Part 22

The escheator of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk was Richard Southwell, a friend of John Paston’s, and if the writs of _diem clausit extremum_ had been issued at once, the latter doubtless hoped that the rights of Fastolf’s trustees would have been immediately acknowledged by two different juries, the one in Norfolk and the other in Suffolk. But the efforts of William Paston were not crowned with such speedy success as he and his brother could have wished. Already, on the 10th November, writs of _diem clausit extremum_ had issued without his applying for them, but they were only for the counties of Surrey and Essex, in which John Paston was not interested. Special commissions to the same effect for the counties of Wilts and Yorkshire were procured from the king at Coventry eighteen days later. [Sidenote: A.D. 1460.] But for Norfolk and Suffolk the writs were not issued till the 13th May in the following year.[200-1] The delay was most probably owing to representations on the part of Paston’s enemies; and to the same cause we may attribute the fact that even after the writ was issued it was not acted on for five months longer, so that nearly a whole year had elapsed since Sir John Fastolf’s death before the Norfolk and Suffolk inquisitions were held. But at length the opposition was overcome. ‘A great day’ was holden at Acle before the under-sheriff and the under-escheator, in presence of some of the most substantial gentlemen of Norfolk; ‘and the matter,’ wrote Margaret Paston to her husband, ‘is well sped after your intent.’[200-2]

[Footnote 200-1: _Inquis. post mortem_, 38 and 39 Henry VI., No. 48.]

[Footnote 200-2: No. 423.]

Already John Paston’s increased importance in his native county had come to be acknowledged. He was at this time knight of the shire for Norfolk. His wife was living at Hellesdon, on the Fastolf estates, two miles out of Norwich; and the mayor and mayoress paid her the compliment of sending thither their dinners and inviting themselves out to dine with her. The mills at Hellesdon and the lands at Caister were let by his agents, and apparently, in spite of his opponents, whoever they may have been, he had succeeded in obtaining quiet possession of all Fastolf’s lands in Norfolk.[200-3] Equally little resistance seems to have been made to his claims in the county of Suffolk, where an inquisition was taken at Bungay nine days after that which had been taken at Acle. In each county the jury limited themselves to declaring the names of the trustees in whose hands the property remained at Fastolf’s death, and nothing was said about the will. A will, in itself, could convey no title to lands, and the juries had nothing to do with it. But in both counties John Paston, either as executor or as one of the trustees, was allowed to assume at this time the entire control of the property.

[Footnote 200-3: _Ibid._]

But now came the renewal of civil war--the battle of Wakefield, soon avenged by the proclamation of Edward IV. as king, and the bloody victory of Towton. [Sidenote: A.D. 1461.] The kingdom was convulsed from end to end, and there was little chance for doubtful titles and disputed claims, except when supported by the strong arm of power. Long before the time at which we have now arrived, [Sidenote: The Duke of Norfolk.] the Duke of Norfolk had set covetous eyes upon Sir John Fastolf’s magnificent new castle of Caister, and he had spread a report in the country that the owner had given it to him.[201-1] But it would seem that Sir John himself had never entertained such an idea, and if ever in conversation with the duke he had let fall something that might have encouraged the hope, he had taken special care before his death to show that it was unfounded. For the duke had visited Sir John in September before he died, and had proposed to purchase of him the reversion of the manor; but Sir John distinctly told him he had given it to Paston for the purpose of founding a college.[201-2] Indeed, it is perfectly clear that for years he had intended it to be turned into an abode of priests, and not made a residence for any such powerful nobleman. And this intention, which is apparent enough in several of the letters written during his lifetime, was expressed in the most unambiguous language in the document which John Paston declared to have been his last will.[201-3] Indeed, if we believe John Paston’s testimony, interested though it no doubt may be, it was chiefly from a fear that his executors might sell the place, not, indeed, to the duke, of whom he seems at that time to have ceased to entertain any apprehension, but to the Viscount Beaumont, the Duke of Somerset, or the Earl of Warwick, that the old knight determined to make Paston his principal executor.[201-4] So, ‘to avoid that no lord, nor great estate, should inhabit in time coming within the great mansion,’ he made a covenant with Paston by which the latter was to have in fee-simple all his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, subject only to the payment of a sum of 4000 marks and the duty of establishing in Caister Castle ‘a college of seven religious men, monks, or secular priests, and seven poor folk, to pray for his soul and the souls of his wife, his father, and mother, and other that he was behold to, in perpetuity.’ And if in endeavouring to carry out this object John Paston was interfered with by any one attempting to obtain possession of the place by force, he was enjoined to ‘pull down the said mansion, and every stone and stick thereof, and do found three of the said seven priests or monks at St. Benet’s, and one at Yarmouth, one at Attleborough, and one at St. Olave’s Church at Southwark.’[202-1]

