INTRODUCTION

1.1Walpole’s Letters(Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.2.1Roberts’sMemoirs of Hannah More, ii. 50.4.1SeeAppendix after Introduction, No. I.4.2Cursory Notices of the Reverend Francis Blomefield.By J. Wilton Rix, Esq.5.1Norfolk Archæology, ii. 210, 211.6.1SeeNichols’sLiterary Anecdotes, iii. 199.6.2The following announcement appears in theMorning Chronicleof the 24th May 1787: ‘Yesterday, John Fenn, Esq., attended the levee at St. James’s, and had the honour of presenting to His Majesty (bound in three volumes) the original letters of which he had before presented a printed copy; when His Majesty, as a mark of his gracious acceptance, was pleased to confer on him the honour of knighthood.’9.1Holland House.By Princess Marie Liechtenstein, vol. ii. p. 198.10.1The missing letters of volume iv. are Nos. 24, 97, 99, and 105 (Nos. 551, 726, 735, and 758 of this edition). The last never formed part of Fenn’s collection. I do not know of any other noted by him as ‘no longer in his possession.’ The letters missing of the Appendix are only Nos. 997 and 1019. Of the four said to be missing in Christie’s catalogue, 1016 is not a document at all, the number having been accidentally skipped in the Inventory, and the other three are in the British Museum. No. 1077, however, is inaccurately described in the Appendix.13.1Archæol.vol. xli. p. 39.13.2SeeAdvertisement in the beginning of the volume, p. vii.15.1The following is the exact form in which they stand in the literal or left-hand version:—‘Utia’z iste mu’d maligust’nsirt& c’up’ia es.’15.2No. 38 in that edition, No. 52 in this.15.3It was Letter 1 in Fenn’s third volume, No. 18 in my first edition, No. 24 in this.16.1No. 25 in present edition.16.2No. 230 in present edition.16.3No. 282 in present edition.16.4That is to say, in the edition published by Mr. Arber in 1875, when it was impossible to correct the text.17.1No. 1033 in present edition.18.1No. 787 of this edition.18.2No. 51 of present edition.18.3No. 205.18.4No. 221.‘The care taken by Sir Johnopening quotation mark missingthe tower of Magdalene College.spelling unchanged25INTRODUCTIONThe Paston FamilyThelittle village of Paston, in Norfolk, lies not far from the sea, where the land descends gently behind the elevated ground of Mundesley, and the line of the shore, proceeding eastward from Cromer, begins to tend a little more towards the south. It is about twenty miles north of Norwich. The country, though destitute of any marked features, is not uninteresting. Southwards, where it is low and flat, the ruins of Bromholm Priory attract attention. But, on the whole, it is an out-of-the-way district, unapproachable by sea, for the coast is dangerous, and offering few attractions to those who visit it by land. Indeed, till quite recently, no railways had come near it, and the means of access were not superabundant. Here, however, lived for several centuries a family which took its surname from the place, and whose private correspondence at one particular epoch sheds no inconsiderable light on the annals of their country.Of the early history of this family our notices are scanty and uncertain. A Norman descent was claimed for them not only by the county historian Blomefield but by the laborious herald, Francis Sandford, author of aGenealogical History of the Kings of England, on the evidence of documents which have been since dispersed. Sandford’s genealogy of the Paston family was drawn up in the year 1674, just after Sir Robert Paston had been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Yarmouth, before he was promoted to the higher dignity of earl. It still remains inMS.; but a pretty full account of it will be found in the fourth volume ofNorfolk Archæology. The26story of the early ancestors, however, does not concern us here. At the time the family and their doings become best known to us, their social position was merely that of small gentry. One of these, however, was a justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of HenryVI., whose uprightness of conduct caused him to be commonly spoken of by the name of the Good Judge. He had a son, John, brought up to the law, who became executor to the old soldier and statesman, Sir John Fastolf. This John Paston had a considerable family, of whom the two eldest sons, strange to say, both bore the same Christian name as their father. They were also both of them soldiers, and each, in his time, attained the dignity of knighthood. But of them and their father, and their grandfather the judge, we shall have more to say presently. After them came Sir William Paston, a lawyer, one of whose daughters, Eleanor, married Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland. He had also two sons, of whom the first, Erasmus, died before him.Clement Paston.The second, whose name was Clement, was perhaps the most illustrious of the whole line. Born at Paston Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, he had an early love for ships, was admitted when young into the naval service of HenryVIII., and became a great commander. In an engagement with the French he captured their admiral, the Baron de St. Blankheare or Blankard, and kept him prisoner at Caister, near Yarmouth, till he had paid 7000 crowns for his ransom, besides giving up a number of valuables contained in his ship. Of this event Clement Paston preserved till his death a curious memorial among his household utensils, and we read in his will that he bequeathed to his nephew his ‘standing bowl called the Baron St. Blankheare.’ He served also by land as well as by sea, and was with the Protector Somerset in Scotland at the battle of Pinkie. In Mary’s reign he is said to have been the person to whom the rebel Sir Thomas Wyat surrendered. In his later years he was more peacefully occupied in building a fine family seat at Oxnead. He lived till near the close of the reign of Elizabeth, having earned golden opinions from each of the sovereigns under whom he served. ‘HenryVIII.,’ we are told, ‘called him his champion; the Duke of Somerset,27Protector in King Edward’s reign, called him his soldier; Queen Mary, her seaman; and Queen Elizabeth, her father.’27.1Clement Paston died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew, another Sir William, whose name is well known in Norfolk as the founder of North Walsham School, and whose effigy in armour is visible in North Walsham Church, with a Latin epitaph recording acts of munificence on his part, not only to the grammar-school, but also to the cathedrals of Bath and Norwich, to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and to the poor at Yarmouth.From Sir William the line descended through Christopher Paston (who, on succeeding his father, was found to be an idiot, incapable of managing his affairs), Sir Edmund and Sir William Paston, Baronet, to Sir Robert Paston, who, in the reign of CharlesII., was created, first Viscount and afterwards Earl of Yarmouth.The Earl of Yarmouth.He is described as a person of good learning, and a traveller who brought home a number of curiosities collected in foreign countries. Before he was raised to the peerage he sat in Parliament for Castle Rising. It was he who, in the year 1664, was bold enough to propose to the House of Commons the unprecedented grant of two and a half millions to the king for a war against the Dutch.27.2This act not unnaturally brought him into favour with the Court, and paved the way for his advancement. Another incident in his life is too remarkable to be passed over. On the 9th of August 1676 he was waylaid while travelling in the night-time by a band of ruffians, who shot five bullets into his coach, one of which entered his body. The wound, however, was not mortal, and he lived six years longer.His relations with the Court were not altogether of good omen for his family. We are told that he once entertained the king and queen, and the king’s brother, James, Duke of York, with a number of the nobility, at his family seat at Oxnead. His son, William, who became second Earl of Yarmouth, married the Lady Charlotte Boyle, one of King Charles’s natural daughters. This great alliance, and all the magnificence28it involved, was too much for his slender fortunes. Earl William was led into a profuse expenditure which involved him in pecuniary difficulties. He soon deeply encumbered his inheritance; the library and the curiosities collected by his accomplished father had to be sold. The magnificent seat at Oxnead was allowed to fall into ruin; and on the death of this second earl it was pulled down, and the materials turned into money to satisfy his creditors. The family line itself came to an end, for Earl William had survived all his male issue, and the title became extinct.From this brief summary of the family history we must now turn to a more specific account of William Paston, the old judge in the days of HenryVI., and of his children.Thrifty ancestors.Of them, and of their more immediate ancestor Clement, we have a description drawn by an unfriendly hand some time after the judge’s death; and as it is, notwithstanding its bias, our sole authority for some facts which should engage our attention at the outset, we cannot do better than quote the paper at length:—‘A remembrance of the worshipful kin and ancestry of Paston, born in Paston in Gemyngham Soken.‘First, There was one Clement Paston dwelling in Paston, and he was a good, plain husband (i.e.husbandman), and lived upon his land that he had in Paston, and kept thereon a plough all times in the year, and sometimes in barlysell two ploughs. The said Clement yede (i.e.went) at one plough both winter and summer, and he rode to mill on the bare horseback with his corn under him, and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart with divers corns to Wynterton to sell, as a good husband[man] ought to do. Also, he had in Paston a five score or a six score acres of land at the most, and much thereof bond land to Gemyngham Hall, with a little poor water-mill running by a little river there, as it appeareth there of old time. Other livelode nor manors had he none there, nor in none other place.‘And he wedded Geoffrey of Somerton (whose true surname is Goneld)’s sister, which was a bondwoman, to whom it is not unknown (to the prior of Bromholm and Bakton also, as it is said) if that men will inquire.‘And as for Geoffrey Somerton, he was bond also, to whom, etc.,29he was both a pardoner and an attorney; and then was a good world, for he gathered many pence and half-pence, and therewith he made a fair chapel at Somerton, as it appeareth, etc.‘Also, the said Clement had a son William, which that he set to school, and often he borrowed money to find him to school; and after that he yede (went) to court with the help of Geoffrey Somerton, his uncle, and learned the law, and there begat he much good; and then he was made a serjeant, and afterwards made a justice, and a right cunning man in the law. And he purchased much land in Paston, and also he purchased the moiety of the fifth part of the manor of Bakton, called either Latymer’s, or Styward’s, or Huntingfield, which moiety stretched into Paston; and so with it, and with another part of the said five parts he hath seignory in Paston, but no manor place; and thereby would John Paston, son to the said William, make himself a lordship there, to the Duke (qu. Duchy?) of Lancaster’s great hurt.‘And the said John would and hath untruly increased him by one tenant, as where that the prior of Bromholm borrowed money of the said William for to pay withal his dismes, the said William would not lend it him unless the said prior would mortgage to the said William one John Albon, the said prior’s bondsman, dwelling in Paston, which was a stiff churl and a thrifty man, and would not obey him unto the said William; and for that cause, and for evil will that the said William had unto him, he desired him of the prior. And now after the death of the said William, the said John Albon died; and now John Paston, son to the said William, by force of the mortgage sent for the son of the said John Albon to Norwich.’The reader will probably be of opinion that several of the facts here recorded are by no means so discreditable to the Pastons as the writer certainly intended that they should appear. The object of the whole paper is to cast a stigma on the family in general, as a crafty, money-getting race who had risen above their natural rank and station. It is insinuated that they were originally mereadscripti glebæ; that Clement Paston was only a thrifty husbandman (note the original signification of the word, ‘housebondman’), that he married a bondwoman, and transmitted to his son and grandson lands held by a servile tenure; and the writer further contends that they had no manorial rights in Paston, although William Paston, the justice, had purchased land in the neighbourhood, and his son John was endeavouring to ‘make himself a lordship’ there to the prejudice of the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster.30It is altogether a singular statement, very interesting in its bearing upon the obscure question of the origin of copyholds, and the gradual emancipation of villeins. Whether it be true or false is another question; if true, it appears to discredit entirely the supposed Norman ancestry of the Pastons; but the remarkable thing is that an imputation of this kind could have been preferred against a family who, whatever may have been their origin, had certainly long before obtained a recognised position in the county.It would appear, however, from the accuser’s own statement, that Clement Paston, the father of the justice, was an industrious peasant, who tilled his own land, and who set so high a value on a good education that he borrowed money to keep his son at school. With the help of his brother-in-law, he also sent the young man to London to learn the law, a profession which in that day, as in the present, was considered to afford an excellent education for a gentleman.30.1The good education was not thrown away.William Paston the justice.William Paston rose in the profession and became one of its ornaments. He improved his fortunes by marrying Agnes, daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Berry of Harlingbury Hall, in Hertfordshire. Some years before his father’s death, Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich, appointed him his steward. In 1414 he was called in, along with two others, to mediate in a dispute which had for some time prevailed in the city of Norwich, as to the mode in which the mayors should be elected; and he had the good fortune with his coadjutors to adjust the matter satisfactorily.30.2In 1421 he was made a serjeant, and in 1429 a judge of the Common Pleas.30.3Before that time we find him acting as trustee for various properties, as of the Appleyard family in Dunston,30.4of Sir Richard Carbonel,30.5Sir Simon Felbrigg,30.6John31Berney,31.1Sir John Rothenhale,31.2Sir John Gyney of Dilham,31.3Lord Cobham,31.4and Ralph Lord Cromwell.31.5He was also executor to Sir William Calthorp.31.6The confidence reposed in him by so many different persons is a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which he was held. He was, moreover, appointed one of the king’s council for the duchy of Lancaster, and on his elevation to the judicial bench the king gave him a salary of 110 marks (£73, 6s. 8d.), with two robes more than the ordinary allowance of the judges.In addition to all this he is supposed to have been a knight, and is called Sir William Paston in Fenn’s publication. But this dignity was never conferred upon him in his own day.Not a knight.There is, indeed, one paper printed by Fenn from theMSS.which were for a long time missing that speaks of him in the heading as ‘Sir William Paston, Knight’; but the originalMS.since recovered shows that the heading so printed is taken from an endorsement of a more modern date. This was, indeed, a confident surmise of mine at a time when theMS.was inaccessible; for it was clear that William Paston never could have been knighted. His name occurs over and over again on the patent rolls of HenryVI.He is named in at least one commission of the peace every year to his death, and in a good many other commissions besides, as justices invariably were. He is named also in many of the other papers of the same collection, simply as William Paston of Paston, Esquire; and even in the body of the petition so inaccurately headed, he is simply styled William Paston, one of the justices. Nor does there appear to be any other foundation for the error than that single endorsement. He left a name behind him of so great repute, that Fuller could not help giving him a place among his ‘Worthies of England,’ although, as he remarks, it did not fall strictly within the plan of his work to notice a lawyer who was neither a chief justice nor an author.His character.Of his personal character we are entitled to form a favourable32estimate, not only from the honourable name conferred on him as a judge, but also from the evidences already alluded to of the general confidence felt in his integrity. True it is that among these papers we have a complaint against him for accepting fees and pensions when he was justice, from various persons in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk;32.1but this only proves, what we might have expected, that he had enemies and cavillers as well as friends. Of the justice of the charges in themselves we have no means of forming an independent judgment; but in days when all England, and not least so the county of Norfolk, was full of party spirit and contention, it was not likely that a man in the position of William Paston should escape imputations of partiality and one-sidedness. Before his elevation to the bench, he had already suffered for doing his duty to more than one client. Having defended the Prior of Norwich in an action brought against him by a certain Walter Aslak, touching the advowson of the church of Sprouston, the latter appears to have pursued him with unrelenting hatred. The county of Norfolk was at the time ringing with the news of an outrage committed by a band of unknown rioters at Wighton. On the last day of the year 1423, one John Grys of Wighton had been entertaining company, and was heated with ‘wassail,’ when he was suddenly attacked in his own house.Outrage by William Aslak.He and his son and a servant were carried a mile from home and led to a pair of gallows, where it was intended to hang them; but as ropes were not at once to be had, they were murdered in another fashion, and their bodies horribly mutilated before death.32.2For nearly three years the murderers went unpunished, while the country stood aghast at the crime. But while it was still recent, at a county court holden at Norwich, Aslak caused a number of bills, partly in rhyme, to be posted on the gates of Norwich priory, and of the Grey Friars, and some of the city gates, distinctly threatening William Paston with the fate of John33Grys, and insinuating that even worse things were in store for him.Against open threats like these William Paston of course appealed to the law; but law in those days was but a feeble protector. Aslak had the powerful support of Sir Thomas Erpingham, by which he was enabled not only to evade the execution of sentence passed against him, but even to continue his persecution. He found means to deprive Paston of the favour of the Duke of Norfolk, got bills introduced in Parliament to his prejudice, and made it unsafe for him to stir abroad. The whole country appears to have been disorganised by faction; quarrels at that very time were rife in the king’s council-chamber itself, between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Protector, and Bishop Beaufort; nor was anything so firmly established by authority but that hopes might be entertained of setting it aside by favour.William Paston had two other enemies at this time. ‘I pray the Holy Trinity,’ he writes in one place, ‘deliver me of my three adversaries, this cursed Bishop for Bromholm, Aslak for Sprouston, and Julian Herberd for Thornham.’ The bishop whom he mentions with so much vehemence, claimed to be a kinsman of his own, and named himself John Paston, but William Paston denied the relationship, maintaining that his true name was John Wortes.John Wortes.He appears to have been in the first place a monk of Bromholm, the prior of which monastery having brought an action against him as an apostate from his order, engaged William Paston as his counsel in the prosecution. Wortes, however, escaped abroad, and brought the matter before the spiritual jurisdiction of the court of Rome, bringing actions against both the prior and William Paston, the latter of whom he got condemned in a penalty of £205. On this William Paston was advised by friends at Rome to come at once to an arrangement with him; but he determined to contest the validity of the sentence, the result of which appears to have been that he was excommunicated. His adversary, meanwhile, found interest to get himself appointed and consecrated Bishop of Cork; and though his name does not appear in the ordinary lists of bishops of34that see, the Vatican archives show that he was provided to it on the 23rd May 1425.34.1As for Julian Herberd, William Paston’s third enemy, we have hitherto known nothing of her but the name. It appears, however, by some Chancery proceedings34.2recently discovered, that Julian Herberd was a widow who considered herself to have been wronged by Paston as regards her mother’s inheritance, of which he had kept her from the full use for no less than forty years. Paston had, indeed, made her some pecuniary offers which she did not think sufficient, and she had attempted to pursue her rights against him at a Parliament at Westminster, when he caused her to be imprisoned in the King’s Bench. There, as she grievously complains, she lay a year, suffering much and ‘nigh dead from cold, hunger, and thirst.’ The case was apparently one of parliamentary privilege, which she had violated by her attempted action, though she adds that he threatened to keep her in prison for life if she would not release to him her right, and give him a full acquittance. She also accuses him of having actually procured one from her by coercion, and of having by false suggestion to the Lord Chancellor caused her committal to the Fleet, where she was kept for a whole year, ‘beaten, fettered, and stocked,’ that no man might know where she was. At another time, also, she says he kept her three years in the pit within Norwich Castle on starvation diet. The accusation culminates in a charge which seems really inconceivable:—‘Item, the said Paston did bring her out of the Round House into your Palace and brought her afore your Chief Justice, and then the said Paston commanded certain persons to bring her to prison to your Bench, and bade at his peril certain persons to smite the brain out of her head for suing of her right; and there being in grievous prison during half year and more, fettered and chained, suffering cold, hunger, thirst, in point of death, God and ye, gracious King, help her to her right.’35What we are to think of all this, not having Paston’s reply, I cannot say.Scanty and disconnected as are the notices we possess of William Paston, we must not pass by without comment his letter to the vicar of the abbot of Clugny, in behalf of Bromholm Priory.35.1It was not, indeed, the only occasion35.2on which we find that he exerted himself in behalf of this ancient monastery, within a mile of which, he tells us, he was born.Bromholm Priory.Bromholm Priory was, in fact, about that distance from Paston Hall, as miles were reckoned then (though it is nearer two of our statute miles), and must have been regarded with special interest by the family. It was there that John Paston, the son of the judge, was sumptuously buried in the reign of EdwardIV.It was a monastery of some celebrity. Though not, at least in its latter days, one of the most wealthy religious houses, for it fell among the smaller monasteries at the first parliamentary suppression of HenryVIII., its ruins still attest that it was by no means insignificant. Situated by the sea-shore, with a flat, unbroken country round about, they are conspicuous from a distance both by sea and land. Among the numerous monasteries of Norfolk, none but Walsingham was more visited by strangers, and many of the pilgrims to Walsingham turned aside on their way homeward to visit the Rood of Bromholm. For this was a very special treasure brought from Constantinople two hundred years before, and composed of a portion of the wood of the true Cross. Many were the miracles recorded to have been wrought in the monastery since that precious relic was set up; the blind had received their sight, the lame had walked, and lepers had been cleansed; even the dead had been restored to life. It was impossible that a native of Paston could be uninterested in a place so renowned throughout all England.Yet about this time the priory must have been less prosperous than it had once been. Its government and constitution were in a transition state. It was one of the twenty-eight monasteries in England which belonged to the Cluniac order, and were originally subject to the visitation of the Abbot of36Clugny in France. Subjection to a foreign head did not tend at any time to make them popular in this country, and in the reign of HenryV.that connection was suddenly broken off. An act was passed suppressing at once all the alien priories, or religious houses that acknowledged foreign superiors. The priors of several of the Cluniac monasteries took out new foundation charters, and attached themselves to other orders. Those that continued signed deeds of surrender, and their monasteries were taken into the king’s hands. About nine or ten years later, however, it would seem that a vicar of the Abbot of Clugny was allowed to visit England, and to him William Paston made an appeal to profess in due form a number of virtuous young men who had joined the priory in the interval.Land purchased by Judge Paston.From the statement already quoted as to the history of the Paston family, it appears that William Paston purchased a good deal of land in Paston besides what had originally belonged to them. It was evidently his intention to make a family residence, and transmit to his sons a more absolute ownership in the land from which they derived their name. Much of his father’s land in Paston had been copyhold belonging to the manor of Gimingham Hall; but William Paston bought ‘a moiety of the fifth part’ of the adjacent manor of Bacton, with free land extending into Paston. He thus established himself as undoubted lord of the greater part of the soil, and must have felt a pardonable pride in the improved position he thereby bequeathed to his descendants. At Paston he apparently contemplated building a manor house; for he made inquiry about getting stone from Yorkshire conveyed by sea to Mundesley, where there was then a small harbour36.1within two miles of Paston village. To carry out the improvementsHighways diverted.he proposed to make there and on other parts of his property, he obtained licence from the king a year before his death to divert two public highways, the one at Paston and the other at Oxnead, a little from their course.36.2The alterations do not appear to have been of a nature that any one had a right to complain of. Full inquiry was made beforehand by37an inquisitionad quod damnum37.1whether they would be to the prejudice of neighbours. At Paston the extent of roadway which he obtained leave to enclose was only thirty-two and a half perches in length by one perch in breadth. It ran on the south side of his mansion, and he agreed to make a new highway of the same dimensions on the north side. The vicar of Paston seems to have been the neighbour principally concerned in the course that the new thoroughfare was to take, and all particulars had been arranged with him a few months before William Paston died.John Paston has disputes with his neighbours.But it would seem upon the judge’s death his great designs were for some time interrupted. The family were looked upon by many as upstarts, and young John Paston, who was only four-and-twenty, though bred to the law like his father, could not expect to possess the same weight and influence with his neighbours. A claim was revived by the lord of Gimingham Hall to a rent of eight shillings from one of Paston’s tenants, which had never been demanded so long as the judge was alive. The vicar of Paston pulled up the ‘doles’ which were set to mark the new highway, and various other disturbances were committed by the neighbours. It seems to have required all the energies not only of John Paston upon the spot, but also of his brother Edmund, who was in London at Clifford’s Inn, to secure the rights of the family; insomuch that their mother, in writing to the latter of the opposition to which they had been exposed, expresses a fear lest she should make him weary of Paston.37.2And, indeed, if Edmund Paston was not weary of the dispute, his mother herself had cause to be; for it not only lasted years after this, but for some years after Edmund Paston was dead the stopping of the king’s highway was a fruitful theme of remonstrance. When Agnes Paston built a wall it was thrown down before it was half completed; threats of heavy amercements were addressed to her in church, and the men of Paston spoke of showing their displeasure when they went in public procession on St. Mark’s day.37.3Oxnead.The Manor of Oxnead, which in later times became the38principal seat of the family, was also among the possessions purchased by Judge Paston. He bought it of William Clopton of Long Melford, and settled it upon Agnes, his wife. But after his death her right to it was disputed. It had formerly belonged to a family of the name of Hauteyn, and there suddenly started up a claimant in the person of one John Hauteyn, whose right to hold property of any kind wasJohn Hauteyn.supposed to have been entirely annulled by the fact of his having entered the Order of Carmelite Friars. It seems, however, he had succeeded in getting from the Pope a dispensation to renounce the Order on the plea that he had been forced into it against his will when he was under age, and being thus restored by the ecclesiastical power to the condition of a layman, he next appealed to the civil courts to get back his inheritance. This danger must have been seen by William Paston before his death, and a paper was drawn up (No. 46) to show that Hauteyn had been released from his vows on false pretences. Nevertheless he pursued his claim at law, and although he complained of the difficulty of getting counsel (owing, as he himself intimated, to the respect in which the bar held the memory of Judge Paston, and the fact that his son John was one of their own members), he seems to have had hopes of succeeding through the influence of the Duke of Suffolk. His suit, however, had not been brought to a successful determination at the date of Suffolk’s fall. It was still going on in the succeeding summer; but as we hear no more of it after that, we may presume that the altered state of the political world induced him to abandon it. According to Blomefield, he and others of the Hauteyn family released their rights to Agnes Paston ‘about 1449’; but this date is certainly at least a year too early.38.1William Paston also purchased various other lands in the county of Norfolk.38.2Among others, he purchased from39Thomas Chaucer, a son of the famous poet, the manor of Gresham,39.1of which we shall have something more to say a little later. We also find that in the fourth year of HenryVI.he obtained, in conjunction with one Thomas Poye, a grant of a market, fair and free-warren in his manor of Shipden which had belonged to his father Clement before him.39.2John Paston’s marriage.The notices of John Paston begin when he was on the eve of marrying, a few years before his father’s death. The match was evidently one that was arranged by the parents, after the fashion of the times. The lady was of a good family—daughter and heiress of John Mauteby, Esq. of Mauteby in Norfolk. The friends on both sides must have been satisfied that the union was a good one; for it had the one great merit which was then considered everything—it was no disparagement to the fortunes or the rank of either family. Beyond this hard business view, indeed, might have been found better arguments to recommend it; but English men and women in those days did not read novels, and had no great notion of cultivating sentiment for its own sake. Agnes Paston writes to her husband to intimate ‘the bringing home of the gentlewoman from Reedham,’ according to the arrangement he had made about it. It was, in her words, ‘the first acquaintance between John Paston and the said gentlewoman’ (one would think Dame Agnes must have learned from her husband to express herself with something of the formality of a lawyer); and we are glad to find that the young lady’s sense of propriety did not spoil her natural affability. ‘She made him gentle cheer in gentle wise, and said he was verily your son; and so I hope there shall need no great treaty between them.’ Finally the judge is requested by his wife to buy a gown for his future daughter-in-law, to which her mother would add a goodly fur. ‘The gown,’ says Dame Agnes, ‘needeth for to40be had; and of colour it would be a goodly blue, or else a bright sanguine.’40.1Character of his wife.‘The gentlewoman’ thus introduced to John Paston and the reader proved to the former a most devoted wife during about six-and-twenty years of married life. Her letters to her husband form no inconsiderable portion of the correspondence in these volumes, and it is impossible to peruse them without being convinced that the writer was a woman not only of great force of character, but of truly affectionate nature. It is true the ordinary style of these epistles is very different from that of wives addressing their husbands nowadays. There are no conventional expressions of tenderness—the conventionality of the age seems to have required not tenderness but humility on the part of women towards the head of a family; the subjects of the letters, too, are for the most part matters of pure business; yet the genuine womanly nature is seen bursting out whenever there is occasion to call it forth. Very early in the correspondence we meet with a letter of hers (No. 47) which in itself is pretty sufficient evidence that women, at least, were human in the fifteenth century. Her husband was at the time in London just beginning to recover from an illness which seems to have been occasioned by some injury he had met with. His mother had vowed to give an image of wax the weight of himself to Our Lady of Walsingham on his recovery, and Margaret to go on a pilgrimage thither, and also to St. Leonard’s at Norwich. That she did not undertake a journey of a hundred miles to do more efficient service was certainly not owing to any want of will on her part. The difficulties of travelling in those days, and the care of a young child, sufficiently account for her remaining in Norfolk; but apparently even these considerations would not have deterred her from the journey had she not been dissuaded from it by others. ‘If I might have had my will,’ she writes, ‘I should have seen you ere this time. I would ye were at home, if it were for your ease (and your sore might be as well looked to here as it is there ye be), now liever than a gown, though it were41of scarlet.’ Could the sincerity of a woman’s wishes be more artlessly expressed?Let not the reader suppose, however, that Margaret Paston’s acknowledged love of a scarlet gown indicates anything like frivolity of character or inordinate love of display. We have little reason to believe from her correspondence that dress was a ruling passion. The chief aim discernible in all she writes—the chief motive that influenced everything she did—was simply the desire to give her husband satisfaction. And her will to do him service was, in general, only equalled by her ability. During term time, when John Paston was in London, she was his agent at home. It was she who negotiated with farmers, receiving overtures for leases and threats of lawsuits, and reported to her husband everything that might affect his interests, with the news of the country generally. Nor were threats always the worst thing she had to encounter on his account. For even domestic life, in those days, was not always exempt from violence; and there were at least two occasions when Margaret had to endure, in her husband’s absence, things that a woman ought to have been spared.The Manor of Gresham.One of these occasions we proceed to notice. The manor of Gresham, which William Paston had purchased from the son of the poet Chaucer, had been in the days of EdwardII.the property of one Edmund Bacon, who obtained from that king a licence to embattle the manor-house. It descended from him to his two daughters, Margaret and Margery. The former became the wife of Sir William de Kerdeston, and her rights were inherited by a daughter named Maud, who married Sir John Burghersh.41.1This moiety came to Thomas Chaucer by his marriage with Maud Burghersh, the daughter of the Maud just mentioned. The other became at first the property of Sir William Molynes, who married Bacon’s second daughter Margery. But this Margery having survived her husband, made a settlement of it by will, according to which the reversion of it after the decease of one Philip Vache and42of Elizabeth his wife, was to be sold; and William, son of Robert Molynes, was to have the first option of purchase. This William Molynes at first declined to buy it, being apparently in want of funds; but he afterwards got one Thomas Fauconer, a London merchant, to advance the purchase-money, on an agreement that his son should marry Fauconer’s daughter. The marriage, however, never took effect; the Molynes family lost all claim upon the manor, and the same Thomas Chaucer who acquired the other moiety by his wife, purchased this moiety also, and conveyed both to William Paston.42.1The whole manor of Gresham thus descended to John Paston, as his father’s heir. But a few years after his father’s death he was troubled in the possession of it by Robert Hungerford, son of Lord Hungerford, who, having married Eleanor Molynes, a descendant of the Sir William Molynes above referred to, had been raised to the peerage as Lord Molynes,and laid claim to the whole inheritance of theClaimed by Lord Molynes.Molynes family. He was still but a young man,42.2heir-apparent to another barony; and, with the prospect of a great inheritance both from his father and from his mother, who was the daughter and sole heir of William Lord Botraux, he certainly had little occasion to covet lands that were not his own. Nevertheless he listened to the counsels of John Heydon of Baconsthorpe, a lawyer who had been sheriff and also recorder of Norwich, and whom the gentry of Norfolk looked upon with anything but goodwill, regarding him as the ready tool of every powerful oppressor. His chief patron, with whom his name was constantly coupled, was Sir Thomas Tuddenham; and the two together, especially during the unpopular ministry of the Duke of Suffolk, exercised an ascendency in the county, of which we hear very numerous43complaints. Heydon persuaded Lord Molynes that he had a good claim to the manor of Gresham; and Lord Molynes, without more ado, went in and took possession on the 17th of February 1448.43.1To recover his rights against a powerful young nobleman connected with various wealthy and influential families required, as John Paston knew, the exercise of great discretion. Instead of resorting at once to an action at law, he made representations to Lord Molynes and his legal advisers to show how indefensible was the title they had set up for him. He secured some attention for his remonstrances by the intercession of Waynflete, bishop of Winchester.43.2Conferences took place between the counsel of both parties during the following summer, and the weakness of Lord Molynes’ case was practically confessed by his solicitors, who in the end told Paston to apply to his lordship personally. Paston accordingly, at no small expense to himself, went and waited upon him at Salisbury and elsewhere, but was continually put off. At last, on the 6th of October, not, as I believe, the same year, but the year following, he succeeded in doing to Lord Molynes to some extent what Lord Molynes had already done to him. He took possession of ‘a mansion within the said town,’ and occupied it himself, having doubtless a sufficiency of servants to guard against any sudden surprise. After this fashion he maintained his rights for a period of over three months. The usual residence of Lord Molynes was in Wiltshire, and his agents probably did not like the responsibility of attempting to remove John Paston without express orders from their master. But on the 28th of January 1450, while John Paston was away in London on business, there came before the mansion at Gresham a company of a thousand persons, sent to recover possession for Lord Molynes. They were armed with cuirasses and brigandines, with guns, bows, and arrows, and with every kind of offensive and defensive armour. They had also mining instruments, long poles with hooks, called cromes, used for pulling down houses, ladders, pickaxes, and pans with fire burning in them.44With these formidable implements they beset the house, at that time occupied only by Margaret Paston and twelve other persons; and having broken open the outer gates, they set to work undermining the very chamber in which Margaret was. Resistance under the circumstances was impossible. Margaret was forcibly carried out. The house was then thoroughly rifled of all that it contained—property estimated by John Paston at £20044.1—the doorposts were cut asunder, and the place was left little better than a ruin. Further, that there might be no mistake about the spirit in which the outrage was perpetrated, the rioters declared openly, that if they had found John Paston, or his friend John Damme, who had aided him with his counsel about these matters, neither of them should have escaped alive.44.2John Paston drew up a petition for redress to Parliament, and another to the Lord Chancellor; but it was some months before his case could be attended to, for that year was one of confusion and disorder unparalleled. It was that year, in fact, which may be said to have witnessed the first outbreak of a long, intermittent civil war. History has not passed over in silence the troubles of 1450.Troubled times,A.D.1450.The rebellion of Jack Cade, and the murder of two bishops in different parts of the country, were facts which no historian could treat as wholly insignificant. Many writers have even repeated the old slander, which there seems no good reason to believe, that Jack Cade’s insurrection was promoted by the intrigues of the Duke of York; but no one appears to me to have realised the precise nature of the crisis that necessarily followed the removal of the Duke of Suffolk. And as we have now arrived at the point where the Paston Letters begin to have a most direct bearing on English history, we must endeavour in a few words of historical retrospect to make the matter as clear as possible.

