PREFACE

[Sidenote: First publication of the Letters.] Public attention was first

drawn to the Paston Letters in the year 1787, when there issued from the

press two quarto volumes with a very lengthy title, setting forth that

the contents were original letters written ‘by various persons of rank

and consequence’ during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard

III. The materials were derived from autographs in the possession of the

Editor, a Mr. Fenn, of East Dereham, in Norfolk, who was well enough

known in society as a gentleman of literary and antiquarian tastes, but

who had not at that time attained any great degree of celebrity. Horace

Walpole had described him, thirteen years before, as ‘a smatterer in

antiquity, but a very good sort of man.’ What the great literary magnate

afterwards thought of him we are not informed, but we know that he took

a lively interest in the Paston Letters the moment they were published.

He appears, indeed, to have given some assistance in the progress of the

work through the press. On its appearance he expressed himself with

characteristic enthusiasm:--‘The letters of Henry VI.’s reign, etc., are

come out, and _to me_ make all other letters not worth reading. I have

gone through one volume, and cannot bear to be writing when I am so

eager to be reading. . . . There are letters from _all_ my acquaintance,

Lord Rivers, Lord Hastings, the Earl of Warwick, whom I remember still

better than Mrs. Strawbridge, though she died within these fifty years.

What antiquary would be answering a letter from a living countess, when

he may read one from Eleanor Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk?’[1-1]

[Footnote 1-1: _Walpole’s Letters_ (Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.]

So wrote the great literary exquisite and virtuoso, the man whose

opinion in those days was life or death to a young author or a new

publication. And in spite of all that was artificial and affected in his

character,--in spite even of the affectation of pretending a snobbish

interest in ancient duchesses--Walpole was one of the fittest men of

that day to appreciate such a publication. [Sidenote: What was thought

of them by some.] Miss Hannah More was less easily pleased, and she no

doubt was the type of many other readers. The letters, she declared,

were quite barbarous in style, with none of the elegance of their

supposed contemporary Rowley. They might perhaps be of some use to

correct history, but as letters and fine reading, nothing was to be said

for them.[2-1] It was natural enough that an age which took this view of

the matter should have preferred the forgeries of Chatterton to the most

genuine productions of the fifteenth century. The style of the Paston

Letters, even if it had been the most polished imaginable, of course

could not have exhibited the polish of the eighteenth century, unless a

Chatterton had had some hand in their composition.

[Footnote 2-1: Roberts’s _Memoirs of Hannah More_, ii. 50.]

[Sidenote: General interest in the work.] Yet the interest excited by

the work was such that the editor had no reason to complain of its

reception. The Paston Letters were soon in everybody’s hands. The work,

indeed, appeared under royal patronage, for Fenn had got leave

beforehand to dedicate it to the King as ‘the avowed patron’ of

antiquarian knowledge. This alone had doubtless some influence upon the

sale; but the novel character of the publication itself must have

excited curiosity still more. A whole edition was disposed of in a week,

and a second edition called for, which, after undergoing some little

revision, with the assistance of Mr. George Steevens, the Shakspearian

editor, was published the same year. Meanwhile, to gratify the curious,

the original MS. letters were deposited for a time in the Library of the

Society of Antiquaries; but the King having expressed a wish to see

them, Fenn sent them to Buckingham Palace, then called the Queen’s

Palace, requesting that, if they were thought worthy of a place in the

Royal Collection, His Majesty would be pleased to accept them. They were

accordingly, it would seem, added to the Royal Library; and as an

acknowledgment of the value of the gift, Fenn was summoned to Court, and

received the honour of knighthood.

But the two volumes hitherto published by Fenn contained only a small

selection out of a pretty considerable number of original letters of the

same period in his possession. The reception these two volumes had met

with now encouraged him to make a further selection, and he announced

with his second edition that another series of the Letters was in

preparation, which was to cover the same period as the first two

volumes, and to include also the reign of Henry VII. Accordingly a third

and fourth volume of the work were issued together in the year 1789,

containing the new letters down to the middle of Edward IV.’s reign. A

fifth and concluding volume, bringing the work down to the end of Henry

VII.’s reign, was left ready for publication at Sir John Fenn’s death in

1794, and was published by his nephew, Mr. Serjeant Frere, in 1823.

Of the original MSS. of these letters and their descent Fenn gives but a

brief account in the preface to his first volume, which we will

endeavour to supplement with additional facts to the best of our

ability. [Sidenote: The MSS.] The letters, it will be seen, were for the

most part written by or to particular members of the family of Paston in

Norfolk. Here and there, it is true, are to be found among them State

papers and other letters of great interest, which must have come to the

hands of the family through some indirect channel; but the great

majority are letters distinctly addressed to persons of the name of

Paston, and in the possession of the Pastons they remained for several

generations. In the days of Charles II. the head of the family, Sir

Robert Paston, was created Earl of Yarmouth; but his son William, the

second bearer of the title, having got into debt and encumbered his

inheritance, finally died without male issue, so that his title became

extinct. While living in reduced circumstances, he appears to have

parted with a portion of his family papers, which were purchased by the

great antiquary and collector, Peter Le Neve, Norroy King of Arms. Le

Neve was a Norfolk man, possessed of considerable estates at Witchingham

and elsewhere in the county; and he made it a special object to collect

MSS. and records relating to Norfolk and Suffolk. Just before his death

in 1729 he made a will,[4-1] by which he bequeathed his MSS. to the

erudite Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph’s, and Thomas Martin

of Palgrave; but this bequest was subject to the condition that within a

year after his death they should ‘procure a good and safe repository in

the Cathedral Church of Norwich, or in some other good and public

building in the said city’ for their preservation, the object being to

make them at all times accessible to those who wished to consult them.