[Footnote 201-1: No. 222 (in vol. ii.).]

[Footnote 201-2: No. 543.]

[Footnote 201-3: No. 385.]

[Footnote 201-4: No. 390.]

[Footnote 202-1: No. 386.]

Yet, notwithstanding all this, the Duke of Norfolk, within three months after the accession of Edward IV., and little more than a year and a half after Sir John Fastolf’s death,[202-2] had certainly taken possession of the great mansion of Caister. The confusion of the time undoubtedly favoured the act, and redress might well have been a troublesome matter, as the Duke of Norfolk was a nobleman whom perhaps even the king would not care to displease. But Edward was a king who, with many faults, was most honourably anxious from the first to do justice even to the meanest of his subjects.[202-3] Paston repaired to the royal presence, and obtained letters from the king to the duke, which his servant, Richard Calle, conveyed to Framlingham. They were delivered to his lordship at the lodge of his demesne, but the messenger was not admitted to his presence. The duke, however, wrote an answer to the king, promising shortly to repair to Court, when he offered to prove that some of the statements in Paston’s letters were erroneous, and that he himself was the person who had the best claim to the manor. It appears there was one other claimant besides, viz. Thomas Fastolf of Cowhaw; but he, not expecting to make his title good against Paston himself, and having need of a powerful friend in some other matters, gave up his claim to the duke, and brought documents to justify the latter in taking possession by the right derived from him.[203-1]

[Footnote 202-2: He had probably done so before by authority of Henry VI., for in the beginning of 1460 Friar Brackley writes: ‘A man of my Lord Norfolk told me here he came from London, and there he had commonly voiced that the Duke of Norfolk should, by the king’s commandment, keep his Easter at Caister for safeguard of the country against Warwick and other such of the king’s enemies.’--Vol. iii. p. 212.]

[[iii. 212 = second-to-last paragraph of letter 403]]

[Footnote 202-3: Edward’s reply to another suit preferred by John Paston this same year is an excellent example of this spirit of impartiality. John Paston’s eldest son writes to his father as follows, touching an interview he had had with the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Essex: ‘And now of late I, remembering him of the same matter, inquired if he had moved the king’s highness therein. And he answered me that he had felt and moved the king therein, rehearsing the king’s answer therein: how that when he had moved the king in the said manor of Dedham, beseeching him to be your good lord therein, considering the service and true part that ye have done and ought to him, and in especial the right that ye have thereto, he said he would be your good lord therein, as he would to the poorest man in England. He would hold with you in your right; and as for favour, he will not be understood that he shall show favour more to one man than to another, not to one in England.’]

[Footnote 203-1: Nos. 458, 465.]

In the end, however, Paston’s appeal to the king must have been successful. Caister was certainly restored to him, and in all probability it was restored within a month or two before the Duke of Norfolk’s death, which occurred that same year, in the beginning of November.[203-2]

[Footnote 203-2: This perhaps may be a reason for supposing Letter 630 to have been written in the year 1461, notwithstanding the difficulty mentioned in the preliminary note.]

