[Sidenote: Margaret Paston enters Cotton.] On her way back to Norfolk,

Margaret Paston entered the manor of Cotton and remained in it for three

days. She had sent a message to her son John Paston the youngest at

Hellesdon to come and meet her there,[229-2] and he came along with

Wykes and twelve others, whom she had left at her departure to keep

possession and collect the rents. It was within a week of Michaelmas

Day, when rents fell due. As yet Lord Scales had made no attempt to

seize upon this property. Sir Gilbert Debenham had occupied the manor

for some years undisturbed, and he was doubtless considerably taken by

surprise when he found that a lady on her way home from London had

entered and taken possession in the name of John Paston. But when he

heard that young John Paston was gathering money of the tenants, he

raised a body of 300 men to expel the intruder. Young John Paston was

expecting reinforcements to his little band from Caister or elsewhere,

but they did not come; so that his position would have been a critical

one had not some one been his friend in the household of the Duke of

Norfolk. Sir Gilbert was the duke’s steward, and John Paston the

youngest was still in the duke’s service. A yeoman of his lordship’s

chamber represented to that nobleman that there was imminent risk of a

quarrel between two of his men, which would be a great ‘disworship’ to

his grace. The duke sent for the two immediately to attend upon him at

Framlingham Castle, and proposed to them terms of compromise until the

matter could be thoroughly investigated. He desired that neither party

should muster men, that the court should be ‘continued’--that is to say,

adjourned--till he himself should have had an opportunity of speaking

both with John Paston the father and on the other side with Yelverton

and Jenney, who had conveyed to Debenham the title on which he founded

his claim to the manor. Meanwhile he proposed that the place should be

kept by some indifferent person to be chosen by both parties.

[Footnote 229-2: _See_ No. 613. The heading of this letter is

unfortunately wrong. Deceived by the facsimile to which Fenn

refers as showing the character of the signature, I attributed the

letter to Sir John Paston. But Margaret Paston expressly says it

was John Paston the younger whom she left at Cotton (No. 610), and

this letter must therefore have been written by him. Besides, the

writer himself mentions that the dispute with Debenham was

referred to the Duke of Norfolk to avoid the scandal of a quarrel

_between two of his men_. It was not Sir John Paston, but his

brother, that was in the Duke of Norfolk’s service.]

To these terms John Paston the youngest would not assent without

consulting his mother, who had again come over from Norwich, or perhaps

from Caister, to see how matters went. But after a conference, they sent

an answer to the duke, declaring that they could not give up possession

of the place, but out of their anxiety for peace, and to satisfy his

lordship, they were willing to desist meanwhile from collecting rents,

if the opposite party would engage not to distrain or keep courts there

either. To this compromise Sir Gilbert said that he agreed, provided it

met with the approval of Yelverton and Jenney; and the Duke of Norfolk,

who was going up to London in anticipation of his birthday when he

attained his majority, left all the sooner in the hope of bringing this

matter to a favourable settlement.[230-1]

[Footnote 230-1: Nos. 613, 614.]

Thus far, at least, the entry into Cotton had been a distinct success.

The compromise was greatly in favour of the Pastons, for an appeal to

force would almost certainly have gone against them, and, though they

engaged for the time to abstain from taking more money of the tenants,

they had already succeeded in collecting almost all that they expected

to receive for Michaelmas term.[230-2] So Margaret Paston on her return

to Norfolk, and her son, when he was summoned to London shortly

afterwards, to attend the duke on his coming of age,[231-1] may each

have left Cotton with feelings akin to triumph. But scarcely had the

former returned to Norwich when she discovered to her dismay that her

clever manœuvre in Suffolk had left the family interests insufficiently

protected elsewhere. The Duke of Suffolk had not only a great number of

men at Cossey, but he had a powerful friend within the city of Norwich.

Thomas Elys, the new mayor, was so flagrantly partial, that he had said

at Drayton he would supply my lord of Suffolk with a hundred men

whenever he should require them, and if any men of the city went to

Paston he would lay them fast in prison.[231-2] Hellesdon,

unfortunately, lay midway between Cossey and the city of Norwich, and as

it was not now assize time there was practically no control over such

magnates as the Duke of Suffolk and the mayor. So, on the morning of

Tuesday the 15th of October, one Bottisforth, who was bailiff for the

duke at Eye, came to Hellesdon, arrested four of John Paston’s servants,

and carried them off to Cossey without a warrant from any justice of the

peace. His intention, he said, was to convey them to Eye prison along

with as many more of Paston’s adherents as he could lay his hands on.

That same day the duke came to Norwich with a retinue of 500 men. He

sent for the mayor and aldermen with the sheriffs, and desired them in

the king’s name to make inquiry of the constables in every ward of the

city what men had taken part with Paston in recent gatherings. Any such

persons he requested that they would arrest and punish, and send their

names to him by eight o’clock on the following day. On this the mayor

arrested one Robert Lovegold, brasier, and threatened him that he should

be hanged, though he had only been with Margaret Paston at Lammas, when

she was menaced by the companies of Harleston and the bailiff of

Cossey.[231-3]

[Footnote 230-2: No. 613.]

[Footnote 231-1: No. 614.]

[Footnote 231-2: No. 581.]

[Footnote 231-3: No. 616.]

[Sidenote: Attack on Hellesdon.] Scarcely one of Paston’s servants now

durst openly show himself abroad, and, the duke having the city at his

command, his followers made, that same Tuesday, a regular assault on the

place at Hellesdon. The slender garrison knew that it was madness to

resist, and no opposition was offered. The duke’s men took possession,

and set John Paston’s own tenants to work, very much against their

wills, to destroy the mansion and break down the walls of the lodge,

while they themselves ransacked the church, turned out the parson, and

spoiled the images. They also pillaged very completely every house in

the village. As for John Paston’s own place, they stripped it completely

bare; and whatever there was of lead, brass, pewter, iron, doors, or

gates, or other things that they could not conveniently carry off, they

hacked and hewed them to pieces. The duke rode through Hellesdon to

Drayton the following day, while his men were still busy completing the

work of destruction by the demolition of the lodge. The wreck of the

building, with the rents they made in its walls, is visible even

now.[232-1]

[Footnote 232-1: Nos. 616, 617.]

This was carrying things with the high hand; but it did not improve the

Duke of Suffolk’s popularity at Norwich, and it created no small

sympathy with Paston and his tenants. ‘There cometh much people daily,’

wrote Margaret Paston to her husband, ‘to wonder thereupon, both of

Norwich and of other places, and they speak shamefully thereof. The duke

had been better than a thousand pound that it had never been done; and

ye have the more good will of the people that it is so foully done.’

Margaret was anxious that the effects of the outrage should be seen

before winter came on by some one specially sent from the king to view

and report upon the ruin. But no redress was obtained while her husband

lived, and even some years after his death his sons petitioned for it in

vain.

_John Paston’s Latter Days_

The chagrin and mortification inflicted upon John Paston by an injury

like this may not unlikely have contributed to shorten his days. The

correspondence is scanty from the end of October 1465 till some time

after his death, which occurred in London in May of the following year.

We know nothing of the nature of the illness which carried him off; but

three imprisonments in the course of five years, accompanied with a

great deal of anxiety about his newly acquired property, the intrigues

of lawyers and the enmity of great men, must have exercised a depressing

influence even on the stoutest heart. He appears to have been released

from prison some time before his death, [Sidenote: A.D. 1466.] and was

so far well in February that he had a conference in Westminster Hall

with William Jenney, who desired at last to come to some agreement with

him. But the great lawsuit about Fastolf’s will remained still

undecided, and he left to his son Sir John an inheritance troubled by a

disputed claim. He died on the 21st or 22nd May[233-1] 1466. His remains

were carried down into Norfolk and buried with great magnificence in

Bromholm Abbey.[233-2]

[Footnote 233-1: No. 648. I do not know Fenn’s authority for

saying it was on the 26th May. Perhaps it is only a misprint.]

[Footnote 233-2: No. 637.]

Of his character we see fewer indications than might have been expected

in a correspondence extending over more than twenty years, and perhaps

we are in danger of judging him too much from the negative point of

view. A man of business habits and of little humour, but apparently of

elastic spirits and thorough knowledge of the world, he was not easily

conquered by any difficulties or overwhelmed by misfortunes. His early

experience in that dispute with Lord Molynes about Gresham must have

taught him, if he needed teaching, the crookedness of the times in which

he lived, and the hopelessness of trusting to mere abstract right and

justice for the protection of his own interests. But by unwearied

energy, by constant watchfulness, by cultivating the friendship of Sir

John Fastolf and the goodwill of the world in general, he succeeded in

asserting for himself a position of some importance in his native

county. That he was, at the same time, grasping and selfish to some

extent, is no more than what we might be prepared to expect; and it

would seem there were complaints to this effect even among the members

of his own family.[233-3] As a parent he appears to have been somewhat

unamiable and cold-hearted. Yet it is mainly to his self-seeking,

businesslike character that we owe the preservation of so valuable a

correspondence. He knew well the importance of letters and of documents

when rights came to be contested, and he was far more anxious about

their security than about all the rest of his goods and chattels.[234-1]

[Footnote 233-3: Nos. 644, 645.]

[Footnote 234-1: No. 649.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Fastolf’s will.] Such being the nature of the man,

and his personal history being as we have seen, what are we to say of

the dark suspicion thrown upon his conduct in one important matter by

his personal enemy Sir William Yelverton, and even by his quondam friend

William Worcester? If their contention was true, the great addition made

to the fortunes of the Paston family on the death of Sir John Fastolf

was only due to a successful forgery. The will on which John Paston

founded his claim to Caister, as well as to the manors of Drayton and

Hellesdon, Cotton, Calcotes, and the whole of Fastolf’s lands in the

counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, was denounced by them as a fabrication

and not the genuine will of Sir John Fastolf. And we must own that there

are many things which seem to make the imputation credible. We have,

unfortunately, only a portion of the depositions taken in the lawsuit,

and these are entirely those of the adverse party, with the exception of

two separate and individual testimonies given in Paston’s favour.[234-2]

We ought, therefore, undoubtedly to be on our guard against attaching

undue weight to the many allegations of perjury and corruption against

Paston’s witnesses, as it is certainly quite conceivable that the

interested testimony was on the other side, and it is truly shown in

John Paston’s own comments upon the evidence that the proofs given were

insufficient. But, on the other hand, it is a very suspicious

circumstance that a will drawn up by Fastolf on the 14th June before his

death, was altered on the 3rd November so as to confer special powers in

the administration to John Paston and Thomas Howes, and to give a large

beneficiary interest to the former.[234-3] It is also singular that

there should be three separate instruments of this latter date, each

professing to be Fastolf’s will.[234-4] And it by no means tends to

allay suspicion when we find that two years after John Paston’s death,

and very shortly before his own, the parson Thomas Howes, a Grey Friar,

and partner with him in the principal charge of the administration of

the alleged last will, made a declaration ‘for the discharge of his

conscience’ that the document was a fabrication.[235-1]

[Footnote 234-2: Nos. 541, 543.]

[Footnote 234-3: No. 385.]

[Footnote 234-4: Nos. 385-387.]

[Footnote 235-1: No. 689.]

This evidence might seem at first sight decisive and extremely damaging

to the character of John Paston. But even here we must not be too

precipitate in our conclusion. It is, for one thing, fairly open to

remark that if this subsequent declaration of Sir Thomas Howes was an

impeachment of Paston’s honesty, it was no less so of his own; so that

it becomes a question whether he was more honest at the time he was

acting in concurrence with Paston or at the time of his professed

repentance when he made this declaration. But on the whole we may admit

that the latter alternative is more probable, and we frankly own it as

our belief that Sir Thomas Howes, in his latter days, felt scruples of

conscience with regard to the part he had taken in defending for his

master Paston the validity of what, after all, he considered to be a

questionable document. Yet what are we to say, in this case, to the

testimony of another Grey Friar, our old friend Dr. Brackley, who had

drawn up the final agreement between Fastolf and Paston relative to the

college, got it engrossed on indented parchment, read it to Sir John,

and saw him put his seal to it?[235-2] It was Brackley’s dying

testimony, when he was shriven by Friar Mowth, and informed that there

were serious imputations on his conduct in reference to this matter,

that as he would answer before God, in whose presence he was soon to

appear, the will which John Paston produced in court was the genuine

will of Sir John Fastolf. This testimony, too, he repeated unsolicited

when, after seeming to rally for a day or two, he sank again, and saw

himself once more in the presence of death.[235-3] Truly, if it seem

hard to doubt the declaration of Sir Thomas Howes, it is harder still to

cast suspicion on Brackley’s dying evidence.

[Footnote 235-2: No. 606 (vol. iv. pp. 183-4).]

[Footnote 235-3: No. 666.]

