The Paston Letters A.D. 1422-1509 by Various authors

First published: 1787

Type of work: Domestic letters, family papers, and legal documents

Principal Personages:

• William Paston, a Norfolk lawyer and landowner
• Agnes Paston, his wife
• John Paston, his son, also a lawyer
• Margaret Paston, his wife
• Sir John Paston, their eldest son
• John Paston III, his younger brother

Analysis

The turbulent era of the Wars of the Roses forms a background for THE PASTON LETTERS, a remarkable collection of personal correspondence and legal documents belonging to a wealthy family in Norfolk, England. Three generations of Pastons left records of a century when law and justice were often at the mercy of might, when noblemen took advantage of their sovereign’s preoccupation with keeping his throne to besiege prosperous manor houses, and when robbers made the road from Norwich to London a perilous one to travel.

The first of the Pastons to make his mark was William, whose skill as a lawyer and judge in the early years of the fifteenth century enabled him to pass on a substantial estate to his son John, who was also trained in the law. John Paston served as a member of Parliament and, like his father, as a justice of the peace for Norfolk. He added great wealth and greater controversy to his family fortunes when he was named executor and chief heir of a Norfolk nobleman, Sir John Fastolf; he was accused of forging Fastolf’s will, and years after his death his sons were still trying to acquire clear title to Fastolf’s home, Caister Castle.

It is due chiefly to the prudence of John Paston that the documents comprising THE PASTON LETTERS survive. He realized the importance of his own papers and Fastolf’s as legal evidence, and he so thoroughly convinced his family of their value that after he died his wife wrote her eldest son: “Your father . . . in his troubled season set more by his writings and evidence than he did by any of his moveable goods. Remember that if they were had from you, you could never get any more such as they be.”

The Pastons had a remarkable ability to float with the political tide and to recover from adversity. They were not fiercely partisan in the conflicts between York and Lancaster; it was more important to keep the favor of whoever occupied the throne. The two younger Johns served on both sides. Sir John Paston was at the court of Edward IV in 1461, trying to settle questions about Fastolf’s will; in 1468 he and his brother John III attended Princess Margaret, the king’s sister, to Bruges for her wedding to the Duke of Burgundy. Three years later both fought for Henry VI, who was temporarily restored to the throne, but they were quickly pardoned for this service when Edward once again gained power.

The personal fortunes of the Paston family were not much more stable than the throne. They were evicted from their home, Gresham Manor, by Lord Molynes in 1448. While John Paston was imprisoned in 1465 for trespassing on the Fastolf property, his home at Hellesdon was completely destroyed by the Duke of Suffolk’s men. Just four years later the Duke of Norfolk besieged and took Caister Castle, which changed hands twice more before the Pastons finally secured it permanently.

The papers collected as THE PASTON LETTERS run to thousands of pages, many of them complicated legal documents. Norman Davis’ selection of about one hundred of the most interesting personal letters, printed in the Clarendon Medieval and Tudor series, gives the general reader an excellent picture of the Paston family and the major events in their lives.

Half a dozen personalities dominate the correspondence. Agnes Paston, who added considerable personal wealth to her husband William’s estate, was a shrewd business woman and a concerned, though occasionally domineering, mother. Her letters to her son John contain advice, as well as questions, about business matters; she herself took care of many of the problems of overseeing her property. Writing to a younger son, Edmond, a student at Clifford’s Inn in London, counseling him to persevere in his legal studies, she quoted his father’s opinion that “whosoever should dwell at Paston should have need to conne [know how to] defend himself.” On another occasion she commissioned a messenger to see that a third child was making progress in his lessons and that his clothes were in order.

She seems to have taken a philosophical view of life in her later years. She wrote to John: “By my counsel, dispose your self as much as you may to have less to do in the world. Your father said, ’In little business lieth much rest.’ This world is but a thoroughfare and full of woe, and when we depart therefrom, right nought bear with us but our good deeds and ill.”