_The Beginning of Edward IV.’s Reign_

But notwithstanding the even-handed justice of the king, the times were wild and unsettled. The revolution by which Henry was deposed was not a thing calculated to bring sudden peace and quiet. [Sidenote: Troubled times.] On the Patent Rolls of this year we have innumerable evidences of the state of alarm, confusion, and tumult which prevailed continuously for at least a twelvemonth over the whole kingdom. Commissions of array,[203-3] commissions to put down insurrections,[203-4] and to punish outrages,[203-5] to arrest seditious persons,[203-6] to resist the king’s enemies at sea,[203-7] or to prepare beacons on the coast to give warning of apprehended invasion,[204-1] are continually met with. Our Letters also tell the same tale. Margaret Paston writes at one time about ‘Will. Lynys that was with Master Fastolf, and such other as he is with him,’ who went about the country accusing men of being Scots, and only letting them go on payment of considerable bribes. ‘He took last week the parson of Freton, and but for my cousin Jerningham the younger, there would have led him forth with him; and he told them plainly, if they made any such doings there, unless they had the letter to show for them, they should have laid on[204-2] on their bodies.’[204-3] A still more flagrant instance of lawlessness had occurred just before, of which our old acquaintance Thomas Denys was the victim. [Sidenote: Thomas Denys.] He was at this time coroner of Norfolk. If not in Edward IV.’s service before he was king, he became a member of the royal household immediately afterwards, and accompanied the new king to York before his coronation. It appears that he had some complaints to make to the king of one Twyer, in Norfolk, and also of Sir John Howard, the sheriff of the county, a relation of the Duke of Norfolk, of whom we have already spoken,[204-4] and shall have more to say presently. But scarcely had he returned home when he was pulled out of his house by the parson of Snoring, a friend of Twyer’s, who accused him of having procured indictments against Twyer and himself, and carried him off, we are not told whither.[204-5] All we know is that in the beginning of July Thomas Denys was murdered, and that there were various reports as to who had instigated the crime. William Lomner believed that some men of the Duke of Norfolk’s council were implicated. Sir Miles Stapleton factiously endeavoured to lay the blame on John Berney of Witchingham. The parson of Snoring was put in the stocks, with four of his associates, but what further punishment they underwent does not appear. John Paston was entreated to use his influence to get them tried by a special commission.[204-6] The most precise account of the crime is found in the records of the King’s Bench, which give us the date and place where it occurred. One Robert Grey of Warham, labourer, was indicted for having, along with others, attacked Denys on Thursday the 2nd July, and dragged him from his house at Gately to Egmere, not far from Walsingham, where they killed him on the Saturday following.

[Footnote 203-3: _Patent Roll_, 1 Edward IV. p. 1, m. 18 _d._, dated March 16; and m. 19 _d._, dated May 10; p. 4, m. 22 _d._, February 24 and March 1 (1462); also p. 2, m. 12 _d._ (against the Scots), Nov. 13.]

[Footnote 203-4: _Ib._ p. 1, m. 27 _d._, March 28, and p. 3, m. 3 _d._, July 8.]

[Footnote 203-5: _Ib._ p. 2, m. 10 _d._, Aug. 17.]

[Footnote 203-6: _Ib._ p. 2, m. 12 _d._, Nov. 4; and p. 4, m. 22 _d._, Feb. 28 (1462).]

[Footnote 203-7: _Ib._ p. 3, m. 3 _d._, July 12.]

[Footnote 204-1: _Ib._ p. 3, m. 3 _d._ and 27 _d._, Aug. 6 and 12; also m. 8 _d._, Jan. 29.]

[Footnote 204-2: Such, I think, must be the meaning intended. The expression in the original is, ‘they shuld aley (_qu._ should a’ laid?) on her bodyys.’]

[Footnote 204-3: No. 469.]