The true explanation of these discrepancies may, however, involve less

serious charges against the character either of Paston, Brackley, or

Howes than would at first sight appear inevitable. The question was not

really one about the authenticity of a document, but about the exact

nature of a dying man’s will. The document avowedly had not Fastolf’s

signature attached; it seems that he was too ill to write. For some

years before his death I do not find Fastolf’s own signature attached to

any of his letters. The point in dispute was whether it really

represented Fastolf’s latest intentions as to the disposal of his

property. True, it bore Fastolf’s seal of arms, which Yelverton and

Worcester at first endeavoured to prove must have been affixed to it

after his death. But Paston seems to have shown most successfully that

this was impossible, as Fastolf’s seal of arms was at his death

contained in a purse sealed with his signet, and the signet itself was

at that time taken off his finger, and sealed up in a chest under the

seals of several of the executors.[236-1] Moreover, Paston’s statements

went to show that the terms of the will were settled in various

conferences with Sir John during the months of September, October, and

the beginning of November, and that corrections had been made in it by

his express desire. With all this, however, it may have been a delicate

question whether the latest corrections were truly in accordance with

Fastolf’s mind, and doubts may have been fairly entertained on the

subject by Sir Thomas Howes; especially when we consider that on the day

the will was dated Fastolf was utterly unable to speak articulately, so

that no one could hear him without putting his ear close to the mouth of

the dying man.[236-2] With regard to John Paston’s part in the matter,

he was not present when Fastolf’s seal was put to the document, so that

the validity of that act rested entirely upon the testimony of others,

particularly Dr. Brackley. And as to the charge of his ‘fabricating’ the

will, it was never denied that he drew it up, or took a considerable

part in doing so; the only question is how far he did so in accordance

with Sir John Fastolf’s own instructions.

[Footnote 236-1: No. 606 (vol. iv. p. 183).]

[Footnote 236-2: No. 565 (vol. iv. p. 104); No. 639 (vol. iv. p.

240).]

Some important matters of fact, indeed, were asserted by Paston in

support of his case, and contested by the opposite side. Among other

things, it was contended that in the autumn of the year 1457, two years

before his death, Sir John Fastolf had actually made estate to John

Paston of the manor of Caister and other lands in Norfolk, and thereupon

given him livery of seisin with a view to the foundation of the

college:[237-1] also that the will made in 1459 was an imperfect

document, in which no executors were named, and to which no seal was

attached.[237-2] If these allegations were true, there was, after all,

no great alteration in Sir John’s intentions during the last two years

of his life. On the other hand, Sir Thomas Howes, in his later

declaration, asserts that only a year before Fastolf’s death he had, at

Paston’s desire, urged Sir John to allow Paston to buy three of his

manors and live in his college; at which proposition the old knight

started with indignation, and declared with a great oath, ‘An I knew

that Paston would buy any of my lands or my goods, he should never be my

feoffee, nor mine executor.’ But even Howes acknowledges that he was

willing to allow Paston a lodging for term of his life within the manor

of Caister.[237-3]

[Footnote 237-1: Vol. iii. No. 386; vol. iv. Nos. 541, 606 (p.

183), 639 (p. 237).]

[Footnote 237-2: No. 606, p. 182 (vol. iv.).]

[Footnote 237-3: No. 689.]

The whole controversy affords certainly an admirable illustration of the

inconvenient state of the law before the passing of the Statute of Uses

in the days of Henry VIII. The hearing of all causes touching the wills

of dead men belonged to the spiritual courts of the Church, which did

not own the king’s jurisdiction. The king’s courts, on the other hand,

had cognisance of everything affecting real property. No lands or

tenements could be bequeathed by will, because the courts of common law

would not give effect to such an instrument. But legal ingenuity had

found the means to enable wealthy persons to bequeath their lands as

well as their goods to whomsoever they pleased. A man had only to

execute a conveyance of his lands to a body of trustees, who thereupon

became in law the owners, express provision being made at the same time

that they were to hold it for his use so long as he lived, and after his

death for the use of certain other persons named in his will, or for

such purposes as might therein be indicated. By this indirect means a

title in lands was very effectually conveyed to a legatee without any

abatement of the original owner’s control over his own property so long

as he lived. But the practice gave rise to a multitude of

inconveniences. Private bargains, legal quibbles and subtleties, crafty

influences brought to bear upon dying men, great uncertainty as to the

destination of certain properties, were among its frequent results. At

the very last moment, when the dying man, perhaps, was in imperfect

possession of his faculties, mere words, or even a nod or sign, might

affect the title to very large estates. And almost by the very nature of

the case, wherever a trust was instituted like that of Sir John Fastolf,

all the pettifogging devices of legal chicanery were necessarily brought

into play, either to establish a title or to contest it.[238-1]

[Footnote 238-1: See the preamble to the Statute of Uses, 27 Henry

VIII. c. 10.]

_Sir John Paston_

Sir John Paston now stepped into his father’s place, as heir to Caister

and to Fastolf’s other possessions in Norfolk and Suffolk. But before he

could vindicate his rights in any part of them it was necessary that he

should wipe out that stain upon his pedigree which had been devised by

calumny in bar of the claims made by his father. The case came before

the king himself in council. An array of court rolls and other ancient

records was produced by the family, to show that they had been lords of

the soil in Paston from a very remote period. Some of their title-deeds

went back as far as the reign of Henry III., and it was shown that their

ancestors had given lands to religious houses in that reign. Indeed, so

little truth was there in the imputation that John Paston the father was

a bondman, that his ancestors, certainly by the mother’s side if not by

the father’s also, had been the owners of bondmen. The evidences were

considered satisfactory, and the family were declared by the king’s

council to be fully cleared of the imputation. The lands, of which Lord

Scales had taken possession for about half a year,[239-1] were restored

to Sir John Paston by a warrant under the king’s signet, dated on the

26th July, little more than two months after the death of John Paston

the father.[239-2]

[Footnote 239-1: _Itin._ W. Worc., 323, where it is said that Lord

Scales ‘custodivit hospicium in Castre per spacium dimidii . . .’

The blank must surely be supplied by the word _anni_.]

[Footnote 239-2: Nos. 641, 643.]

[Sidenote: Tournament at Eltham.] After this Sir John Paston was much at

court, and Lord Scales became his special friend. Even as early as the

following April we find Sir John taking part in a tournament at Eltham,

in which the king, Lord Scales, and himself were upon one side.[239-3]

But the favour with which he was regarded at court both by the king and

the Lord Scales appeared more evidently one year later, [Sidenote: A.D.

1468.] when the king’s sister Margaret went over to the Low Countries to

be married to Charles, Duke of Burgundy. [Sidenote: Marriage of

Margaret, sister of Edward IV., to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.]

This match had been more than a year in contemplation, and was highly

popular in cementing the friendship of England and Burgundy in

opposition to France. On the 1st May 1467 a curious bargain or wager was

made by Sir John Paston as to the probability of its taking effect

within two years.[239-4] But on the 18th April 1468 he received a

summons from the king to be prepared to give his attendance on the

princess by the 1st June following, and to accompany her into

Flanders.[239-5] Not only he, but his brother John Paston the younger,

crossed the sea in the Lady Margaret’s train; and we are indebted to the

latter for an interesting account of the marriage and of the tournaments

which followed in honour of it. Young John Paston was greatly struck

with the splendour of the Burgundian court. He had never heard of

anything like it, he said, except the court of King Arthur.[239-6] But

his brother seems to have found another attraction abroad which

fascinated him quite as much as all the pageants and the tournaments in

honour of the Lady Margaret.

[Footnote 239-3: No. 665.]

[Footnote 239-4: No. 667.]

[Footnote 239-5: No. 683.]

[Footnote 239-6: No. 684.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Paston and Anne Haute.] There lived, probably in the

town of Calais, a certain Mrs. Anne Haute, a lady of English extraction

and related to Lord Scales, whom Sir John Paston seems on this occasion

to have met for the first time. Having been perhaps all her life abroad,

she appears to have had an imperfect command of the English language; at

least Sir John, in proposing to open a correspondence, wrote to her,

‘Mistress Annes, I am proud that ye can read English.’ For the rest we

must not attempt to portray the lady, of whose appearance and qualities

of mind or body we have no account whatever. But perhaps we may take it

for granted that she was really beautiful; for though Sir John was a

susceptible person, and had once been smitten before, his friend Daverse

declared him to be the best chooser of a gentlewoman that he

knew.[240-1] It is a pity that with this qualification his suit was not

more successful. It went on for several years, but was in the end broken

off, and Sir John Paston lived and died a bachelor.

[Footnote 240-1: No. 660.]

[Sidenote: A troubled inheritance.] But Sir John was heir to the

troubles of a lawsuit, and his property was continually threatened by

various claimants both at Hellesdon and at Caister. His mother writes to

him on one occasion that Blickling of Hellesdon had come from London,

‘and maketh his boast that within this fortnight at Hellesdon should be

both new lords and new officers. And also this day Rysing of Fretton

should have heard said in divers places, there as he was in Suffolk,

that Fastolf of Cowhaw maketh all the strength that he may, and

proposeth him to assault Caister and to enter there if he may, insomuch

that it is said that he hath a five-score men ready, and sendeth daily

espies to understand what fellowship keep the place.’ For which reason

Margaret Paston urges her son to send home either his brothers or

Daubeney to command the garrison, for, as he well knew, she had been

‘affrayed’[240-2] there before this time, and she could not ‘well guide

nor rule soldiers.’[240-3] Another time it is intimated to Sir John that

the Duchess of Suffolk means to enter into Cotton suddenly at some time

when few men should know what she is going to do.[240-4] And this

intention she seems to have fully accomplished, for in the beginning of

the year 1469 the Earl of Oxford sends Sir John a friendly warning that

she means to hold a court there next Monday with a view to proving that

the manor of Cotton Hemnales is holden of her by knight’s

service.[241-1] So that altogether Sir John Paston’s inheritance was

held by a very precarious tenure, and his mother, like a prudent woman,

advises him ‘not to be too hasty to be married till ye were more sure of

your livelode.’[241-2]

[Footnote 240-2: That is to say, menaced, if not attacked, an

‘affray’ being made upon her. It is curious to meet here our

familiar word ‘afraid’ in its original form and signification.]

[Footnote 240-3: No. 671.]

[Footnote 240-4: No. 690.]

[Footnote 241-1: No. 696.]

[Footnote 241-2: No. 704.]

The old dispute with the executors, however, was compromised in the

court of audience: and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Waynflete,

and Lord Beauchamp granted to Sir John full right in the manor of

Caister, and a number of other lands both in Norfolk and Suffolk.[241-3]

Sir John soon afterwards conveyed a portion of the Suffolk property

called Hemnales in Cotton and the manor of Haynford to the Duke of

Norfolk and others.[241-4] William Worcester became friends with John

Paston’s widow, imputed his old misunderstanding with her husband to the

interference of others between them, and expressed himself well pleased

that Caister was to be at her command. ‘A rich jewel it is at need,’

writes Worcester, ‘for all the country in time of war; and my master

Fastolf would rather he had never builded it than it should be in the

governance of any sovereign that would oppress the country.’ At the same

time it seemed very doubtful whether Fastolf’s intention of founding the

college there could be carried out, and Worcester had some conferences

with Sir John Paston about establishing it at Cambridge. Bishop

Waynflete had already proposed doing so at Oxford; but Cambridge was

nearer to the county of Norfolk, and by buying a few advowsons of

wealthy parsonages an additional foundation might be established there

at considerably less cost than by the purchase of manors. In this

opinion Sir John Paston and William Worcester coincided, and the former

promised to urge it upon Bishop Waynflete.[241-5]

[Footnote 241-3: No. 675. The deed, perhaps, was found to be

irregular afterwards, for its general effect was confirmed about

five months later by another instrument. No. 680.]

[Footnote 241-4: No. 677.]

[Footnote 241-5: No. 681.]

Sir John Paston had now some reason to expect that with the settlement

of this controversy he would have been left for life in peaceful

possession of Caister. That which his father had not been able to attain

was now apparently conceded to him: and even if Sir William Yelverton

was still dissatisfied, the other executors had formally recognised his

rights in the court of audience. But before many months had passed it

appeared that Yelverton could still be troublesome, and he found an ally

in one who had hitherto been his opponent. [Sidenote: Sir Thomas Howes

unites with Yelverton,] Sir Thomas Howes was probably failing in

health--for he seems to have died about the end of the year

1468[242-1]--when he made that declaration ‘for the discharge of his

conscience’ to which we have already alluded. Scruples seem to have

arisen in his mind as to the part he had taken with Sir John Paston’s

father in reference to the administration of Fastolf’s will, and he now

maintained that the will nuncupative which he himself had propounded

along with John Paston in opposition to an earlier will propounded by

Yelverton and Worcester, was a fabrication which did not truly express

the mind of the deceased. We may observe, though the subject is

exceedingly obscure, that of the three wills[242-2] printed in Volume

III., each of which professes to be the will of Sir John Fastolf, the

third, which is in Latin, is clearly a will nuncupative declaring the

testator’s mind in the third person, and defining the powers of the

executors in regard to his goods and chattels.[242-3]

[Footnote 242-1: _See_ preliminary note to No. 703.]

[Footnote 242-2: Nos. 385-7.]