The condition, however, was not fulfilled, and the bequest would

naturally have become null; but ‘honest Tom Martin of Palgrave’ (to give

him the familiar name by which he himself desired to be known) married

the widow of his friend, and thus became possessed of his MSS. by

another title.

[Footnote 4-1: _See_ Appendix after Introduction, No. I.]

The Le Neve collection, however, contained only a portion of the Paston

family papers. On the death, in 1732, of the Earl of Yarmouth, who

outlived Le Neve by three years, some thirty or forty chests of valuable

letters and documents still remained at the family seat at Oxnead. These

treasures the Rev. Francis Blomefield was allowed to examine three years

later with a view to his county history, for which purpose he boarded at

Oxnead for a fortnight.[4-2] Of the results of a general survey of the

papers he writes, on the 13th May 1735, to Major Weldon a number of

interesting particulars, of which the following may be quoted as bearing

upon the subject before us:--‘There is another box full of the pardons,

grants, and old deeds, freedoms, etc., belonging to the Paston family

only, which I laid by themselves, for fear you should think them proper

to be preserved with the family; they don’t relate to any estates. . . .

There are innumerable letters of good consequence in history still lying

among the loose papers, all which I laid up in a corner of the room on a

heap which contains several sacks full.’[5-1] But Blomefield afterwards

became the owner of a considerable portion of these papers; for he not

only wrote his initials on several of them, and marked a good many

others with a mark by which he was in the habit of distinguishing

original documents that he had examined and noted, but he also made a

present to a friend of one letter which must certainly have once been in

the Paston family archives. He himself refers to his ownership of

certain collections of documents in the Preface to his _History of

Norfolk_, where he informs the reader that he has made distinct

reference to the several authors and originals he had made use of in all

cases, ‘except’ (these are his words) ‘where the originals are either in

Mr. Le Neve’s or my own collections, which at present I design to join

to his, so that, being together, they may be consulted at all times.’

Apparently honest Tom Martin was still intending to carry out Le Neve’s

design, and Blomefield purposed to aid it further by adding his own

collections to the Le Neve MSS. But though Martin lived for nearly forty

years after his marriage with Le Neve’s widow, and always kept this

design in view, he failed to carry it out. His necessities compelled him

to part with some of his treasures, but these apparently were mainly

books enriched with MS. notes, not original ancient MSS., and even as he

grew old he did not altogether drop the project. He frequently formed

resolutions that he would, _next year_, arrange what remained, and make

a selection for public use. But at last, at the age of seventy-four, he

suddenly died in his chair without having given effect to his purpose.

[Footnote 4-2: _Cursory Notices of the Reverend Francis

Blomefield._ By J. Wilton Rix, Esq.]

[Footnote 5-1: _Norfolk Archæology_, ii. 210, 211.]

Neither did his friend Blomefield, who died nine years before him, in

January 1762, succeed in giving effect to _his_ good intention of

uniting his collections with the Le Neve MSS. For he died deeply in

debt, and by his will, made just before death, he directed all his

personal property to be sold in payment of his liabilities. His

executors, however, declined to act, and administration was granted to

two principal creditors. Of the Paston MSS. which were owned by him,

a few are now to be found in one of the volumes of the Douce Collection

in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These, it would seem, were first

purchased by the noted antiquary John Ives,[6-1] who acquired a number

of Le Neve’s, Martin’s, and Blomefield’s MSS.; and after his library was

sold by auction in March 1777, they became part of the collections

relating to the counties of Oxford and Cambridge, which Gough, in his

_British Topography_ (vol. ii. p. 5), informs us that he purchased at

the sale of Mr. Ives’ papers. To this same collection, probably,

belonged also a few of the scattered documents relating to the Paston

family which have been met with among the miscellaneous stores of the

Bodleian Library, for a knowledge of which I was indebted to the late

Mr. W. H. Turner of Oxford.

[Footnote 6-1: _See_ Nichols’s _Literary Anecdotes_, iii. 199.]

Martin’s executors seem to have done what they could to preserve the

integrity of his collections. A catalogue of his library was printed

at Lynn in 1771, in the hope that some purchaser would be found to take

the whole. Such a purchaser did present himself, but not in the interest

of the public. [Sidenote: By Mr. Worth.] A certain Mr. John Worth,

a chemist at Diss, bought both the library and the other collections,

as a speculation, for £630. The printed books he immediately sold to

a firm at Norwich, who disposed of them by auction; the pictures and

smaller curiosities he sold by auction at Diss, and certain portions

of the MSS. were sent, at different times, to the London market. But

before he had completed the sale of all the collections, Mr. Worth died

suddenly in December 1774. That portion of the MSS. which contained the

Paston Letters he had up to that time reserved. Mr. Fenn immediately

purchased them of his executors, and they had been twelve years in his

possession when he published his first two volumes of selections from

them.

So much for the early history of the MSS. Their subsequent fate is not a

little curious. On the 23rd May 1787, Fenn received his knighthood at

St. James’s, having then and there presented to the King three bound

volumes of MSS. which were the originals of his first two printed

volumes.[6-2] Yet, strange to say, these MSS. were afterwards lost sight

of so completely that for a whole century nobody could tell what had

become of them. They were not in the Royal Library afterwards given up

to the British Museum; they were not to be found in any of the Royal

Palaces. The late Prince Consort, just before his death, caused a

careful search to be made for them, but it proved quite ineffectual.

Their hiding-place remained unknown even when I first republished these

Letters in the years 1872-75.

[Footnote 6-2: The following announcement appears in the _Morning

Chronicle_ of 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.’]

