England is free from that sickness. God cease it when it pleaseth Him! Wherefore, for God’s sake let my mother take heed to my young brethren, that they be in none place where that sickness is reigning, nor that they disport not with none other young people which resorteth where any sickness is; and if there be any of that sickness dead or infect in Norwich, for God’s sake let her send them to some friends267of hers into the country, and do ye the same by mine advice. Let my mother rather remove her household into the country.’267.1The plague continued on till the beginning of winter. Margaret Paston does not seem to have removed into the country, but in writing to her son John in the beginning of November she notes the progress of the enemy. ‘Your cousin Berney of Witchingham is passed to God, whom God assoyle! Veyl’s wife, and London’s wife, and Picard the baker of Tombland, be gone also. All this household and this parish is as ye left it, blessed be God! We live in fear, but we wot not whither to flee for to be better than we be here.’267.2In the same letter Margaret Paston speaks of other troubles.Money matters.She had been obliged to borrow money for her son Sir John, and it was redemanded. The fortunes of the family were at a low ebb, and she knew not what to do without selling her woods—a thing which would seriously impair the value of Sir John’s succession to her estates, as there were so many wood sales then in Norfolk that no man was likely to give much more than within a hundred marks of their real value. She therefore urged Sir John in his own interest to consider what he could do to meet the difficulty. Already she had done much for him, and was not a little ashamed that it was known she had not reserved the means of paying the debts she had incurred for him. Sir John, however, returned for answer that he was utterly unable to make any shift for the money, and Margaret saw nothing for it but the humiliation of selling wood or land, or even furniture, to meet the emergency. ‘It is a death to me to think upon it,’ she wrote. She felt strongly that her son had not the art of managing with economy—that he spent double the money on his affairs that his father had done in matters of the same character, and, what grieved her even more, that duties which filial pride ought to have piously discharged long ago had been neglected owing to his extravagance. ‘At the reverence of God,’ she writes to his younger brother John, ‘advise him yet to beware of his expenses and guiding, that it be no shame to us all. It is a268shame and a thing that is much spoken of in this country that your father’s gravestone is not made.John Paston’s gravestone.For God’s love, let it be remembered and purveyed in haste. There hath been much more spent in waste than should have made that.’ Apparently direct remonstrances had failed to tell upon Sir John otherwise than to make him peevish and crusty. She therefore wrote to his younger brother instead. ‘Me thinketh by your brother that he is weary to write to me, and therefore I will not accumber him with writing to him. Ye may tell him as I write to you.’268.1Sir John Paston and Anne Haute.Thriftless, extravagant, and irresolute, Sir John Paston was not the man to succeed, either in money matters or in anything else. No wonder, then, that his engagement with Anne Haute became unsatisfactory, apparently to both parties alike. The manner in which he speaks of it at this time is indeed ambiguous; but there can be no doubt that in the end both parties desired to be released, and were for a long time only restrained by the cost of a dispensation, which was necessary to dissolve even such a contract as theirs. It would not have been surprising, indeed, if on the restoration of EdwardIV.Lord Rivers and the queen’s relations had shown themselves unfavourable to a match between their kinswoman and one who had fought against the king at Barnet. But whether this was the case or not we have no positive evidence to show. Only we know that in the course of this year the issue of the matter was regarded as uncertain. In September Sir John Paston writes that he had almost spoken with Mrs. Anne Haute, but had not done so. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this next term I hope to take one way with her or other. She is agreed to speak with me and she hopeth to do me ease, as she saith.’268.2A.D.1471, Oct.Six weeks later, in the end of October, the state of matters269is reported, not by Sir John Paston but by his brother. ‘As for Mrs. A. Haulte, the matter is moved by divers of the queen’s council, and of fear by R. Haulte; but he would it should be first of our motion, and we would it should come of them first—our matter should be the better.’269.1A.D.1472, Feb.In February following Sir John was admitted to another interview with the lady, but was unable to bring the matter to a decisive issue. ‘I have spoken,’ he says, ‘with Mrs. Anne Haulte at a pretty leisure, and, blessed be God, we be as far forth as we were tofore, and so I hope we shall continue. And I promised her that at the next leisure that I could find thereto, that I would come again and see her, which will take a leisure, as I deem now. Since this observance is overdone, I purpose not to tempt God no more so.’269.2A year later, in April 1473, he says that if he had six days more leisure, he ‘would have hoped to have been delivered of Mrs. Anne Haulte. Her friends, the queen, and Atcliff,’ he writes, ‘agreed to common and conclude with me, if I can find the mean to discharge her conscience, which I trust to God to do.’269.3But the discharge of her conscience required an application to the Court of Rome, and this involved a very unsentimental question of fees. ‘I have answer again from Rome,’ he writes in November following, ‘that there is the well of grace and salve sufficient for such a sore, and that I may be dispensed with; nevertheless my proctor there asketh a thousand ducats, as he deemeth. But Master Lacy, another Rome runner here, which knoweth my said proctor there, as he saith, as well as Bernard knew his shield, sayeth that he meaneth but an hundred ducats, or two hundred ducats at the most; wherefore after this cometh more. He wrote to me alsoquod Papa hoc facit hodiernis diebus multociens(that the Pope does this nowadays very frequently).’269.4Here we lose for a while nearly all further trace of the matter. Nothing more seems to have been done in it for a long time; for about fourteen months later we find Sir John Paston’s mother still wishing he were ‘delivered of Mrs.270Anne Haulte,’270.1and this is all we hear about it until after an interval of two years more, when, in February 1477, Sir John reports that the matter between him and Mrs. Anne Haulte had been ‘sore broken’ to Cardinal Bourchier, the Lord Chamberlain (Hastings), and himself, and that he was ‘in good hope.’270.2Finally, in August following, he expects that it ‘shall, with God’s grace, this term be at a perfect end.’270.3After this we hear nothing more of it. The pre-contract between Sir John and Anne Haulte seems therefore to have been at last annulled; and what is more remarkable, after it had been so, he was reported to be so influential at Court that another marriage was offered him ‘right nigh of the Queen’s blood.’270.4His mother, who writes to him on the subject in May 1478, had not been informed who the lady was, and neither can we tell the reader. We only know for certain that such a marriage never took effect.John Paston’s love affairs.John Paston, too, had his love affairs as well as his brother, but was more fortunate in not being bound helplessly to one lady for a long series of years. In the summer of 1471, he seems to have been endeavouring to win the hand of a certain Lady Elizabeth Bourchier; but here he did not prosper, for she was married a few months later to Lord Thomas Howard—the nobleman who more than forty years after was created Duke of Norfolk by King HenryVIII.for his victory over the Scots at Flodden.270.5As to his further proceedings in271search of a wife, we shall have occasion to speak of them hereafter.A.D.1472.Property was at all times a matter of more importance than love to that selfish generation; it was plainly, avowedly regarded by every one as the principal point in marrying.The Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester.In the royal family at this very time, the design of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to marry the widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, awoke the jealousy of his brother Clarence. For the lady was a younger sister of Clarence’s own wife, and co-heir to her father, Warwick the Kingmaker; and since the death of that great earl at Barnet, Clarence seems to have pounced on the whole of his immense domains without the slightest regard even to the rights of his widow, who, indeed, was now in disgrace, and was living in sanctuary at Beaulieu. The idea of being compelled to share the property with his brother was a thing that had never occurred to him, and he could not endure the thought. He endeavoured to prevent the proposed marriage by concealing the lady in London.271.1Disputes arose between the two brothers in consequence, and though they went to Sheen together to pardon, it was truly suspected to be ‘not all in charity.’ The king endeavoured to act as mediator, and entreated Clarence to show a fair amount of consideration to his brother; but his efforts met with very little success. ‘As it is said,’ writes Sir John Paston, ‘he answereth that he may well have my lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no livelode,’—the elder sister was to have all the inheritance, and the younger sister nothing! No wonder the writer adds, ‘So what will fall can I not say.’271.2What did fall, however, we know partly from the Paston Letters and partly from other sources. The Duke of Gloucester married the lady in spite of his brother’s threats. The dispute about the property raged violently more than two years, and almost defied the king’s efforts to keep his two brothers in subjection. In November 1473 we find it ‘said for certain that the Duke of Clarence maketh him big in that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester; but the king intendeth, in eschewing all inconvenients,272to be as big as they both, and to be a styffeler atween them. And some men think that under this there should be some other thing intended, and some treason conspired.’ Sir John Paston again did not know what to make of it, and was driven to reiterate his former remark, ‘So what shall fall can I not say.’272.1He only hoped the two brothers would yet be brought into agreement by the king’s award.272.2This hope was ultimately realised. Clarence at last consented with an ill will to let his sister-in-law have a share in her father’s lands; and an arrangement was made by a special Act of Parliament for the division of the property.272.3To satisfy the rapacity of the royal brothers, the claims of the Countess of Warwick were deliberately set aside, and the Act expressly treated her as if she had been a dead woman. So the matter was finally settled in May 1474. Yet possibly the Countess’s claims had some influence in hastening this settlement; for about a twelvemonth before she had been removed from her sanctuary at Beaulieu272.4and conveyed northwards by Sir James Tyrell. This, it appears, was not done avowedly by the king’s command; nevertheless rumour said that it was by his assent, and also that it was contrary to the will of Clarence.272.5Even so in the Paston family love affairs give place at this time to questions about property, in which their interests were very seriously at stake. Not only was there the great question between Sir John and the Duke of Norfolk about Caister, but there was also a minor question about the manor of Saxthorpe, the particulars of which are not very clear. On the 12th July 1471, Sir John Paston made a release of Saxthorpe and Titchwell and some other portions of the Fastolf estates, to David Husband and William Gyfford;272.6but this was probably only in the nature of a trust, for it appears that he did not intend to give up his interest in the property.A.D.1472, Jan.In January following, however, William Gurney entered into Saxthorpe and273endeavoured to hold a court there for the lord of the manor.John Paston interrupts the Manor Court at Saxthorpe.But John Paston hearing of what was doing, went thither accompanied by one man only to protect his brother’s interest, and charged the tenants, in the presence of Gurney himself and a number of his friends, to proceed no further. The protest was effective so far as to produce a momentary pause. But when it was seen that he had only one man with him, the proceedings were resumed; on which John Paston sat down by the steward and blotted his book with his finger as he wrote, and then called the tenants to witness that he had effectually interrupted the court in his brother’s right.273.1Gurney, however, did not give up the game, but warned another court to be kept on Holy Rood day (May 3rd, the Invention of the Holy Cross), when he would have collected the half-year’s rents from the tenants. The court was held, but before it was half over John Paston appeared again and persuaded him to stay proceedings once more, and to forbear gathering money until he and Sir John Paston should confer together in London. It seems to have required some tact and courtesy to get him to consent to this arrangement; for Henry Heydon, the son of the old ally of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, had raised a number of men-at-arms to give Gurney any assistance that might have been necessary, but the gentle demeanour of John Paston left him no pretext for calling in such aid.273.2The real claimant of the manor against Sir John Paston was Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, of whom, almost immediately after this, Henry Heydon bought both Saxthorpe and Titchwell. Sir John Paston, apparently, had been caught napping as usual, and knew nothing of the transaction. His mother wrote to him in dismay on the 5th June. Young Heydon had already taken possession. ‘We beat the bushes,’ said Margaret Paston, ‘and have the loss and the disworship, and other men have the birds. My lord hath false counsel and simple that adviseth him thereto. And, as it is told me, Guton is like to go the same way in haste. And as for Hellesdon and Drayton, I trow it is there it shall be. What shall fall of the remnant God knoweth,—I trow as evil or worse.’273.3274John Paston in like manner writes on the same day that Heydon was sure of Saxthorpe, and Lady Boleyn of Guton.274.1Sir John Paston was letting the family property slip out of his fingers, while on the other hand he was running into debt, and in his straitened circumstances he was considering what he could sell. His mother had threatened if he parted with any of his lands to disinherit him of double the amount;274.2so he was looking out for a purchaser of his wood at Sporle, which he was proposing to cut down.274.3But by far the most serious matter of all was Caister; ‘if we lose that,’ said Margaret Paston, ‘we lose the fairest flower of our garland.’ To her, too, it would be peculiarly annoying, for she expected to have little comfort in her own family mansion at Mautby, if the Duke of Norfolk had possession of Caister only three miles off.274.4Sir John Paston seeks to get Caister restored to him.On this subject, however, Sir John Paston does not appear to have been remiss. It was the first thing that occupied his thoughts after he had secured his pardon. In the beginning of the year he had been with Archbishop Nevill, who, though he had been in disgrace and committed to the Tower just after the battle of Barnet, seems at this time again to have had some influence in the world, at his residence called the Moor. By the archbishop’s means apparently he had received his pardon, and had spent a merrier Christmas in consequence; and he wrote to his mother that if he could have got any assurance of having Caister restored to him, he would have come away at once.274.5But it was not long before the archbishop again got into trouble. He was once more conducted to the Tower, and two days afterwards at midnight he was put on board a ship and conveyed out to sea.274.6Nothing more therefore was to be hoped for from the archbishop’s friendship; but Sir John Paston did not cease to use what means lay in his power. His brother made incessant applications on his behalf to the Duchess of Norfolk, and to the duke’s council at Framlingham. To be reinstated Sir John was willing to275make the duke a present of £40, an offer which the council acknowledged was ‘more than reasonable.’ If the matter were their own, they gave John Paston to understand, they could easily come to an understanding with him, but my lord was intractable. The duchess herself declined to interfere in the matter until my lord and the council were agreed, and the latter said that when they had mooted it to the duke ‘he gave them such an answer that none of them all would tell it.’ They suggested, however, that the duke might be swayed by more influential opinions, and that if Sir John could get my Lord Chamberlain Hastings, or some other nobleman of mark, to speak to the duke in his favour, there was great probability that he would attain his object.275.1The Duchess of Norfolk.A favourable opportunity, however, presented itself shortly afterwards for urging a petition for justice on the duke himself. After ten years or more of married life the Duchess of Norfolk was at length with child. Duke and duchess received everywhere congratulations from their friends and dependants. Among the rest Sir John Paston offered his to my lady herself, in a vein of banter that seems slightly to have offended her, though not perhaps so much by its grossness, which was excessive, as by the undue familiarity exhibited in such a tone of address.275.2The Duke of Norfolk was going to be with his wife on the occasion of her lying-in, and John Paston, as an old servant of the family, went to give his attendance at Framlingham. It was resolved that the utmost should be made of the opportunity. John Paston drew up a petition in behalf of his brother to present to the duke, while Sir John Paston himself, then in London, obtained letters from the king to both the duke and duchess, and also to their council. The king seems to have been particularly interested in the case, and assured Sir John that if his letters were ineffectual justice should be done in the matter without delay. The letters were despatched by a special messenger, ‘a man of worship’ in high favour with the king himself. With such powerful influence engaged on his behalf, most probably Sir John did not care to ask for letters from Lord Hastings, which his brother was276even then expecting. But he suggested, if my lady’s lying-in should be at Norwich instead of Framlingham, that his mother might obtain admittance to her chamber, and that her persuasions would be of considerable use.276.1Birth of a daughter.The duchess was confined at Framlingham, and gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of Anne. Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, came down to christen the child, and he, too, took an opportunity during his brief stay to say a word to my lady about Caister and the claim of Sir John Paston to restitution. But exhortations, royal letters, and all were thrown away upon the Duke of Norfolk. My lady promised secretly to another person to favour Sir John’s suit, but the fact of her giving such a promise was not to be communicated to any one else. John Paston was made as uncomfortable as possible by the manner in which his representations were received. ‘I let you plainly wit,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘I am not the man I was, for I was never so rough in my master’s conceit as I am now, and that he told me himself before Richard Southwell, Tymperley, Sir W. Brandon, and twenty more; so that they that lowered now laugh upon me.’276.2Sir John Paston seeks to enter Parliament.But although all arts were unsuccessful to bend the will of the Duke of Norfolk on this subject, Sir John Paston seems to have enjoyed the favour and approval of the duchess in offering himself as a candidate for the borough of Maldon in the Parliament of 1472. His friend James Arblaster wrote a letter to the bailiff of Maldon suggesting the great advantage it would be to the town to have for one of their two burgesses ‘such a man of worship and of wit as were towards my said lady,’ and advising all her tenants to vote for Sir John Paston, who not only had this great qualification, but also possessed the additional advantage of being in high favour with my Lord Chamberlain Hastings.276.3There was, however, some uncertainty as to the result, and his brother John suggested in writing to him that if he missed being elected for Maldon he might be for some other place. There were a dozen towns in277England that ought to return members to Parliament which had chosen none, and by the influence of my Lord Chamberlain he might get returned for one of them.277.1In point of fact, I find that Sir John Paston was not returned for Maldon to the Parliament of 1472; and whether he sat for any other borough I am not certain, though there is an expression in the correspondence a little later that might lead one to suppose so.277.2But that he went up to London we know by a letter dated on the 4th November;277.3and though he went to Calais, and even visited the court of the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy at Ghent early in the following year, when Parliament was no longer sitting, he had returned to London long before it had ended its second session in April 1473.277.4It is also clear that he took a strong interest in its proceedings; but this was only natural. That Parliament was summoned avowedly to provide for the safety of the kingdom. Although the Earl of Warwick was now dead, and Margaret of Anjou a prisoner at Wallingford,277.5and the line of HenryVI.extinct,Fear of Invasion.it was still anticipated that the Earl of Oxford and others, supported by the power of France, would make a descent upon the coast. Commissions of array were issued at various times for defence against apprehended invasion.277.6Information was therefore laid before Parliament of the danger in which the kingdom stood from a confederacy of the king’s ‘ancient and mortal enemies environing the same,’ and a message was sent to the Commons to the effect that the king intended to equip an expedition in resistance of their malice.277.7278The result was that, in November 1472, the Commons agreed to a levy of 13,000 archers, and voted a tenth for their support, which was to be levied before Candlemas following.278.1An income and property tax was not a permanent institution of our ancestors, but when it came it pressed heavily; so that a demand of two shillings in the pound was not at all unprecedented. A higher tax had been imposed four years before, and also in 1453 by the Parliament of Reading. Still, a sudden demand of two shillings in the pound, to be levied within the next four months, was an uncomfortable thing to meet; and owing either to its unpopularity or the difficulty of arranging the machinery for its collection, it was not put in force within the time appointed.A.D.1473.But in the following spring, when the Parliament had begun its second session, collectors were named throughout the country, and it was notified that some further demands were to be made upon the national pocket. On the 26th March, John Paston writes that his cousin John Blennerhasset had been appointed collector in Norfolk, and asks his brother Sir John in London to get him excused from serving in ‘that thankless office,’ as he had not a foot of ground in the county. At the same time the writer expresses the sentiments of himself and his neighbours in language quite sufficiently emphatic: ‘I pray God send you the Holy Ghost among you in the Parliament House, and rather the Devil, we say, than ye should grant any more taxes.’278.2Unfortunately, before the Parliament ended its sittings, it granted a whole fifteenth and tenth additional.278.3Family jars.At this time we find that there was some further unpleasant feeling within the Paston family circle. Margaret Paston had several times expressed her discontent with the thriftless extravagance of her eldest son, and even the second, John, did not stand continually in her good graces. A third brother, Edmund, was now just coming out in life, and as a preparation for it he too had to endure continual reproofs and remonstrances from his mother. Besides these, there were at home three other sons and one daughter, of whom we shall speak hereafter. The young generation apparently was a little too much for the lone widow;279and, finding her elder sons not very satisfactory advisers, she did what lone women are very apt to do under such circumstances—took counsel in most of the affairs of this life of a confidential priest. In fact, she was a good and pious woman, to whom in her advancing years this world appeared more and more in its true character as a mere preparation for the next. She had now withdrawn from city life at Norwich, and was dwelling on her own family estate at Mautby. Bodily infirmities, perhaps—though we hear nothing explicitly said of them—made it somewhat less easy for her to move about; and she desired to obtain a licence from the Bishop of Norwich to have the sacrament in her own chapel.279.1She was also thinking, we know, of getting her fourth son Walter educated for the priesthood; and she wished her own spiritual adviser, Sir James Gloys,279.2to conduct him to Oxford, and see him put in the right way to pursue his studies creditably. She hoped, she said, to have more joy of him than of his elder brothers; and though she desired him to be a priest, she wished him not to take any orders that should be binding until he had reached the age of four-and-twenty. ‘I will love him better,’ she said, ‘to be a good secular man than a lewd priest.’279.3Sir James Gloys.But the influence of this spiritual adviser over their mother was by no means agreeable to the two eldest sons. John Paston speaks of him in a letter to his brother as ‘the proud, peevish, and ill-disposed priest to us all,’ and complains grievously of his interference in family affairs. ‘Many quarrels,’ he writes, ‘are picked to get my brother Edmund and me out of her house. We go not to bed unchidden lightly; all that we do is ill done, and all that Sir James and Pecock doth is well done. Sir James and I be twain. We280fell out before my mother with “Thou proud priest,” and “Thou proud squire,” my mother taking his part; so I have almost beshut the bolt as for my mother’s house; yet summer shall be done or I get me any master.’280.1John Paston, in fact, was obliged to put up with it for some months longer, and though he afterwards reports that Sir James was always ‘chopping at him,’ and seeking to irritate him in his mother’s presence, he had found out that it was not altogether the best policy to rail at him in return. So he learned to smile a little at the most severe speeches, and remark quietly, ‘It is good hearing of these old tales.’280.2This mode of meeting the attack, if it did not soften Sir James’s bitterness, may have made Margaret Paston less willing to take his part against her son. At all events we hear no more of these encounters. Sir James Gloys, however, died about twelve months later.280.3