1.1Walpole’s Letters(Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.2.1Roberts’sMemoirs of Hannah More, ii. 50.4.1SeeAppendix after Introduction, No. I.4.2Cursory Notices of the Reverend Francis Blomefield.By J. Wilton Rix, Esq.5.1Norfolk Archæology, ii. 210, 211.6.1SeeNichols’sLiterary Anecdotes, iii. 199.6.2The following announcement appears in theMorning Chronicleof the 24th May 1787: ‘Yesterday, John Fenn, Esq., attended the levee at St. James’s, and had the honour of presenting to His Majesty (bound in three volumes) the original letters of which he had before presented a printed copy; when His Majesty, as a mark of his gracious acceptance, was pleased to confer on him the honour of knighthood.’9.1Holland House.By Princess Marie Liechtenstein, vol. ii. p. 198.10.1The missing letters of volume iv. are Nos. 24, 97, 99, and 105 (Nos. 551, 726, 735, and 758 of this edition). The last never formed part of Fenn’s collection. I do not know of any other noted by him as ‘no longer in his possession.’ The letters missing of the Appendix are only Nos. 997 and 1019. Of the four said to be missing in Christie’s catalogue, 1016 is not a document at all, the number having been accidentally skipped in the Inventory, and the other three are in the British Museum. No. 1077, however, is inaccurately described in the Appendix.13.1Archæol.vol. xli. p. 39.13.2SeeAdvertisement in the beginning of the volume, p. vii.15.1The following is the exact form in which they stand in the literal or left-hand version:—‘Utia’z iste mu’d maligust’nsirt& c’up’ia es.’15.2No. 38 in that edition, No. 52 in this.15.3It was Letter 1 in Fenn’s third volume, No. 18 in my first edition, No. 24 in this.16.1No. 25 in present edition.16.2No. 230 in present edition.16.3No. 282 in present edition.16.4That is to say, in the edition published by Mr. Arber in 1875, when it was impossible to correct the text.17.1No. 1033 in present edition.18.1No. 787 of this edition.18.2No. 51 of present edition.18.3No. 205.18.4No. 221.‘The care taken by Sir Johnopening quotation mark missingthe tower of Magdalene College.spelling unchanged25INTRODUCTIONThe Paston FamilyThelittle village of Paston, in Norfolk, lies not far from the sea, where the land descends gently behind the elevated ground of Mundesley, and the line of the shore, proceeding eastward from Cromer, begins to tend a little more towards the south. It is about twenty miles north of Norwich. The country, though destitute of any marked features, is not uninteresting. Southwards, where it is low and flat, the ruins of Bromholm Priory attract attention. But, on the whole, it is an out-of-the-way district, unapproachable by sea, for the coast is dangerous, and offering few attractions to those who visit it by land. Indeed, till quite recently, no railways had come near it, and the means of access were not superabundant. Here, however, lived for several centuries a family which took its surname from the place, and whose private correspondence at one particular epoch sheds no inconsiderable light on the annals of their country.Of the early history of this family our notices are scanty and uncertain. A Norman descent was claimed for them not only by the county historian Blomefield but by the laborious herald, Francis Sandford, author of aGenealogical History of the Kings of England, on the evidence of documents which have been since dispersed. Sandford’s genealogy of the Paston family was drawn up in the year 1674, just after Sir Robert Paston had been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Yarmouth, before he was promoted to the higher dignity of earl. It still remains inMS.; but a pretty full account of it will be found in the fourth volume ofNorfolk Archæology. The26story of the early ancestors, however, does not concern us here. At the time the family and their doings become best known to us, their social position was merely that of small gentry. One of these, however, was a justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of HenryVI., whose uprightness of conduct caused him to be commonly spoken of by the name of the Good Judge. He had a son, John, brought up to the law, who became executor to the old soldier and statesman, Sir John Fastolf. This John Paston had a considerable family, of whom the two eldest sons, strange to say, both bore the same Christian name as their father. They were also both of them soldiers, and each, in his time, attained the dignity of knighthood. But of them and their father, and their grandfather the judge, we shall have more to say presently. After them came Sir William Paston, a lawyer, one of whose daughters, Eleanor, married Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland. He had also two sons, of whom the first, Erasmus, died before him.Clement Paston.The second, whose name was Clement, was perhaps the most illustrious of the whole line. Born at Paston Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, he had an early love for ships, was admitted when young into the naval service of HenryVIII., and became a great commander. In an engagement with the French he captured their admiral, the Baron de St. Blankheare or Blankard, and kept him prisoner at Caister, near Yarmouth, till he had paid 7000 crowns for his ransom, besides giving up a number of valuables contained in his ship. Of this event Clement Paston preserved till his death a curious memorial among his household utensils, and we read in his will that he bequeathed to his nephew his ‘standing bowl called the Baron St. Blankheare.’ He served also by land as well as by sea, and was with the Protector Somerset in Scotland at the battle of Pinkie. In Mary’s reign he is said to have been the person to whom the rebel Sir Thomas Wyat surrendered. In his later years he was more peacefully occupied in building a fine family seat at Oxnead. He lived till near the close of the reign of Elizabeth, having earned golden opinions from each of the sovereigns under whom he served. ‘HenryVIII.,’ we are told, ‘called him his champion; the Duke of Somerset,27Protector in King Edward’s reign, called him his soldier; Queen Mary, her seaman; and Queen Elizabeth, her father.’27.1Clement Paston died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew, another Sir William, whose name is well known in Norfolk as the founder of North Walsham School, and whose effigy in armour is visible in North Walsham Church, with a Latin epitaph recording acts of munificence on his part, not only to the grammar-school, but also to the cathedrals of Bath and Norwich, to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and to the poor at Yarmouth.From Sir William the line descended through Christopher Paston (who, on succeeding his father, was found to be an idiot, incapable of managing his affairs), Sir Edmund and Sir William Paston, Baronet, to Sir Robert Paston, who, in the reign of CharlesII., was created, first Viscount and afterwards Earl of Yarmouth.The Earl of Yarmouth.He is described as a person of good learning, and a traveller who brought home a number of curiosities collected in foreign countries. Before he was raised to the peerage he sat in Parliament for Castle Rising. It was he who, in the year 1664, was bold enough to propose to the House of Commons the unprecedented grant of two and a half millions to the king for a war against the Dutch.27.2This act not unnaturally brought him into favour with the Court, and paved the way for his advancement. Another incident in his life is too remarkable to be passed over. On the 9th of August 1676 he was waylaid while travelling in the night-time by a band of ruffians, who shot five bullets into his coach, one of which entered his body. The wound, however, was not mortal, and he lived six years longer.His relations with the Court were not altogether of good omen for his family. We are told that he once entertained the king and queen, and the king’s brother, James, Duke of York, with a number of the nobility, at his family seat at Oxnead. His son, William, who became second Earl of Yarmouth, married the Lady Charlotte Boyle, one of King Charles’s natural daughters. This great alliance, and all the magnificence28it involved, was too much for his slender fortunes. Earl William was led into a profuse expenditure which involved him in pecuniary difficulties. He soon deeply encumbered his inheritance; the library and the curiosities collected by his accomplished father had to be sold. The magnificent seat at Oxnead was allowed to fall into ruin; and on the death of this second earl it was pulled down, and the materials turned into money to satisfy his creditors. The family line itself came to an end, for Earl William had survived all his male issue, and the title became extinct.From this brief summary of the family history we must now turn to a more specific account of William Paston, the old judge in the days of HenryVI., and of his children.Thrifty ancestors.Of them, and of their more immediate ancestor Clement, we have a description drawn by an unfriendly hand some time after the judge’s death; and as it is, notwithstanding its bias, our sole authority for some facts which should engage our attention at the outset, we cannot do better than quote the paper at length:—‘A remembrance of the worshipful kin and ancestry of Paston, born in Paston in Gemyngham Soken.‘First, There was one Clement Paston dwelling in Paston, and he was a good, plain husband (i.e.husbandman), and lived upon his land that he had in Paston, and kept thereon a plough all times in the year, and sometimes in barlysell two ploughs. The said Clement yede (i.e.went) at one plough both winter and summer, and he rode to mill on the bare horseback with his corn under him, and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart with divers corns to Wynterton to sell, as a good husband[man] ought to do. Also, he had in Paston a five score or a six score acres of land at the most, and much thereof bond land to Gemyngham Hall, with a little poor water-mill running by a little river there, as it appeareth there of old time. Other livelode nor manors had he none there, nor in none other place.‘And he wedded Geoffrey of Somerton (whose true surname is Goneld)’s sister, which was a bondwoman, to whom it is not unknown (to the prior of Bromholm and Bakton also, as it is said) if that men will inquire.‘And as for Geoffrey Somerton, he was bond also, to whom, etc.,29he was both a pardoner and an attorney; and then was a good world, for he gathered many pence and half-pence, and therewith he made a fair chapel at Somerton, as it appeareth, etc.‘Also, the said Clement had a son William, which that he set to school, and often he borrowed money to find him to school; and after that he yede (went) to court with the help of Geoffrey Somerton, his uncle, and learned the law, and there begat he much good; and then he was made a serjeant, and afterwards made a justice, and a right cunning man in the law. And he purchased much land in Paston, and also he purchased the moiety of the fifth part of the manor of Bakton, called either Latymer’s, or Styward’s, or Huntingfield, which moiety stretched into Paston; and so with it, and with another part of the said five parts he hath seignory in Paston, but no manor place; and thereby would John Paston, son to the said William, make himself a lordship there, to the Duke (qu. Duchy?) of Lancaster’s great hurt.‘And the said John would and hath untruly increased him by one tenant, as where that the prior of Bromholm borrowed money of the said William for to pay withal his dismes, the said William would not lend it him unless the said prior would mortgage to the said William one John Albon, the said prior’s bondsman, dwelling in Paston, which was a stiff churl and a thrifty man, and would not obey him unto the said William; and for that cause, and for evil will that the said William had unto him, he desired him of the prior. And now after the death of the said William, the said John Albon died; and now John Paston, son to the said William, by force of the mortgage sent for the son of the said John Albon to Norwich.’The reader will probably be of opinion that several of the facts here recorded are by no means so discreditable to the Pastons as the writer certainly intended that they should appear. The object of the whole paper is to cast a stigma on the family in general, as a crafty, money-getting race who had risen above their natural rank and station. It is insinuated that they were originally mereadscripti glebæ; that Clement Paston was only a thrifty husbandman (note the original signification of the word, ‘housebondman’), that he married a bondwoman, and transmitted to his son and grandson lands held by a servile tenure; and the writer further contends that they had no manorial rights in Paston, although William Paston, the justice, had purchased land in the neighbourhood, and his son John was endeavouring to ‘make himself a lordship’ there to the prejudice of the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster.30It is altogether a singular statement, very interesting in its bearing upon the obscure question of the origin of copyholds, and the gradual emancipation of villeins. Whether it be true or false is another question; if true, it appears to discredit entirely the supposed Norman ancestry of the Pastons; but the remarkable thing is that an imputation of this kind could have been preferred against a family who, whatever may have been their origin, had certainly long before obtained a recognised position in the county.It would appear, however, from the accuser’s own statement, that Clement Paston, the father of the justice, was an industrious peasant, who tilled his own land, and who set so high a value on a good education that he borrowed money to keep his son at school. With the help of his brother-in-law, he also sent the young man to London to learn the law, a profession which in that day, as in the present, was considered to afford an excellent education for a gentleman.30.1The good education was not thrown away.William Paston the justice.William Paston rose in the profession and became one of its ornaments. He improved his fortunes by marrying Agnes, daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Berry of Harlingbury Hall, in Hertfordshire. Some years before his father’s death, Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich, appointed him his steward. In 1414 he was called in, along with two others, to mediate in a dispute which had for some time prevailed in the city of Norwich, as to the mode in which the mayors should be elected; and he had the good fortune with his coadjutors to adjust the matter satisfactorily.30.2In 1421 he was made a serjeant, and in 1429 a judge of the Common Pleas.30.3Before that time we find him acting as trustee for various properties, as of the Appleyard family in Dunston,30.4of Sir Richard Carbonel,30.5Sir Simon Felbrigg,30.6John31Berney,31.1Sir John Rothenhale,31.2Sir John Gyney of Dilham,31.3Lord Cobham,31.4and Ralph Lord Cromwell.31.5He was also executor to Sir William Calthorp.31.6The confidence reposed in him by so many different persons is a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which he was held. He was, moreover, appointed one of the king’s council for the duchy of Lancaster, and on his elevation to the judicial bench the king gave him a salary of 110 marks (£73, 6s. 8d.), with two robes more than the ordinary allowance of the judges.In addition to all this he is supposed to have been a knight, and is called Sir William Paston in Fenn’s publication. But this dignity was never conferred upon him in his own day.Not a knight.There is, indeed, one paper printed by Fenn from theMSS.which were for a long time missing that speaks of him in the heading as ‘Sir William Paston, Knight’; but the originalMS.since recovered shows that the heading so printed is taken from an endorsement of a more modern date. This was, indeed, a confident surmise of mine at a time when theMS.was inaccessible; for it was clear that William Paston never could have been knighted. His name occurs over and over again on the patent rolls of HenryVI.He is named in at least one commission of the peace every year to his death, and in a good many other commissions besides, as justices invariably were. He is named also in many of the other papers of the same collection, simply as William Paston of Paston, Esquire; and even in the body of the petition so inaccurately headed, he is simply styled William Paston, one of the justices. Nor does there appear to be any other foundation for the error than that single endorsement. He left a name behind him of so great repute, that Fuller could not help giving him a place among his ‘Worthies of England,’ although, as he remarks, it did not fall strictly within the plan of his work to notice a lawyer who was neither a chief justice nor an author.His character.Of his personal character we are entitled to form a favourable32estimate, not only from the honourable name conferred on him as a judge, but also from the evidences already alluded to of the general confidence felt in his integrity. True it is that among these papers we have a complaint against him for accepting fees and pensions when he was justice, from various persons in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk;32.1but this only proves, what we might have expected, that he had enemies and cavillers as well as friends. Of the justice of the charges in themselves we have no means of forming an independent judgment; but in days when all England, and not least so the county of Norfolk, was full of party spirit and contention, it was not likely that a man in the position of William Paston should escape imputations of partiality and one-sidedness. Before his elevation to the bench, he had already suffered for doing his duty to more than one client. Having defended the Prior of Norwich in an action brought against him by a certain Walter Aslak, touching the advowson of the church of Sprouston, the latter appears to have pursued him with unrelenting hatred. The county of Norfolk was at the time ringing with the news of an outrage committed by a band of unknown rioters at Wighton. On the last day of the year 1423, one John Grys of Wighton had been entertaining company, and was heated with ‘wassail,’ when he was suddenly attacked in his own house.Outrage by William Aslak.He and his son and a servant were carried a mile from home and led to a pair of gallows, where it was intended to hang them; but as ropes were not at once to be had, they were murdered in another fashion, and their bodies horribly mutilated before death.32.2For nearly three years the murderers went unpunished, while the country stood aghast at the crime. But while it was still recent, at a county court holden at Norwich, Aslak caused a number of bills, partly in rhyme, to be posted on the gates of Norwich priory, and of the Grey Friars, and some of the city gates, distinctly threatening William Paston with the fate of John33Grys, and insinuating that even worse things were in store for him.Against open threats like these William Paston of course appealed to the law; but law in those days was but a feeble protector. Aslak had the powerful support of Sir Thomas Erpingham, by which he was enabled not only to evade the execution of sentence passed against him, but even to continue his persecution. He found means to deprive Paston of the favour of the Duke of Norfolk, got bills introduced in Parliament to his prejudice, and made it unsafe for him to stir abroad. The whole country appears to have been disorganised by faction; quarrels at that very time were rife in the king’s council-chamber itself, between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Protector, and Bishop Beaufort; nor was anything so firmly established by authority but that hopes might be entertained of setting it aside by favour.William Paston had two other enemies at this time. ‘I pray the Holy Trinity,’ he writes in one place, ‘deliver me of my three adversaries, this cursed Bishop for Bromholm, Aslak for Sprouston, and Julian Herberd for Thornham.’ The bishop whom he mentions with so much vehemence, claimed to be a kinsman of his own, and named himself John Paston, but William Paston denied the relationship, maintaining that his true name was John Wortes.John Wortes.He appears to have been in the first place a monk of Bromholm, the prior of which monastery having brought an action against him as an apostate from his order, engaged William Paston as his counsel in the prosecution. Wortes, however, escaped abroad, and brought the matter before the spiritual jurisdiction of the court of Rome, bringing actions against both the prior and William Paston, the latter of whom he got condemned in a penalty of £205. On this William Paston was advised by friends at Rome to come at once to an arrangement with him; but he determined to contest the validity of the sentence, the result of which appears to have been that he was excommunicated. His adversary, meanwhile, found interest to get himself appointed and consecrated Bishop of Cork; and though his name does not appear in the ordinary lists of bishops of34that see, the Vatican archives show that he was provided to it on the 23rd May 1425.34.1As for Julian Herberd, William Paston’s third enemy, we have hitherto known nothing of her but the name. It appears, however, by some Chancery proceedings34.2recently discovered, that Julian Herberd was a widow who considered herself to have been wronged by Paston as regards her mother’s inheritance, of which he had kept her from the full use for no less than forty years. Paston had, indeed, made her some pecuniary offers which she did not think sufficient, and she had attempted to pursue her rights against him at a Parliament at Westminster, when he caused her to be imprisoned in the King’s Bench. There, as she grievously complains, she lay a year, suffering much and ‘nigh dead from cold, hunger, and thirst.’ The case was apparently one of parliamentary privilege, which she had violated by her attempted action, though she adds that he threatened to keep her in prison for life if she would not release to him her right, and give him a full acquittance. She also accuses him of having actually procured one from her by coercion, and of having by false suggestion to the Lord Chancellor caused her committal to the Fleet, where she was kept for a whole year, ‘beaten, fettered, and stocked,’ that no man might know where she was. At another time, also, she says he kept her three years in the pit within Norwich Castle on starvation diet. The accusation culminates in a charge which seems really inconceivable:—‘Item, the said Paston did bring her out of the Round House into your Palace and brought her afore your Chief Justice, and then the said Paston commanded certain persons to bring her to prison to your Bench, and bade at his peril certain persons to smite the brain out of her head for suing of her right; and there being in grievous prison during half year and more, fettered and chained, suffering cold, hunger, thirst, in point of death, God and ye, gracious King, help her to her right.’35What we are to think of all this, not having Paston’s reply, I cannot say.Scanty and disconnected as are the notices we possess of William Paston, we must not pass by without comment his letter to the vicar of the abbot of Clugny, in behalf of Bromholm Priory.35.1It was not, indeed, the only occasion35.2on which we find that he exerted himself in behalf of this ancient monastery, within a mile of which, he tells us, he was born.Bromholm Priory.Bromholm Priory was, in fact, about that distance from Paston Hall, as miles were reckoned then (though it is nearer two of our statute miles), and must have been regarded with special interest by the family. It was there that John Paston, the son of the judge, was sumptuously buried in the reign of EdwardIV.It was a monastery of some celebrity. Though not, at least in its latter days, one of the most wealthy religious houses, for it fell among the smaller monasteries at the first parliamentary suppression of HenryVIII., its ruins still attest that it was by no means insignificant. Situated by the sea-shore, with a flat, unbroken country round about, they are conspicuous from a distance both by sea and land. Among the numerous monasteries of Norfolk, none but Walsingham was more visited by strangers, and many of the pilgrims to Walsingham turned aside on their way homeward to visit the Rood of Bromholm. For this was a very special treasure brought from Constantinople two hundred years before, and composed of a portion of the wood of the true Cross. Many were the miracles recorded to have been wrought in the monastery since that precious relic was set up; the blind had received their sight, the lame had walked, and lepers had been cleansed; even the dead had been restored to life. It was impossible that a native of Paston could be uninterested in a place so renowned throughout all England.Yet about this time the priory must have been less prosperous than it had once been. Its government and constitution were in a transition state. It was one of the twenty-eight monasteries in England which belonged to the Cluniac order, and were originally subject to the visitation of the Abbot of36Clugny in France. Subjection to a foreign head did not tend at any time to make them popular in this country, and in the reign of HenryV.that connection was suddenly broken off. An act was passed suppressing at once all the alien priories, or religious houses that acknowledged foreign superiors. The priors of several of the Cluniac monasteries took out new foundation charters, and attached themselves to other orders. Those that continued signed deeds of surrender, and their monasteries were taken into the king’s hands. About nine or ten years later, however, it would seem that a vicar of the Abbot of Clugny was allowed to visit England, and to him William Paston made an appeal to profess in due form a number of virtuous young men who had joined the priory in the interval.Land purchased by Judge Paston.From the statement already quoted as to the history of the Paston family, it appears that William Paston purchased a good deal of land in Paston besides what had originally belonged to them. It was evidently his intention to make a family residence, and transmit to his sons a more absolute ownership in the land from which they derived their name. Much of his father’s land in Paston had been copyhold belonging to the manor of Gimingham Hall; but William Paston bought ‘a moiety of the fifth part’ of the adjacent manor of Bacton, with free land extending into Paston. He thus established himself as undoubted lord of the greater part of the soil, and must have felt a pardonable pride in the improved position he thereby bequeathed to his descendants. At Paston he apparently contemplated building a manor house; for he made inquiry about getting stone from Yorkshire conveyed by sea to Mundesley, where there was then a small harbour36.1within two miles of Paston village. To carry out the improvementsHighways diverted.he proposed to make there and on other parts of his property, he obtained licence from the king a year before his death to divert two public highways, the one at Paston and the other at Oxnead, a little from their course.36.2The alterations do not appear to have been of a nature that any one had a right to complain of. Full inquiry was made beforehand by37an inquisitionad quod damnum37.1whether they would be to the prejudice of neighbours. At Paston the extent of roadway which he obtained leave to enclose was only thirty-two and a half perches in length by one perch in breadth. It ran on the south side of his mansion, and he agreed to make a new highway of the same dimensions on the north side. The vicar of Paston seems to have been the neighbour principally concerned in the course that the new thoroughfare was to take, and all particulars had been arranged with him a few months before William Paston died.John Paston has disputes with his neighbours.But it would seem upon the judge’s death his great designs were for some time interrupted. The family were looked upon by many as upstarts, and young John Paston, who was only four-and-twenty, though bred to the law like his father, could not expect to possess the same weight and influence with his neighbours. A claim was revived by the lord of Gimingham Hall to a rent of eight shillings from one of Paston’s tenants, which had never been demanded so long as the judge was alive. The vicar of Paston pulled up the ‘doles’ which were set to mark the new highway, and various other disturbances were committed by the neighbours. It seems to have required all the energies not only of John Paston upon the spot, but also of his brother Edmund, who was in London at Clifford’s Inn, to secure the rights of the family; insomuch that their mother, in writing to the latter of the opposition to which they had been exposed, expresses a fear lest she should make him weary of Paston.37.2And, indeed, if Edmund Paston was not weary of the dispute, his mother herself had cause to be; for it not only lasted years after this, but for some years after Edmund Paston was dead the stopping of the king’s highway was a fruitful theme of remonstrance. When Agnes Paston built a wall it was thrown down before it was half completed; threats of heavy amercements were addressed to her in church, and the men of Paston spoke of showing their displeasure when they went in public procession on St. Mark’s day.37.3Oxnead.The Manor of Oxnead, which in later times became the38principal seat of the family, was also among the possessions purchased by Judge Paston. He bought it of William Clopton of Long Melford, and settled it upon Agnes, his wife. But after his death her right to it was disputed. It had formerly belonged to a family of the name of Hauteyn, and there suddenly started up a claimant in the person of one John Hauteyn, whose right to hold property of any kind wasJohn Hauteyn.supposed to have been entirely annulled by the fact of his having entered the Order of Carmelite Friars. It seems, however, he had succeeded in getting from the Pope a dispensation to renounce the Order on the plea that he had been forced into it against his will when he was under age, and being thus restored by the ecclesiastical power to the condition of a layman, he next appealed to the civil courts to get back his inheritance. This danger must have been seen by William Paston before his death, and a paper was drawn up (No. 46) to show that Hauteyn had been released from his vows on false pretences. Nevertheless he pursued his claim at law, and although he complained of the difficulty of getting counsel (owing, as he himself intimated, to the respect in which the bar held the memory of Judge Paston, and the fact that his son John was one of their own members), he seems to have had hopes of succeeding through the influence of the Duke of Suffolk. His suit, however, had not been brought to a successful determination at the date of Suffolk’s fall. It was still going on in the succeeding summer; but as we hear no more of it after that, we may presume that the altered state of the political world induced him to abandon it. According to Blomefield, he and others of the Hauteyn family released their rights to Agnes Paston ‘about 1449’; but this date is certainly at least a year too early.38.1William Paston also purchased various other lands in the county of Norfolk.38.2Among others, he purchased from39Thomas Chaucer, a son of the famous poet, the manor of Gresham,39.1of which we shall have something more to say a little later. We also find that in the fourth year of HenryVI.he obtained, in conjunction with one Thomas Poye, a grant of a market, fair and free-warren in his manor of Shipden which had belonged to his father Clement before him.39.2John Paston’s marriage.The notices of John Paston begin when he was on the eve of marrying, a few years before his father’s death. The match was evidently one that was arranged by the parents, after the fashion of the times. The lady was of a good family—daughter and heiress of John Mauteby, Esq. of Mauteby in Norfolk. The friends on both sides must have been satisfied that the union was a good one; for it had the one great merit which was then considered everything—it was no disparagement to the fortunes or the rank of either family. Beyond this hard business view, indeed, might have been found better arguments to recommend it; but English men and women in those days did not read novels, and had no great notion of cultivating sentiment for its own sake. Agnes Paston writes to her husband to intimate ‘the bringing home of the gentlewoman from Reedham,’ according to the arrangement he had made about it. It was, in her words, ‘the first acquaintance between John Paston and the said gentlewoman’ (one would think Dame Agnes must have learned from her husband to express herself with something of the formality of a lawyer); and we are glad to find that the young lady’s sense of propriety did not spoil her natural affability. ‘She made him gentle cheer in gentle wise, and said he was verily your son; and so I hope there shall need no great treaty between them.’ Finally the judge is requested by his wife to buy a gown for his future daughter-in-law, to which her mother would add a goodly fur. ‘The gown,’ says Dame Agnes, ‘needeth for to40be had; and of colour it would be a goodly blue, or else a bright sanguine.’40.1Character of his wife.‘The gentlewoman’ thus introduced to John Paston and the reader proved to the former a most devoted wife during about six-and-twenty years of married life. Her letters to her husband form no inconsiderable portion of the correspondence in these volumes, and it is impossible to peruse them without being convinced that the writer was a woman not only of great force of character, but of truly affectionate nature. It is true the ordinary style of these epistles is very different from that of wives addressing their husbands nowadays. There are no conventional expressions of tenderness—the conventionality of the age seems to have required not tenderness but humility on the part of women towards the head of a family; the subjects of the letters, too, are for the most part matters of pure business; yet the genuine womanly nature is seen bursting out whenever there is occasion to call it forth. Very early in the correspondence we meet with a letter of hers (No. 47) which in itself is pretty sufficient evidence that women, at least, were human in the fifteenth century. Her husband was at the time in London just beginning to recover from an illness which seems to have been occasioned by some injury he had met with. His mother had vowed to give an image of wax the weight of himself to Our Lady of Walsingham on his recovery, and Margaret to go on a pilgrimage thither, and also to St. Leonard’s at Norwich. That she did not undertake a journey of a hundred miles to do more efficient service was certainly not owing to any want of will on her part. The difficulties of travelling in those days, and the care of a young child, sufficiently account for her remaining in Norfolk; but apparently even these considerations would not have deterred her from the journey had she not been dissuaded from it by others. ‘If I might have had my will,’ she writes, ‘I should have seen you ere this time. I would ye were at home, if it were for your ease (and your sore might be as well looked to here as it is there ye be), now liever than a gown, though it were41of scarlet.’ Could the sincerity of a woman’s wishes be more artlessly expressed?Let not the reader suppose, however, that Margaret Paston’s acknowledged love of a scarlet gown indicates anything like frivolity of character or inordinate love of display. We have little reason to believe from her correspondence that dress was a ruling passion. The chief aim discernible in all she writes—the chief motive that influenced everything she did—was simply the desire to give her husband satisfaction. And her will to do him service was, in general, only equalled by her ability. During term time, when John Paston was in London, she was his agent at home. It was she who negotiated with farmers, receiving overtures for leases and threats of lawsuits, and reported to her husband everything that might affect his interests, with the news of the country generally. Nor were threats always the worst thing she had to encounter on his account. For even domestic life, in those days, was not always exempt from violence; and there were at least two occasions when Margaret had to endure, in her husband’s absence, things that a woman ought to have been spared.The Manor of Gresham.One of these occasions we proceed to notice. The manor of Gresham, which William Paston had purchased from the son of the poet Chaucer, had been in the days of EdwardII.the property of one Edmund Bacon, who obtained from that king a licence to embattle the manor-house. It descended from him to his two daughters, Margaret and Margery. The former became the wife of Sir William de Kerdeston, and her rights were inherited by a daughter named Maud, who married Sir John Burghersh.41.1This moiety came to Thomas Chaucer by his marriage with Maud Burghersh, the daughter of the Maud just mentioned. The other became at first the property of Sir William Molynes, who married Bacon’s second daughter Margery. But this Margery having survived her husband, made a settlement of it by will, according to which the reversion of it after the decease of one Philip Vache and42of Elizabeth his wife, was to be sold; and William, son of Robert Molynes, was to have the first option of purchase. This William Molynes at first declined to buy it, being apparently in want of funds; but he afterwards got one Thomas Fauconer, a London merchant, to advance the purchase-money, on an agreement that his son should marry Fauconer’s daughter. The marriage, however, never took effect; the Molynes family lost all claim upon the manor, and the same Thomas Chaucer who acquired the other moiety by his wife, purchased this moiety also, and conveyed both to William Paston.42.1The whole manor of Gresham thus descended to John Paston, as his father’s heir. But a few years after his father’s death he was troubled in the possession of it by Robert Hungerford, son of Lord Hungerford, who, having married Eleanor Molynes, a descendant of the Sir William Molynes above referred to, had been raised to the peerage as Lord Molynes,and laid claim to the whole inheritance of theClaimed by Lord Molynes.Molynes family. He was still but a young man,42.2heir-apparent to another barony; and, with the prospect of a great inheritance both from his father and from his mother, who was the daughter and sole heir of William Lord Botraux, he certainly had little occasion to covet lands that were not his own. Nevertheless he listened to the counsels of John Heydon of Baconsthorpe, a lawyer who had been sheriff and also recorder of Norwich, and whom the gentry of Norfolk looked upon with anything but goodwill, regarding him as the ready tool of every powerful oppressor. His chief patron, with whom his name was constantly coupled, was Sir Thomas Tuddenham; and the two together, especially during the unpopular ministry of the Duke of Suffolk, exercised an ascendency in the county, of which we hear very numerous43complaints. Heydon persuaded Lord Molynes that he had a good claim to the manor of Gresham; and Lord Molynes, without more ado, went in and took possession on the 17th of February 1448.43.1To recover his rights against a powerful young nobleman connected with various wealthy and influential families required, as John Paston knew, the exercise of great discretion. Instead of resorting at once to an action at law, he made representations to Lord Molynes and his legal advisers to show how indefensible was the title they had set up for him. He secured some attention for his remonstrances by the intercession of Waynflete, bishop of Winchester.43.2Conferences took place between the counsel of both parties during the following summer, and the weakness of Lord Molynes’ case was practically confessed by his solicitors, who in the end told Paston to apply to his lordship personally. Paston accordingly, at no small expense to himself, went and waited upon him at Salisbury and elsewhere, but was continually put off. At last, on the 6th of October, not, as I believe, the same year, but the year following, he succeeded in doing to Lord Molynes to some extent what Lord Molynes had already done to him. He took possession of ‘a mansion within the said town,’ and occupied it himself, having doubtless a sufficiency of servants to guard against any sudden surprise. After this fashion he maintained his rights for a period of over three months. The usual residence of Lord Molynes was in Wiltshire, and his agents probably did not like the responsibility of attempting to remove John Paston without express orders from their master. But on the 28th of January 1450, while John Paston was away in London on business, there came before the mansion at Gresham a company of a thousand persons, sent to recover possession for Lord Molynes. They were armed with cuirasses and brigandines, with guns, bows, and arrows, and with every kind of offensive and defensive armour. They had also mining instruments, long poles with hooks, called cromes, used for pulling down houses, ladders, pickaxes, and pans with fire burning in them.44With these formidable implements they beset the house, at that time occupied only by Margaret Paston and twelve other persons; and having broken open the outer gates, they set to work undermining the very chamber in which Margaret was. Resistance under the circumstances was impossible. Margaret was forcibly carried out. The house was then thoroughly rifled of all that it contained—property estimated by John Paston at £20044.1—the doorposts were cut asunder, and the place was left little better than a ruin. Further, that there might be no mistake about the spirit in which the outrage was perpetrated, the rioters declared openly, that if they had found John Paston, or his friend John Damme, who had aided him with his counsel about these matters, neither of them should have escaped alive.44.2John Paston drew up a petition for redress to Parliament, and another to the Lord Chancellor; but it was some months before his case could be attended to, for that year was one of confusion and disorder unparalleled. It was that year, in fact, which may be said to have witnessed the first outbreak of a long, intermittent civil war. History has not passed over in silence the troubles of 1450.Troubled times,A.D.1450.The rebellion of Jack Cade, and the murder of two bishops in different parts of the country, were facts which no historian could treat as wholly insignificant. Many writers have even repeated the old slander, which there seems no good reason to believe, that Jack Cade’s insurrection was promoted by the intrigues of the Duke of York; but no one appears to me to have realised the precise nature of the crisis that necessarily followed the removal of the Duke of Suffolk. And as we have now arrived at the point where the Paston Letters begin to have a most direct bearing on English history, we must endeavour in a few words of historical retrospect to make the matter as clear as possible.