To this mystery succeeded another of the same kind. The originals of the

other three volumes were not presented to the king; but they, too,

disappeared, and remained for a long time equally undiscoverable. Even

Mr. Serjeant Frere, who edited the fifth volume from transcripts left by

Sir John Fenn after his death, declared that he had not been able to

find the originals of that volume any more than those of the others.

Strange to say, however, the originals of that volume were in his house

all the time, and were discovered by his son, Mr. Philip Frere, in the

year 1865, just after an ingenious _littérateur_ had made the complete

disappearance of _all_ the MSS. a ground for casting doubt on the

authenticity of the published letters. It is certainly a misfortune for

historical literature, or at all events was in those days, that the

owners of ancient MSS. commonly took so little pains to ascertain what

it was that they had got. Since then the proceedings of the Historical

MSS. Commission, which have brought to light vast stores of unsuspected

materials for history, have awakened much more interest in such matters.

Thus three distinct portions of MSS. that had been carefully edited had

all been lost sight of and remained undiscoverable for a long series of

years. The originals of the first two volumes presented to the King

could not be found. The originals of volumes iii. and iv. could not be

found. The originals of volume v. could not be found. These last,

however, after a time, came to light, as we have seen, in 1865, having

been discovered in the house of the late Mr. Philip Frere at Dungate, in

Cambridgeshire; and with them were found a large number of additional

MSS., also belonging to the Paston Collection, among which was the

original of one of the letters of volume iii. separated from all its

fellows, whose place of concealment remained still unknown.

This discovery, however, was important, and at once suggested to me the

possibility of producing a new edition of the Letters arranged in true

chronological order, and augmented by those hitherto unedited. It

suggested, moreover, that more of the originals might even yet be

discovered with a little further search, perhaps even in the same house.

But a further search at Dungate, though it brought to light a vast

quantity of papers of different ages, many of them very curious, did not

lead to the discovery of any other than the single document above

referred to belonging to any of the first four volumes. All that Mr.

Philip Frere could find belonging to the Paston Collection he sold to

the British Museum, and the rest he disposed of by auction.

The question then occurred: Since the originals of volumes iii. and iv.

had not been found at Dungate, might they be in the possession of the

head of the Frere family, the late Mr. George Frere of Roydon Hall, near

Diss, in Norfolk? This was suggested to me as probable by Mr. Philip

Frere, his cousin, and I wrote to him accordingly on the 3rd December

1867. I received an answer from him dated on the 6th, that he did not

see how such MSS. should have found their way to Roydon, but if they

turned up at any time he would let me know. Unluckily he seems to have

dismissed the subject from his mind, and I received no answer to further

inquiries repeated at various intervals. At last it appeared hopeless to

wait longer and defer my edition of the Letters indefinitely on the

chance of finding more originals anywhere. So the first volume of my

edition went to press, and the second, and the third. But just after I

had printed off two Appendices to vol. iii., a friend of Mr. George

Frere’s called upon me at the Record Office, and informed me that a

number of original Paston letters had been discovered at Roydon, which

he had conveyed up to London. After some further communication with Mr.

Frere himself I was allowed to inspect them at his son’s chambers in the

Temple, when I found among them those very originals of Fenn’s third and

fourth volumes which eight years before he could not believe were in his

possession! Every one of them, I think, was there with just two

exceptions--the first a document which, as already mentioned, was found

at Dungate; the second a letter (No. 52 in this edition) now preserved

at Holland House, the existence of which was made known to me before my

second volume was issued by a recent book of the Princess Marie

Liechtenstein.[9-1]

[Footnote 9-1: _Holland House._ By Princess Marie Liechtenstein,

vol. ii. p. 198.]

It was mortifying, I confess, not to have received earlier intelligence

of a fact that I had suspected all along. But it was better to have

learned it at the last moment than not till after my last volume was

published. So, having made two Appendices already to that volume, the

only thing to do was to add a third, in which the reader would find a

brief note of the discovery, with copies of some of the unpublished

letters, and as full an account of the others belonging to the same

period as circumstances would permit. Altogether there were no less than

ninety-five new original letters belonging to the period found at Roydon

Hall, along with the originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes.

In July 1888 these Roydon Hall MSS. were offered for sale at Christie’s.

They consisted then of 311 letters, mainly the originals of Fenn’s third

and fourth volumes, and of those described in my third Appendix. Of the

former set there were only four letters wanting, viz. the two in volume

iii. whose existence is accounted for elsewhere, and two in volume iv.

‘which,’ the sale catalogue observes, ‘are noted by Fenn himself as

being no longer in his possession.’ As to the letters in my Appendix the

catalogue goes on to say:--

‘Of the ninety-five additional letters above mentioned (Gairdner,

992-1086) _four_ are missing (Nos. 1016, 1029, 1077, 1085). On the

other hand, on collating the present collection with the printed

volumes, it was found to contain _four others_ of which no record

exists either in Fenn’s or Mr. Gairdner’s edition, and which

consequently appear to have escaped the notice of the latter

gentleman while examining the treasures at Roydon Hall.’

‘The latter gentleman’ begs leave to say here that he never was at

Roydon Hall in his life, and was only allowed to examine such of the

‘treasures’ found there as were placed before him in the year 1875 in a

certain chamber in the Temple. A well-known bookseller purchased the

MSS. offered at Christie’s for 500 guineas, and some years later (in

1896), sold them to the British Museum. They are thus, at length,

available for general consultation. The number of missing originals,

however, is not quite as given in Christie’s sale catalogue. There are

four, not two, lacking of volume iv. On the other hand, only two letters

of the Appendix are wanting.[10-1]

[Footnote 10-1: The 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.]