[Footnote 204-4: _See_ p. 164.]

[Footnote 204-5: Nos. 455, 463.]

[Footnote 204-6: No. 472.]

Elizabeth Poynings, too, John Paston’s sister, has some experience of the bitterness of the times. She has by this time become a widow, having lost her husband at the second battle of St. Albans, and her lands are occupied by the Countess of Northumberland and Robert Fenys, in disregard of her rights.[205-1] In times of revolution and tumult the weak must go to the wall.

[Footnote 205-1: No. 461.]

Besides these illustrations of the social condition of the times, our Letters still abound with information not to be found elsewhere as to the chief political events. [Sidenote: Political events.] Here we have the record of the battle of Towton, of those who fell, and of those who were wounded;[205-2] after which we find Henry VI. shut up in Yorkshire, in a place the name of which is doubtful.[205-3] Then we hear of the beheading of the Earl of Wiltshire, and of his head being placed on London Bridge.[205-4] Then come matters relating to the coronation of Edward IV., which was delayed on account of the siege of Carlisle.[205-5] On this occasion, it seems, John Paston was to have received the honour of knighthood,[205-6] which he doubtless declined, having already compounded with Henry VI. not to be made a knight.[205-7] Two years later, however, his eldest son was made one, very probably as a substitute for himself, apparently just at the time when he attained the age of twenty-one.[205-8] To the father such an honour would evidently have been a burden rather than a satisfaction.

[Footnote 205-2: No. 450.]

[Footnote 205-3: No. 451.]

[Footnote 205-4: Nos. 451, 452.]

[Footnote 205-5: No. 457.]

[Footnote 205-6: Nos. 457, 460.]

[Footnote 205-7: No. 373.]

[Footnote 205-8: Sir John Paston must have been born in 1442. At the inquisition taken in October 1466, after his father’s death, he was found to be twenty-four years old and more.]

But on the whole John Paston stood well with his countrymen, and the change of kings was an event from which he had no reason to anticipate bad consequences to himself. Since the death of Sir John Fastolf he had become a man of much greater importance, and he had been returned to Parliament in the last year of Henry VI. as a supporter of the Duke of York. He was now, in the first year of Edward IV., returned to Parliament again. [Sidenote: John Paston returned to Parliament.] He was apparently in good favour with the king, and had been since the accession of Edward for a short time resident in his household.[206-1] The king also obtained from him the redelivery of the jewels pawned by his father, the Duke of York, to Sir John Fastolf,[206-2] in consideration of which he granted John Paston an assignment of 700 marks[206-3] on the fee-farm of the city of Norwich, and on the issues of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. But his election as knight of the shire for Norfolk did not pass altogether without question. Paston’s wife’s cousin, John Berney of Witchingham, whom Sir Miles Stapleton accused of being implicated in the murder of Denys, had taken a leading

## part in the proceedings, and Stapleton alleged that he was meditating

further outrages. The people had appeared ‘jacked and saletted’ at the shire house, the under-sheriff was put in suspicion of Berney, and the sheriff, Sir John Howard, conceived it would be necessary to have a new election. To this neither Berney nor Paston very much objected. Berney was willing to give every assurance that he would do the under-sheriff no bodily hurt, but he considered his conduct that at the election had not been creditable, and he desired that he would either intimate to the people that the election should stand, or procure a new writ, and publicly announce the day on which another election should be holden. As for Paston, he was perfectly satisfied, provided that he were not put to further expense, as he believed it was the general desire of the people to ratify what they had done; he only wished that it might be on a holiday, so as not to interfere with the people’s work. The matter was discussed before the king himself, John Paston and the under-sheriff being present, each to answer for his part in the affair, and a writ was finally granted for a new election on St. Laurence’s Day. But from what he had seen of the conduct of the under-sheriff, Paston seems to have been afraid the day might yet be changed, to his prejudice; so, in a personal interview with that functionary, he got him to place the writ in his hands, and sent it down to his wife to keep until the new day of election came round, charging her to see that the under-sheriff had it again that day.[207-1]

[Footnote 206-1: No. 459.]

