---- ---- TO WILLIAM PASTON.
[Sidenote: 1426(?)]
‘Dear and well-beloved Cousin.’ --Is in good health, but ill at ease,
being informed that she is in debt to Steyard for my lord’s debt, whose
soul God assoil, £7 and a pipe of wine. Knew nothing of it in my lord’s
life, except of 2 pipes for herself, and one for her mother-in-law, of
which she has paid 20s. Since my Lord’s death, Steyard has never asked
her for it. ‘For which time, as I was at Jernemouth abiding in the Frere
Carmes the time of the pestilence, his wife came unto me,’ asking the
writer to be good lady to him; and he asked no more then than the above
3 pipes. He asked no more last harvest when he was sick and like to die,
when John of Berneye was present. Thinks, therefore, his asking is
untrue. My Lord would have made me or some of his council privy to such
a debt. Hopes Paston, whom my Lord made one of his feoffees, will see
‘that ye and I be discharged anemps the King as for the debt of
Steyard.’ --Dated Castre, the day after the Conversion of St. Paul.
Addressed, ‘A mon tres cher et bien ame cousin, Will’m Paston soit
donné.’
[This letter is endorsed in another hand, ‘W. Paston, j. feoffatorum
et executorum Johannis Rothnale per lit’ Cz. (?)’ It seems,
therefore, to have been written by the Lady Elizabeth, widow of Sir
John Rothenhale, whose name occurs in No. 13 in connection with
William Steyard of Great Yarmouth. She was the daughter of Sir
Philip Branch, Kt., and had been previously married to John Clere of
Ormesby. She died at Caister, the place from which this letter is
dated, in 1440; and by her will, which was dated at Caister, 16th
October 1438, she bequeathed all her goods at Ormesby to her son
Robert Clere, and all her goods at Horning Hall, in Caister, to her
son Edmund. --_See_ Blomefield’s _Norfolk_, iv. 35, vi. 392, xi.
210.]
[Footnote 30.1: [From Paston MSS., B.M.]]
[[whose name occurs in No. 13
_corrected by editor from “No. 8”_]]
16