Appeal of two widows.

We have but a word or two to say as to matters affecting the family history of the Pastons during this brief interval. At the siege of Caister two men of the Duke of Norfolk’s were killed by the fire of the garrison. The duke’s council, not satisfied with having turned the Pastons out, now prompted the widows of these two men to sue an ‘appeal’257.3against John Paston and those who acted with him. A true bill was also found against them for felony at the Norwich session of June 1470, in which Sir John Paston was included as an accessory; but the indictment was held to be void by some of Paston’s258friends on the ground that two of the jury would not agree to it. This objection I presume must have been held sufficient to quash the proceedings in this form, of which we hear no more.258.1The ‘appeal,’ however, remained to be disposed of, as we shall see by and by.

Compromise touching Fastolf’s will.

With respect to the title claimed by Sir John Paston in Caister and the performance of Fastolf’s will, a compromise was arranged with Bishop Waynflete, who was now recognised as sole executor. It was agreed that as the whole of Fastolf’s lands in Essex, Surrey, Norfolk, and Suffolk had been much wasted by the disputes between the executors, the manors should be divided between Sir John Paston and the bishop, the former promising to surrender the title-deeds of all except the manor of Caister. The project of a college in that place was given up, and a foundation of seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalen College, Oxford, was agreed to in its place.258.2Soon afterwards the Duke of Norfolk executed a release to the bishop of the manor of Caister and all the lands conveyed to him by Yelverton and Howes as executors of Sir John Fastolf, acknowledging that the bargain made with them was contrary to Fastolf’s will, and receiving from the bishop the sum of 500 marks for the reconveyance. The duke accordingly sent notice to his servants and tenants to depart out of the manor as soon as they could conveniently remove such goods and furniture as he and they had placed in it.258.3

Thus by the mediation of Bishop Waynflete the long-standing disputes were nearly settled during the period of HenryVI.’s brief restoration. But, probably in consequence of the disturbed state of the country and the return of EdwardIV., the duke’s orders for the evacuation of Caister were not immediately obeyed, and, as we shall see hereafter, the place remained in Norfolk’s possession for the space of three whole years.

Elizabeth Poynings remarries.

About this time, or rather, perhaps, two years later, Sir John Paston’s aunt, Elizabeth Poynings, terminated her widowhood by marrying Sir George Browne of Betchworth Castle in Surrey. We have already seen how she was dispossessed of259her lands soon after her first husband’s death by the Countess of Northumberland. They were afterwards seized by the Crown as forfeited, and granted by patent to Edmund Grey, Earl of Kent, but without any title having been duly found for the king. The Earl of Kent after a time gave up possession of them to the Earl of Essex, but this did not make things pleasanter for Elizabeth Poynings; while other of her lands were occupied by Sir Robert Fenys in violation, as she alleged, of her husband’s will.259.1The date of her second marriage was probably about the end of the year 1471.259.2

These matters we are bound to mention as incidents in the history of the family. Of Elizabeth Paston, however, and her second husband we do not hear much henceforward; in the Letters after this period the domestic interest centres chiefly round the two John Pastons, Sir John and his brother.