1.1Walpole’s Letters(Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.2.1Roberts’sMemoirs of Hannah More, ii. 50.4.1SeeAppendix after Introduction, No. I.4.2Cursory Notices of the Reverend Francis Blomefield.By J. Wilton Rix, Esq.5.1Norfolk Archæology, ii. 210, 211.6.1SeeNichols’sLiterary Anecdotes, iii. 199.6.2The following announcement appears in theMorning Chronicleof the 24th May 1787: ‘Yesterday, John Fenn, Esq., attended the levee at St. James’s, and had the honour of presenting to His Majesty (bound in three volumes) the original letters of which he had before presented a printed copy; when His Majesty, as a mark of his gracious acceptance, was pleased to confer on him the honour of knighthood.’9.1Holland House.By Princess Marie Liechtenstein, vol. ii. p. 198.10.1The missing letters of volume iv. are Nos. 24, 97, 99, and 105 (Nos. 551, 726, 735, and 758 of this edition). The last never formed part of Fenn’s collection. I do not know of any other noted by him as ‘no longer in his possession.’ The letters missing of the Appendix are only Nos. 997 and 1019. Of the four said to be missing in Christie’s catalogue, 1016 is not a document at all, the number having been accidentally skipped in the Inventory, and the other three are in the British Museum. No. 1077, however, is inaccurately described in the Appendix.13.1Archæol.vol. xli. p. 39.13.2SeeAdvertisement in the beginning of the volume, p. vii.15.1The following is the exact form in which they stand in the literal or left-hand version:—‘Utia’z iste mu’d maligust’nsirt& c’up’ia es.’15.2No. 38 in that edition, No. 52 in this.15.3It was Letter 1 in Fenn’s third volume, No. 18 in my first edition, No. 24 in this.16.1No. 25 in present edition.16.2No. 230 in present edition.16.3No. 282 in present edition.16.4That is to say, in the edition published by Mr. Arber in 1875, when it was impossible to correct the text.17.1No. 1033 in present edition.18.1No. 787 of this edition.18.2No. 51 of present edition.18.3No. 205.18.4No. 221.

