Chapter XV: Letter 97: to a much earlier date than that assigned to it by the (6)

[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.]

_Taxation, Private Affairs, and the French War_

The impatience of taxation expressed by John Paston and others may perhaps be interpreted as showing that little was generally known, or at all events believed, of any such serious danger to the kingdom from outward enemies as had been represented to Parliament. Nevertheless, in March 1473, John Paston speaks of ‘a few Frenchmen whirling on the coasts,’ for fear of whom the fishermen did not venture to leave port without safe conducts.[280-4] [Sidenote: Hogan’s prophecies.] A political prophet named Hogan also foretold that some attempt would shortly be made to invade the kingdom or to create trouble within it. But the French ships soon returned home, and Hogan’s words were not greatly esteemed, though he was arrested and sent up to London for uttering them. He had, in fact, prophesied similar things before. Yet there was an impression in some quarters that he might be right on this occasion. He was committed to the Tower, and he desired leave to speak to the king, but Edward declined to give him any occasion for boasting that his warnings had been listened to. Ere long, however, his story was to some extent justified. News came that on Saturday, the 10th April, the Earl of Oxford had been at Dieppe with twelve ships, about to sail for Scotland. A man was examined in London, who gave information that large sums of money had been sent him from England, and that a hundred gentlemen in Norfolk and Suffolk had agreed to assist him if he should attempt a landing. On the 28th May he actually did land at St. Osith’s, in Essex, but hearing that the Earl of Essex with the Lords Dynham and Durasse were coming to oppose him, he returned to his ships and sailed away. His attempt, however, saved Hogan his head, and gained him greater esteem as a prophet; for he had foretold ‘that this trouble should begin in May, and that the king should northwards, and that the Scots should make us work and him battle.’ People began everywhere to buy armour, expecting they knew not what.[281-1]

[Footnote 280-4: No. 828.]

[Footnote 281-1: Nos. 829, 830, 831, 833, 834.]

Sir John Paston, for his part, during his visit to the Burgundian court in the end of January,[281-2] had already ordered a complete suit of armour for himself, together with some horse armour, of Martin Rondelle, the armourer of the Bastard of Burgundy.[281-3] But the demand for armour increased as the year went on. [Sidenote: The Earl of Oxford at St. Michael’s Mount.] The Earl of Oxford again suddenly appeared, this time on the coast of Cornwall, and took possession of St. Michael’s Mount on the last day of September. He was besieged there by Sir Henry Bodrugan, but the place was so strong that, if properly victualled, twenty men could keep it against the world. The earl’s men, however, parleyed with Sir Henry, who by some gross negligence allowed victuals to be conveyed into the Mount. The command of the besieging force was taken from him by the king and given to Richard Fortescue, sheriff of Cornwall.[281-4] At the same time the quarrel between the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester contributed to make people uneasy. The world, as Sir John Paston phrased it, seemed ‘queasy.’ Every man about the king sent for his ‘harness.’ The king himself sent for the Great Seal, which was conveyed to him by Dr. Morton, Master of the Rolls. Some expected that he would make a new Chancellor, some that he would keep the Seal in his own hands as he had done during former commotions.[282-1]

[Footnote 281-2: He was at Ghent on Thursday, 28th January.--No.
826.]

[Footnote 281-3: No. 838.]

[Footnote 281-4: Warkworth’s _Chronicle_, 26-7.]

[Footnote 282-1: No. 841.]

The Earl of Oxford was fast shut up in the Mount. But during November he made a sally, took a gentleman prisoner, and dragged him within. Shortly afterwards, attempting to give more trouble to the besiegers, he was wounded in the face with an arrow.[282-2] But his gallant defence seems to have awakened sympathy in the West Country; for on the 10th December the king found it necessary to issue a proclamation against bearing arms in Devonshire.[282-3] However, after keeping possession of the place for four months and a half, he felt himself compelled to surrender, not by lack of victuals, but for want of reliance on his own men, to whom the king had offered pardons and rewards for deserting him. The earl himself was constrained to sue for pardon of his own life, and yielded himself a prisoner on the 15th February 1474.[282-4]

[Footnote 282-2: No. 843.]

[Footnote 282-3: _Close Roll_, 13 Edw. IV., m. 8.]

[Footnote 282-4: No. 846. Warkworth, 27.]

[Sidenote: Projected royal expedition against France.] Meanwhile people were looking forward to a royal expedition against France. It was for this the 13,000 archers were to be raised, and it was agreed in Parliament that if the expedition did not take place before Michaelmas 1474, the money collected for the purpose should be repaid. As the time drew near, however, it was found impossible to carry out the project quite so soon. The tenth voted in November 1472 had been assessed by the commissioners before February 1473 over all the kingdom, except five northern shires and one or two separate hundreds and wapentakes. But the total amount of the assessment had only produced £31,410: 14: 1½, a sum which to the modern reader will appear inconceivably small as the proceeds of a ten per cent. income and property tax for nearly the whole of England. It was in fact not sufficient for the purpose intended; even such a tax, strange to say, could not maintain 13,000 archers; and the Commons, as we have already said, voted one-tenth and one-fifteenth additional. This impost, however, was not immediately levied. On the 26th March 1473 a truce was made at Brussels between England and Burgundy on the one side, and France on the other, till the 1st April 1474.[283-1] After it expired Edward announced to his Parliament that he intended as soon as possible to invade France in person; but as it was not likely that he could do so before Michaelmas following, the time at which the money was to be repaid to the taxpayers, in case of the expedition not taking place, was prolonged to St. John Baptist’s Day (24th June) in 1476.[283-2]

[Footnote 283-1: No. 832. It is curious that we have no notice of
this truce in Rymer.]