[Footnote 242-3: The other two have relation to his lands, and are

not inconsistent with each other; but the first is drawn up in the

name of the testator himself, while the second speaks of him in

the third person. The second is, in fact, a note of various

instructions given by the testator in reference to his property on

the 2nd and 3rd days of November before he died, and its contents

may have been fully embodied in the first, when the will was

regularly drawn up; but the first is printed from a draft which is

probably imperfect.]

[[Sidenote: Sir Thomas Howes unites with Yelverton,

_not an error: sentence continues below_]]

It was apparently this nuncupative will that Howes declared to be

spurious. The validity of the others touching his lands depended upon

the genuineness of a previous bargain made by Fastolf with John Paston,

which was also disputed. But it was the nuncupative will that appointed

ten executors and yet gave John Paston and Thomas Howes sole powers of

administration, except in cases where those two thought fit to ask their

assistance. This will seems to have been drawn up mainly by the

instrumentality of one Master John Smyth, whom Howes afterwards

denounced as ‘none wholesome counsellor.’[243-1] Howes now combined with

Yelverton in declaring it to be spurious.[243-2]

[Footnote 243-1: No. 681.]

[Footnote 243-2: Nos. 688-9.]

[Sidenote: and they sell Caister to the Duke of Norfolk.] The result of

this allegation was that Yelverton and Howes took it upon them, as

executors of Sir John Fastolf, to recommend to Archbishop Bourchier that

the Duke of Norfolk should be allowed to purchase the manor of Caister

and certain other lands in Norfolk, and that the money received for it

should be spent in charitable deeds for the good of Fastolf’s soul. The

transaction was not yet completed,[243-3] but the duke immediately

proceeded to act upon it just as if it were. He did not, indeed, at once

take possession of the place, but he warned the tenants of the manor to

pay no money to Sir John, and his agents even spoke as if they had the

king’s authority. On the other hand, Sir John had the support of

powerful men in the king’s council--no less persons than the great Earl

of Warwick and his brother, the Archbishop of York, who had lately been

Lord Chancellor, and was hoping to be so again. The Earl of Warwick had

spoken about the matter to the duke even in the king’s chamber, and the

archbishop had said, ‘rather than the land should go so, he would come

and dwell there himself.’ [Sidenote: Archbishop Nevill.] ‘Ye would

marvel,’ adds the correspondent who communicates the news to Sir John

Paston, ‘ye would marvel what hearts my lord hath gotten and how this

language put people in comfort.’ It had its effect upon the Duke of

Norfolk, who saw that he must not be too precipitate. He was urged on,

it seems, by the duchess his wife, but he would go and speak to her and

entreat her.[243-4]

[Footnote 243-3: ‘The bargain is not yet made,’ says an anonymous

writer on the 28th October. _See_ No. 690. Nevertheless an

ostensible title had been conveyed to the duke by a formal

document on the 1st October. _See_ No. 764.]

[Footnote 243-4: Nos. 688, 690.]

On the other hand, Yelverton and Howes seem to have been pretty

confident that my Lord of York would not be chancellor again unless

their bargain with the duke was ratified. The Nevills were no longer

regarded with favour at court. The coolness which had existed between

the king and Warwick ever since the marriage with Elizabeth Woodville

had last year come to an open rupture, and the Archbishop of York had

been at the same time dismissed from the office of chancellor. Soon

after the new year a reconciliation was effected through the medium of

private friends, and the archbishop conducted his brother the Earl of

Warwick to the king at Coventry.[244-1] But real confidence was not

restored, and party spirit was anxious that it never should be. Nor

could the public at large, perhaps, imagine the deep grounds of distrust

that Warwick had already given to his sovereign.

[Footnote 244-1: W. Worc., 512-13.]

Sir John Paston, nevertheless, was advised to put his trust chiefly in

the friendship of the Nevills and in the probable reinstatement of the

archbishop as Lord Chancellor. Another means, however, was not to be

neglected. Sir Thomas Howes might be gammoned, or bullied, or got over

in some way. He and Yelverton did not agree so well that it need be a

very hard matter to separate them. Sir John’s friends hoped to secure

for him the good offices of the Bishop of Ely and a certain Master

Tresham, who, it was thought, could put it nicely to Sir Thomas Howes

half in jest and half in earnest, putting him ‘in hope of the moon shone

in the water,’ and telling him that such efforts were made ‘that either

he should be a pope, or else in despair to be deprived _de omni

beneficio ecclesiastico_ for simony, lechery, perjury, and double

variable peevishness, and for administering without authority.’ Such

were a few of the humours of the controversy.[244-2]

[Footnote 244-2: No. 690.]

[Sidenote: Sir John ‘wages’ men. A.D. 1469.] Better, however, than the

friendship of the great, was the security to be derived from keeping

Caister well guarded; and Sir John Paston immediately set about ‘waging’

men to add to the little garrison.[244-3] With this he seems to have

been much occupied from November till January following, when by

repeated letters from the king he was commanded to desist from making

any assembly of the lieges, and to appear personally before the council

at Westminster.[244-4] The matter, apparently, was hung up for a time

without any decision being come to by the council. The friendship of

Archbishop Nevill could have done little to recommend the cause of Sir

John Paston to the king. On the other hand, if favour had anything to do

with the result, his cause was warmly advocated by Lord Scales, the

king’s own brother-in-law, on account of Sir John’s intended marriage

with his kinswoman, Anne Haute.[245-1] And it is certain that Judge

Yelverton had conferences with Lord Scales in the hope of coming to some

kind of understanding. But King Edward, as we have already said, had a

real desire to be impartial in the disputes and quarrels of his

subjects; and doubtless it was from a feeling of this that Sir John

Paston and his mother rejoiced to hear that it was the king’s intention

to visit Norwich in the course of the ensuing summer. The rumour of this

intention, it was believed, had a powerful influence in inducing the

Duchess of Suffolk to remain at her family seat at Ewelme, in

Oxfordshire, that she might be out of the way if sent for by the king,

and plead age or sickness as her excuse.[245-2] The attempt made by her

son to dispossess Sir John Paston at Hellesdon could best be judged of

on the spot. And in Norfolk, too, the king would learn what was thought

of the Duke of Norfolk’s claim to Caister.

[Footnote 244-3: No. 691.]

[Footnote 244-4: No. 698.]

[Footnote 245-1: Nos. 704, 706, 707.]

[Footnote 245-2: No. 704.]

So it was hoped that the king’s presence in the county would tell most

favourably on Sir John Paston’s interests. And there was one

circumstance in particular of which advantage might be taken. As Edward

was to go from Norwich on pilgrimage to Walsingham, his way would of

necessity lie through Hellesdon and Drayton. The lodge whose walls the

Duke of Suffolk had caused to be broken down could hardly fail, from its

conspicuous position, to meet his eye, and perhaps some friend in the

king’s suite could be got to call his attention to it and tell him the

story of the outrage. This Thomas Wingfield engaged to do, and promised

to get the king’s own brother, the Duke of Gloucester, to join him in

pointing out the ruin. Promises were also obtained from Earl Rivers, the

queen’s father, and from her brother Lord Scales and Sir John Woodville,

that they would urge the king to command the Dukes of Norfolk and

Suffolk to forbear claiming title to the lands of Sir John Fastolf. And

by the time the king took his departure from Norwich the Pastons were

encouraged to believe that steps had already been taken to end their

controversy with one if not with both dukes. Unfortunately the belief,

or at least the hope that it gave rise to, proved to be utterly

unfounded.[246-1]

[Footnote 246-1: No. 716.]

[Sidenote: The ruined lodge is shown to the king.] The king rode through

Hellesdon Warren on his way, as it had been expected that he would do.

The ruined lodge was pointed out to him by William Paston, Sir John’s

uncle; but his answer was altogether at variance with what the

Woodvilles had led them to expect. The king said the building might have

fallen by itself, and if it had been pulled down, as alleged, the

Pastons might have put in bills at the session of _Oyer and Terminer_

held by the judges when he was at Norwich. William Paston replied that

his nephew had been induced to hope the king himself would have procured

an amicable settlement with both the dukes, and therefore had forborne

to vindicate his rights by law. But the king said he would neither treat

nor speak for Sir John, but let the law take its course.[246-2]

[Footnote 246-2: _Ibid._]

_Civil War--Public and Private_

Possibly on the eve of his departure from Norwich, the king had heard

news which took away all disposition he might once have entertained to

hear personally complaints against such noblemen as the Dukes of Norfolk

and Suffolk. [Sidenote: Robin of Redesdale’s rebellion.] It was just

about the time of the insurrection of Robin of Redesdale in Yorkshire--a

movement got up under fictitious names and really promoted by the

discontented Earl of Warwick. From the day that Edward IV. had announced

himself a married man, and disconcerted the subtle promoters of an

alliance with France through the medium of the French king’s

sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy,[246-3] the Earl of Warwick had not only

lost his old ascendency in the king’s councils, but had seen his policy

altogether thwarted and his own selfish interests continually set aside.

He had been from the first in favour of an amicable compromise of the

dispute with France, while the young king owed not a little of his

popularity to the belief that he would maintain the old pretensions of

England, and vindicate them if necessary upon the field of battle.

Disappointed of one mode of promoting a French alliance, he had been

disappointed still further in 1467, when the king, to humour his

inclinations for a while, sent him over to France on embassy. The result

was that he was magnificently entertained by Louis XI., captivated by

the bland familiarity of the French monarch, and became for ever after

his most ready and convenient tool. If he had anything to learn before

in the arts of diplomacy and statecraft, he came back from France a

most accomplished scholar. Edward, however, pursued a course of his own,

treated the French ambassadors in England with rudeness, and cultivated

instead a close alliance with Burgundy, the formidable rival and lately

the enemy of Louis. He contracted his sister Margaret to the Duke of

Burgundy’s eldest son, Charles, Count of Charolois, who became duke

himself in the following year, when the marriage was solemnised at

Bruges with a splendour no court in Europe could have rivalled. To crown

all, he announced in Parliament just before the marriage an intention to

invade France in person.[247-1]

[Footnote 246-3: The story that the Earl of Warwick had gone to

France to negotiate the marriage of Edward with Bona of Savoy,

when Edward frustrated his diplomacy by marrying Elizabeth

Woodville, is certainly not in accordance with facts. But the

doubts of some modern historians that the project of such a match

was ever entertained are quite set at rest by the evidence of two

letters which have been recently printed in some of the

publications of the Société de l’Histoire de France, to which

attention is called by Mr. Kirk in his _History of Charles the

Bold_ (vol. i. p. 415 note, and ii. p. 15 note). It appears that

although the earl had not actually gone to France, he was expected

there just at the time the secret of the king’s marriage was

revealed. Nor can there be a reasonable doubt--indeed there is

something like positive evidence to prove--that the first cause of

the Earl of Warwick’s alienation from the king arose out of this

matter. I ought to add that the merit of placing before us for the

first time a clear view of the consequences of Edward IV.’s

marriage, in its bearing alike on the domestic history of England

and on Edward’s relations with France and Burgundy, is due to Mr.

Kirk.]

[Footnote 247-1: W. Worc., 513-14.]

The Earl of Warwick dissembled. Charles of Burgundy was the man he hated

most,[247-2] but he conducted the Princess Margaret to the coast on her

way to Flanders. A number of personal wrongs and disappointments also

rankled in his breast, and gave birth to sinister projects for

gratifying a wounded ambition, and taking revenge upon an ungrateful

king, who owed it in no small degree to himself that he was king at all.

As yet Edward was without an heir-male. He had two daughters;[248-1] but

in the succession a brother might perhaps be preferred to a female.

Warwick could marry his eldest daughter to George, Duke of Clarence, and

encourage that vain prince in his expectation of the crown. The earl was

governor of Calais. At midsummer in the year 1469 the Duke of Clarence

stole across the sea without the leave of his brother, and landed in a

territory where Warwick was like an independent king. There the wedding

was celebrated by the Archbishop of York, the Earl of Warwick’s brother.

Soon after it was over, the duke, the earl, and the archbishop returned

to England.

[Footnote 247-2: _Contin. of Croyland Chronicle_, p. 551.]

[Footnote 248-1: The two eldest daughters of Edward IV. were born

in the years 1465 and 1466; the third, Cecily, in the latter end

of 1469. _See_ Green’s _Princesses_, vol. iii.; also an article by

Sir Frederic Madden, in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1831 (vol.

ci. pt. i., p. 24).]

And now it was that the king, after leaving Norwich and visiting the

famous shrine at Walsingham, found himself compelled to turn his steps

northwards and face the insurrection that had been secretly stirred up

by Warwick and his own brother. It appears by the Privy Seal dates that

he had reached Lynn on the 26th June.[248-2] He passed on through

Wisbeach with a company of two hundred horse to Crowland Abbey, where he

stayed a night, and sailed from thence through the fenny country up the

Nen to his father’s castle of Fotheringay, one of his own favourite

residences.[248-3] From thence, when a number of troops had flocked to

his standard from all parts of the kingdom, he marched northwards to

Nottingham; where, apparently, he learned, to his no little

mortification, that his brother Clarence was in alliance with the Earl

of Warwick and Archbishop Nevill, and that it was questionable whether

they had not too good an understanding with the rebels in the North.