About fifteen years after the discovery at Roydon there came another

discovery elsewhere. On the 29th March 1890 it was announced in the

_Athenæum_ that the missing originals of Fenn’s first and second

volumes--that is to say, the MSS. presented to King George III.--had

likewise come to light again. They were found at Orwell Park, in

Suffolk, in 1889, after the death of the late Colonel Tomline, and they

remain there in the possession of his cousin, Mr. E. G. Pretyman, M.P.,

now Secretary to the Admiralty, who kindly showed them to me at his

house soon after their discovery. They have come to him among family

papers and heirlooms of which, being only tenant for life, he is not

free to dispose until some doubts can be removed as to their past

history; and I accordingly forbear from saying more on this point except

that their place of deposit indicates that they may either have got

mixed with the private papers and books of Pitt, of which a large number

are in the Orwell library, or with those of his old tutor and secretary,

Dr. George Pretyman, better known as Bishop Tomline. Dr. Pretyman had

just been appointed Bishop of Lincoln when Fenn published his first two

volumes, and it was many years afterwards that he assumed the name of

Tomline. But whether these MSS. came to his hands or to Pitt’s, or under

what circumstances they were delivered to either, there is no evidence

to show. Possibly the King’s illness in 1788 prevented their being

placed, or, it may be, replaced, in the Royal Library, where they were

intended to remain.

The edition of these Letters published by Mr. Arber in 1872-75 was in

three volumes. It was printed from stereotype plates, and has been

reissued more than once by the Messrs. Constable with corrections, and

latterly with an additional volume containing the Preface and

Introduction by themselves, and a Supplement giving the full text of

those newly-found letters of which the reader had to be content with a

bare catalogue in 1875. My original aim to have a complete collection of

all extant Paston Letters had been defeated; and there seemed nothing

for it but to let them remain even at the last in a general series, an

Appendix and a Supplement. The present publishers, however, by

arrangement with Messrs. Constable, were anxious to meet the wants of

scholars who desired to possess the letters, now that the collection

seems to be as complete as it is ever likely to be, in a single series,

and in a more luxurious form than that in which they have hitherto

appeared. I have accordingly rearranged the letters as desired--a task

not altogether without its difficulties when nice chronological

questions had to be weighed and the story of the Pastons in all its

details had for so many years ceased to occupy a foremost place in my

thoughts; and I trust that the unity of the series will now give

satisfaction. At the same time, the opportunity has not been lost of

rectifying such errors as have been brought to my notice, which could

not have been conveniently corrected in the stereotype editions.

Notwithstanding the recovery of the originals of the letters printed by

Fenn, it has not been thought necessary to edit these anew from the MSS.

Whether such a thing would be altogether practicable even now may

perhaps be a question; at all events it would have delayed the work

unduly. Fenn’s editing is, as I have shown in previous editions, fairly

satisfactory on the whole, and it is not to be supposed that a

comparison of all the printed letters with the original MSS. would lead

to results of very material consequence. A large number have been

compared already, and the comparison inspires the greatest confidence in

his care and accuracy. His misreadings are really very few, his method

of procedure having been such as to prevent their being either many or

serious; while as to his suppressions I have found no reason to believe,

from what examination I have been able to make, that any of them were of

very material importance.

It was not editorial carelessness on Fenn’s part which made a new

edition desirable in 1872. It was, first of all, the advance of

historical criticism since his day--or rather, perhaps, I should say, of

the means of verifying many things by the publication of historical

sources and the greater accessibility of historical records. And

secondly, the discovery of such a large number of unprinted documents

belonging to the Paston Collection made it possible to study that

collection as a whole, and fill up the outlines of information which

they contained on matters both public and private. On this subject I may

be allowed simply to quote what I said in 1872 in the preface to the

first volume:--

‘The errors in Fenn’s chronology are numerous, and so exceedingly

misleading that, indispensable as these Letters now are to the

historian, there is not a single historian who has made use of them

but has misdated some event or other, owing to their inaccurate

arrangement. Even writers who have been most on their guard in some

places have suffered themselves to be misled in others. This is no

reproach to the former Editor, whose work is indeed a perfect model

of care and accuracy for the days in which he lived; but historical

criticism has advanced since that time, and facilities abound which

did not then exist for comparing one set of documents with another,

and testing the accuracy of dates by public records. The completion

of Blomefield’s _History of Norfolk_, and the admirable index added

to that work of late years by Mr. Chadwick, have also been of

eminent service in verifying minute facts. Moreover, the

comprehensive study of the whole correspondence, with the advantage

of having a part already published to refer to, has enabled me in

many cases to see the exact bearing of particular letters, which

before seemed to have no certain place in the chronology, not only

upon public events, but upon the Private affairs of the Paston

family. . . .

[Sidenote: Accuracy of Fenn’s text.] ‘The care taken by Sir John

Fenn to secure the accuracy of his text can be proved by many tests.

It might, indeed, be inferred from the elaborate plan of editing

that he adopted, exhibiting in every case two transcripts of the

same letter, the one to show the precise spelling and punctuation of

the original, the other to facilitate the perusal by modern

orthography. A work on which so much pains were bestowed, and which

was illustrated besides by numerous facsimiles of the original

handwritings, signatures, paper-marks, and seals of the letters, was

not likely to have been executed in a slovenly manner, in so far as

the text is concerned. But we are not left in this case to mere

presumptive evidence. The originals of the fifth volume have been

minutely examined by a committee of the Society of Antiquaries, and

compared all through with the printed text, and the general result

of this examination was that the errors are very few, and for the

most part trivial. Now, if this was the case with regard to that

volume, which it must be remembered was published after Fenn’s death

from transcripts prepared for the press, and had not the benefit of

a final revision of the proof-sheets by the editor, we have surely

every reason to suppose that the preceding volumes were at least not

less accurate.