[Footnote 283-2: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 113-14.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1474.] [Sidenote: Effects of severe taxation.] The taxation pinched every one severely. ‘The king goeth so near us in this country,’ wrote Margaret Paston, ‘both to poor and rich, that I wot not how we shall live but if the world amend.’ The two taxes came so close upon each other that they had to be paid at one and the same time.[283-3] And to those who, like Sir John Paston, were in debt and trying to raise money for other purposes, the hardship was extreme. So many were selling corn and cattle that very little was to be realised in that way. Wheat was but 2s. 4d. a comb, and malt and oats but tenpence. During the year 1473 Sir John had applied in vain to his mother for a loan of £100 to redeem the manor of Sporle, which he had been obliged to mortgage. He had already been driven to sell a portion of the wood, and had thoughts of giving a seven years’ lease of the manor to a neighbour of the name of Cocket, on receiving six years’ rent in ready money.[283-4] But in 1474, having received £100 from the executors of Lyhart, Bishop of Norwich, in satisfaction of some old claim, his mother consented to lend another sum of like amount, which would enable him, with a very little further help from some other quarter, to meet the demands of Townsend the mortgagee.[283-5] In the end, however, a sum of £142: 13: 4 was advanced by his uncle William, and some other moneys by Margaret Paston, partly on the security of her own plate, and partly on that of Sir John Paston’s lands in the hundred of Flegg.[283-6]

[Footnote 283-3: No. 871. ‘William Pecock shall send you a bill
what he hath paid for you for two tasks (_taxes_) at this time.’
Margaret Paston to Sir John, 23rd May 1475.]

[Footnote 283-4: Nos. 828, 831, 842, 865.]

[Footnote 283-5: No. 856.]

[Footnote 283-6: No. 865.]

[Sidenote: Arrangement with Bishop Waynflete.] About the same time Sir John came to an understanding with Bishop Waynflete about the lands of Sir John Fastolf; [Sidenote: The college at Caister abandoned.] and the bishop having obtained a dispensation from the Pope enabling him to apply the endowments of Fastolf’s intended college at Caister to the support of Magdalen College, Oxford, a division was made of the Norfolk lands between him and Paston. Sir John was allowed to enjoy Caister and the lands in Flegg, if he could recover them from the Duke of Norfolk, with the manor of Hellesdon, Tolthorpe, and certain tenements in Norwich and Earlham; but he gave up Drayton to the bishop. And so terminated one long-standing controversy.[284-1]

[Footnote 284-1: Nos. 834, 859.]

[Sidenote: Anne Paston engaged to William Yelverton.] An event in the family now claims our notice, although the allusions to it are but slight, and the manner in which it is referred to is quite in keeping with that strange absence of domestic feeling which is so painfully characteristic of the times. Anne Paston, Sir John’s sister, had come to a marriageable age; and her mother disposed of her hand to William Yelverton, a grandson of the judge, although she had an offer from one of the family of Bedingfield.[284-2] The engagement had lasted at least a year and a half, when Sir John Paston in London heard news that she had been exceedingly unwell; on which he quietly remarks that he had imagined she was already married. It seems scarcely possible to attribute this ignorance to any unusual detention of letters between Norwich and London; so that we are almost driven to conclude that his sister’s marriage was an event of which Sir John did not expect to receive any very special intimation. The news even of her sickness, I suspect from the manner in which he refers to it, was conveyed to him not by letters from home, but by Yelverton, her intended husband, who had come up to London. Nor must it be supposed that Yelverton himself was deeply concerned about her state of health; for it was certainly not with a lover’s anxiety that he communicated the intelligence to Sir John. In fact the marriage, so far from being a thing already accomplished, as Sir John supposed, was a matter that still remained uncertain. ‘As for Yelverton,’ writes Sir John himself, ‘he said but late that he would have her if she had her money, and else not; wherefore me thinketh that they be not very sure.’ Still the old song of ‘Property, property,’ like Tennyson’s ‘Northern Farmer.’ And how very quietly this cold-hearted brother takes the news that the marriage which he thought already accomplished might very likely never take place at all! ‘But among all other things,’ he adds, ‘I pray you beware that the old love of Pampyng renew not.’ What, another sister ready to marry a servant of the family? If she could not have Yelverton, at least let her be preserved from that at all hazards.[285-1]

[Footnote 284-2: No. 804.]

[Footnote 285-1: Nos. 842, 843.]

[Sidenote: Married to him.] Such was the state of matters in November 1473. And it seems by the course of events that Pampyng was not allowed to follow the example of Richard Calle. Anne Paston remained unmarried for about three and a half years longer, and the family, despairing of Yelverton, sought to match her somewhere else;[285-2] but between March and June of the year 1477, the marriage with Yelverton actually took place.[285-3] Of the married life of this couple we have in the Paston Letters no notices whatever; but one incident that occurred in it we learn from another source. Yelverton brought his bride home to his own house at Caister St. Edmund’s, three miles from Norwich. Some time after their marriage this house was burned down by the carelessness of a servant girl while they were away at the marriage of a daughter of Sir William Calthorpe. The year of the occurrence is not stated, but must, I think, have been 1480, for it happened on a Tuesday night, the 18th of January, the eve of St. Wolstan’s Day.[285-4] Now the 18th of January did not fall on a Tuesday during their married life in any earlier year, and it did not so fall again till 1485, when William Worcester, in whose itinerary the event is recorded, was certainly dead.

[Footnote 285-2: No. 885.]