246.3The story that the Earl of Warwick had gone to France to negotiate the marriage of Edward with Bona of Savoy, when Edward frustrated his diplomacy by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, is certainly not in accordance with facts. But the doubts of some modern historians that the project of such a match was ever entertained are quite set at rest by the evidence of two letters which have been recently printed in some of the publications of the Société de l’Histoire de France, to which attention is called by Mr. Kirk in hisHistory of Charles the Bold(vol. i. p. 415 note, and ii. p. 15 note). It appears that although the earl had not actually gone to France, he was expected there just at the time the secret of the king’s marriage was revealed. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt—indeed there is something like positive evidence to prove—that the first cause of the Earl of Warwick’s alienation from the king arose out of this matter. I ought to add that the merit of placing before us for the first time a clear view of the consequences of EdwardIV.’s marriage, in its bearing alike on the domestic history of England and on Edward’s relations with France and Burgundy, is due to Mr. Kirk.247.1W. Worc., 513-14.247.2Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 551.248.1The two eldest daughters of EdwardIV.were born in the years 1465 and 1466; the third, Cecily, in the latter end of 1469.SeeGreen’sPrincesses, vol. iii.; also an article by Sir Frederic Madden, in theGentleman’s Magazinefor 1831 (vol. ci. pt. i., p. 24).248.2He seems to have left Norwich on the 21st. There are Privy Seals dated on that day, some at Norwich and some at Walsingham.248.3Contin. Chron. Croyl.p. 542.249.1Seethe petition printed by Halliwell in his notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 47-51.249.2Seethe proclamation immediately preceding the above petition in the notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 46-7.249.3No. 719.249.4No. 714.250.1Contin. Chron. Croyl.pp. 542, 551. There are Privy Seals dated on the 2nd August at Coventry; on the 9th, 12th, and 13th at Warwick; and on the 25th and 28th at Middleham.250.2No. 736.250.3At least William Worcester, in hisItinerary, p. 321, seems to indicate in very bad Latin that the siege began on the Monday before St. Bartholomew’s Day, which in 1469 would be the 21st August. Yet a very bewildering sentence just before would imply that the siege began either on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (15th August) or on St. Bartholomew’s Day itself (24th August), and that it lasted five weeks and three days. But we know that the castle surrendered on the 26th September, so that if the duration of the siege was five weeks and three days it must have begun on the 19th August, a different date still. William Worcester’s habit of continually jotting down memoranda in his commonplace books has been of very great service to the historian of this disordered epoch; but his memoranda reflect the character of the times in their confusion, inconsistency, and contradictions.251.1Itin.W. de Worc., 325.251.2No. 720.252.1No. 720.253.1722-6.253.2No. 725.254.1Square pyramids of iron which were shot out of crossbows. The word is of French origin and was originallyquarreaux.254.2Nos. 730, 731.254.3The modern confusion of this word withlivelihood—a word which properly means a lively condition—is one of the things that would be unpardonable did not usage pardon everything in language.254.4Nos. 733, 737, 738.255.1No. 737.255.2No. 710.255.3No. 713.256.1No. 721.256.2Nos. 721, 736, 737.257.1Rolls of Parl.vi. 232.257.2SeeNos. 742, 743.257.3An appeal of murder was a criminal prosecution instituted by the nearest relation of the murdered person, and a pardon from the king could not be pleaded in bar of this process.258.1Nos. 740, 746, 747.258.2Nos. 750, 755, 767.258.3Nos. 763, 764.259.1Nos. 461, 627, 692, 693.259.2On the 18th November 1471, Edmund Paston speaks of her as ‘my Aunt Ponynges.’ Before the 8th January 1472 she had married Sir George Browne. Nos. 789, 795.

246.3The story that the Earl of Warwick had gone to France to negotiate the marriage of Edward with Bona of Savoy, when Edward frustrated his diplomacy by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, is certainly not in accordance with facts. But the doubts of some modern historians that the project of such a match was ever entertained are quite set at rest by the evidence of two letters which have been recently printed in some of the publications of the Société de l’Histoire de France, to which attention is called by Mr. Kirk in hisHistory of Charles the Bold(vol. i. p. 415 note, and ii. p. 15 note). It appears that although the earl had not actually gone to France, he was expected there just at the time the secret of the king’s marriage was revealed. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt—indeed there is something like positive evidence to prove—that the first cause of the Earl of Warwick’s alienation from the king arose out of this matter. I ought to add that the merit of placing before us for the first time a clear view of the consequences of EdwardIV.’s marriage, in its bearing alike on the domestic history of England and on Edward’s relations with France and Burgundy, is due to Mr. Kirk.

247.1W. Worc., 513-14.

247.2Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 551.

248.1The two eldest daughters of EdwardIV.were born in the years 1465 and 1466; the third, Cecily, in the latter end of 1469.SeeGreen’sPrincesses, vol. iii.; also an article by Sir Frederic Madden, in theGentleman’s Magazinefor 1831 (vol. ci. pt. i., p. 24).

248.2He seems to have left Norwich on the 21st. There are Privy Seals dated on that day, some at Norwich and some at Walsingham.

248.3Contin. Chron. Croyl.p. 542.

249.1Seethe petition printed by Halliwell in his notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 47-51.

249.2Seethe proclamation immediately preceding the above petition in the notes toWarkworth’s Chronicle, pp. 46-7.

249.3No. 719.

249.4No. 714.

250.1Contin. Chron. Croyl.pp. 542, 551. There are Privy Seals dated on the 2nd August at Coventry; on the 9th, 12th, and 13th at Warwick; and on the 25th and 28th at Middleham.

250.2No. 736.

250.3At least William Worcester, in hisItinerary, p. 321, seems to indicate in very bad Latin that the siege began on the Monday before St. Bartholomew’s Day, which in 1469 would be the 21st August. Yet a very bewildering sentence just before would imply that the siege began either on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (15th August) or on St. Bartholomew’s Day itself (24th August), and that it lasted five weeks and three days. But we know that the castle surrendered on the 26th September, so that if the duration of the siege was five weeks and three days it must have begun on the 19th August, a different date still. William Worcester’s habit of continually jotting down memoranda in his commonplace books has been of very great service to the historian of this disordered epoch; but his memoranda reflect the character of the times in their confusion, inconsistency, and contradictions.

251.1Itin.W. de Worc., 325.

251.2No. 720.

252.1No. 720.

253.1722-6.

253.2No. 725.

254.1Square pyramids of iron which were shot out of crossbows. The word is of French origin and was originallyquarreaux.

254.2Nos. 730, 731.

254.3The modern confusion of this word withlivelihood—a word which properly means a lively condition—is one of the things that would be unpardonable did not usage pardon everything in language.

254.4Nos. 733, 737, 738.

255.1No. 737.

255.2No. 710.

255.3No. 713.

256.1No. 721.

256.2Nos. 721, 736, 737.

257.1Rolls of Parl.vi. 232.

257.2SeeNos. 742, 743.

257.3An appeal of murder was a criminal prosecution instituted by the nearest relation of the murdered person, and a pardon from the king could not be pleaded in bar of this process.

258.1Nos. 740, 746, 747.

258.2Nos. 750, 755, 767.

258.3Nos. 763, 764.

259.1Nos. 461, 627, 692, 693.

259.2On the 18th November 1471, Edmund Paston speaks of her as ‘my Aunt Ponynges.’ Before the 8th January 1472 she had married Sir George Browne. Nos. 789, 795.

Reckless government of EdwardIV.

Within the space of ten brief years EdwardIV.had almost succeeded in convincing the world that he was no more capable of governing England than the rival whom he had deposed. Never did gambler throw away a fortune with more recklessness than Edward threw away the advantages which it had cost him and his friends so much hard fighting to secure. Just when he had reached the summit of his prosperity, he alienated the men to whom it was mainly due, and took no care to protect himself against the consequences of their concealed displeasure. The Earl of Warwick took him prisoner, then released him, then stirred up a new rebellion with impunity, and finally, returning to England once more, surprised and drove him out, notwithstanding the warnings of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. HenryVI.was proclaimed anew, and the cause of the House of York seemed to be lost for ever.

It was not so, however, in fact. Adversity quickened Edward’s energies in a manner almost miraculous, and in a few months he recovered his kingdom as suddenly as he had lost it. But it was not easy to believe, even after his most formidable enemy had been slain at Barnet, that a king who had shown himself so careless could maintain himself again upon the throne. Besides, men who desired a steady government had rested all their hopes in the restoration of HenryVI., and had found the new state of matters very promising, just before Edward reappeared. The king, it might have been hoped, would be governed this time by the Earl of Warwick, and not by Queen Margaret.The Pastons favour HenryVI.The Pastons, in particular, had very special reasons to rejoice in Henry’s restoration. They had a powerful friend in the Earl of Oxford, whose influence with Henry and the Earl of Warwick stood very high. Owing partly, perhaps, to Oxford’s intercession, the Duke of Norfolk had been obliged to quit his hold of Caister, and Sir John Paston had been reinstated in possession.260.1The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk sued to Oxford as humbly as the Pastons had been accustomed to sue to them, and the earl, from the very first, had been as careful of the interests of this family as if they had been his own. Even in the first days of the revolution—probably before Edward was yet driven out—he had sent a messenger to the Duchess of Norfolk from Colchester when John Paston was in London on a matter which concerned him alone. The family, indeed, seem at first to have built rather extravagant expectations upon the new turn of affairs, which John Paston felt it necessary to repress in writing to his mother. ‘As for the offices that ye wrote to my brother for and to me, they be for no poor men, but I trust we shall speed of other offices meetly for us, for my master the Earl of Oxford biddeth me ask and have. I trow my brother Sir John shall have the constableship of Norwich Castle, with £20 of fee. All the lords be agreed to it.’260.2