John Paston, the head of the family during the years when the surviving papers are most extensive, was a competent business man and a conscientious, if stern, husband and father. He was particularly severe with his oldest son, who appeared to be squandering both time and money, and he refused for several years to receive the young man at home. The overall picture of Paston as an unbending man is somewhat softened by a letter written to his wife after she had visited him in prison. He thanks her for the “great cheer” she made for him, though he complains about the cost of her entertainment, and he concludes his epistle with a rather ponderous poem.

The letters of Margaret Paston and those her husband wrote to her should dispel for once and all the concept of the medieval woman as sheltered and helpless. Margaret was expected to oversee the family property with the help of servants while her husband was in London; most of his letters to her were lists of business matters to attend to. He advised her to keep his notes close at hand, checking off his instructions as they were carried out. It was Margaret, not John, who had to withstand the assaults on Gresham and Hellesdon; one of her sons aided in the defense of Caister Castle, but the primary responsibility seems to have been hers. She performed another valuable service for her husband by reporting on local affairs relating to their interests. Public opinion fluctuated for and against the Pastons, and there were times when John’s presence in Norfolk would have put him in grave danger.

Margaret played the traditional mother’s role of mediator between father and son, begging her husband to give Sir John a chance to regain his favor. As she grew older her relations with her children became a little strained. Sir John resented her implications that he was not shouldering his proper responsibility after his father’s death, and John III complained in a letter to his brother: “Many quarrels are picked to get my brother E[dmond] and me out of her house. . . . All that we do is ill done, and all that Sir James [Margaret’s priest] and Peacock doeth is well done.” Margaret was more severe with her daughter Margery, who imprudently fell in love with her family’s bailiff, Richard Calle, and insisted upon marrying him.

After the death of John Paston of the plague in 1406, the responsibility for overseeing the family’s affairs fell upon Sir John and John III. Sir John appears in his letters as a lover of books and a connoisseur of pretty women. He enjoyed jousting more than attending to family business, and his mother several times chided him for not doing his duty. Some brotherly responsibilities appealed to him, however, and he wrote an attractive letter to John III in 1467, thanking him for his care of Caister Castle and giving him advice on the courting of a prospective bride. While marriage was primarily a business affair, sentiment evidently played some part in the arrangements: “You be personable, and peradventure your being once in the sight of the maid, and a little discovering of your good will to her, bending her to keep it secret, and that you can find in your heart, with some comfort of her, to find the means to bring such a matter about as shall be her pleasure and yours, but that this you cannot do without some comfort of her in no wise—and bear yourself as lowly to the mother as you like, but to the maid not too lowly, neither that you be too glad to speed [succeed] nor too sorry to fail.” All this good advice came from one who was a bachelor at his death in 1479.

Even before Sir John died, John III was carrying much of the burden of running the family estates. It was he who, with his mother, vainly tried to protect Caister Castle against the attacks of the Duke of Norfolk. His correspondence with his wife, Margery Brews, shows him to be an affectionate, open person, blessed in a happy marriage. In spite of his differences with his mother over her reliance on her priest, he was a devoted son. Late in her life Margaret asked her daughter-in-law to intercede with her husband to insure that he would provide for his younger brothers and sisters and for family servants after his mother’s death. John III replied in a touching letter that he was grateful for her trust in his wife, but that there was no need for an intermediary between her and him; he was always ready to do what she asked.

Many other individuals make their mark in the reader’s mind: poor Thomas Dennis, who asked for Paston’s help for his wife while he was imprisoned; Richard Calle, whose persuasive love letter to his future wife suggests why the girl was willing to risk her family’s wrath to marry him; Margery Brews, who addressed her letters to her “valentine,” John III, before their wedding.

As a literary monument THE PASTON LETTERS leaves much to be desired. There was no striving for style; the authors either set down exactly what they meant to say or used the technical legal language of the day. Yet few documents in history are more valuable as a source of insights into a century and a way of life.