That such was the actual fact we know to a certainty. The insurgents

disseminated papers complaining that the kingdom was misgoverned, in

consequence of the undue influence of the queen’s relations and one or

two other councillors, who had impoverished the crown by procuring large

grants of crown lands to themselves, and who had caused the king to

tamper with the currency and impose inordinate taxes. Worst of all, they

had estranged the true lords of the king’s blood from his secret

council, and thereby prevented any check being placed on their rapacity

and misconduct.[249-1]

[Footnote 248-2: He seems to have left Norwich on the 21st. There

are Privy Seals dated on that day, some at Norwich and some at

Walsingham.]

[Footnote 248-3: _Contin. Chron. Croyl._ p. 542.]

[Footnote 249-1: _See_ the petition printed by Halliwell in his

notes to _Warkworth’s Chronicle_, pp. 47-51.]

The Duke of Clarence, with Warwick and the archbishop, had no sooner

landed from Calais, than copies of these manifestoes were laid before

them, which they took it upon them to regard in the light of a petition

calling upon the lords of England generally, and themselves in

particular, to redress the evils of the state. They declared the

petition just and reasonable, promised to lay it before the king, and by

a proclamation under their signets, dated the 12th day of July, called

upon all who loved the common weal to meet them at Canterbury on Sunday

following, armed and arrayed to the best of their power.[249-2] Three

days before the date of this proclamation, the king at Nottingham had

addressed letters to the duke, earl, and archbishop separately, desiring

credence for Sir Thomas Montgomery and Maurice Berkeley, and expressing

a hope that the current rumour as to their intentions was

erroneous.[249-3] A hope altogether vain. The king was surrounded with

enemies, and no plan of action could be arranged among his friends.

Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, whom he had summoned from Wales, met at

Banbury with Humphrey, Lord Strafford of Southwick, lately created Earl

of Devonshire,[249-4] who came out of Devonshire to do battle with the

rebels. But the two leaders had a dispute about quarters; the Earl of

Devonshire withdrew eight or ten miles back; and Sir William Conyers,

the rebel captain, who had adopted the name Robin of Redesdale,

[Sidenote: Battle of Hedgecote, 26th July.] came down upon the Earl of

Pembroke and defeated him with great slaughter. The earl himself and his

brother Sir Richard Herbert were taken prisoners, and were shortly

afterwards put to death at Coventry, along with Lord Rivers and his son

Sir John Woodville, who were about the same time captured in the Forest

of Dean in Gloucestershire. They had parted from the king in alarm

before he came to Nottingham, and fled for safety towards Wales; but

their flight was to no purpose. [Sidenote: The king taken prisoner.]

Before their execution--apparently some time during the month of

August--the king himself was taken prisoner near Coventry by the

confederate lords, and led to Warwick Castle; from which place he was,

soon after his committal, transferred to Middleham, another castle of

the Earl of Warwick, in Yorkshire.[250-1]

[Footnote 249-2: _See_ the proclamation immediately preceding the

above petition in the notes to _Warkworth’s Chronicle_, pp. 46-7.]

[Footnote 249-3: No. 719.]

[Footnote 249-4: No. 714.]

[Footnote 250-1: _Contin. Chron. Croyl._ pp. 542, 551. There are

Privy Seals dated on the 2nd August at Coventry; on the 9th, 12th,

and 13th at Warwick; and on the 25th and 28th at Middleham.]

He was shortly afterwards released, and arrived in London in the

beginning of October. It was not easy to say what to do with such a

prisoner, and Warwick thought it best to let him go. He had done enough

for the present to show his power and wreak his revenge upon the

Woodvilles; and Edward, even when he was set at liberty, saw clearly

that prudence required him to forget the affront and not show himself in

any way offended.[250-2]

[Footnote 250-2: No. 736.]

But what kind of order could have prevailed throughout the kingdom at a

time when the king was a captive in the hands of his own subjects? For

the most part we know nothing of the facts, but perhaps we may judge to

some extent from what took place in a small corner of the county of

Norfolk. [Sidenote: Siege of Caister, A.D. 1469, Aug.] On Monday the

21st August,[250-3] the Duke of Norfolk began to lay a regular siege to

Caister Castle. Sir John Paston was at the time in London, and his

brother John kept the place as his lieutenant. At first the duke sent

Sir John Heveningham, a kinsman of Sir John Fastolf, to demand peaceable

entry, on the ground that he had bought the manor from Fastolf’s

executor Yelverton; but on being refused admittance, he surrounded the

castle with a body of 3000 men.[251-1] Those within were not wholly

unprepared. They had rather more than a month’s supply of victuals and

gunpowder, but they were only a handful of men. Sir John Heveningham,

who was appointed by the duke one of the captains of the besieging

force, had hitherto been friendly to the Paston family. He came and

visited old Agnes Paston at Norwich, and Margaret Paston thought he

might be induced to show a little favour to messengers coming from

herself or her son Sir John. But this he steadily refused to do, and

made a very suspicious suggestion for the settlement of the controversy,

which he requested Margaret to write to her son Sir John in London.

Could not the duke be allowed to enter peaceably on giving surety to Sir

John to recompense all wrongs, if the law should afterwards declare the

right to be in him? ‘Be ye advised,’ wrote Margaret, ‘what answer ye

will give.’[251-2]

[Footnote 250-3: At least William Worcester, in his _Itinerary_,

p. 321, seems to indicate in very bad Latin that the siege began

on the Monday before St. Bartholomew’s Day, which in 1469 would be

the 21st August. Yet a very bewildering sentence just before would

imply that the siege began either on the Feast of the Assumption

of the Virgin (15th August) or on St. Bartholomew’s Day itself

(24th August), and that it lasted five weeks and three days. But

we know that the castle surrendered on the 26th September, so that

if the duration of the siege was five weeks and three days it must

have begun on the 19th August, a different date still. William

Worcester’s habit of continually jotting down memoranda in his

commonplace books has been of very great service to the historian

of this disordered epoch; but his memoranda reflect the character

of the times in their confusion, inconsistency, and

contradictions.]

[Footnote 251-1: _Itin._ W. de Worc., 325.]

[Footnote 251-2: No. 720.]

Other proposals were shortly afterwards made on the duke’s behalf,

nearly the same in character but with somewhat greater show of fairness.

The place, it was suggested, might be put in the keeping of indifferent

parties, who would receive the profits for the benefit of whoever should

prove to be the true claimant until the right could be determined, the

duke and Paston both giving security not to disturb these occupants in

the meanwhile. But who could be relied upon as indifferent, or what

power existed in the kingdom to secure impartiality at a time when the

king himself was a prisoner in the hands of his enemies? Margaret Paston

could but forward these suggestions to her son, with a warning to lose

no time in making up his mind about them. ‘Send word how ye will be

demeaned by as good advice as ye can get, and make no longer delay, for

they must needs have hasty succour that be in the place; for they be

sore hurt and have none help. And if they have hasty help, it shall be

the greatest worship that ever ye had. And if they be not holpen it

shall be to you a great disworship; and look never to have favour of

your neighbours and friends but if this speed well.’[252-1]

[Footnote 252-1: No. 720.]

Unfortunately the only relief which Sir John Paston had it easily in his

power to obtain for the garrison was not in the shape of succours. Sir

John was in London, and did not know for certain how long they had the

power to hold out. But he addressed his complaints to the Duke of

Clarence and Archbishop Nevill, who now ruled in the name of the captive

king, and one Writtill, a servant of the former, was sent down to

procure a suspension of hostilities, preparatory, if possible, to a

settlement of the controversy. Terms were agreed upon by the lords in

London which it was thought might be honourably offered to both parties.

Apparently it was proposed that the Earl of Oxford, as a neutral person,

should be allowed to keep the place until a final decision had been come

to by a competent tribunal. But the Duke of Norfolk, after agreeing to

the suspension of hostilities, which only diminished by so many days’

allowance the scanty provisions of the garrison, utterly rejected the

conditions which some of his own relations in the king’s council had

given it as their opinion that he ought not to refuse. On the other

hand, Sir John Paston in London, fondly believing that the store of

victuals within the place would last a much longer period, caught at an

eager hope of obtaining a message from the king which would compel

Norfolk to withdraw his forces, and in this idle expectation he was

foolish enough to urge Writtill to get the truce prolonged a few days

further. Shortly afterwards he received a letter from his mother which

ought to have opened his eyes. Victuals, she informed him, were failing

in the garrison; his brother and the little band within stood in great

danger; Daubeney and Berney, two of their captains, were dead, and

several others were wounded; the walls were severely battered, and the

supply of gunpowder and arrows would very soon be exhausted. Since

Writtill’s attempt at negotiation the Duke of Norfolk had been more

determined than ever to win the place, and with a view to a grand

assault, whenever the truce should expire, he had sent for all his

tenants to be there on Holy Rood day, the 14th September. If Sir John

Paston had it in his power to relieve the garrison, let him do it at

once. If not, let him obtain letters from the Duke of Clarence or the

lords in London addressed to the Duke of Norfolk, to allow them to quit

the place with their lives and goods.[253-1]

[Footnote 253-1: Nos. 722-6.]

Sir John Paston still would not believe that the case was desperate. He

had repeatedly declared that his desire to preserve the stronghold was

exceeded only by his anxiety for the lives of his brother and those

within. But what evidence was there to justify his mother’s

apprehensions? Daubeney and Berney had been alive the Saturday before,

and since that day no one could have got leave to pass outside. Truce

had been prolonged till Monday following, and he expected it to be

renewed for another week. He had heard far worse tidings before than his

mother told him now. As for means of relief to the besieged, the Duke of

Clarence and Archbishop Nevill were no longer in London, but he was

expecting an answer from the king in Yorkshire, which ought to arrive by

Wednesday at farthest, and his mother might rest assured there could not

possibly be any fear of victuals or gunpowder running short. When all

else failed, a rescue he would certainly procure, if all the lands he

held in England and all the friends he had would enable him to obtain

it. But this was the very last remedy that could be thought of. It would

not agree with the attempt to get the king or lords to interfere. It

would besides cost fully a thousand crowns, and how to raise the money

he was not sure. How much could his mother herself raise by mortgage,

and what friends could she obtain to give their aid?[253-2]

[Footnote 253-2: No. 725.]

[Sidenote: Caister surrenders.] Unluckily, while Sir John Paston was

devising means how, after another week or fortnight’s truce, effectual

relief might at last be conveyed to the besieged, they were reduced to

such extremities as to be compelled to capitulate. Owing to the

representations that had been made in their behalf by Cardinal Bourchier

and the Duke of Clarence, Norfolk allowed them to pass out in freedom,

with bag and baggage, horses and harness, leaving only behind them their

guns, crossbows and ‘quarrels.’[254-1] Thus, after some weeks’ suspense

and the loss of one valuable soldier (Margaret Paston was misinformed

about Berney being dead as well as Daubeney), the great castle in which

Fastolf intended the Pastons to reside and to found a college, and which

he was anxious that no great lord should occupy, fell into the hands of

the most powerful nobleman of Eastern England.[254-2]

[Footnote 254-1: Square pyramids of iron which were shot out of

crossbows. The word is of French origin and was originally

_quarreaux_.]

[Footnote 254-2: Nos. 730, 731.]

Sir John Paston had now lost the fairest gem of his inheritance--or, as

he and his contemporaries called it, of his ‘livelode.’[254-3] Hence it

was become all the more important that he should see to the remainder.

Just before the surrender of Caister, in answer to his appeal to see

what money she could raise, his mother by a great effort obtained for

him £10 on sureties, but it was all spent immediately in paying the

discharged garrison and some other matters. Ways and means must be found

to obtain money, for even his mother’s rents did not come in as they

ought to have done, and she expected to be reduced to borrowing, or

breaking up her household. On consideration, he determined to part with

the manor of East Beckham, and to ascertain what was likely to be

realised by selling a quantity of wood at Sporle. The sale of East

Beckham--with all Paston’s lands both in East and West Beckham, Bodham,

Sherringham, Beeston-near-the-Sea, Runton, Shipden, Felbrigg, Aylmerton,

Sustead and Gresham, places which lie a few miles to the west and south

of Cromer--was at length completed for the sum of 100 marks.[254-4]

[Footnote 254-3: The modern confusion of this word with

_livelihood_--a word which properly means a lively condition--is

one of the things that would be unpardonable did not usage pardon

everything in language.]

[Footnote 254-4: Nos. 733, 737, 738.]

It was unfortunate for Sir John Paston’s interests that at such a time

as this he happened to have a misunderstanding with his most faithful

bailiff and general manager of his property, Richard Calle. The

title-deeds of Beckham were in Calle’s hands, but he at once gave up,

when required, both these and every one of the documents in his

possession relating to Paston’s lands, and made a clear account of

everything to John Paston the younger.[255-1] The coolness had arisen

some months before the siege; the cause was a very old, old story.