Certainly, when they remembered the loss of Caister, which they had now regained—when they recalled his inability261to protect them against armed aggression, and the disappointment of their expectations of redress against the Duke of Suffolk for the attack on the lodge at Hellesdon—the Pastons had little cause to pray for the return of EdwardIV.They were completely committed to the cause of Henry; and Sir John Paston and his brother fought, no doubt in the Earl of Oxford’s company, against King Edward at Barnet.Sir John Paston and his brother in the battle of Barnet.A.D.1471.Both the brothers came out of the battle alive, but John Paston was wounded with an arrow in the right arm, beneath the elbow.261.1His wound, however, was not of a very serious character, and in little more than a fortnight he was able to write a letter with his own hand.261.2A more serious consideration was, how far the family prospects were injured by the part they had taken against what seemed now to be the winning side. Perhaps they might be effectually befriended by their cousin Lomner, who seems to have adhered to Edward, and who had promised them his good offices, if required. But on the whole the Pastons did not look despondingly upon the situation, and rather advised their cousin Lomner not to commit himself too much to the other side, as times might change. ‘I beseech you,’ writes Sir John Paston to his mother, ‘on my behalf to advise him to be well aware of his dealing or language as yet; for the world, I ensure you, is right queasy, as ye shall know within this month. The people here feareth it sore. God hath showed Himself marvellously like Him that made all, and can undo again when Him list, and I can think that by all likelihood He shall show Himself as marvellous again, and that in short time.’261.3

In point of fact, Sir John Paston, when he wrote these words, had already heard of the landing of Queen Margaret and her son in the west, so that another conflict was certainly impending. His brother John, recovering from his wounds, but smarting severely in pocket from the cost of his surgery, looked forward to it with a sanguine hope that Edward would be defeated. ‘With God’s grace,’ he writes, ‘it shall not be long ere my wrongs and other men’s shall be redressed, for262the world was never so like to be ours as it is now. Wherefore I pray you let Lomner not be too busy yet.’262.1The issue, however, did not agree with his expectations.The battle of Tewkesbury.Four days later was fought the battle of Tewkesbury,262.2at which Margaret was defeated, and her son, though taken alive, put to death upon the field. Shortly afterwards she herself surrendered as a prisoner, while her chief captain, Somerset, was beheaded by the conqueror. The Lancastrian party was completely crushed; and before three weeks were over, King Henry himself had ended his days—no doubt he was murdered—within the Tower. Edward, instead of being driven out again, was now seated on the throne more firmly than he had ever been before; and the Paston brothers had to sue for the king’s pardon for the part they had taken in opposing him.

Caister retaken by the Duke of Norfolk.

Under these circumstances, it was only natural that the Duke of Norfolk, who had been forced to relinquish his claim to Caister under the government of HenryVI., should endeavour to reassert it against one who was in the eye of the law a rebel. On this occasion, however, the duke had recourse to stratagem, and one of his servants suddenly obtained possession of the place on Sunday, the 23rd June.262.3It is remarkable that we have no direct reference in the letters either to this event, or to the previous reinstatement of Sir John Paston during the restoration of HenryVI.; but a statement in the itinerary of William Worcester and Sir John Paston’s petition to the king in 1475262.4leave no doubt about the facts. After about six months of possession the Pastons were again driven out of Caister.262.5

The Pastons had need of friends, and offers of friendship263were made to them by Earl Rivers, formerly Lord Scales.Earl Rivers offers his friendship.The engagement of Sir John Paston to Rivers’s kinswoman, Anne Haute,263.1still held; and though there was some talk of breaking it off, the earl was willing to do what lay in his power in behalf both of Sir John and of his brother. The latter was not very grateful for his offer, considering, apparently, that the earl’s influence with the king was not what it had been. ‘Lord Scales,’ he said, for so he continued to call him, ‘may do least with the great master. But he would depart over the sea as hastily as he may; and because he weeneth that I would go with him, as I had promised him ever, if he had kept forth his journey at that time, this is the cause that he will be my good lord, and help to get my pardon. The king is not best pleased with him, for that he desireth to depart; insomuch that the king hath said of him that whenever he hath most to do, then the Lord Scales will soonest ask leave to depart, and weeneth that it is most because of cowardice.’263.2

Earl Rivers, in fact, was at this time meditating a voyage to Portugal, where he meant to go in an expedition against the Saracens, and he actually embarked on Christmas Eve following.263.3His friendship, perhaps, may have been unduly depreciated by the younger brother; for within twelve days John Paston actually obtained the king’s signature to a warrant for his pardon. This, it is true, may have been procured without his mediation; but in any case the family were not in the position of persons for whom no one would intercede. They had still so much influence in the world that within three months after he had been a second time dispossessed of Caister, Sir John made a serious effort to264ascertain whether the Duke of Norfolk might not be induced to let him have it back again.Sir J. Paston petitions the Duke of Norfolk to give back Caister.This he did, as was only natural, through the medium of his brother John, whose former services in the duke’s household gave him a claim to be heard in a matter touching the personal interests of the family. John Paston, however, wisely addressed himself, on this subject, rather to the duchess than to the duke; and though he received but a slender amount of encouragement, it was enough, for a few months, just to keep his hopes alive. ‘I cannot yet,’ he writes, ‘make my peace with my lord of Norfolk by no means, yet every man telleth me that my lady sayeth passing well of me always notwithstanding.’ This was written in the beginning of the year 1472, just seven months after Sir John’s second expulsion from Caister. But the Pastons continued their suit for four years more, and only recovered possession of the place on the Duke of Norfolk’s death, as we shall see hereafter.264.1

260.1Seepreliminary note to Letter No. 879.260.2No. 759.261.1No. 774.261.2No. 776.261.3No. 774.262.1No. 776.262.2In connection with this battle, we have in No. 777 lists of the principal persons killed and beheaded after the fight, and of the knights made by King Edward upon the field. This document has never been published before.262.3W. Worc.Itin., 368.262.4No. 879.262.5Although the fact of this expulsion could not be gathered from the letters of this date, some allusion to it will be found in Letter 778, by which it seems that a horse of John Paston’s had been left at Caister, which the family endeavoured to reclaim by pretending that it was his brother Edmund’s. John Paston, however, seems to have preferred that the duke’s men should keep the animal, in the hope that they would make other concessions of greater value.263.1A transcript of an old pedigree with which I was favoured by Mr. J. R. Scott during the publication of these letters long ago, confirmed my conjecture that Anne Haute was the daughter of William Haute, whose marriage with Joan, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, is referred to in theExcerpta Historica, p. 249. She was, therefore, the niece of Richard, Earl Rivers, and cousin-german to EdwardIV.’s queen. It appears also that she had a sister named Alice, who was married to Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Treasurer of the Household to EdwardIV.This Sir John Fogge was the man whom RichardIII., having previously regarded him as a deadly enemy, sent for out of sanctuary, and took publicly by the hand at his accession, in token that he had forgotten all old grudges.263.2No. 778.263.3Nos. 793, 795.264.1Nos. 781, 796, 802.

260.1Seepreliminary note to Letter No. 879.

260.2No. 759.

261.1No. 774.

261.2No. 776.

261.3No. 774.

262.1No. 776.

262.2In connection with this battle, we have in No. 777 lists of the principal persons killed and beheaded after the fight, and of the knights made by King Edward upon the field. This document has never been published before.

262.3W. Worc.Itin., 368.

262.4No. 879.

262.5Although the fact of this expulsion could not be gathered from the letters of this date, some allusion to it will be found in Letter 778, by which it seems that a horse of John Paston’s had been left at Caister, which the family endeavoured to reclaim by pretending that it was his brother Edmund’s. John Paston, however, seems to have preferred that the duke’s men should keep the animal, in the hope that they would make other concessions of greater value.

263.1A transcript of an old pedigree with which I was favoured by Mr. J. R. Scott during the publication of these letters long ago, confirmed my conjecture that Anne Haute was the daughter of William Haute, whose marriage with Joan, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville, is referred to in theExcerpta Historica, p. 249. She was, therefore, the niece of Richard, Earl Rivers, and cousin-german to EdwardIV.’s queen. It appears also that she had a sister named Alice, who was married to Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Treasurer of the Household to EdwardIV.This Sir John Fogge was the man whom RichardIII., having previously regarded him as a deadly enemy, sent for out of sanctuary, and took publicly by the hand at his accession, in token that he had forgotten all old grudges.