1.1Walpole’s Letters(Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.

2.1Roberts’sMemoirs of Hannah More, ii. 50.

4.1SeeAppendix after Introduction, No. I.

4.2Cursory Notices of the Reverend Francis Blomefield.By J. Wilton Rix, Esq.

5.1Norfolk Archæology, ii. 210, 211.

6.1SeeNichols’sLiterary Anecdotes, iii. 199.

6.2The following announcement appears in theMorning Chronicleof the 24th May 1787: ‘Yesterday, John Fenn, Esq., attended the levee at St. James’s, and had the honour of presenting to His Majesty (bound in three volumes) the original letters of which he had before presented a printed copy; when His Majesty, as a mark of his gracious acceptance, was pleased to confer on him the honour of knighthood.’

9.1Holland House.By Princess Marie Liechtenstein, vol. ii. p. 198.

10.1The missing letters of volume iv. are Nos. 24, 97, 99, and 105 (Nos. 551, 726, 735, and 758 of this edition). The last never formed part of Fenn’s collection. I do not know of any other noted by him as ‘no longer in his possession.’ The letters missing of the Appendix are only Nos. 997 and 1019. Of the four said to be missing in Christie’s catalogue, 1016 is not a document at all, the number having been accidentally skipped in the Inventory, and the other three are in the British Museum. No. 1077, however, is inaccurately described in the Appendix.

13.1Archæol.vol. xli. p. 39.

13.2SeeAdvertisement in the beginning of the volume, p. vii.

15.1The following is the exact form in which they stand in the literal or left-hand version:—‘Utia’z iste mu’d maligust’nsirt& c’up’ia es.’

15.2No. 38 in that edition, No. 52 in this.

15.3It was Letter 1 in Fenn’s third volume, No. 18 in my first edition, No. 24 in this.

16.1No. 25 in present edition.

16.2No. 230 in present edition.

16.3No. 282 in present edition.

16.4That is to say, in the edition published by Mr. Arber in 1875, when it was impossible to correct the text.

17.1No. 1033 in present edition.

18.1No. 787 of this edition.

18.2No. 51 of present edition.

18.3No. 205.

18.4No. 221.

‘The care taken by Sir Johnopening quotation mark missingthe tower of Magdalene College.spelling unchanged

‘The care taken by Sir Johnopening quotation mark missing

the tower of Magdalene College.spelling unchanged

Thelittle village of Paston, in Norfolk, lies not far from the sea, where the land descends gently behind the elevated ground of Mundesley, and the line of the shore, proceeding eastward from Cromer, begins to tend a little more towards the south. It is about twenty miles north of Norwich. The country, though destitute of any marked features, is not uninteresting. Southwards, where it is low and flat, the ruins of Bromholm Priory attract attention. But, on the whole, it is an out-of-the-way district, unapproachable by sea, for the coast is dangerous, and offering few attractions to those who visit it by land. Indeed, till quite recently, no railways had come near it, and the means of access were not superabundant. Here, however, lived for several centuries a family which took its surname from the place, and whose private correspondence at one particular epoch sheds no inconsiderable light on the annals of their country.

Of the early history of this family our notices are scanty and uncertain. A Norman descent was claimed for them not only by the county historian Blomefield but by the laborious herald, Francis Sandford, author of aGenealogical History of the Kings of England, on the evidence of documents which have been since dispersed. Sandford’s genealogy of the Paston family was drawn up in the year 1674, just after Sir Robert Paston had been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Yarmouth, before he was promoted to the higher dignity of earl. It still remains inMS.; but a pretty full account of it will be found in the fourth volume ofNorfolk Archæology. The26story of the early ancestors, however, does not concern us here. At the time the family and their doings become best known to us, their social position was merely that of small gentry. One of these, however, was a justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of HenryVI., whose uprightness of conduct caused him to be commonly spoken of by the name of the Good Judge. He had a son, John, brought up to the law, who became executor to the old soldier and statesman, Sir John Fastolf. This John Paston had a considerable family, of whom the two eldest sons, strange to say, both bore the same Christian name as their father. They were also both of them soldiers, and each, in his time, attained the dignity of knighthood. But of them and their father, and their grandfather the judge, we shall have more to say presently. After them came Sir William Paston, a lawyer, one of whose daughters, Eleanor, married Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland. He had also two sons, of whom the first, Erasmus, died before him.Clement Paston.The second, whose name was Clement, was perhaps the most illustrious of the whole line. Born at Paston Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, he had an early love for ships, was admitted when young into the naval service of HenryVIII., and became a great commander. In an engagement with the French he captured their admiral, the Baron de St. Blankheare or Blankard, and kept him prisoner at Caister, near Yarmouth, till he had paid 7000 crowns for his ransom, besides giving up a number of valuables contained in his ship. Of this event Clement Paston preserved till his death a curious memorial among his household utensils, and we read in his will that he bequeathed to his nephew his ‘standing bowl called the Baron St. Blankheare.’ He served also by land as well as by sea, and was with the Protector Somerset in Scotland at the battle of Pinkie. In Mary’s reign he is said to have been the person to whom the rebel Sir Thomas Wyat surrendered. In his later years he was more peacefully occupied in building a fine family seat at Oxnead. He lived till near the close of the reign of Elizabeth, having earned golden opinions from each of the sovereigns under whom he served. ‘HenryVIII.,’ we are told, ‘called him his champion; the Duke of Somerset,27Protector in King Edward’s reign, called him his soldier; Queen Mary, her seaman; and Queen Elizabeth, her father.’27.1

Clement Paston died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew, another Sir William, whose name is well known in Norfolk as the founder of North Walsham School, and whose effigy in armour is visible in North Walsham Church, with a Latin epitaph recording acts of munificence on his part, not only to the grammar-school, but also to the cathedrals of Bath and Norwich, to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and to the poor at Yarmouth.

From Sir William the line descended through Christopher Paston (who, on succeeding his father, was found to be an idiot, incapable of managing his affairs), Sir Edmund and Sir William Paston, Baronet, to Sir Robert Paston, who, in the reign of CharlesII., was created, first Viscount and afterwards Earl of Yarmouth.The Earl of Yarmouth.He is described as a person of good learning, and a traveller who brought home a number of curiosities collected in foreign countries. Before he was raised to the peerage he sat in Parliament for Castle Rising. It was he who, in the year 1664, was bold enough to propose to the House of Commons the unprecedented grant of two and a half millions to the king for a war against the Dutch.27.2This act not unnaturally brought him into favour with the Court, and paved the way for his advancement. Another incident in his life is too remarkable to be passed over. On the 9th of August 1676 he was waylaid while travelling in the night-time by a band of ruffians, who shot five bullets into his coach, one of which entered his body. The wound, however, was not mortal, and he lived six years longer.

His relations with the Court were not altogether of good omen for his family. We are told that he once entertained the king and queen, and the king’s brother, James, Duke of York, with a number of the nobility, at his family seat at Oxnead. His son, William, who became second Earl of Yarmouth, married the Lady Charlotte Boyle, one of King Charles’s natural daughters. This great alliance, and all the magnificence28it involved, was too much for his slender fortunes. Earl William was led into a profuse expenditure which involved him in pecuniary difficulties. He soon deeply encumbered his inheritance; the library and the curiosities collected by his accomplished father had to be sold. The magnificent seat at Oxnead was allowed to fall into ruin; and on the death of this second earl it was pulled down, and the materials turned into money to satisfy his creditors. The family line itself came to an end, for Earl William had survived all his male issue, and the title became extinct.

From this brief summary of the family history we must now turn to a more specific account of William Paston, the old judge in the days of HenryVI., and of his children.Thrifty ancestors.Of them, and of their more immediate ancestor Clement, we have a description drawn by an unfriendly hand some time after the judge’s death; and as it is, notwithstanding its bias, our sole authority for some facts which should engage our attention at the outset, we cannot do better than quote the paper at length:—

‘A remembrance of the worshipful kin and ancestry of Paston, born in Paston in Gemyngham Soken.‘First, There was one Clement Paston dwelling in Paston, and he was a good, plain husband (i.e.husbandman), and lived upon his land that he had in Paston, and kept thereon a plough all times in the year, and sometimes in barlysell two ploughs. The said Clement yede (i.e.went) at one plough both winter and summer, and he rode to mill on the bare horseback with his corn under him, and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart with divers corns to Wynterton to sell, as a good husband[man] ought to do. Also, he had in Paston a five score or a six score acres of land at the most, and much thereof bond land to Gemyngham Hall, with a little poor water-mill running by a little river there, as it appeareth there of old time. Other livelode nor manors had he none there, nor in none other place.‘And he wedded Geoffrey of Somerton (whose true surname is Goneld)’s sister, which was a bondwoman, to whom it is not unknown (to the prior of Bromholm and Bakton also, as it is said) if that men will inquire.‘And as for Geoffrey Somerton, he was bond also, to whom, etc.,29he was both a pardoner and an attorney; and then was a good world, for he gathered many pence and half-pence, and therewith he made a fair chapel at Somerton, as it appeareth, etc.‘Also, the said Clement had a son William, which that he set to school, and often he borrowed money to find him to school; and after that he yede (went) to court with the help of Geoffrey Somerton, his uncle, and learned the law, and there begat he much good; and then he was made a serjeant, and afterwards made a justice, and a right cunning man in the law. And he purchased much land in Paston, and also he purchased the moiety of the fifth part of the manor of Bakton, called either Latymer’s, or Styward’s, or Huntingfield, which moiety stretched into Paston; and so with it, and with another part of the said five parts he hath seignory in Paston, but no manor place; and thereby would John Paston, son to the said William, make himself a lordship there, to the Duke (qu. Duchy?) of Lancaster’s great hurt.‘And the said John would and hath untruly increased him by one tenant, as where that the prior of Bromholm borrowed money of the said William for to pay withal his dismes, the said William would not lend it him unless the said prior would mortgage to the said William one John Albon, the said prior’s bondsman, dwelling in Paston, which was a stiff churl and a thrifty man, and would not obey him unto the said William; and for that cause, and for evil will that the said William had unto him, he desired him of the prior. And now after the death of the said William, the said John Albon died; and now John Paston, son to the said William, by force of the mortgage sent for the son of the said John Albon to Norwich.’