Richard Calle had presumed to fall in love with Sir John Paston’s sister

Margery. [Sidenote: Richard Calle and Margery Paston.] Margery Paston

had not disdained to return his affection. She at once fell into

disgrace with the whole family. Her eldest brother, Sir John, was in

London when he heard of it, and it was insinuated to him that the matter

was quite well known to his brother John and met with his approval. John

the younger hastened to disavow the imputation. A little diplomacy had

been used by Calle, who got a friend to inquire of him whether the

engagement was a settled thing, intimating that if it were not he knew

of a good marriage for the lady. But young John saw through the

artifice, and gave the mediator an answer designed to set the question

at rest for ever. ‘I answered him,’ writes young John himself to his

brother, ‘that an my father (whom God assoil) were alive, and had

consented thereto, and my mother and ye both, he should never have my

goodwill for to make my sister to sell candle and mustard in

Framlingham.’ If such a prospect did not disgust Margery herself, it was

clear she must have a very strong will of her own.[255-2]

[Footnote 255-1: No. 737.]

[Footnote 255-2: No. 710.]

The anger of her relations was painful to bear in the extreme. For some

time Margery found it difficult to avow that she had fairly plighted her

troth to one who was deemed such an unequal match. For what was plighted

troth in the eye of God but matrimony itself? Even the Church

acknowledged it as no less binding. Once that was avowed, the question

was at an end, and no human hands could untie the knot. To interfere

with it was deadly sin. Hence Richard Calle implored the woman of his

love to emancipate both herself and him from an intolerable position by

one act of boldness. ‘I suppose, an ye tell them sadly the truth, they

would not damn their souls for us.’[255-3] But it required much courage

to take the step which when taken must be decisive. The avowal was at

last made, and though the family would fain have suppressed it or got

the poor girl to deny what she said, her lover appealed to the Bishop of

Norwich to inquire into the matter, and free the point from any

ambiguity. The bishop could not refuse. He sent for Margery Paston and

for Richard Calle, and examined them both apart. He told the former that

he was informed she loved one of whom her friends did not approve,

reminded her of the great disadvantage and shame she would incur if she

were not guided by their advice, and said he must inquire into the words

that had passed between her and her lover, whether they amounted to

matrimony or not. On this she told him what she had said to Calle, and

added that if those words did not make it sure she would make it surer

before she left the bishop’s presence, for she thought herself in

conscience bound to Calle, whatever the words were. Then Calle himself

was examined, and his statements agreed with hers as to the nature of

the pledges given and the time and place when it was done. The bishop

then said that in case other impediments were found he would delay

giving sentence till the Wednesday or Thursday after Michaelmas.[256-1]

[Footnote 255-3: No. 713.]

[Footnote 256-1: No. 721.]

When Margery Paston returned from her examination her mother’s door was

shut against her, and the bishop was forced to find a lodging for her

until the day that he was to give sentence. Before that day came

occurred the loss of Caister. The fortunes of the Paston family were

diminished, and Sir John began to feel that he at least could ill afford

to lose the services of one who had been such a faithful and attached

dependant. In writing to his mother he expressed a wish merely that the

marriage might be put off till Christmas. Calle, meanwhile, unmarried,

was staying at Blackborough Nunnery near Lynn, where his bride had found

a temporary asylum. He was still willing to give his services to Sir

John Paston, and promised not to offer them to any other unless Sir John

declined them. They appear to have been accepted, for we find Calle one

or two years later still in the service of the family. But he never

seems to have been recognised as one of its members.[256-2]

[Footnote 256-2: Nos. 721, 736, 737.]

The siege of Caister was one of those strong and high-handed

acts which could only have been possible when there was really no

sovereign authority in the land to repress and punish violence. Acts of

very much the same character had been seen before--the reader will not

have forgotten the forcible ejection of John Paston’s wife from Gresham.

But they had been due more especially to the weak and incompetent rule

of Henry VI., and not even then do we hear of a place being taken from

one of the king’s subjects after a five weeks’ siege by a rival

claimant. It was evident that the rebellion of Robin of Redesdale had

destroyed King Edward’s power. The king had been actually made a

prisoner, and the ascendency of the Woodvilles had been abolished. The

Duchess of Bedford, wife of the late Earl of Rivers, had even during the

commotions been accused of witchcraft.[257-1] The Earl of Warwick

enjoyed his revenge in the disorganisation of the whole kingdom. He had

now made it almost impossible for Edward to recover his authority

without getting rid of him; nor did many months pass away before he

stirred up another rebellion in Lincolnshire.[257-2] When that movement

failed, he and Clarence escaped abroad; but it was not many months

before they reappeared in England and drove out the king. [Sidenote:

Warwick the Kingmaker. A.D. 1470.] Henry VI. was proclaimed anew, and

for the space of a short half-year Warwick the Kingmaker governed in the

name of that sovereign in whose deposition ten years before he had been

one of the principal agents.

[Footnote 257-1: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 232.]

[Footnote 257-2: _See_ Nos. 742, 743.]

[Sidenote: Appeal of two widows.] We have but a word or two to say as to

matters affecting the family history of the Pastons during this brief

interval. At the siege of Caister two men of the Duke of Norfolk’s were

killed by the fire of the garrison. The duke’s council, not satisfied

with having turned the Pastons out, now prompted the widows of these two

men to sue an ‘appeal’[257-3] against John Paston and those who acted

with him. A true bill was also found against them for felony at the

Norwich session of June 1470, in which Sir John Paston was included as

an accessory; but the indictment was held to be void by some of Paston’s

friends on the ground that two of the jury would not agree to it. This

objection I presume must have been held sufficient to quash the

proceedings in this form, of which we hear no more.[258-1] The ‘appeal,’

however, remained to be disposed of, as we shall see by and by.

[Footnote 257-3: An appeal of murder was a criminal prosecution

instituted by the nearest relation of the murdered person, and a

pardon from the king could not be pleaded in bar of this process.]

[Footnote 258-1: Nos. 740, 746, 747.]

[Sidenote: Compromise touching Fastolf’s will.] With respect to the

title claimed by Sir John Paston in Caister and the performance of

Fastolf’s will, a compromise was arranged with Bishop Waynflete, who was

now recognised as sole executor. It was agreed that as the whole of

Fastolf’s lands in Essex, Surrey, Norfolk, and Suffolk had been much

wasted by the disputes between the executors, the manors should be

divided between Sir John Paston and the bishop, the former promising to

surrender the title-deeds of all except the manor of Caister. The

project of a college in that place was given up, and a foundation of

seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalen College, Oxford, was

agreed to in its place.[258-2] Soon afterwards the Duke of Norfolk

executed a release to the bishop of the manor of Caister and all the

lands conveyed to him by Yelverton and Howes as executors of Sir John

Fastolf, acknowledging that the bargain made with them was contrary to

Fastolf’s will, and receiving from the bishop the sum of 500 marks for

the reconveyance. The duke accordingly sent notice to his servants and

tenants to depart out of the manor as soon as they could conveniently

remove such goods and furniture as he and they had placed in it.[258-3]

[Footnote 258-2: Nos. 750, 755, 767.]

[Footnote 258-3: Nos. 763, 764.]

Thus by the mediation of Bishop Waynflete the long-standing disputes

were nearly settled during the period of Henry VI.’s brief restoration.

But, probably in consequence of the disturbed state of the country and

the return of Edward IV., the duke’s orders for the evacuation of

Caister were not immediately obeyed, and, as we shall see hereafter, the

place remained in Norfolk’s possession for the space of three whole

years.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth Poynings remarries.] About this time, or rather,

perhaps, two years later, Sir John Paston’s aunt, Elizabeth Poynings,

terminated her widowhood by marrying Sir George Browne of Betchworth

Castle in Surrey. We have already seen how she was dispossessed of her

lands soon after her first husband’s death by the Countess of

Northumberland. They were afterwards seized by the Crown as forfeited,

and granted by patent to Edmund Grey, Earl of Kent, but without any

title having been duly found for the king. The Earl of Kent after a time

gave up possession of them to the Earl of Essex, but this did not make

things pleasanter for Elizabeth Poynings; while other of her lands were

occupied by Sir Robert Fenys in violation, as she alleged, of her

husband’s will.[259-1] The date of her second marriage was probably

about the end of the year 1471.[259-2]

[Footnote 259-1: Nos. 461, 627, 692, 693.]

[Footnote 259-2: On the 18th November 1471, Edmund Paston speaks

of her as ‘my Aunt Ponynges.’ Before the 8th January 1472 she had

married Sir George Browne. Nos. 789, 795.]

These matters we are bound to mention as incidents in the history of the

family. Of Elizabeth Paston, however, and her second husband we do not

hear much henceforward; in the Letters after this period the domestic

interest centres chiefly round the two John Pastons, Sir John and his

brother.

_Changes and Counter-changes_

[Sidenote: Reckless government of Edward IV.] Within the space of ten

brief years Edward IV. had almost succeeded in convincing the world that

he was no more capable of governing England than the rival whom he had

deposed. Never did gambler throw away a fortune with more recklessness

than Edward threw away the advantages which it had cost him and his

friends so much hard fighting to secure. Just when he had reached the

summit of his prosperity, he alienated the men to whom it was mainly

due, and took no care to protect himself against the consequences of

their concealed displeasure. The Earl of Warwick took him prisoner, then

released him, then stirred up a new rebellion with impunity, and

finally, returning to England once more, surprised and drove him out,

notwithstanding the warnings of his brother-in-law, the Duke of

Burgundy. Henry VI. was proclaimed anew, and the cause of the House of

York seemed to be lost for ever.

It was not so, however, in fact. Adversity quickened Edward’s energies

in a manner almost miraculous, and in a few months he recovered his

kingdom as suddenly as he had lost it. But it was not easy to believe,

even after his most formidable enemy had been slain at Barnet, that a

king who had shown himself so careless could maintain himself again upon

the throne. Besides, men who desired a steady government had rested all

their hopes in the restoration of Henry VI., and had found the new state

of matters very promising, just before Edward reappeared. The king, it

might have been hoped, would be governed this time by the Earl of

Warwick, and not by Queen Margaret. [Sidenote: The Pastons favour Henry

VI.] The Pastons, in particular, had very special reasons to rejoice in

Henry’s restoration. They had a powerful friend in the Earl of Oxford,

whose influence with Henry and the Earl of Warwick stood very high.

Owing partly, perhaps, to Oxford’s intercession, the Duke of Norfolk had

been obliged to quit his hold of Caister, and Sir John Paston had been

reinstated in possession.[260-1] The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk sued to

Oxford as humbly as the Pastons had been accustomed to sue to them, and

the earl, from the very first, had been as careful of the interests of

this family as if they had been his own. Even in the first days of the

revolution--probably before Edward was yet driven out--he had sent a

messenger to the Duchess of Norfolk from Colchester when John Paston was

in London on a matter which concerned him alone. The family, indeed,

seem at first to have built rather extravagant expectations upon the new

turn of affairs, which John Paston felt it necessary to repress in

writing to his mother. ‘As for the offices that ye wrote to my brother

for and to me, they be for no poor men, but I trust we shall speed of

other offices meetly for us, for my master the Earl of Oxford biddeth me

ask and have. I trow my brother Sir John shall have the constableship of

Norwich Castle, with £20 of fee. All the lords be agreed to it.’[260-2]

[Footnote 260-1: _See_ preliminary note to Letter No. 879.]

[Footnote 260-2: No. 759.]

Certainly, when they remembered the loss of Caister, which they had now

regained--when they recalled his inability to protect them against armed

aggression, and the disappointment of their expectations of redress

against the Duke of Suffolk for the attack on the lodge at

Hellesdon--the Pastons had little cause to pray for the return of Edward

IV. They were completely committed to the cause of Henry; and Sir John

Paston and his brother fought, no doubt in the Earl of Oxford’s company,

against King Edward at Barnet. [Sidenote: Sir John Paston and his

brother in the battle of Barnet. A.D. 1471.] Both the brothers came out

of the battle alive, but John Paston was wounded with an arrow in the

right arm, beneath the elbow.[261-1] His wound, however, was not of a

very serious character, and in little more than a fortnight he was able

to write a letter with his own hand.[261-2] A more serious consideration

was, how far the family prospects were injured by the part they had

taken against what seemed now to be the winning side. Perhaps they might

be effectually befriended by their cousin Lomner, who seems to have

adhered to Edward, and who had promised them his good offices, if

required. But on the whole the Pastons did not look despondingly upon

the situation, and rather advised their cousin Lomner not to commit

himself too much to the other side, as times might change. ‘I beseech

you,’ writes Sir John Paston to his mother, ‘on my behalf to advise him

to be well aware of his dealing or language as yet; for the world,

I ensure you, is right queasy, as ye shall know within this month. The

people here feareth it sore. God hath showed Himself marvellously like

Him that made all, and can undo again when Him list, and I can think

that by all likelihood He shall show Himself as marvellous again, and

that in short time.’[261-3]

[Footnote 261-1: No. 774.]

[Footnote 261-2: No. 776.]

[Footnote 261-3: No. 774.]