263.2No. 778.

263.3Nos. 793, 795.

264.1Nos. 781, 796, 802.

Royal pardon to John Paston.

John Paston obtained a ‘bill of pardon’ signed by the king, on Wednesday the 17th July. This, however, was not in itself a pardon, but only a warrant to the Chancellor to give him one under the Great Seal. The pardon with the Great Seal attached he hoped to obtain from the Chancellor on the following Friday. Meanwhile he wrote home to his mother to let no one know of it but Lady Calthorpe, who, for some reason not explained, seems to have been a confidante in this particular matter.264.2Perhaps this was as well, for as a matter of fact the pardon was not sealed that Friday, nor for many a long week, and even for some months after. It seems to have been promised, but it did not come. At Norwich some one called John Paston traitor and sought to pick quarrels with him; and how far he could rely upon the protection of the law was a question not free from anxiety. His brother, Sir John, urged him to take steps to have the pardon made sure265without delay; but it was only passed at length upon the 7th of February following, nearly seven months after the king had signed the bill for it. His brother, Sir John, obtained one on the 21st December.265.1

The appeal of the widows.

But John Paston stood in another danger, from which even a royal pardon could not by law protect him. The ‘appeal’265.2of the two widows still lay against him. The blood of their husbands cried for vengeance on the men who had defended Caister, and especially upon the captain of the garrison. Their appeal, however, was suspected to proceed from the instigation of others who would fain have encouraged them to keep it up longer than they cared to do themselves. Sir John Paston had information from some quarter which led him to believe that they had both found husbands again, and he recommended his brother to make inquiry, as in that case the appeals were abated. With regard to one of them, the intelligence turned out to be correct. A friend whom John Paston asked to go and converse with this woman, the widow of a fuller of South Walsham, reported that she was now married to one Tom Steward, dwelling in the parish of St. Giles in Norwich. She confessed to him that she never sued the appeal of her own accord, ‘but that she was by subtle craft brought to the New Inn at Norwich. And there was Master Southwell; and he entreated her to be my lord’s widow265.3by the space of an whole year next following; and thereto he made her to be bound in an obligation. And when that year was past he desired her to be my lord’s widow another year. And then she said that she had liever lose that that she had done than to lose that and more; and therefore she said plainly that she would no more of that matter; and so she took her an husband, which is the said Tom Steward. And she saith that it was full sore against her will that ever the matter went so far forth, for she had never none avail thereof, but it was sued to her great labor and loss, for she had never of my lord’s council but barely her costs to London.’265.4

The other widow, however, had not married again as Sir John had imagined. With her the right of appeal still remained, and she was induced to exercise it. In this she seems to have been encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk, simply for the sake of giving trouble to Sir John Paston; for though it was his brother and the men with him who were the most direct cause of her husband’s death, the appeal was not prosecuted against them, but against him only. In the following January the widow went up to London, and 100 shillings were given her to sue with. What came of the affair then we have no further record. Sir John Paston was warned of his danger both by his mother and by his brother; so perhaps he found the means to induce her to forbear proceeding further. An argument that has often enough stopped the course of justice would doubtless have been efficacious to put an end to such a purely vexatious prosecution. But it may be that the case was actually heard, and Sir John Paston acquitted.266.1

Great mortality.

In a social point of view the year of EdwardIV.’s restoration was not one of gladness. The internal peace of the kingdom was secured by the two sharp battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and by the execution of the Bastard Falconbridge after his attempt on London, but the land was visited with pestilence and the mortality was severe. Hosts of pilgrims travelled through the country, eager to escape the prevailing infection or to return thanks for their recovery from illness. The king and queen went on pilgrimage to Canterbury; and never, it was said, had there been so many pilgrims at a time.266.2‘It is the most universal death that ever I wist in England,’ says Sir John Paston; ‘for by my trouth I cannot hear by pilgrims that pass the country that any borough town in England is free from that sickness. God cease it when it pleaseth Him! Wherefore, for God’s sake let my mother take heed to my young brethren, that they be in none place where that sickness is reigning, nor that they disport not with none other young people which resorteth where any sickness is; and if there be any of that sickness dead or infect in Norwich, for God’s sake let her send them to some friends267of hers into the country, and do ye the same by mine advice. Let my mother rather remove her household into the country.’267.1

The plague continued on till the beginning of winter. Margaret Paston does not seem to have removed into the country, but in writing to her son John in the beginning of November she notes the progress of the enemy. ‘Your cousin Berney of Witchingham is passed to God, whom God assoyle! Veyl’s wife, and London’s wife, and Picard the baker of Tombland, be gone also. All this household and this parish is as ye left it, blessed be God! We live in fear, but we wot not whither to flee for to be better than we be here.’267.2In the same letter Margaret Paston speaks of other troubles.Money matters.She had been obliged to borrow money for her son Sir John, and it was redemanded. The fortunes of the family were at a low ebb, and she knew not what to do without selling her woods—a thing which would seriously impair the value of Sir John’s succession to her estates, as there were so many wood sales then in Norfolk that no man was likely to give much more than within a hundred marks of their real value. She therefore urged Sir John in his own interest to consider what he could do to meet the difficulty. Already she had done much for him, and was not a little ashamed that it was known she had not reserved the means of paying the debts she had incurred for him. Sir John, however, returned for answer that he was utterly unable to make any shift for the money, and Margaret saw nothing for it but the humiliation of selling wood or land, or even furniture, to meet the emergency. ‘It is a death to me to think upon it,’ she wrote. She felt strongly that her son had not the art of managing with economy—that he spent double the money on his affairs that his father had done in matters of the same character, and, what grieved her even more, that duties which filial pride ought to have piously discharged long ago had been neglected owing to his extravagance. ‘At the reverence of God,’ she writes to his younger brother John, ‘advise him yet to beware of his expenses and guiding, that it be no shame to us all. It is a268shame and a thing that is much spoken of in this country that your father’s gravestone is not made.John Paston’s gravestone.For God’s love, let it be remembered and purveyed in haste. There hath been much more spent in waste than should have made that.’ Apparently direct remonstrances had failed to tell upon Sir John otherwise than to make him peevish and crusty. She therefore wrote to his younger brother instead. ‘Me thinketh by your brother that he is weary to write to me, and therefore I will not accumber him with writing to him. Ye may tell him as I write to you.’268.1

Sir John Paston and Anne Haute.

Thriftless, extravagant, and irresolute, Sir John Paston was not the man to succeed, either in money matters or in anything else. No wonder, then, that his engagement with Anne Haute became unsatisfactory, apparently to both parties alike. The manner in which he speaks of it at this time is indeed ambiguous; but there can be no doubt that in the end both parties desired to be released, and were for a long time only restrained by the cost of a dispensation, which was necessary to dissolve even such a contract as theirs. It would not have been surprising, indeed, if on the restoration of EdwardIV.Lord Rivers and the queen’s relations had shown themselves unfavourable to a match between their kinswoman and one who had fought against the king at Barnet. But whether this was the case or not we have no positive evidence to show. Only we know that in the course of this year the issue of the matter was regarded as uncertain. In September Sir John Paston writes that he had almost spoken with Mrs. Anne Haute, but had not done so. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this next term I hope to take one way with her or other. She is agreed to speak with me and she hopeth to do me ease, as she saith.’268.2

A.D.1471, Oct.

Six weeks later, in the end of October, the state of matters269is reported, not by Sir John Paston but by his brother. ‘As for Mrs. A. Haulte, the matter is moved by divers of the queen’s council, and of fear by R. Haulte; but he would it should be first of our motion, and we would it should come of them first—our matter should be the better.’269.1A.D.1472, Feb.In February following Sir John was admitted to another interview with the lady, but was unable to bring the matter to a decisive issue. ‘I have spoken,’ he says, ‘with Mrs. Anne Haulte at a pretty leisure, and, blessed be God, we be as far forth as we were tofore, and so I hope we shall continue. And I promised her that at the next leisure that I could find thereto, that I would come again and see her, which will take a leisure, as I deem now. Since this observance is overdone, I purpose not to tempt God no more so.’269.2

A year later, in April 1473, he says that if he had six days more leisure, he ‘would have hoped to have been delivered of Mrs. Anne Haulte. Her friends, the queen, and Atcliff,’ he writes, ‘agreed to common and conclude with me, if I can find the mean to discharge her conscience, which I trust to God to do.’269.3But the discharge of her conscience required an application to the Court of Rome, and this involved a very unsentimental question of fees. ‘I have answer again from Rome,’ he writes in November following, ‘that there is the well of grace and salve sufficient for such a sore, and that I may be dispensed with; nevertheless my proctor there asketh a thousand ducats, as he deemeth. But Master Lacy, another Rome runner here, which knoweth my said proctor there, as he saith, as well as Bernard knew his shield, sayeth that he meaneth but an hundred ducats, or two hundred ducats at the most; wherefore after this cometh more. He wrote to me alsoquod Papa hoc facit hodiernis diebus multociens(that the Pope does this nowadays very frequently).’269.4