‘A remembrance of the worshipful kin and ancestry of Paston, born in Paston in Gemyngham Soken.

‘First, There was one Clement Paston dwelling in Paston, and he was a good, plain husband (i.e.husbandman), and lived upon his land that he had in Paston, and kept thereon a plough all times in the year, and sometimes in barlysell two ploughs. The said Clement yede (i.e.went) at one plough both winter and summer, and he rode to mill on the bare horseback with his corn under him, and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart with divers corns to Wynterton to sell, as a good husband[man] ought to do. Also, he had in Paston a five score or a six score acres of land at the most, and much thereof bond land to Gemyngham Hall, with a little poor water-mill running by a little river there, as it appeareth there of old time. Other livelode nor manors had he none there, nor in none other place.

‘And he wedded Geoffrey of Somerton (whose true surname is Goneld)’s sister, which was a bondwoman, to whom it is not unknown (to the prior of Bromholm and Bakton also, as it is said) if that men will inquire.

‘And as for Geoffrey Somerton, he was bond also, to whom, etc.,29he was both a pardoner and an attorney; and then was a good world, for he gathered many pence and half-pence, and therewith he made a fair chapel at Somerton, as it appeareth, etc.

‘Also, the said Clement had a son William, which that he set to school, and often he borrowed money to find him to school; and after that he yede (went) to court with the help of Geoffrey Somerton, his uncle, and learned the law, and there begat he much good; and then he was made a serjeant, and afterwards made a justice, and a right cunning man in the law. And he purchased much land in Paston, and also he purchased the moiety of the fifth part of the manor of Bakton, called either Latymer’s, or Styward’s, or Huntingfield, which moiety stretched into Paston; and so with it, and with another part of the said five parts he hath seignory in Paston, but no manor place; and thereby would John Paston, son to the said William, make himself a lordship there, to the Duke (qu. Duchy?) of Lancaster’s great hurt.

‘And the said John would and hath untruly increased him by one tenant, as where that the prior of Bromholm borrowed money of the said William for to pay withal his dismes, the said William would not lend it him unless the said prior would mortgage to the said William one John Albon, the said prior’s bondsman, dwelling in Paston, which was a stiff churl and a thrifty man, and would not obey him unto the said William; and for that cause, and for evil will that the said William had unto him, he desired him of the prior. And now after the death of the said William, the said John Albon died; and now John Paston, son to the said William, by force of the mortgage sent for the son of the said John Albon to Norwich.’

The reader will probably be of opinion that several of the facts here recorded are by no means so discreditable to the Pastons as the writer certainly intended that they should appear. The object of the whole paper is to cast a stigma on the family in general, as a crafty, money-getting race who had risen above their natural rank and station. It is insinuated that they were originally mereadscripti glebæ; that Clement Paston was only a thrifty husbandman (note the original signification of the word, ‘housebondman’), that he married a bondwoman, and transmitted to his son and grandson lands held by a servile tenure; and the writer further contends that they had no manorial rights in Paston, although William Paston, the justice, had purchased land in the neighbourhood, and his son John was endeavouring to ‘make himself a lordship’ there to the prejudice of the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster.30It is altogether a singular statement, very interesting in its bearing upon the obscure question of the origin of copyholds, and the gradual emancipation of villeins. Whether it be true or false is another question; if true, it appears to discredit entirely the supposed Norman ancestry of the Pastons; but the remarkable thing is that an imputation of this kind could have been preferred against a family who, whatever may have been their origin, had certainly long before obtained a recognised position in the county.

It would appear, however, from the accuser’s own statement, that Clement Paston, the father of the justice, was an industrious peasant, who tilled his own land, and who set so high a value on a good education that he borrowed money to keep his son at school. With the help of his brother-in-law, he also sent the young man to London to learn the law, a profession which in that day, as in the present, was considered to afford an excellent education for a gentleman.30.1The good education was not thrown away.William Paston the justice.William Paston rose in the profession and became one of its ornaments. He improved his fortunes by marrying Agnes, daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Berry of Harlingbury Hall, in Hertfordshire. Some years before his father’s death, Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich, appointed him his steward. In 1414 he was called in, along with two others, to mediate in a dispute which had for some time prevailed in the city of Norwich, as to the mode in which the mayors should be elected; and he had the good fortune with his coadjutors to adjust the matter satisfactorily.30.2In 1421 he was made a serjeant, and in 1429 a judge of the Common Pleas.30.3Before that time we find him acting as trustee for various properties, as of the Appleyard family in Dunston,30.4of Sir Richard Carbonel,30.5Sir Simon Felbrigg,30.6John31Berney,31.1Sir John Rothenhale,31.2Sir John Gyney of Dilham,31.3Lord Cobham,31.4and Ralph Lord Cromwell.31.5He was also executor to Sir William Calthorp.31.6The confidence reposed in him by so many different persons is a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which he was held. He was, moreover, appointed one of the king’s council for the duchy of Lancaster, and on his elevation to the judicial bench the king gave him a salary of 110 marks (£73, 6s. 8d.), with two robes more than the ordinary allowance of the judges.

In addition to all this he is supposed to have been a knight, and is called Sir William Paston in Fenn’s publication. But this dignity was never conferred upon him in his own day.Not a knight.There is, indeed, one paper printed by Fenn from theMSS.which were for a long time missing that speaks of him in the heading as ‘Sir William Paston, Knight’; but the originalMS.since recovered shows that the heading so printed is taken from an endorsement of a more modern date. This was, indeed, a confident surmise of mine at a time when theMS.was inaccessible; for it was clear that William Paston never could have been knighted. His name occurs over and over again on the patent rolls of HenryVI.He is named in at least one commission of the peace every year to his death, and in a good many other commissions besides, as justices invariably were. He is named also in many of the other papers of the same collection, simply as William Paston of Paston, Esquire; and even in the body of the petition so inaccurately headed, he is simply styled William Paston, one of the justices. Nor does there appear to be any other foundation for the error than that single endorsement. He left a name behind him of so great repute, that Fuller could not help giving him a place among his ‘Worthies of England,’ although, as he remarks, it did not fall strictly within the plan of his work to notice a lawyer who was neither a chief justice nor an author.

His character.

Of his personal character we are entitled to form a favourable32estimate, not only from the honourable name conferred on him as a judge, but also from the evidences already alluded to of the general confidence felt in his integrity. True it is that among these papers we have a complaint against him for accepting fees and pensions when he was justice, from various persons in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk;32.1but this only proves, what we might have expected, that he had enemies and cavillers as well as friends. Of the justice of the charges in themselves we have no means of forming an independent judgment; but in days when all England, and not least so the county of Norfolk, was full of party spirit and contention, it was not likely that a man in the position of William Paston should escape imputations of partiality and one-sidedness. Before his elevation to the bench, he had already suffered for doing his duty to more than one client. Having defended the Prior of Norwich in an action brought against him by a certain Walter Aslak, touching the advowson of the church of Sprouston, the latter appears to have pursued him with unrelenting hatred. The county of Norfolk was at the time ringing with the news of an outrage committed by a band of unknown rioters at Wighton. On the last day of the year 1423, one John Grys of Wighton had been entertaining company, and was heated with ‘wassail,’ when he was suddenly attacked in his own house.Outrage by William Aslak.He and his son and a servant were carried a mile from home and led to a pair of gallows, where it was intended to hang them; but as ropes were not at once to be had, they were murdered in another fashion, and their bodies horribly mutilated before death.32.2For nearly three years the murderers went unpunished, while the country stood aghast at the crime. But while it was still recent, at a county court holden at Norwich, Aslak caused a number of bills, partly in rhyme, to be posted on the gates of Norwich priory, and of the Grey Friars, and some of the city gates, distinctly threatening William Paston with the fate of John33Grys, and insinuating that even worse things were in store for him.

Against open threats like these William Paston of course appealed to the law; but law in those days was but a feeble protector. Aslak had the powerful support of Sir Thomas Erpingham, by which he was enabled not only to evade the execution of sentence passed against him, but even to continue his persecution. He found means to deprive Paston of the favour of the Duke of Norfolk, got bills introduced in Parliament to his prejudice, and made it unsafe for him to stir abroad. The whole country appears to have been disorganised by faction; quarrels at that very time were rife in the king’s council-chamber itself, between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Protector, and Bishop Beaufort; nor was anything so firmly established by authority but that hopes might be entertained of setting it aside by favour.

William Paston had two other enemies at this time. ‘I pray the Holy Trinity,’ he writes in one place, ‘deliver me of my three adversaries, this cursed Bishop for Bromholm, Aslak for Sprouston, and Julian Herberd for Thornham.’ The bishop whom he mentions with so much vehemence, claimed to be a kinsman of his own, and named himself John Paston, but William Paston denied the relationship, maintaining that his true name was John Wortes.John Wortes.He appears to have been in the first place a monk of Bromholm, the prior of which monastery having brought an action against him as an apostate from his order, engaged William Paston as his counsel in the prosecution. Wortes, however, escaped abroad, and brought the matter before the spiritual jurisdiction of the court of Rome, bringing actions against both the prior and William Paston, the latter of whom he got condemned in a penalty of £205. On this William Paston was advised by friends at Rome to come at once to an arrangement with him; but he determined to contest the validity of the sentence, the result of which appears to have been that he was excommunicated. His adversary, meanwhile, found interest to get himself appointed and consecrated Bishop of Cork; and though his name does not appear in the ordinary lists of bishops of34that see, the Vatican archives show that he was provided to it on the 23rd May 1425.34.1

As for Julian Herberd, William Paston’s third enemy, we have hitherto known nothing of her but the name. It appears, however, by some Chancery proceedings34.2recently discovered, that Julian Herberd was a widow who considered herself to have been wronged by Paston as regards her mother’s inheritance, of which he had kept her from the full use for no less than forty years. Paston had, indeed, made her some pecuniary offers which she did not think sufficient, and she had attempted to pursue her rights against him at a Parliament at Westminster, when he caused her to be imprisoned in the King’s Bench. There, as she grievously complains, she lay a year, suffering much and ‘nigh dead from cold, hunger, and thirst.’ The case was apparently one of parliamentary privilege, which she had violated by her attempted action, though she adds that he threatened to keep her in prison for life if she would not release to him her right, and give him a full acquittance. She also accuses him of having actually procured one from her by coercion, and of having by false suggestion to the Lord Chancellor caused her committal to the Fleet, where she was kept for a whole year, ‘beaten, fettered, and stocked,’ that no man might know where she was. At another time, also, she says he kept her three years in the pit within Norwich Castle on starvation diet. The accusation culminates in a charge which seems really inconceivable:—

‘Item, the said Paston did bring her out of the Round House into your Palace and brought her afore your Chief Justice, and then the said Paston commanded certain persons to bring her to prison to your Bench, and bade at his peril certain persons to smite the brain out of her head for suing of her right; and there being in grievous prison during half year and more, fettered and chained, suffering cold, hunger, thirst, in point of death, God and ye, gracious King, help her to her right.’

What we are to think of all this, not having Paston’s reply, I cannot say.

Scanty and disconnected as are the notices we possess of William Paston, we must not pass by without comment his letter to the vicar of the abbot of Clugny, in behalf of Bromholm Priory.35.1It was not, indeed, the only occasion35.2on which we find that he exerted himself in behalf of this ancient monastery, within a mile of which, he tells us, he was born.Bromholm Priory.Bromholm Priory was, in fact, about that distance from Paston Hall, as miles were reckoned then (though it is nearer two of our statute miles), and must have been regarded with special interest by the family. It was there that John Paston, the son of the judge, was sumptuously buried in the reign of EdwardIV.It was a monastery of some celebrity. Though not, at least in its latter days, one of the most wealthy religious houses, for it fell among the smaller monasteries at the first parliamentary suppression of HenryVIII., its ruins still attest that it was by no means insignificant. Situated by the sea-shore, with a flat, unbroken country round about, they are conspicuous from a distance both by sea and land. Among the numerous monasteries of Norfolk, none but Walsingham was more visited by strangers, and many of the pilgrims to Walsingham turned aside on their way homeward to visit the Rood of Bromholm. For this was a very special treasure brought from Constantinople two hundred years before, and composed of a portion of the wood of the true Cross. Many were the miracles recorded to have been wrought in the monastery since that precious relic was set up; the blind had received their sight, the lame had walked, and lepers had been cleansed; even the dead had been restored to life. It was impossible that a native of Paston could be uninterested in a place so renowned throughout all England.

Yet about this time the priory must have been less prosperous than it had once been. Its government and constitution were in a transition state. It was one of the twenty-eight monasteries in England which belonged to the Cluniac order, and were originally subject to the visitation of the Abbot of36Clugny in France. Subjection to a foreign head did not tend at any time to make them popular in this country, and in the reign of HenryV.that connection was suddenly broken off. An act was passed suppressing at once all the alien priories, or religious houses that acknowledged foreign superiors. The priors of several of the Cluniac monasteries took out new foundation charters, and attached themselves to other orders. Those that continued signed deeds of surrender, and their monasteries were taken into the king’s hands. About nine or ten years later, however, it would seem that a vicar of the Abbot of Clugny was allowed to visit England, and to him William Paston made an appeal to profess in due form a number of virtuous young men who had joined the priory in the interval.

Land purchased by Judge Paston.