In point of fact, Sir John Paston, when he wrote these words, had

already heard of the landing of Queen Margaret and her son in the west,

so that another conflict was certainly impending. His brother John,

recovering from his wounds, but smarting severely in pocket from the

cost of his surgery, looked forward to it with a sanguine hope that

Edward would be defeated. ‘With God’s grace,’ he writes, ‘it shall not

be long ere my wrongs and other men’s shall be redressed, for the world

was never so like to be ours as it is now. Wherefore I pray you let

Lomner not be too busy yet.’[262-1] The issue, however, did not agree

with his expectations. [Sidenote: The battle of Tewkesbury.] Four days

later was fought the battle of Tewkesbury,[262-2] at which Margaret was

defeated, and her son, though taken alive, put to death upon the field.

Shortly afterwards she herself surrendered as a prisoner, while her

chief captain, Somerset, was beheaded by the conqueror. The Lancastrian

party was completely crushed; and before three weeks were over, King

Henry himself had ended his days--no doubt he was murdered--within the

Tower. Edward, instead of being driven out again, was now seated on the

throne more firmly than he had ever been before; and the Paston brothers

had to sue for the king’s pardon for the part they had taken in opposing

him.

[Footnote 262-1: No. 776.]

[Footnote 262-2: In connection with this battle, we have in No.

777 lists of the principal persons killed and beheaded after the

fight, and of the knights made by King Edward upon the field. This

document has never been published before.]

[Sidenote: Caister retaken by the Duke of Norfolk.] Under these

circumstances, it was only natural that the Duke of Norfolk, who had

been forced to relinquish his claim to Caister under the government of

Henry VI., should endeavour to reassert it against one who was in the

eye of the law a rebel. On this occasion, however, the duke had recourse

to stratagem, and one of his servants suddenly obtained possession of

the place on Sunday, the 23rd June.[262-3] It is remarkable that we have

no direct reference in the letters either to this event, or to the

previous reinstatement of Sir John Paston during the restoration of

Henry VI.; but a statement in the itinerary of William Worcester and Sir

John Paston’s petition to the king in 1475[262-4] leave no doubt about

the facts. After about six months of possession the Pastons were again

driven out of Caister.[262-5]

[Footnote 262-3: W. Worc. _Itin._, 368.]

[Footnote 262-4: No. 879.]

[Footnote 262-5: Although the fact of this expulsion could not be

gathered from the letters of this date, some allusion to it will

be found in Letter 778, by which it seems that a horse of John

Paston’s had been left at Caister, which the family endeavoured to

reclaim by pretending that it was his brother Edmund’s. John

Paston, however, seems to have preferred that the duke’s men

should keep the animal, in the hope that they would make other

concessions of greater value.]

The Pastons had need of friends, and offers of friendship were made to

them by Earl Rivers, formerly Lord Scales. [Sidenote: Earl Rivers offers

his friendship.] The engagement of Sir John Paston to Rivers’s

kinswoman, Anne Haute,[263-1] still held; and though there was some talk

of breaking it off, the earl was willing to do what lay in his power in

behalf both of Sir John and of his brother. The latter was not very

grateful for his offer, considering, apparently, that the earl’s

influence with the king was not what it had been. ‘Lord Scales,’ he

said, for so he continued to call him, ‘may do least with the great

master. But he would depart over the sea as hastily as he may; and

because he weeneth that I would go with him, as I had promised him ever,

if he had kept forth his journey at that time, this is the cause that he

will be my good lord, and help to get my pardon. The king is not best

pleased with him, for that he desireth to depart; insomuch that the king

hath said of him that whenever he hath most to do, then the Lord Scales

will soonest ask leave to depart, and weeneth that it is most because of

cowardice.’[263-2]

[Footnote 263-1: A transcript of an old pedigree with which I was

favoured by Mr. J. R. Scott during the publication of these

letters long ago, confirmed my conjecture that Anne Haute was the

daughter of William Haute, whose marriage with Joan, daughter of

Sir Richard Woodville, is referred to in the _Excerpta Historica_,

p. 249. She was, therefore, the niece of Richard, Earl Rivers, and

cousin-german to Edward IV.’s queen. It appears also that she had

a sister named Alice, who was married to Sir John Fogge of

Ashford, Treasurer of the Household to Edward IV. This Sir John

Fogge was the man whom Richard III., having previously regarded

him as a deadly enemy, sent for out of sanctuary, and took

publicly by the hand at his accession, in token that he had

forgotten all old grudges.]

[Footnote 263-2: No. 778.]

Earl Rivers, in fact, was at this time meditating a voyage to Portugal,

where he meant to go in an expedition against the Saracens, and he

actually embarked on Christmas Eve following.[263-3] His friendship,

perhaps, may have been unduly depreciated by the younger brother; for

within twelve days John Paston actually obtained the king’s signature to

a warrant for his pardon. This, it is true, may have been procured

without his mediation; but in any case the family were not in the

position of persons for whom no one would intercede. They had still so

much influence in the world that within three months after he had been a

second time dispossessed of Caister, Sir John made a serious effort to

ascertain whether the Duke of Norfolk might not be induced to let him

have it back again. [Sidenote: Sir J. Paston petitions the Duke of

Norfolk to give back Caister.] This he did, as was only natural, through

the medium of his brother John, whose former services in the duke’s

household gave him a claim to be heard in a matter touching the personal

interests of the family. John Paston, however, wisely addressed himself,

on this subject, rather to the duchess than to the duke; and though he

received but a slender amount of encouragement, it was enough, for a few

months, just to keep his hopes alive. ‘I cannot yet,’ he writes, ‘make

my peace with my lord of Norfolk by no means, yet every man telleth me

that my lady sayeth passing well of me always notwithstanding.’ This was

written in the beginning of the year 1472, just seven months after Sir

John’s second expulsion from Caister. But the Pastons continued their

suit for four years more, and only recovered possession of the place on

the Duke of Norfolk’s death, as we shall see hereafter.[264-1]

[Footnote 263-3: Nos. 793, 795.]

[Footnote 264-1: Nos. 781, 796, 802.]

_The Paston Brothers_

[Sidenote: Royal pardon to John Paston.] John Paston obtained a ‘bill of

pardon’ signed by the king, on Wednesday the 17th July. This, however,

was not in itself a pardon, but only a warrant to the Chancellor to give

him one under the Great Seal. The pardon with the Great Seal attached he

hoped to obtain from the Chancellor on the following Friday. Meanwhile

he wrote home to his mother to let no one know of it but Lady Calthorpe,

who, for some reason not explained, seems to have been a confidante in

this particular matter.[264-2] Perhaps this was as well, for as a matter

of fact the pardon was not sealed that Friday, nor for many a long week,

and even for some months after. It seems to have been promised, but it

did not come. At Norwich some one called John Paston traitor and sought

to pick quarrels with him; and how far he could rely upon the protection

of the law was a question not free from anxiety. His brother, Sir John,

urged him to take steps to have the pardon made sure without delay; but

it was only passed at length upon the 7th of February following, nearly

seven months after the king had signed the bill for it. His brother, Sir

John, obtained one on the 21st December.[265-1]

[Footnote 264-2: No. 780.]

[Footnote 265-1: Nos. 780, 781, 795.]

[Sidenote: The appeal of the widows.] But John Paston stood in another

danger, from which even a royal pardon could not by law protect him. The

‘appeal’[265-2] of the two widows still lay against him. The blood of

their husbands cried for vengeance on the men who had defended Caister,

and especially upon the captain of the garrison. Their appeal, however,

was suspected to proceed from the instigation of others who would fain

have encouraged them to keep it up longer than they cared to do

themselves. Sir John Paston had information from some quarter which led

him to believe that they had both found husbands again, and he

recommended his brother to make inquiry, as in that case the appeals

were abated. With regard to one of them, the intelligence turned out to

be correct. A friend whom John Paston asked to go and converse with this

woman, the widow of a fuller of South Walsham, reported that she was now

married to one Tom Steward, dwelling in the parish of St. Giles in

Norwich. She confessed to him that she never sued the appeal of her own

accord, ‘but that she was by subtle craft brought to the New Inn at

Norwich. And there was Master Southwell; and he entreated her to be my

lord’s widow[265-3] by the space of an whole year next following; and

thereto he made her to be bound in an obligation. And when that year was

past he desired her to be my lord’s widow another year. And then she

said that she had liever lose that that she had done than to lose that

and more; and therefore she said plainly that she would no more of that

matter; and so she took her an husband, which is the said Tom Steward.

And she saith that it was full sore against her will that ever the

matter went so far forth, for she had never none avail thereof, but it

was sued to her great labor and loss, for she had never of my lord’s

council but barely her costs to London.’[265-4]

[Footnote 265-2: _See_ p. 257, note 3.]

[Footnote 265-3: The widow of a lord’s vassal was called the

lord’s widow, and could only marry again by his leave.]

[Footnote 265-4: Nos. 782, 783.]

The other widow, however, had not married again as Sir John had

imagined. With her the right of appeal still remained, and she was

induced to exercise it. In this she seems to have been encouraged by the

Duke of Norfolk, simply for the sake of giving trouble to Sir John

Paston; for though it was his brother and the men with him who were the

most direct cause of her husband’s death, the appeal was not prosecuted

against them, but against him only. In the following January the widow

went up to London, and 100 shillings were given her to sue with. What

came of the affair then we have no further record. Sir John Paston was

warned of his danger both by his mother and by his brother; so perhaps

he found the means to induce her to forbear proceeding further. An

argument that has often enough stopped the course of justice would

doubtless have been efficacious to put an end to such a purely vexatious

prosecution. But it may be that the case was actually heard, and Sir

John Paston acquitted.[266-1]

[Footnote 266-1: Nos. 796, 797.]

[Sidenote: Great mortality.] In a social point of view the year of

Edward IV.’s restoration was not one of gladness. The internal peace of

the kingdom was secured by the two sharp battles of Barnet and

Tewkesbury, and by the execution of the Bastard Falconbridge after his

attempt on London, but the land was visited with pestilence and the

mortality was severe. Hosts of pilgrims travelled through the country,

eager to escape the prevailing infection or to return thanks for their

recovery from illness. The king and queen went on pilgrimage to

Canterbury; and never, it was said, had there been so many pilgrims at a

time.[266-2] ‘It is the most universal death that ever I wist in

England,’ says Sir John Paston; ‘for by my trouth I cannot hear by

pilgrims that pass the country that any borough town in England is free

from that sickness. God cease it when it pleaseth Him! Wherefore, for

God’s sake let my mother take heed to my young brethren, that they be in

none place where that sickness is reigning, nor that they disport not

with none other young people which resorteth where any sickness is; and

if there be any of that sickness dead or infect in Norwich, for God’s

sake let her send them to some friends of hers into the country, and do

ye the same by mine advice. Let my mother rather remove her household

into the country.’[267-1]

[Footnote 266-2: No. 782.]

[Footnote 267-1: No. 781.]

The plague continued on till the beginning of winter. Margaret Paston

does not seem to have removed into the country, but in writing to her

son John in the beginning of November she notes the progress of the

enemy. ‘Your cousin Berney of Witchingham is passed to God, whom God

assoyle! Veyl’s wife, and London’s wife, and Picard the baker of

Tombland, be gone also. All this household and this parish is as ye left

it, blessed be God! We live in fear, but we wot not whither to flee for

to be better than we be here.’[267-2] In the same letter Margaret Paston

speaks of other troubles. [Sidenote: Money matters.] She had been

obliged to borrow money for her son Sir John, and it was redemanded. The

fortunes of the family were at a low ebb, and she knew not what to do

without selling her woods--a thing which would seriously impair the

value of Sir John’s succession to her estates, as there were so many

wood sales then in Norfolk that no man was likely to give much more than

within a hundred marks of their real value. She therefore urged Sir John

in his own interest to consider what he could do to meet the difficulty.

Already she had done much for him, and was not a little ashamed that it

was known she had not reserved the means of paying the debts she had

incurred for him. Sir John, however, returned for answer that he was

utterly unable to make any shift for the money, and Margaret saw nothing

for it but the humiliation of selling wood or land, or even furniture,

to meet the emergency. ‘It is a death to me to think upon it,’ she

wrote. She felt strongly that her son had not the art of managing with

economy--that he spent double the money on his affairs that his father

had done in matters of the same character, and, what grieved her even

more, that duties which filial pride ought to have piously discharged

long ago had been neglected owing to his extravagance. ‘At the reverence

of God,’ she writes to his younger brother John, ‘advise him yet to

beware of his expenses and guiding, that it be no shame to us all. It is

a shame and a thing that is much spoken of in this country that your

father’s gravestone is not made. [Sidenote: John Paston’s gravestone.]

For God’s love, let it be remembered and purveyed in haste. There hath

been much more spent in waste than should have made that.’ Apparently

direct remonstrances had failed to tell upon Sir John otherwise than to

make him peevish and crusty. She therefore wrote to his younger brother

instead. ‘Me thinketh by your brother that he is weary to write to me,

and therefore I will not accumber him with writing to him. Ye may tell

him as I write to you.’[268-1]

[Footnote 267-2: No. 787.]