Here we lose for a while nearly all further trace of the matter. Nothing more seems to have been done in it for a long time; for about fourteen months later we find Sir John Paston’s mother still wishing he were ‘delivered of Mrs.270Anne Haulte,’270.1and this is all we hear about it until after an interval of two years more, when, in February 1477, Sir John reports that the matter between him and Mrs. Anne Haulte had been ‘sore broken’ to Cardinal Bourchier, the Lord Chamberlain (Hastings), and himself, and that he was ‘in good hope.’270.2Finally, in August following, he expects that it ‘shall, with God’s grace, this term be at a perfect end.’270.3After this we hear nothing more of it. The pre-contract between Sir John and Anne Haulte seems therefore to have been at last annulled; and what is more remarkable, after it had been so, he was reported to be so influential at Court that another marriage was offered him ‘right nigh of the Queen’s blood.’270.4His mother, who writes to him on the subject in May 1478, had not been informed who the lady was, and neither can we tell the reader. We only know for certain that such a marriage never took effect.

John Paston’s love affairs.

John Paston, too, had his love affairs as well as his brother, but was more fortunate in not being bound helplessly to one lady for a long series of years. In the summer of 1471, he seems to have been endeavouring to win the hand of a certain Lady Elizabeth Bourchier; but here he did not prosper, for she was married a few months later to Lord Thomas Howard—the nobleman who more than forty years after was created Duke of Norfolk by King HenryVIII.for his victory over the Scots at Flodden.270.5As to his further proceedings in271search of a wife, we shall have occasion to speak of them hereafter.

A.D.1472.

Property was at all times a matter of more importance than love to that selfish generation; it was plainly, avowedly regarded by every one as the principal point in marrying.The Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester.In the royal family at this very time, the design of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to marry the widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, awoke the jealousy of his brother Clarence. For the lady was a younger sister of Clarence’s own wife, and co-heir to her father, Warwick the Kingmaker; and since the death of that great earl at Barnet, Clarence seems to have pounced on the whole of his immense domains without the slightest regard even to the rights of his widow, who, indeed, was now in disgrace, and was living in sanctuary at Beaulieu. The idea of being compelled to share the property with his brother was a thing that had never occurred to him, and he could not endure the thought. He endeavoured to prevent the proposed marriage by concealing the lady in London.271.1Disputes arose between the two brothers in consequence, and though they went to Sheen together to pardon, it was truly suspected to be ‘not all in charity.’ The king endeavoured to act as mediator, and entreated Clarence to show a fair amount of consideration to his brother; but his efforts met with very little success. ‘As it is said,’ writes Sir John Paston, ‘he answereth that he may well have my lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no livelode,’—the elder sister was to have all the inheritance, and the younger sister nothing! No wonder the writer adds, ‘So what will fall can I not say.’271.2What did fall, however, we know partly from the Paston Letters and partly from other sources. The Duke of Gloucester married the lady in spite of his brother’s threats. The dispute about the property raged violently more than two years, and almost defied the king’s efforts to keep his two brothers in subjection. In November 1473 we find it ‘said for certain that the Duke of Clarence maketh him big in that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester; but the king intendeth, in eschewing all inconvenients,272to be as big as they both, and to be a styffeler atween them. And some men think that under this there should be some other thing intended, and some treason conspired.’ Sir John Paston again did not know what to make of it, and was driven to reiterate his former remark, ‘So what shall fall can I not say.’272.1He only hoped the two brothers would yet be brought into agreement by the king’s award.272.2

This hope was ultimately realised. Clarence at last consented with an ill will to let his sister-in-law have a share in her father’s lands; and an arrangement was made by a special Act of Parliament for the division of the property.272.3To satisfy the rapacity of the royal brothers, the claims of the Countess of Warwick were deliberately set aside, and the Act expressly treated her as if she had been a dead woman. So the matter was finally settled in May 1474. Yet possibly the Countess’s claims had some influence in hastening this settlement; for about a twelvemonth before she had been removed from her sanctuary at Beaulieu272.4and conveyed northwards by Sir James Tyrell. This, it appears, was not done avowedly by the king’s command; nevertheless rumour said that it was by his assent, and also that it was contrary to the will of Clarence.272.5

Even so in the Paston family love affairs give place at this time to questions about property, in which their interests were very seriously at stake. Not only was there the great question between Sir John and the Duke of Norfolk about Caister, but there was also a minor question about the manor of Saxthorpe, the particulars of which are not very clear. On the 12th July 1471, Sir John Paston made a release of Saxthorpe and Titchwell and some other portions of the Fastolf estates, to David Husband and William Gyfford;272.6but this was probably only in the nature of a trust, for it appears that he did not intend to give up his interest in the property.A.D.1472, Jan.In January following, however, William Gurney entered into Saxthorpe and273endeavoured to hold a court there for the lord of the manor.John Paston interrupts the Manor Court at Saxthorpe.But John Paston hearing of what was doing, went thither accompanied by one man only to protect his brother’s interest, and charged the tenants, in the presence of Gurney himself and a number of his friends, to proceed no further. The protest was effective so far as to produce a momentary pause. But when it was seen that he had only one man with him, the proceedings were resumed; on which John Paston sat down by the steward and blotted his book with his finger as he wrote, and then called the tenants to witness that he had effectually interrupted the court in his brother’s right.273.1Gurney, however, did not give up the game, but warned another court to be kept on Holy Rood day (May 3rd, the Invention of the Holy Cross), when he would have collected the half-year’s rents from the tenants. The court was held, but before it was half over John Paston appeared again and persuaded him to stay proceedings once more, and to forbear gathering money until he and Sir John Paston should confer together in London. It seems to have required some tact and courtesy to get him to consent to this arrangement; for Henry Heydon, the son of the old ally of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, had raised a number of men-at-arms to give Gurney any assistance that might have been necessary, but the gentle demeanour of John Paston left him no pretext for calling in such aid.273.2

The real claimant of the manor against Sir John Paston was Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, of whom, almost immediately after this, Henry Heydon bought both Saxthorpe and Titchwell. Sir John Paston, apparently, had been caught napping as usual, and knew nothing of the transaction. His mother wrote to him in dismay on the 5th June. Young Heydon had already taken possession. ‘We beat the bushes,’ said Margaret Paston, ‘and have the loss and the disworship, and other men have the birds. My lord hath false counsel and simple that adviseth him thereto. And, as it is told me, Guton is like to go the same way in haste. And as for Hellesdon and Drayton, I trow it is there it shall be. What shall fall of the remnant God knoweth,—I trow as evil or worse.’273.3

John Paston in like manner writes on the same day that Heydon was sure of Saxthorpe, and Lady Boleyn of Guton.274.1Sir John Paston was letting the family property slip out of his fingers, while on the other hand he was running into debt, and in his straitened circumstances he was considering what he could sell. His mother had threatened if he parted with any of his lands to disinherit him of double the amount;274.2so he was looking out for a purchaser of his wood at Sporle, which he was proposing to cut down.274.3But by far the most serious matter of all was Caister; ‘if we lose that,’ said Margaret Paston, ‘we lose the fairest flower of our garland.’ To her, too, it would be peculiarly annoying, for she expected to have little comfort in her own family mansion at Mautby, if the Duke of Norfolk had possession of Caister only three miles off.274.4Sir John Paston seeks to get Caister restored to him.On this subject, however, Sir John Paston does not appear to have been remiss. It was the first thing that occupied his thoughts after he had secured his pardon. In the beginning of the year he had been with Archbishop Nevill, who, though he had been in disgrace and committed to the Tower just after the battle of Barnet, seems at this time again to have had some influence in the world, at his residence called the Moor. By the archbishop’s means apparently he had received his pardon, and had spent a merrier Christmas in consequence; and he wrote to his mother that if he could have got any assurance of having Caister restored to him, he would have come away at once.274.5But it was not long before the archbishop again got into trouble. He was once more conducted to the Tower, and two days afterwards at midnight he was put on board a ship and conveyed out to sea.274.6Nothing more therefore was to be hoped for from the archbishop’s friendship; but Sir John Paston did not cease to use what means lay in his power. His brother made incessant applications on his behalf to the Duchess of Norfolk, and to the duke’s council at Framlingham. To be reinstated Sir John was willing to275make the duke a present of £40, an offer which the council acknowledged was ‘more than reasonable.’ If the matter were their own, they gave John Paston to understand, they could easily come to an understanding with him, but my lord was intractable. The duchess herself declined to interfere in the matter until my lord and the council were agreed, and the latter said that when they had mooted it to the duke ‘he gave them such an answer that none of them all would tell it.’ They suggested, however, that the duke might be swayed by more influential opinions, and that if Sir John could get my Lord Chamberlain Hastings, or some other nobleman of mark, to speak to the duke in his favour, there was great probability that he would attain his object.275.1

The Duchess of Norfolk.