[Footnote 206-2: No. 473. Compare No. 223. It is striking that, notwithstanding his large possessions in land, the Duke of York should have been unable for eight years to redeem these jewels.]

[Footnote 206-3: This was less than the sum (£487) for which the jewels were pledged, and yet it was the whole compensation granted both for the jewels and for a bond of 100 marks given by the Duke of York to Fastolf, which Paston also surrendered.]

[Footnote 207-1: Nos. 466-8, 471, 475.]

[[but he considered his conduct that at the election _text unchanged: 1st edition has same word order_]]

His suspicions of unfair dealing were probably too well founded. At all events, the new election did not pass over peacefully any more than the previous one, perhaps not so much so. We do not, indeed, hear any more of John Berney and Sir Miles Stapleton; [Sidenote: John Paston and Sir John Howard.] but the sheriff, Sir John Howard, had a violent altercation with Paston himself in the shire house, and one of Howard’s men struck Paston twice with a dagger, so that he would have been severely wounded but for the protection of a good doublet that he wore on the occasion.[207-2]

[Footnote 207-2: Nos. 477, 478.]

The occurrence was an awkward one. The feuds in the county of Norfolk had already occupied the king’s attention once, and that which it was supposed would have been a settlement had proved no settlement at all. Perhaps Edward had been too lenient towards old offenders; for Sir Miles Stapleton was but an ally of Sir Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon, of whom we have heard so much in the days of Henry VI., and these two personages were almost as influential as ever. Some time before the king’s coronation, they had received a royal pardon, on the strength of which, as we learn by a letter at that time, they intended going up to London with the Duchess of Suffolk to be present at the ceremony.[207-3] And very soon afterwards we have a renewal of the old complaints that ‘the world was right wild, and had been sithence Heydon’s safeguard was proclaimed at Walsingham.’[207-4] But whoever was in fault, it was a serious thing for John Paston--who by this time hoped that he was in favour with the king, and had actually got his eldest son introduced into the king’s household[208-1]--that royal influence itself could not still the angry feelings that had arisen about his election. The dispute must now once more come before the king, and his adversary, in consequence of his relation to the Duke of Norfolk, was doubtless a man of considerable influence. Paston himself, it is true, was in the position of the injured party, but he forbore to complain. The subject, however, was brought by others under the notice of the king, who commanded both Paston and Howard to appear before him, and was even incensed at the former for delaying to obey his summons. On the 11th of October the king said to one of John Paston’s friends: ‘We have sent two privy seals to Paston by two yeomen of our chamber, and he disobeyeth them; but we will send him another to-morrow, and, by God’s mercy, if he come not then, he shall die for it. We will make all other men beware by him how they shall disobey our writing. A servant of ours hath made a complaint of him. I cannot think that he hath informed us all truly. Yet not for that we will not suffer him to disobey our writing; but sithence he disobeyeth our writing, we may believe the better his guiding is as we be informed.’[208-2]

[Footnote 207-3: No. 458.]

[Footnote 207-4: No. 465.]

[Footnote 208-1: Nos. 477, 478.]

[Footnote 208-2: No. 484.]

[[Footnote 208-1: Nos. 477, 478. _text reads “No.”_]]

These terrible words were reported to John Paston by his brother Clement, then in London, who urged him to come up from Norfolk in all possible haste, and to be sure that he had some very weighty excuse for having neglected the previous messages. But besides great despatch in coming, and a very weighty excuse, one thing more was very necessary to be attended to, and this further admonition was added: ‘Also, if ye do well, come right strong; for Howard’s wife made her boast that if any of her husband’s men might come to you, there should go no penny for your life, and Howard hath with the king a great fellowship.’[208-3]

[Footnote 208-3: _Ibid._]