[Footnote 268-1: Nos. 787, 791. In justice to Sir John Paston it

should be mentioned that he had been making inquiries two months

before as to the dimensions of the space over his father’s grave

at Bromholm available for a monument.--_See_ No. 782. More than

five years, however, had elapsed since his father’s death, and

even two years after this the tomb was not attended to, as we find

by repeated comments on the subject.--_See_ Nos. 843 and 878. This

last letter has been accidentally misplaced, and is really of the

year 1472, as will be shown hereafter.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Paston and Anne Haute.] Thriftless, extravagant, and

irresolute, Sir John Paston was not the man to succeed, either in money

matters or in anything else. No wonder, then, that his engagement with

Anne Haute became unsatisfactory, apparently to both parties alike. The

manner in which he speaks of it at this time is indeed ambiguous; but

there can be no doubt that in the end both parties desired to be

released, and were for a long time only restrained by the cost of a

dispensation, which was necessary to dissolve even such a contract as

theirs. It would not have been surprising, indeed, if on the restoration

of Edward IV. Lord Rivers and the queen’s relations had shown themselves

unfavourable to a match between their kinswoman and one who had fought

against the king at Barnet. But whether this was the case or not we have

no positive evidence to show. Only we know that in the course of this

year the issue of the matter was regarded as uncertain. In September Sir

John Paston writes that he had almost spoken with Mrs. Anne Haute, but

had not done so. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this next term I hope to take

one way with her or other. She is agreed to speak with me and she hopeth

to do me ease, as she saith.’[268-2]

[Footnote 268-2: No. 781.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1471, Oct.] Six weeks later, in the end of October, the

state of matters is reported, not by Sir John Paston but by his brother.

‘As for Mrs. A. Haulte, the matter is moved by divers of the queen’s

council, and of fear by R. Haulte; but he would it should be first of

our motion, and we would it should come of them first--our matter should

be the better.’[269-1] [Sidenote: A.D. 1472, Feb.] In February following

Sir John was admitted to another interview with the lady, but was unable

to bring the matter to a decisive issue. ‘I have spoken,’ he says, ‘with

Mrs. Anne Haulte at a pretty leisure, and, blessed be God, we be as far

forth as we were tofore, and so I hope we shall continue. And I promised

her that at the next leisure that I could find thereto, that I would

come again and see her, which will take a leisure, as I deem now. Since

this observance is overdone, I purpose not to tempt God no more

so.’[269-2]

[Footnote 269-1: No. 784.]

[Footnote 269-2: No. 798.]

A year later, in April 1473, he says that if he had six days more

leisure, he ‘would have hoped to have been delivered of Mrs. Anne

Haulte. Her friends, the queen, and Atcliff,’ he writes, ‘agreed to

common and conclude with me, if I can find the mean to discharge her

conscience, which I trust to God to do.’[269-3] But the discharge of her

conscience required an application to the Court of Rome, and this

involved a very unsentimental question of fees. ‘I have answer again

from Rome,’ he writes in November following, ‘that there is the well of

grace and salve sufficient for such a sore, and that I may be dispensed

with; nevertheless my proctor there asketh a thousand ducats, as he

deemeth. But Master Lacy, another Rome runner here, which knoweth my

said proctor there, as he saith, as well as Bernard knew his shield,

sayeth that he meaneth but an hundred ducats, or two hundred ducats at

the most; wherefore after this cometh more. He wrote to me also _quod

Papa hoc facit hodiernis diebus multociens_ (that the Pope does this

nowadays very frequently).’[269-4]

[Footnote 269-3: No. 831.]

[Footnote 269-4: No. 842.]

Here we lose for a while nearly all further trace of the matter. Nothing

more seems to have been done in it for a long time; for about fourteen

months later we find Sir John Paston’s mother still wishing he were

‘delivered of Mrs. Anne Haulte,’[270-1] and this is all we hear about it

until after an interval of two years more, when, in February 1477, Sir

John reports that the matter between him and Mrs. Anne Haulte had been

‘sore broken’ to Cardinal Bourchier, the Lord Chamberlain (Hastings),

and himself, and that he was ‘in good hope.’[270-2] Finally, in August

following, he expects that it ‘shall, with God’s grace, this term be at

a perfect end.’[270-3] After this we hear nothing more of it. The

pre-contract between Sir John and Anne Haulte seems therefore to have

been at last annulled; and what is more remarkable, after it had been

so, he was reported to be so influential at Court that another marriage

was offered him ‘right nigh of the Queen’s blood.’[270-4] His mother,

who writes to him on the subject in May 1478, had not been informed who

the lady was, and neither can we tell the reader. We only know for

certain that such a marriage never took effect.

[Footnote 270-1: No. 863. Some months before the time when he

himself expressed that hope of being delivered from his

engagement, I meet with a passage of rather doubtful meaning in a

letter to Sir John Paston from his brother. There is a lady in the

case, but the lady is not named. John Paston has delivered to her

a ring which he had much difficulty in inducing her to take. But

he promises that Sir John shall be her true knight, and she in

return promises to be more at his commandment than at any knight’s

in England, ‘my lord’ excepted. ‘And that ye shall well

understand’ (so John Paston reports the message) ‘if ye have aught

to do wherein she may be an helper; for there was never knight did

so much cost on her as ye have done.’ (No. 817.) Is this anonymous

lady Anne Haulte once more? Was the ring an engagement ring

returned? And did they thus break off relations with each other,

retaining mutual esteem? Let us hope this is the explanation,

which indeed I should even think probable, but that the lady must

have been at this time residing in the county of Norfolk, and I

have no notice of Anne Haulte having been there at any time.]

[Footnote 270-2: No. 900.]

[Footnote 270-3: No. 916.]

[Footnote 270-4: No. 933.]

[Sidenote: John Paston’s love affairs.] John Paston, too, had his love

affairs as well as his brother, but was more fortunate in not being

bound helplessly to one lady for a long series of years. In the summer

of 1471, he seems to have been endeavouring to win the hand of a certain

Lady Elizabeth Bourchier; but here he did not prosper, for she was

married a few months later to Lord Thomas Howard--the nobleman who more

than forty years after was created Duke of Norfolk by King Henry VIII.

for his victory over the Scots at Flodden.[270-5] As to his further

proceedings in search of a wife, we shall have occasion to speak of them

hereafter.

[Footnote 270-5: Nos. 781, 800.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1472.] Property was at all times a matter of more

importance than love to that selfish generation; it was plainly,

avowedly regarded by every one as the principal point in marrying.

[Sidenote: The Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester.] In the royal family at

this very time, the design of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to marry the

widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, awoke the jealousy of his brother

Clarence. For the lady was a younger sister of Clarence’s own wife, and

co-heir to her father, Warwick the Kingmaker; and since the death of

that great earl at Barnet, Clarence seems to have pounced on the whole

of his immense domains without the slightest regard even to the rights

of his widow, who, indeed, was now in disgrace, and was living in

sanctuary at Beaulieu. The idea of being compelled to share the property

with his brother was a thing that had never occurred to him, and he

could not endure the thought. He endeavoured to prevent the proposed

marriage by concealing the lady in London.[271-1] Disputes arose between

the two brothers in consequence, and though they went to Sheen together

to pardon, it was truly suspected to be ‘not all in charity.’ The king

endeavoured to act as mediator, and entreated Clarence to show a fair

amount of consideration to his brother; but his efforts met with very

little success. ‘As it is said,’ writes Sir John Paston, ‘he answereth

that he may well have my lady his sister-in-law, but they shall part no

livelode,’--the elder sister was to have all the inheritance, and the

younger sister nothing! No wonder the writer adds, ‘So what will fall

can I not say.’[271-2] What did fall, however, we know partly from the

Paston Letters and partly from other sources. The Duke of Gloucester

married the lady in spite of his brother’s threats. The dispute about

the property raged violently more than two years, and almost defied the

king’s efforts to keep his two brothers in subjection. In November 1473

we find it ‘said for certain that the Duke of Clarence maketh him big in

that he can, showing as he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester;

but the king intendeth, in eschewing all inconvenients, to be as big as

they both, and to be a styffeler atween them. And some men think that

under this there should be some other thing intended, and some treason

conspired.’ Sir John Paston again did not know what to make of it, and

was driven to reiterate his former remark, ‘So what shall fall can I not

say.’[272-1] He only hoped the two brothers would yet be brought into

agreement by the king’s award.[272-2]

[Footnote 271-1: _Contin. Chron. of Croyland_, 557.]

[Footnote 271-2: No. 798.]

[Footnote 272-1: No. 841.]

[Footnote 272-2: No. 842.]

This hope was ultimately realised. Clarence at last consented with an

ill will to let his sister-in-law have a share in her father’s lands;

and an arrangement was made by a special Act of Parliament for the

division of the property.[272-3] To satisfy the rapacity of the royal

brothers, the claims of the Countess of Warwick were deliberately set

aside, and the Act expressly treated her as if she had been a dead

woman. So the matter was finally settled in May 1474. Yet possibly the

Countess’s claims had some influence in hastening this settlement; for

about a twelvemonth before she had been removed from her sanctuary at

Beaulieu[272-4] and conveyed northwards by Sir James Tyrell. This, it

appears, was not done avowedly by the king’s command; nevertheless

rumour said that it was by his assent, and also that it was contrary to

the will of Clarence.[272-5]

[Footnote 272-3: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 100.]

[Footnote 272-4: ‘Beweley Seyntwarye’ in Fenn; but the reading is

‘_Beverley_ sanctuary’ in the right-hand version. Which is

correct?]

[Footnote 272-5: No. 834.]

Even so in the Paston family love affairs give place at this time to

questions about property, in which their interests were very seriously

at stake. Not only was there the great question between Sir John and the

Duke of Norfolk about Caister, but there was also a minor question about

the manor of Saxthorpe, the particulars of which are not very clear. On

the 12th July 1471, Sir John Paston made a release of Saxthorpe and

Titchwell and some other portions of the Fastolf estates, to David

Husband and William Gyfford;[272-6] but this was probably only in the

nature of a trust, for it appears that he did not intend to give up his

interest in the property. [Sidenote: A.D. 1472, Jan.] In January

following, however, William Gurney entered into Saxthorpe and

endeavoured to hold a court there for the lord of the manor. [Sidenote:

John Paston interrupts the Manor Court at Saxthorpe.] But John Paston

hearing of what was doing, went thither accompanied by one man only to

protect his brother’s interest, and charged the tenants, in the presence

of Gurney himself and a number of his friends, to proceed no further.

The protest was effective so far as to produce a momentary pause. But

when it was seen that he had only one man with him, the proceedings were

resumed; on which John Paston sat down by the steward and blotted his

book with his finger as he wrote, and then called the tenants to witness

that he had effectually interrupted the court in his brother’s

right.[273-1] Gurney, however, did not give up the game, but warned

another court to be kept on Holy Rood day (May 3rd, the Invention of the

Holy Cross), when he would have collected the half-year’s rents from the

tenants. The court was held, but before it was half over John Paston

appeared again and persuaded him to stay proceedings once more, and to

forbear gathering money until he and Sir John Paston should confer

together in London. It seems to have required some tact and courtesy to

get him to consent to this arrangement; for Henry Heydon, the son of the

old ally of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, had raised a number of men-at-arms to

give Gurney any assistance that might have been necessary, but the

gentle demeanour of John Paston left him no pretext for calling in such

aid.[273-2]

[Footnote 272-6: No. 779.]

[Footnote 273-1: No. 796.]

[Footnote 273-2: No. 801.]

The real claimant of the manor against Sir John Paston was Waynflete,

Bishop of Winchester, of whom, almost immediately after this, Henry

Heydon bought both Saxthorpe and Titchwell. Sir John Paston, apparently,

had been caught napping as usual, and knew nothing of the transaction.

His mother wrote to him in dismay on the 5th June. Young Heydon had

already taken possession. ‘We beat the bushes,’ said Margaret Paston,

‘and have the loss and the disworship, and other men have the birds. My

lord hath false counsel and simple that adviseth him thereto. And, as it

is told me, Guton is like to go the same way in haste. And as for

Hellesdon and Drayton, I trow it is there it shall be. What shall fall

of the remnant God knoweth,--I trow as evil or worse.’[273-3]

[Footnote 273-3: No. 803.]