‘At all events, any inaccuracies that may exist in them were

certainly not the result of negligence. I have been favoured by Mr.

Almack, of Melford, near Sudbury, in Suffolk, with the loan of

several sheets of MS. notes bequeathed to him by the late Mr.

Dalton, of Bury St. Edmunds, who transcribed a number of the

original MSS. for Sir John Fenn. These papers contain a host of

minute queries and criticisms, which were the result of a close

examination of the first four volumes, undertaken at Fenn’s request.

Those on the first two volumes are dated on the 3rd and 7th of May

1788, more than a year after the book was published. But on vols.

iii. and iv. there are two separate sets of observations, the first

of which were made on the transcripts before they were sent to

press, the other, like those on the two first volumes, on the

published letters. From an examination of these criticisms, and also

from the results of the examination of the fifth volume by the

committee of the Society of Antiquaries,[13-1] I have been led to

the opinion that the manner in which Sir John Fenn prepared his

materials for the press was as follows:-- [Sidenote: Mode in which

Fenn prepared the letters for publication.] Two copies were first

made of every letter, the one in the exact spelling and punctuation

of the original, the other in modern orthography. Both these copies

were taken direct from the original, and possibly in the case of the

first two volumes they were both made by Fenn himself. In vols. iii.

and iv., however, it is stated that many of the transcripts were

made by Mr. Dalton, while those of vol. v. were found to be almost

all in his handwriting when that volume was sent to press in

1823.[13-2] But this statement probably refers only to the copies in

the antique spelling. Those in modern spelling I believe to have

been made for the most part, if not altogether, by Fenn himself.

When completed, the two copies were placed side by side, and given

to Mr. Dalton to take home with him. Mr. Dalton then made a close

comparison of the two versions, and pointed out every instance in

which he found the slightest disagreement between them, or where he

thought an explanation might be usefully bracketed into the modern

version. These comments in the case of vol. iii. are upwards of 400

in number, and extend over eighteen closely written pages quarto. It

is clear that they one and all received the fullest consideration

from Sir John Fenn before the work was published. Every one of the

discrepancies pointed out between the two versions is rectified in

the printed volume, and there cannot be a doubt that in every such

case the original MS. was again referred to, to settle the disputed

reading.

‘One or two illustrations of this may not be unacceptable to the

reader. The following are among the observations made by Mr. Dalton

on the transcripts of vol. iii. as prepared for press. [Sidenote:

Examples.] In Letter viii. was a passage in which occurred the

words, “that had of your father certain lands _one_ seven years or

eight years agone.” Mr. Dalton’s experience as a transcriber appears

to have suggested to him that “one” was a very common misreading of

the word “over” in ancient MSS., and he accordingly suggested that

word as making better sense. His surmise turned out to be the true

reading, and the passage stands corrected accordingly in the printed

volume. In Letter xxiv. there was a discrepancy in the date between

the transcript in ancient spelling and the modern version. In the

latter it was “the 4th day of December,” whereas the former gave it

as the 3rd. On examination it appears that the _modern_ version was

found to be correct, a Roman “iiij.” having been misread in the

other as “iij.” Thus we have very sufficient evidence that the

modern copy could not have been taken from the ancient, but was made

independently from the original MS. Another instance of the same

thing occurs in the beginning of Letter xli., where the words “to my

power” had been omitted in the literal transcript, but were found in

the modern copy.

‘Mr. Dalton’s part in the work of transcription appears clearly in

several of his observations. One of the transcripts is frequently

referred to as “my copy”; and an observation made on Letter lxxxvi.

shows pretty clearly that the copy so referred to was the literal

one. At the bottom of that letter is the following brief

postscript:--“Utinam iste mundus malignus transiret et

concupiscentia ejus”; on which Mr. Dalton remarks as follows:--“I

have added this on _your_ copy as supposing it an oversight, and

hope it is properly inserted.” Thus it appears that Mr. Dalton’s own

transcript had the words which were deficient in the other, and

that, being tolerably certain they existed in the original, he

transferred them to the copy made by Fenn. Now when it is considered

that these words are written in the original MS. with peculiarly

crabbed contractions, which had to be preserved in the literal

version as exactly as they could be represented in type,[15-1] it

will, I think, appear evident that Mr. Dalton could never have

ventured to supply them in such a form without the original before

him. It is clear, therefore, that his copy was the literal

transcript, and that of Fenn the modern version.

‘Again, in Letter xxxi. of the same volume, on the second last line

of page 137, occur the words, “that he obey not the certiorari.” On

this passage occurs the following query--“The word for ‘obey’ seems

unintelligible. Have I not erred from the original in my copy?”

Another case will show how by this examination the errors of the

original transcripts were eliminated. In Letter xxxiv., at the

bottom of pp. 144-5, occurs the name of Will or William Staunton. It

appears this name was first transcribed as “Robert Fraunton” in the

right or modern version; on which Mr. Dalton remarks, “It is William

in orig.” (Mr. Dalton constantly speaks of the transcript in ancient

spelling as the “original” in these notes, though it is clear he had

not the real original before him at the time he made them).

Strangely enough, Mr. Dalton does not suspect the surname as well as

the Christian name, but it is clear that both were wrong, and that

they were set right in consequence of this query directing the

editor’s attention once more to the original MS.’

[Footnote 13-1: _Archæol._ vol. xli. p. 39.]

[Footnote 13-2: _See_ Advertisement in the beginning of the

volume, p. vii.]

[Footnote 15-1: The following is the exact form in which they

stand in the literal or left-hand version:--‘Utia’z iste mu’d

maligu{s} t’nsir{t} & c’up’ia e{s}.’]