A favourable opportunity, however, presented itself shortly afterwards for urging a petition for justice on the duke himself. After ten years or more of married life the Duchess of Norfolk was at length with child. Duke and duchess received everywhere congratulations from their friends and dependants. Among the rest Sir John Paston offered his to my lady herself, in a vein of banter that seems slightly to have offended her, though not perhaps so much by its grossness, which was excessive, as by the undue familiarity exhibited in such a tone of address.275.2The Duke of Norfolk was going to be with his wife on the occasion of her lying-in, and John Paston, as an old servant of the family, went to give his attendance at Framlingham. It was resolved that the utmost should be made of the opportunity. John Paston drew up a petition in behalf of his brother to present to the duke, while Sir John Paston himself, then in London, obtained letters from the king to both the duke and duchess, and also to their council. The king seems to have been particularly interested in the case, and assured Sir John that if his letters were ineffectual justice should be done in the matter without delay. The letters were despatched by a special messenger, ‘a man of worship’ in high favour with the king himself. With such powerful influence engaged on his behalf, most probably Sir John did not care to ask for letters from Lord Hastings, which his brother was276even then expecting. But he suggested, if my lady’s lying-in should be at Norwich instead of Framlingham, that his mother might obtain admittance to her chamber, and that her persuasions would be of considerable use.276.1

Birth of a daughter.

The duchess was confined at Framlingham, and gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of Anne. Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, came down to christen the child, and he, too, took an opportunity during his brief stay to say a word to my lady about Caister and the claim of Sir John Paston to restitution. But exhortations, royal letters, and all were thrown away upon the Duke of Norfolk. My lady promised secretly to another person to favour Sir John’s suit, but the fact of her giving such a promise was not to be communicated to any one else. John Paston was made as uncomfortable as possible by the manner in which his representations were received. ‘I let you plainly wit,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘I am not the man I was, for I was never so rough in my master’s conceit as I am now, and that he told me himself before Richard Southwell, Tymperley, Sir W. Brandon, and twenty more; so that they that lowered now laugh upon me.’276.2

Sir John Paston seeks to enter Parliament.

But although all arts were unsuccessful to bend the will of the Duke of Norfolk on this subject, Sir John Paston seems to have enjoyed the favour and approval of the duchess in offering himself as a candidate for the borough of Maldon in the Parliament of 1472. His friend James Arblaster wrote a letter to the bailiff of Maldon suggesting the great advantage it would be to the town to have for one of their two burgesses ‘such a man of worship and of wit as were towards my said lady,’ and advising all her tenants to vote for Sir John Paston, who not only had this great qualification, but also possessed the additional advantage of being in high favour with my Lord Chamberlain Hastings.276.3There was, however, some uncertainty as to the result, and his brother John suggested in writing to him that if he missed being elected for Maldon he might be for some other place. There were a dozen towns in277England that ought to return members to Parliament which had chosen none, and by the influence of my Lord Chamberlain he might get returned for one of them.277.1

In point of fact, I find that Sir John Paston was not returned for Maldon to the Parliament of 1472; and whether he sat for any other borough I am not certain, though there is an expression in the correspondence a little later that might lead one to suppose so.277.2But that he went up to London we know by a letter dated on the 4th November;277.3and though he went to Calais, and even visited the court of the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy at Ghent early in the following year, when Parliament was no longer sitting, he had returned to London long before it had ended its second session in April 1473.277.4It is also clear that he took a strong interest in its proceedings; but this was only natural. That Parliament was summoned avowedly to provide for the safety of the kingdom. Although the Earl of Warwick was now dead, and Margaret of Anjou a prisoner at Wallingford,277.5and the line of HenryVI.extinct,Fear of Invasion.it was still anticipated that the Earl of Oxford and others, supported by the power of France, would make a descent upon the coast. Commissions of array were issued at various times for defence against apprehended invasion.277.6Information was therefore laid before Parliament of the danger in which the kingdom stood from a confederacy of the king’s ‘ancient and mortal enemies environing the same,’ and a message was sent to the Commons to the effect that the king intended to equip an expedition in resistance of their malice.277.7278The result was that, in November 1472, the Commons agreed to a levy of 13,000 archers, and voted a tenth for their support, which was to be levied before Candlemas following.278.1An income and property tax was not a permanent institution of our ancestors, but when it came it pressed heavily; so that a demand of two shillings in the pound was not at all unprecedented. A higher tax had been imposed four years before, and also in 1453 by the Parliament of Reading. Still, a sudden demand of two shillings in the pound, to be levied within the next four months, was an uncomfortable thing to meet; and owing either to its unpopularity or the difficulty of arranging the machinery for its collection, it was not put in force within the time appointed.A.D.1473.But in the following spring, when the Parliament had begun its second session, collectors were named throughout the country, and it was notified that some further demands were to be made upon the national pocket. On the 26th March, John Paston writes that his cousin John Blennerhasset had been appointed collector in Norfolk, and asks his brother Sir John in London to get him excused from serving in ‘that thankless office,’ as he had not a foot of ground in the county. At the same time the writer expresses the sentiments of himself and his neighbours in language quite sufficiently emphatic: ‘I pray God send you the Holy Ghost among you in the Parliament House, and rather the Devil, we say, than ye should grant any more taxes.’278.2Unfortunately, before the Parliament ended its sittings, it granted a whole fifteenth and tenth additional.278.3

Family jars.

At this time we find that there was some further unpleasant feeling within the Paston family circle. Margaret Paston had several times expressed her discontent with the thriftless extravagance of her eldest son, and even the second, John, did not stand continually in her good graces. A third brother, Edmund, was now just coming out in life, and as a preparation for it he too had to endure continual reproofs and remonstrances from his mother. Besides these, there were at home three other sons and one daughter, of whom we shall speak hereafter. The young generation apparently was a little too much for the lone widow;279and, finding her elder sons not very satisfactory advisers, she did what lone women are very apt to do under such circumstances—took counsel in most of the affairs of this life of a confidential priest. In fact, she was a good and pious woman, to whom in her advancing years this world appeared more and more in its true character as a mere preparation for the next. She had now withdrawn from city life at Norwich, and was dwelling on her own family estate at Mautby. Bodily infirmities, perhaps—though we hear nothing explicitly said of them—made it somewhat less easy for her to move about; and she desired to obtain a licence from the Bishop of Norwich to have the sacrament in her own chapel.279.1She was also thinking, we know, of getting her fourth son Walter educated for the priesthood; and she wished her own spiritual adviser, Sir James Gloys,279.2to conduct him to Oxford, and see him put in the right way to pursue his studies creditably. She hoped, she said, to have more joy of him than of his elder brothers; and though she desired him to be a priest, she wished him not to take any orders that should be binding until he had reached the age of four-and-twenty. ‘I will love him better,’ she said, ‘to be a good secular man than a lewd priest.’279.3

Sir James Gloys.

But the influence of this spiritual adviser over their mother was by no means agreeable to the two eldest sons. John Paston speaks of him in a letter to his brother as ‘the proud, peevish, and ill-disposed priest to us all,’ and complains grievously of his interference in family affairs. ‘Many quarrels,’ he writes, ‘are picked to get my brother Edmund and me out of her house. We go not to bed unchidden lightly; all that we do is ill done, and all that Sir James and Pecock doth is well done. Sir James and I be twain. We280fell out before my mother with “Thou proud priest,” and “Thou proud squire,” my mother taking his part; so I have almost beshut the bolt as for my mother’s house; yet summer shall be done or I get me any master.’280.1John Paston, in fact, was obliged to put up with it for some months longer, and though he afterwards reports that Sir James was always ‘chopping at him,’ and seeking to irritate him in his mother’s presence, he had found out that it was not altogether the best policy to rail at him in return. So he learned to smile a little at the most severe speeches, and remark quietly, ‘It is good hearing of these old tales.’280.2This mode of meeting the attack, if it did not soften Sir James’s bitterness, may have made Margaret Paston less willing to take his part against her son. At all events we hear no more of these encounters. Sir James Gloys, however, died about twelve months later.280.3

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