John Paston in like manner writes on the same day that Heydon was sure

of Saxthorpe, and Lady Boleyn of Guton.[274-1] Sir John Paston was

letting the family property slip out of his fingers, while on the other

hand he was running into debt, and in his straitened circumstances he

was considering what he could sell. His mother had threatened if he

parted with any of his lands to disinherit him of double the

amount;[274-2] so he was looking out for a purchaser of his wood at

Sporle, which he was proposing to cut down.[274-3] But by far the most

serious matter of all was Caister; ‘if we lose that,’ said Margaret

Paston, ‘we lose the fairest flower of our garland.’ To her, too, it

would be peculiarly annoying, for she expected to have little comfort in

her own family mansion at Mautby, if the Duke of Norfolk had possession

of Caister only three miles off.[274-4] [Sidenote: Sir John Paston seeks

to get Caister restored to him.] On this subject, however, Sir John

Paston does not appear to have been remiss. It was the first thing that

occupied his thoughts after he had secured his pardon. In the beginning

of the year he had been with Archbishop Nevill, who, though he had been

in disgrace and committed to the Tower just after the battle of Barnet,

seems at this time again to have had some influence in the world, at his

residence called the Moor. By the archbishop’s means apparently he had

received his pardon, and had spent a merrier Christmas in consequence;

and he wrote to his mother that if he could have got any assurance of

having Caister restored to him, he would have come away at once.[274-5]

But it was not long before the archbishop again got into trouble. He was

once more conducted to the Tower, and two days afterwards at midnight he

was put on board a ship and conveyed out to sea.[274-6] Nothing more

therefore was to be hoped for from the archbishop’s friendship; but Sir

John Paston did not cease to use what means lay in his power. His

brother made incessant applications on his behalf to the Duchess of

Norfolk, and to the duke’s council at Framlingham. To be reinstated Sir

John was willing to make the duke a present of £40, an offer which the

council acknowledged was ‘more than reasonable.’ If the matter were

their own, they gave John Paston to understand, they could easily come

to an understanding with him, but my lord was intractable. The duchess

herself declined to interfere in the matter until my lord and the

council were agreed, and the latter said that when they had mooted it to

the duke ‘he gave them such an answer that none of them all would tell

it.’ They suggested, however, that the duke might be swayed by more

influential opinions, and that if Sir John could get my Lord Chamberlain

Hastings, or some other nobleman of mark, to speak to the duke in his

favour, there was great probability that he would attain his

object.[275-1]

[Footnote 274-1: No. 804.]

[Footnote 274-2: No. 802.]

[Footnote 274-3: Nos. 798, 804, 819, 820.--No. 819 is a little out

of its place, the exact date of the letter being the 9th May.]

[Footnote 274-4: No. 803.]

[Footnote 274-5: No. 795.]

[Footnote 274-6: No. 800.]

[Footnote 275-1: No. 809.]

[Sidenote: The Duchess of Norfolk.] A favourable opportunity, however,

presented itself shortly afterwards for urging a petition for justice on

the duke himself. After ten years or more of married life the Duchess of

Norfolk was at length with child. Duke and duchess received everywhere

congratulations from their friends and dependants. Among the rest Sir

John Paston offered his to my lady herself, in a vein of banter that

seems slightly to have offended her, though not perhaps so much by its

grossness, which was excessive, as by the undue familiarity exhibited in

such a tone of address.[275-2] The Duke of Norfolk was going to be with

his wife on the occasion of her lying-in, and John Paston, as an old

servant of the family, went to give his attendance at Framlingham. It

was resolved that the utmost should be made of the opportunity. John

Paston drew up a petition in behalf of his brother to present to the

duke, while Sir John Paston himself, then in London, obtained letters

from the king to both the duke and duchess, and also to their council.

The king seems to have been particularly interested in the case, and

assured Sir John that if his letters were ineffectual justice should be

done in the matter without delay. The letters were despatched by a

special messenger, ‘a man of worship’ in high favour with the king

himself. With such powerful influence engaged on his behalf, most

probably Sir John did not care to ask for letters from Lord Hastings,

which his brother was even then expecting. But he suggested, if my

lady’s lying-in should be at Norwich instead of Framlingham, that his

mother might obtain admittance to her chamber, and that her persuasions

would be of considerable use.[276-1]

[Footnote 275-2: Nos. 812, 813.]

[Footnote 276-1: Nos. 813, 814, 815, 817, 824. _See_ also No. 878,

which by a strange inadvertence has been put in the year 1475

instead of 1472. The preliminary note is correct except as to the

year.]

[Sidenote: Birth of a daughter.] The duchess was confined at

Framlingham, and gave birth to a daughter, who received the name of

Anne. Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, came down to christen the child,

and he, too, took an opportunity during his brief stay to say a word to

my lady about Caister and the claim of Sir John Paston to restitution.

But exhortations, royal letters, and all were thrown away upon the Duke

of Norfolk. My lady promised secretly to another person to favour Sir

John’s suit, but the fact of her giving such a promise was not to be

communicated to any one else. John Paston was made as uncomfortable as

possible by the manner in which his representations were received. ‘I

let you plainly wit,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘I am not the man I was,

for I was never so rough in my master’s conceit as I am now, and that he

told me himself before Richard Southwell, Tymperley, Sir W. Brandon, and

twenty more; so that they that lowered now laugh upon me.’[276-2]

[Footnote 276-2: No. 823.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Paston seeks to enter Parliament.] But although all

arts were unsuccessful to bend the will of the Duke of Norfolk on this

subject, Sir John Paston seems to have enjoyed the favour and approval

of the duchess in offering himself as a candidate for the borough of

Maldon in the Parliament of 1472. His friend James Arblaster wrote a

letter to the bailiff of Maldon suggesting the great advantage it would

be to the town to have for one of their two burgesses ‘such a man of

worship and of wit as were towards my said lady,’ and advising all her

tenants to vote for Sir John Paston, who not only had this great

qualification, but also possessed the additional advantage of being in

high favour with my Lord Chamberlain Hastings.[276-3] There was,

however, some uncertainty as to the result, and his brother John

suggested in writing to him that if he missed being elected for Maldon

he might be for some other place. There were a dozen towns in England

that ought to return members to Parliament which had chosen none, and by

the influence of my Lord Chamberlain he might get returned for one of

them.[277-1]

[Footnote 276-3: No. 808.]

[Footnote 277-1: No. 809.]

In point of fact, I find that Sir John Paston was not returned for

Maldon to the Parliament of 1472; and whether he sat for any other

borough I am not certain, though there is an expression in the

correspondence a little later that might lead one to suppose so.[277-2]

But that he went up to London we know by a letter dated on the 4th

November;[277-3] and though he went to Calais, and even visited the

court of the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy at Ghent early in the

following year, when Parliament was no longer sitting, he had returned

to London long before it had ended its second session in April

1473.[277-4] It is also clear that he took a strong interest in its

proceedings; but this was only natural. That Parliament was summoned

avowedly to provide for the safety of the kingdom. Although the Earl of

Warwick was now dead, and Margaret of Anjou a prisoner at

Wallingford,[277-5] and the line of Henry VI. extinct, [Sidenote: Fear

of Invasion.] it was still anticipated that the Earl of Oxford and

others, supported by the power of France, would make a descent upon the

coast. Commissions of array were issued at various times for defence

against apprehended invasion.[277-6] Information was therefore laid

before Parliament of the danger in which the kingdom stood from a

confederacy of the king’s ‘ancient and mortal enemies environing the

same,’ and a message was sent to the Commons to the effect that the king

intended to equip an expedition in resistance of their malice.[277-7]

The result was that, in November 1472, the Commons agreed to a levy of

13,000 archers, and voted a tenth for their support, which was to be

levied before Candlemas following.[278-1] An income and property tax was

not a permanent institution of our ancestors, but when it came it

pressed heavily; so that a demand of two shillings in the pound was not

at all unprecedented. A higher tax had been imposed four years before,

and also in 1453 by the Parliament of Reading. Still, a sudden demand of

two shillings in the pound, to be levied within the next four months,

was an uncomfortable thing to meet; and owing either to its unpopularity

or the difficulty of arranging the machinery for its collection, it was

not put in force within the time appointed. [Sidenote: A.D. 1473.] But

in the following spring, when the Parliament had begun its second

session, collectors were named throughout the country, and it was

notified that some further demands were to be made upon the national

pocket. On the 26th March, John Paston writes that his cousin John

Blennerhasset had been appointed collector in Norfolk, and asks his

brother Sir John in London to get him excused from serving in ‘that

thankless office,’ as he had not a foot of ground in the county. At the

same time the writer expresses the sentiments of himself and his

neighbours in language quite sufficiently emphatic: ‘I pray God send you

the Holy Ghost among you in the Parliament House, and rather the Devil,

we say, than ye should grant any more taxes.’[278-2] Unfortunately,

before the Parliament ended its sittings, it granted a whole fifteenth

and tenth additional.[278-3]

[Footnote 277-2: His name does not appear in any of the original

returns preserved in the Record Office; but they are certainly

very imperfect, and some of them are not very legible. The two

burgesses returned for Maldon were William Pestell and William

Albon. I find, however, that William Paston, probably Sir John’s

uncle, was returned for Newcastle-under-Lyne.]

[Footnote 277-3: No. 812.]

[Footnote 277-4: He could scarcely have returned from Calais in

time for the opening of that session on the 8th February, as he

was at Calais on the 3rd, and says nothing about coming home at

that date.--No. 826.]

[Footnote 277-5: No. 795.]

[Footnote 277-6: Patent, 7th March, 12 Edw. IV., p. 1, membs. 25

and 26 _in dorso_; and 10th May, p. 1, m. 13 _in dorso_.]

[Footnote 277-7: Even on the 1st June, four months before

Parliament met, we find commissions issued to certain masters of

ships to take sailors for the army going over sea.--_Patent Roll_,

12 Edw. IV., p. 1, m. 10 _in dorso_.]

[Footnote 278-1: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 4.]

[Footnote 278-2: No. 829.]

[Footnote 278-3: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 39.]

[Sidenote: Family jars.] At this time we find that there was some

further unpleasant feeling within the Paston family circle. Margaret

Paston had several times expressed her discontent with the thriftless

extravagance of her eldest son, and even the second, John, did not stand

continually in her good graces. A third brother, Edmund, was now just

coming out in life, and as a preparation for it he too had to endure

continual reproofs and remonstrances from his mother. Besides these,

there were at home three other sons and one daughter, of whom we shall

speak hereafter. The young generation apparently was a little too much

for the lone widow; and, finding her elder sons not very satisfactory

advisers, she did what lone women are very apt to do under such

circumstances--took counsel in most of the affairs of this life of a

confidential priest. In fact, she was a good and pious woman, to whom in

her advancing years this world appeared more and more in its true

character as a mere preparation for the next. She had now withdrawn from

city life at Norwich, and was dwelling on her own family estate at

Mautby. Bodily infirmities, perhaps--though we hear nothing explicitly

said of them--made it somewhat less easy for her to move about; and she

desired to obtain a licence from the Bishop of Norwich to have the

sacrament in her own chapel.[279-1] She was also thinking, we know, of

getting her fourth son Walter educated for the priesthood; and she

wished her own spiritual adviser, Sir James Gloys,[279-2] to conduct him

to Oxford, and see him put in the right way to pursue his studies

creditably. She hoped, she said, to have more joy of him than of his

elder brothers; and though she desired him to be a priest, she wished

him not to take any orders that should be binding until he had reached

the age of four-and-twenty. ‘I will love him better,’ she said, ‘to be a

good secular man than a lewd priest.’[279-3]

[Footnote 279-1: No. 821. She repeats the request more than two

years later, and desires that if it cannot be obtained of the

Bishop of Norwich, John Paston should endeavour to get it of the

Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘for that,’ she says, ‘is the most sure

for all places.’--No. 866.]

[Footnote 279-2: We ought, perhaps, to have explained before that

the prefix ‘Sir’ before a priest’s name, as in Sir James Gloys and

Sir Thomas Howes, was commonly used as equivalent to ‘Reverend,’

though strictly speaking it was applied to one who had taken no

higher degree than bachelor.]

[Footnote 279-3: No. 825. Even so Erasmus says of More (Epp.

lib. x. 30, col. 536). ‘Maluit maritus esse castus quam sacerdos

impurus.’ The sentiment evidently was a very common one.]

[[(Epp. lib. x. 30, col. 536).

_text unchanged: expected final comma_]]

[Sidenote: Sir James Gloys.] But the influence of this spiritual adviser

over their mother was by no means agreeable to the two eldest sons. John

Paston speaks of him in a letter to his brother as ‘the proud, peevish,

and ill-disposed priest to us all,’ and complains grievously of his

interference in family affairs. ‘Many quarrels,’ he writes, ‘are picked

to get my brother Edmund and me out of her house. We go not to bed

unchidden lightly; all that we do is ill done, and all that Sir James

and Pecock doth is well done. Sir James and I be twain. We fell out

before my mother with “Thou proud priest,” and “Thou proud squire,” my

mother taking his part; so I have almost beshut the bolt as for my

mother’s house; yet summer shall be done or I get me any master.’[280-1]

John Paston, in fact, was obliged to put up with it for some months

longer, and though he afterwards reports that Sir James was always

‘chopping at him,’ and seeking to irritate him in his mother’s presence,

he had found out that it was not altogether the best policy to rail at

him in return. So he learned to smile a little at the most severe

speeches, and remark quietly, ‘It is good hearing of these old

tales.’[280-2] This mode of meeting the attack, if it did not soften Sir

James’s bitterness, may have made Margaret Paston less willing to take

his part against her son. At all events we hear no more of these

encounters. Sir James Gloys, however, died about twelve months

later.[280-3]

[Footnote 280-1: No. 805.]

[Footnote 280-2: No. 810.]

[Footnote 280-3: No. 842.]