[[‘The care taken by Sir John

_opening quotation mark missing_]]

To this I may add some further evidences of Fenn’s editorial care and

accuracy. When the second volume of my first edition was published in

1874, my attention was called, as already mentioned, to the existence at

Holland House of the original of one of those letters[15-2] which I had

reprinted from Fenn. It was one of the letters in Fenn’s third volume,

and only one[15-3] other letter in that volume had then turned up.

I carefully compared both these papers with the documents as printed,

and in both, as I remarked in the Preface to vol. ii., the exact spelling

was given with the most scrupulous accuracy, so that there was scarcely

the most trivial variation between the originals and the printed text.

But a more careful estimate, alike of Fenn’s merits and of his defects

as an editor, became possible when, on the publication of the third

volume of the same edition, I was able, as I have already shown, to

announce at the last moment the result of a cursory inspection of the

originals of his third and fourth volumes. And what I said at that time

may be here transcribed:--

‘The recovery of these long-lost originals, although, unfortunately,

too late to be of the use it might have been in this edition, is

important in two ways: first, as affording an additional means of

testing Fenn’s accuracy as an editor; and secondly, as a means of

testing the soundness of some occasional inferences which the

present Editor was obliged to draw for himself in the absence of the

originals. More than one instance occurs in this work in which it

will be seen that I have ventured to eliminate from the text as

spurious a heading printed by Fenn as if it were a part of the

document which it precedes. Thus, in No. 19,[16-1] I pointed out

that the title, in which Judge Paston is called “Sir William Paston,

knight,” could not possibly be contemporaneous; and the document

itself shows that this opinion was well founded. It bears, indeed,

a modern endorsement in a handwriting of the last century much to the

same effect as Sir John Fenn’s heading; but this, of course, is no

authority at all. In the same way I showed that the title printed by

Fenn, as a heading to No. 191,[16-2] was utterly erroneous, and

could not possibly have existed in the original MS. This conclusion

is also substantiated by the document, which, I may add, bears in

the margin the heading “Copia,” showing that it was a transcript.

The document itself being an important State Paper, there were

probably a number of copies made at the time; but as no others have

been preserved, it is only known to us as one of the Paston Letters.

‘Another State Paper (No. 238),[16-3] of which a copy was likewise

sent to John Paston, has a heading which Sir John Fenn very

curiously misread. It is printed in this edition[16-4] as it stands

in the first, _Vadatur J. P._, meaning apparently “John Paston gives

security, or stands pledged.” But it turns out on examination that

the reading of the original is _Tradatur J. P._ (Let this be

delivered to John Paston).

‘To return to No. 19, it will be seen that I was obliged to reprint

from Fenn in the preliminary note a few words which he had found

written on the back of the letter, of which it was difficult to make

any perfect sense, but which seemed to imply that the bill was

delivered to Parliament in the 13th year of Henry VI. I pointed out

that there seemed to be some error in this, as no Parliament

actually met in the 13th year of Henry VI. The original endorsement,

however, is perfectly intelligible and consistent with facts, when

once it has been accurately deciphered. The handwriting, indeed, is

very crabbed, and for a considerable time I was puzzled; but the

words are as follows:--“Falsa billa Will’i Dallyng ad parliamentum

tempore quo Henricus Grey fuit vicecomes, ante annum terciodecimum

Regis Henrici vj{ti}.” I find as a matter of fact that Henry Grey

was sheriff (_vicecomes_) of Norfolk, first in the 8th and 9th, and

again in the 12th and 13th year of Henry VI., and that Parliament

sat in November and December of the 12th year (1433); so that the

date of the document is one year earlier than that assigned to it.

‘Again, I ventured to question on internal evidence the authorship

of a letter (No. 910)[17-1] which Fenn had assigned to William

Paston, the uncle of Sir John Paston. At the end is the signature

“Wyll’m Paston,” with a reference in Fenn to a facsimile engraved in

a previous volume. But the evidence seemed to me very strong that

the William Paston who wrote this letter was not Sir John’s uncle,

but his brother. The inspection of the original letter itself has

proved to me that I was right. The signatures of the two Williams

were not altogether unlike each other; but the signature appended to

this letter is unquestionably that of the younger man, not of his

uncle; while the facsimile, to which Fenn erroneously refers the

reader, is that of the uncle’s signature taken from a different

letter.

‘It may perhaps be conceived that if even these few errors could be

detected in Fenn’s work by one who had not yet an opportunity of

consulting the original MSS., a large number of others would be

discovered by a minute comparison of the printed volumes with the

letters themselves. This suspicion, however, is scarcely borne out

by the facts. I cannot profess to have made anything like an

exhaustive examination, but so far as I have compared these MSS.

with the printed text, I find no evidence of more than very

occasional inaccuracy, and, generally speaking, in matters very

immaterial. On the contrary, an inspection of these last recovered

originals has greatly confirmed the opinion, which the originals

previously discovered enabled me to form, of the scrupulous fidelity

and care with which the letters were first edited. For the most

part, not only the words, but the exact spelling of the MSS. is

preserved, with merely the most trifling variations. Sir John,

indeed, was not a trained archivist, and there are what may be

called errors of system in his mode of reading, such as, for

instance, the omission of contractions that may be held to represent

a final _e_, or the rendering a final dash by _s_ instead of _es_.

In such things the plan that he pursued was obvious. But it is

manifest that in other respects he is very accurate indeed; for he

had made so careful a study of these MSS. that he was quite familiar

with most of the ancient modes of handwriting, and, on the whole,

very seldom mistook a reading.