From the statement already quoted as to the history of the Paston family, it appears that William Paston purchased a good deal of land in Paston besides what had originally belonged to them. It was evidently his intention to make a family residence, and transmit to his sons a more absolute ownership in the land from which they derived their name. Much of his father’s land in Paston had been copyhold belonging to the manor of Gimingham Hall; but William Paston bought ‘a moiety of the fifth part’ of the adjacent manor of Bacton, with free land extending into Paston. He thus established himself as undoubted lord of the greater part of the soil, and must have felt a pardonable pride in the improved position he thereby bequeathed to his descendants. At Paston he apparently contemplated building a manor house; for he made inquiry about getting stone from Yorkshire conveyed by sea to Mundesley, where there was then a small harbour36.1within two miles of Paston village. To carry out the improvementsHighways diverted.he proposed to make there and on other parts of his property, he obtained licence from the king a year before his death to divert two public highways, the one at Paston and the other at Oxnead, a little from their course.36.2The alterations do not appear to have been of a nature that any one had a right to complain of. Full inquiry was made beforehand by37an inquisitionad quod damnum37.1whether they would be to the prejudice of neighbours. At Paston the extent of roadway which he obtained leave to enclose was only thirty-two and a half perches in length by one perch in breadth. It ran on the south side of his mansion, and he agreed to make a new highway of the same dimensions on the north side. The vicar of Paston seems to have been the neighbour principally concerned in the course that the new thoroughfare was to take, and all particulars had been arranged with him a few months before William Paston died.

John Paston has disputes with his neighbours.

But it would seem upon the judge’s death his great designs were for some time interrupted. The family were looked upon by many as upstarts, and young John Paston, who was only four-and-twenty, though bred to the law like his father, could not expect to possess the same weight and influence with his neighbours. A claim was revived by the lord of Gimingham Hall to a rent of eight shillings from one of Paston’s tenants, which had never been demanded so long as the judge was alive. The vicar of Paston pulled up the ‘doles’ which were set to mark the new highway, and various other disturbances were committed by the neighbours. It seems to have required all the energies not only of John Paston upon the spot, but also of his brother Edmund, who was in London at Clifford’s Inn, to secure the rights of the family; insomuch that their mother, in writing to the latter of the opposition to which they had been exposed, expresses a fear lest she should make him weary of Paston.37.2And, indeed, if Edmund Paston was not weary of the dispute, his mother herself had cause to be; for it not only lasted years after this, but for some years after Edmund Paston was dead the stopping of the king’s highway was a fruitful theme of remonstrance. When Agnes Paston built a wall it was thrown down before it was half completed; threats of heavy amercements were addressed to her in church, and the men of Paston spoke of showing their displeasure when they went in public procession on St. Mark’s day.37.3

Oxnead.

The Manor of Oxnead, which in later times became the38principal seat of the family, was also among the possessions purchased by Judge Paston. He bought it of William Clopton of Long Melford, and settled it upon Agnes, his wife. But after his death her right to it was disputed. It had formerly belonged to a family of the name of Hauteyn, and there suddenly started up a claimant in the person of one John Hauteyn, whose right to hold property of any kind wasJohn Hauteyn.supposed to have been entirely annulled by the fact of his having entered the Order of Carmelite Friars. It seems, however, he had succeeded in getting from the Pope a dispensation to renounce the Order on the plea that he had been forced into it against his will when he was under age, and being thus restored by the ecclesiastical power to the condition of a layman, he next appealed to the civil courts to get back his inheritance. This danger must have been seen by William Paston before his death, and a paper was drawn up (No. 46) to show that Hauteyn had been released from his vows on false pretences. Nevertheless he pursued his claim at law, and although he complained of the difficulty of getting counsel (owing, as he himself intimated, to the respect in which the bar held the memory of Judge Paston, and the fact that his son John was one of their own members), he seems to have had hopes of succeeding through the influence of the Duke of Suffolk. His suit, however, had not been brought to a successful determination at the date of Suffolk’s fall. It was still going on in the succeeding summer; but as we hear no more of it after that, we may presume that the altered state of the political world induced him to abandon it. According to Blomefield, he and others of the Hauteyn family released their rights to Agnes Paston ‘about 1449’; but this date is certainly at least a year too early.38.1

William Paston also purchased various other lands in the county of Norfolk.38.2Among others, he purchased from39Thomas Chaucer, a son of the famous poet, the manor of Gresham,39.1of which we shall have something more to say a little later. We also find that in the fourth year of HenryVI.he obtained, in conjunction with one Thomas Poye, a grant of a market, fair and free-warren in his manor of Shipden which had belonged to his father Clement before him.39.2

John Paston’s marriage.

The notices of John Paston begin when he was on the eve of marrying, a few years before his father’s death. The match was evidently one that was arranged by the parents, after the fashion of the times. The lady was of a good family—daughter and heiress of John Mauteby, Esq. of Mauteby in Norfolk. The friends on both sides must have been satisfied that the union was a good one; for it had the one great merit which was then considered everything—it was no disparagement to the fortunes or the rank of either family. Beyond this hard business view, indeed, might have been found better arguments to recommend it; but English men and women in those days did not read novels, and had no great notion of cultivating sentiment for its own sake. Agnes Paston writes to her husband to intimate ‘the bringing home of the gentlewoman from Reedham,’ according to the arrangement he had made about it. It was, in her words, ‘the first acquaintance between John Paston and the said gentlewoman’ (one would think Dame Agnes must have learned from her husband to express herself with something of the formality of a lawyer); and we are glad to find that the young lady’s sense of propriety did not spoil her natural affability. ‘She made him gentle cheer in gentle wise, and said he was verily your son; and so I hope there shall need no great treaty between them.’ Finally the judge is requested by his wife to buy a gown for his future daughter-in-law, to which her mother would add a goodly fur. ‘The gown,’ says Dame Agnes, ‘needeth for to40be had; and of colour it would be a goodly blue, or else a bright sanguine.’40.1

Character of his wife.

‘The gentlewoman’ thus introduced to John Paston and the reader proved to the former a most devoted wife during about six-and-twenty years of married life. Her letters to her husband form no inconsiderable portion of the correspondence in these volumes, and it is impossible to peruse them without being convinced that the writer was a woman not only of great force of character, but of truly affectionate nature. It is true the ordinary style of these epistles is very different from that of wives addressing their husbands nowadays. There are no conventional expressions of tenderness—the conventionality of the age seems to have required not tenderness but humility on the part of women towards the head of a family; the subjects of the letters, too, are for the most part matters of pure business; yet the genuine womanly nature is seen bursting out whenever there is occasion to call it forth. Very early in the correspondence we meet with a letter of hers (No. 47) which in itself is pretty sufficient evidence that women, at least, were human in the fifteenth century. Her husband was at the time in London just beginning to recover from an illness which seems to have been occasioned by some injury he had met with. His mother had vowed to give an image of wax the weight of himself to Our Lady of Walsingham on his recovery, and Margaret to go on a pilgrimage thither, and also to St. Leonard’s at Norwich. That she did not undertake a journey of a hundred miles to do more efficient service was certainly not owing to any want of will on her part. The difficulties of travelling in those days, and the care of a young child, sufficiently account for her remaining in Norfolk; but apparently even these considerations would not have deterred her from the journey had she not been dissuaded from it by others. ‘If I might have had my will,’ she writes, ‘I should have seen you ere this time. I would ye were at home, if it were for your ease (and your sore might be as well looked to here as it is there ye be), now liever than a gown, though it were41of scarlet.’ Could the sincerity of a woman’s wishes be more artlessly expressed?

Let not the reader suppose, however, that Margaret Paston’s acknowledged love of a scarlet gown indicates anything like frivolity of character or inordinate love of display. We have little reason to believe from her correspondence that dress was a ruling passion. The chief aim discernible in all she writes—the chief motive that influenced everything she did—was simply the desire to give her husband satisfaction. And her will to do him service was, in general, only equalled by her ability. During term time, when John Paston was in London, she was his agent at home. It was she who negotiated with farmers, receiving overtures for leases and threats of lawsuits, and reported to her husband everything that might affect his interests, with the news of the country generally. Nor were threats always the worst thing she had to encounter on his account. For even domestic life, in those days, was not always exempt from violence; and there were at least two occasions when Margaret had to endure, in her husband’s absence, things that a woman ought to have been spared.

The Manor of Gresham.

One of these occasions we proceed to notice. The manor of Gresham, which William Paston had purchased from the son of the poet Chaucer, had been in the days of EdwardII.the property of one Edmund Bacon, who obtained from that king a licence to embattle the manor-house. It descended from him to his two daughters, Margaret and Margery. The former became the wife of Sir William de Kerdeston, and her rights were inherited by a daughter named Maud, who married Sir John Burghersh.41.1This moiety came to Thomas Chaucer by his marriage with Maud Burghersh, the daughter of the Maud just mentioned. The other became at first the property of Sir William Molynes, who married Bacon’s second daughter Margery. But this Margery having survived her husband, made a settlement of it by will, according to which the reversion of it after the decease of one Philip Vache and42of Elizabeth his wife, was to be sold; and William, son of Robert Molynes, was to have the first option of purchase. This William Molynes at first declined to buy it, being apparently in want of funds; but he afterwards got one Thomas Fauconer, a London merchant, to advance the purchase-money, on an agreement that his son should marry Fauconer’s daughter. The marriage, however, never took effect; the Molynes family lost all claim upon the manor, and the same Thomas Chaucer who acquired the other moiety by his wife, purchased this moiety also, and conveyed both to William Paston.42.1

The whole manor of Gresham thus descended to John Paston, as his father’s heir. But a few years after his father’s death he was troubled in the possession of it by Robert Hungerford, son of Lord Hungerford, who, having married Eleanor Molynes, a descendant of the Sir William Molynes above referred to, had been raised to the peerage as Lord Molynes,and laid claim to the whole inheritance of theClaimed by Lord Molynes.Molynes family. He was still but a young man,42.2heir-apparent to another barony; and, with the prospect of a great inheritance both from his father and from his mother, who was the daughter and sole heir of William Lord Botraux, he certainly had little occasion to covet lands that were not his own. Nevertheless he listened to the counsels of John Heydon of Baconsthorpe, a lawyer who had been sheriff and also recorder of Norwich, and whom the gentry of Norfolk looked upon with anything but goodwill, regarding him as the ready tool of every powerful oppressor. His chief patron, with whom his name was constantly coupled, was Sir Thomas Tuddenham; and the two together, especially during the unpopular ministry of the Duke of Suffolk, exercised an ascendency in the county, of which we hear very numerous43complaints. Heydon persuaded Lord Molynes that he had a good claim to the manor of Gresham; and Lord Molynes, without more ado, went in and took possession on the 17th of February 1448.43.1

To recover his rights against a powerful young nobleman connected with various wealthy and influential families required, as John Paston knew, the exercise of great discretion. Instead of resorting at once to an action at law, he made representations to Lord Molynes and his legal advisers to show how indefensible was the title they had set up for him. He secured some attention for his remonstrances by the intercession of Waynflete, bishop of Winchester.43.2Conferences took place between the counsel of both parties during the following summer, and the weakness of Lord Molynes’ case was practically confessed by his solicitors, who in the end told Paston to apply to his lordship personally. Paston accordingly, at no small expense to himself, went and waited upon him at Salisbury and elsewhere, but was continually put off. At last, on the 6th of October, not, as I believe, the same year, but the year following, he succeeded in doing to Lord Molynes to some extent what Lord Molynes had already done to him. He took possession of ‘a mansion within the said town,’ and occupied it himself, having doubtless a sufficiency of servants to guard against any sudden surprise. After this fashion he maintained his rights for a period of over three months. The usual residence of Lord Molynes was in Wiltshire, and his agents probably did not like the responsibility of attempting to remove John Paston without express orders from their master. But on the 28th of January 1450, while John Paston was away in London on business, there came before the mansion at Gresham a company of a thousand persons, sent to recover possession for Lord Molynes. They were armed with cuirasses and brigandines, with guns, bows, and arrows, and with every kind of offensive and defensive armour. They had also mining instruments, long poles with hooks, called cromes, used for pulling down houses, ladders, pickaxes, and pans with fire burning in them.44With these formidable implements they beset the house, at that time occupied only by Margaret Paston and twelve other persons; and having broken open the outer gates, they set to work undermining the very chamber in which Margaret was. Resistance under the circumstances was impossible. Margaret was forcibly carried out. The house was then thoroughly rifled of all that it contained—property estimated by John Paston at £20044.1—the doorposts were cut asunder, and the place was left little better than a ruin. Further, that there might be no mistake about the spirit in which the outrage was perpetrated, the rioters declared openly, that if they had found John Paston, or his friend John Damme, who had aided him with his counsel about these matters, neither of them should have escaped alive.44.2

John Paston drew up a petition for redress to Parliament, and another to the Lord Chancellor; but it was some months before his case could be attended to, for that year was one of confusion and disorder unparalleled. It was that year, in fact, which may be said to have witnessed the first outbreak of a long, intermittent civil war. History has not passed over in silence the troubles of 1450.Troubled times,A.D.1450.The rebellion of Jack Cade, and the murder of two bishops in different parts of the country, were facts which no historian could treat as wholly insignificant. Many writers have even repeated the old slander, which there seems no good reason to believe, that Jack Cade’s insurrection was promoted by the intrigues of the Duke of York; but no one appears to me to have realised the precise nature of the crisis that necessarily followed the removal of the Duke of Suffolk. And as we have now arrived at the point where the Paston Letters begin to have a most direct bearing on English history, we must endeavour in a few words of historical retrospect to make the matter as clear as possible.

Back to IndexNext