‘I may add, that this recent discovery enables me to vindicate his

accuracy in one place, even where it seemed before to be very

strangely at fault. At the end of Letter iii. of the fifth

volume,[18-1] occurs in the original edition the following

postscript:--“I warn you keep this letter close, and lose it not;

rather burn it.” On comparing this letter with the original, the

Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, some years ago, were amazed

to find that there was no such postscript in the MS., and they were

a good deal at a loss to account for its insertion. It now appears,

however, that this letter was preserved in duplicate, for among the

newly-recovered MSS. I discovered a second copy, being a corrected

draft, in Margaret Paston’s own hand, at the end of which occurs the

P.S. in question.

‘It must be acknowledged, however, that Fenn’s mode of editing was

not in all respects quite so satisfactory. Defects, of which no one

could reasonably have complained in his own day, are now a serious

drawback, especially where the original MSS. are no longer

accessible. Occasionally, as we have seen, he inserts a heading of

his own in the text of a document without any intimation that it is

not in the original; but this is so rare a matter that little need

be said about it. A more serious fault is, that in vols. iii. and

iv. he has published occasionally mere extracts from a letter as if

it were the whole letter. In vols. i. and ii. he avowedly left out

passages of little interest, and marked the places where they

occurred with asterisks; but in the two succeeding volumes he has

not thought it necessary to be so particular, and he has made the

omissions _sub silentio_. For this indeed no one can seriously blame

him. The work itself, as he had planned it, was only a selection of

letters from a correspondence, and a liberal use of asterisks would

not have helped to make it more interesting to the public.

Occasionally he even inverts the order of his extracts, printing a

postscript, or part of a postscript, in the body of a letter, and

placing at the end some passage that occurs in the letter itself,

for no other reason apparently than that it might read better as a

whole.

‘Thus Letter 37 of this edition[18-2] (vol. iii., Letter vi., in

Fenn) is only a brief extract, the original being a very long

letter, though the subjects touched upon are not of very great

interest. So also Letter 171 (Letter xxx. in Fenn’s third

volume)[18-3] is a set of extracts. Letter 182 (vol. iii., Letter

xxxix., in Fenn)[18-4] is the same; and the first part of what is

given as a postscript is not a postscript in the original, but

actually comes before the first printed paragraph.

‘In short, it was the aim of Sir John Fenn to reproduce with

accuracy the spelling and the style of the MSS. he had before him;

but as for the substance, to give only so much as he thought would

be really interesting. The letters themselves he regarded rather as

specimens of epistolary art in the fifteenth century than as a

substantial contribution to our knowledge of the times. To have

given a complete transcript of every letter, or even a _résumé_ in

his own words of all that concerned lawsuits, leases, bailiffs’

accounts, and a number of other matters of equally little interest,

formed no part of his design; but the task that he had really set

himself he executed with admirable fidelity. He grudged no labour or

expense in tracing facsimiles of the signatures, the seals, and the

watermarks on the paper. All that could serve to illustrate the

manners of the period, either in the contents of the letters, or in

the handwritings, or the mode in which they were folded, he esteemed

most valuable; and for these things his edition will continue still

to be much prized. But as it was clearly impossible in that day to

think of printing the whole correspondence, and determining

precisely the chronology by an exhaustive study of minutiæ, there

seemed no good reason why he should not give two or three paragraphs

from a letter without feeling bound to specify that they were merely

extracts. Yet even these defects are not of frequent occurrence. The

omissions are by no means numerous, and the matter they contain is

generally unimportant in itself.’

[Footnote 15-2: No. 38 in that edition, No. 52 in this.]

[Footnote 15-3: It was Letter 1 in Fenn’s third volume, No. 18 in

my first edition, No. 24 in this.]

[Footnote 16-1: No. 25 in present edition.]

[Footnote 16-2: No. 230 in present edition.]

[Footnote 16-3: No. 282 in present edition.]

[Footnote 16-4: That is to say, in the edition published by Mr.

Arber in 1875, when it was impossible to correct the text.]

[Footnote 17-1: No. 1033 in present edition.]

[Footnote 18-1: No. 787 of this edition.]

[Footnote 18-2: No. 51 of present edition.]

[Footnote 18-3: No. 205.]

[Footnote 18-4: No. 221.]

I took advantage, however, at that time, of the recovery of so many of

the missing originals to make a cursory examination for the further

testing of Fenn’s editorial accuracy. Two or three letters I compared

carefully with the originals throughout, and in others I made special

reference to passages where doubts were naturally suggested, either from

the obscurity of the words or from any other cause as to the correctness

of the reading. The results of this examination I gave in an Appendix at

the end of the Introduction to the third volume in 1875, and such errors

as I was then able to detect are corrected in the present edition.

Apart from such corrections, the letters are here reproduced as they are

printed in previous editions, only in a better order. Fenn’s text has

been followed, where no corrections have been found, in all the letters

printed by him except those of his fifth volume. The exact transcript

given on the left-hand pages of Fenn’s edition has been strictly adhered

to, except that contractions have been extended; and even in this

process we have always been guided by the interpretation given by Fenn

himself in his modern version on the right-hand pages. All the other

letters in this publication are edited from the original MSS., with a

very few exceptions in which these cannot be found. In some places,

indeed, where the contents of a letter are of very little interest, it

has been thought sufficient merely to give an abstract instead of a

transcript, placing the abstract in what is believed to be its true

place in the series chronologically. Abstracts are also given of

documents that are too lengthy and formal to be printed, and, in one

case, of a letter sold at a public sale, of which a transcript is not

now procurable. In the same manner, wherever I have found the slightest

note or reference, whether in Fenn’s footnotes or in Blomefield’s

_Norfolk_--where a few such references may be met with--to any letter

that appears originally to have belonged to the Paston correspondence,

even though the original be now inaccessible, and our information about

the contents the most scanty, the reader will find a notice of all that

is known about the missing document in the present publication.

I wish it were in my power to make the present edition better still. But

there have been always formidable obstacles to completeness during the

thirty years and more since I first took up the business of editing the

letters; and though many of these obstacles have been removed, my

energies are naturally not quite what they once were. The publishers,

however, have thought it time for a more satisfactory edition, and I

hope I have done my best. It remains to say a few words about the

original MSS. and the places in which they now exist.

Of those at Orwell Park I have already spoken. They are contained in

three half-bound volumes, and are the originals of the letters printed

by Fenn in his first and second volumes.

In the British Museum are contained, first of all, four volumes of the

‘Additional MSS.’ numbered 27,443 to 27,446, consisting of the originals

of volume v. of Fenn’s edition which was published after his death, and

a number of other letters first printed by me in the edition of 1872-75.

The nine volumes which follow these, viz. ‘Additional MSS.,’

27,447-27,455, contain also Paston letters but of a later date, and

papers relating to Sir John Fenn’s publication. There is also a separate

volume of ‘Paston letters’ in ‘Additional MS.’ 33,597; but these, too,

are mostly of later date, only eight being of the fifteenth century.

Further, there are the Roydon Hall MSS. (including with, I believe, only

two exceptions the originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes), which

are contained in the volumes ‘Additional,’ 34,888-9. And finally there

are two Paston letters (included in this edition) in ‘Additional MS.’

35,251. These are all that are in the British Museum. Besides these

there are, as above noticed, a few MSS. in a volume of the Douce

Collection and the other stray MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford

above referred to. At Oxford, also, though not strictly belonging to the

Paston family correspondence, are a number of valuable papers, some of

which are included in this edition, having an important bearing on the

fortunes of the family. These are among the muniments contained in the

tower of Magdalene College. As the execution of Sir John Fastolf’s will

ultimately devolved upon Bishop Waynflete, who, instead of a college at

Caister, made provision for a foundation of seven priests and seven poor

scholars in Magdalene College, a number of papers relative to the

disputes between the executors and the arrangement between the Bishop

and John Paston’s sons have been preserved among the documents of that

college. My attention was first called to these many years ago by Mr.

Macray, through whom I obtained copies, in the first place, of some

entries from an old index of the deeds relating to Norfolk and Suffolk,

which had already been referred to by Chandler in his Life of Bishop

Waynflete. Afterwards Mr. Macray, who had for some time been engaged in

a catalogue of the whole collection, was obliging enough to send me one

or two abstracts of his own made from the original documents even before

he was able to refer me to his report on the muniments of Magdalene

College, printed in the Fourth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission.

It will be seen that I have transcribed several interesting entries from

this source.

Further, there are just a few Paston letters preserved in Pembroke

College, Cambridge.

What remains to be said is only the confession of personal obligations,

incurred mainly long ago in connection with this work. The lapse of

years since my first edition of these letters was issued, in 1872,

naturally reminds me of the loss of various friends who favoured and

assisted it in various ways. Among these were the late Colonel Chester,

Mr. H. C. Coote, Mr. Richard Almack of Melford, Mr. W. H. Turner of

Oxford, Mr. J. H. Gurney, Mr. Fitch, and Mr. L’Estrange of Norwich. On

the other hand, I am happy to reckon still among the living Dr. Jessopp,

Mr. Aldis Wright, Miss Toulmin Smith, and Mr. J. C. C. Smith, now a

retired official of the Probate Office at Somerset House, who all gave

me kindly help so long ago. And I have further to declare my obligations

to Mr. Walter Rye, a gentleman well known as the best living authority

on Norfolk topography and families, for most friendly and useful

assistance in the way of notes and suggestions towards later editions.

I have also quite recently received help (confessed elsewhere) from the

Rev. William Hudson of Eastbourne, and have further had my attention

called to significant documents in the Public Record Office by some of

my old friends and colleagues there.

But among the departed, there is one whom I have reserved for mention by

himself, not so much for any particular assistance given me long ago in

the preparation of this work as for the previous education in historical

study which I feel that I received from intercourse with him. I had been

years engaged in the public service, and always thought that the records

of the realm ought to be better utilised than they were in those days

for the purpose of historical research; but how even Record clerks were

to become well acquainted with them under the conditions then existing

it was difficult to see. For each of us had his own little task assigned

to him, and had really very little opportunity, if ever so willing, to

go beyond it. Nor was there too much encouragement given under official

regulations to anything like historical training; for the Record Office,

when first constituted, was supposed to exist for the sake of litigants

who wanted copies of documents, rather than for that of historical

students who wanted to read them with other objects. Besides, people did

not generally imagine then that past history could be rewritten, except

by able and graphic pens which, perhaps, could put new life into old

facts without a very large amount of additional research. The idea that

the country contained vast stores of long-neglected letters capable of

yielding up copious new information to supplement and to correct the old

story of our national annals had hardly dawned upon anybody--least of

all, perhaps, on humble officials bound to furnish office copies of

‘fines’ and ‘recoveries’ and antiquated legal processes. Even the State

Papers, at that time, were kept apart from the Public Records, and could

only be consulted by special permission from a Secretary of State. No

clerk, either of the Record or State Paper Department, knew more than

was contained within his own particular province. But by the wise policy

of the late Lord Romilly these red-tape bands were ultimately broken;

and just at that time I had the rare privilege of being appointed to

assist the late Reverend John S. Brewer in one of the great works which

his Lordship set on foot to enable the British public to understand the

value of its own MSS. It was to this association with Mr. Brewer that I

feel I owe all my historical training, and I made some acknowledgment of

that debt in 1872 when I dedicated to him my first edition of this work.