Part 24

[Sidenote: The Duke of Suffolk lays claim to Drayton.] The first indications of it appear in a letter of Margaret Paston to her husband, written on the 8th April 1465, by which we find that the Duke of Suffolk had now set up a claim to Sir John Fastolf’s manor of Drayton, about four miles north-west of Norwich. Margaret had also heard that he had bought up the rights of a person named Brytyeff or Bryghtylhed, who laid claim to the neighbouring manor of Hellesdon, a little nearer the city, and that he intended to take possession after Easter.[218-2] The claim appears to have been very ill founded, and the tenants, all but one or two, were favourable to Paston.[218-3] Nevertheless Philip Lipyate, the duke’s bailiff, began taking distresses, and carried off the horses of one Dorlet as he was about to yoke them to his plough. But Margaret Paston, who had been staying at Caister, after waiting till her son Sir John could come to her, and leaving him to keep the castle, went over to Hellesdon to collect the rents for her husband, and put a stop, if possible, to the proceedings of the duke’s officers. She soon began to feel that there was more need of a captain like her son Sir John at Hellesdon than at Caister. One single tenant named Piers Warin gave her servants a little trouble, and they took from him two mares as security for the rent. Warin made his complaint to Philip Lipyate and the duke’s bailiff of Cossey, who came with a body of eightscore men in armour, and took away the plough-horses of the parson and another tenant, intimating that the beasts should not be restored unless their owners would appear and give answer to certain matters at Drayton on the Tuesday following. The duke’s men further threatened that if Paston’s servants ventured to take any further distresses in Drayton, even if it were but of the value of a hen, they would take the value of an ox in Hellesdon.[219-1]

[Footnote 218-2: No. 578.]

[Footnote 218-3: Nos. 579, 584.]

[Footnote 219-1: Nos. 579, 581.]

John Paston, though not at this time in confinement, seems to have been unable to leave London. But it was impossible that he could underestimate the danger in which his property stood from the pretensions of such a formidable neighbour as the Duke of Suffolk. The letters written to him at this period by his wife are annotated all down the margin with very brief rough jottings in his own handwriting, for the most part only calling attention to the subjects touched upon in the letter, but occasionally indicating what he was about to say in his reply. He expressed, indeed, no great respect for the big threats of Suffolk’s officers about taking the value of an ox for that of a hen, which he characterised in the margin by the simple monosyllable ‘crack’; but he noted, in the brief words ‘Periculum Heylesdon,’ the fact that there was real cause for anxiety lest the duke, who had already occupied Drayton, should drive him out of Hellesdon as well.[219-2]

[Footnote 219-2: No. 581.]

The Bishop of Norwich had been appealed to, as chief justice of the peace for the county, to use his influence with the Duke of Suffolk’s officers, and especially with Philip Lipyate, who was a priest, and subject to his jurisdiction, to bring the dispute to a peaceful settlement. But John Paston probably trusted more to the fact that he had men of his own ready to repel force by force. The parishes of Hellesdon and Drayton are situated on the northern bank of the river Wensum, partly on a low ridge which slopes downward towards the stream. Opposite to Drayton, on the other side of the river, lay the Duke of Suffolk’s mansion of Cossey,[219-3] from which, at any time that was thought advisable, an armed band could be sent along with a distraining officer to assert the duke’s alleged rights over the tenants. It was really a case of two hostile camps keeping watch upon each other, and each of them ready to take advantage of the other’s weakness. Not that either of them pretended to be above the law, but the duke and Paston each claimed to be lawful owner of the lordships of Hellesdon and Drayton, and, until any legal settlement could be come to, each was well aware of the importance of maintaining his claim by corresponding acts. If the duke could levy a distress, so could Paston. His officers made an inroad, undeterred by the menaces of the duke’s men, into Drayton, took 77 neat, and brought them home to Hellesdon. The tenants followed, petitioning to have their cattle back again, but Margaret Paston told them they must first pay such duties as they owed to her husband, or find security to pay at such a day as she could agree to. An officer of the duke named Harleston was at Norwich, and told them that if they either paid or gave such surety they should be put out of their holdings. Harleston had a conference with Margaret Paston in the evening, but she refused to redeliver the distress on any other terms than those she had already intimated. This was on a Saturday evening. On Monday following a replevin was served upon her in the name of Harleston, who was under-steward of the duchy of Lancaster, on the ground that the cattle had been taken within the fee of the duchy. Margaret refused to deliver them until she had ascertained whether this was actually the case, and on inquiry she found that it was not so. The beasts were accordingly still detained in Hellesdon pin-fold, and Pynchemore, the officer who had brought the replevin, was obliged to return to his master. But in the afternoon he came again with a replevin under the seal of the sheriff of Norfolk, which it was impossible lawfully to disobey. So the beasts were at last taken out of the pin-fold and redelivered to the tenants.[220-1]

[Footnote 219-3: Now commonly spelt Costessey, but pronounced, as it is usually spelt in the Paston Letters, Cossey.]

[Footnote 220-1: No. 583.]

This sort of quasi-legal warfare continued for weeks and for months. At one time there would be a lull; but again it was reported that the duke’s men were busier. The duke himself was coming to Cossey, and his servants boasted openly that he would have Drayton in peace and then Hellesdon.[221-1] And not very long after the duke did come to Norfolk, raising people on his way both in Norfolk and Suffolk,--for an attack, as every one knew, on Paston’s stronghold at Hellesdon, which was now placed in the keeping of his son Sir John.[221-2]

[Footnote 221-1: No. 585.]

[Footnote 221-2: No. 592.]

[Sidenote: Attempt of the duke’s men on Hellesdon.] On Monday the 8th July, Philip Lipyate and the bailiff of Cossey, with about 300 men, came before Hellesdon, but, finding Sir John Paston quite prepared for them, professed they had no intention of attempting to force an entry. For Sir John had a garrison of 60 men within the place, and such a quantity of guns and ordnance that the assailants would certainly have had the worst of it. Lipyate and the bailiff, however, informed Sir John that they had a warrant to attach John Daubeney, Wykes, Richard Calle, and some others. Sir John replied that they were not within, and if they had been he would not have delivered them. Afterwards it was mutually agreed that the Duke of Suffolk should dismiss his men and Sir John Paston should do the same. But this only transferred the scene of action to Norwich, where Richard Calle was attacked by twelve men in the streets and only rescued by the sheriff; nor did he escape without the pleasant assurance that if he were caught another time he would be put to death, so that he did not dare ride out without an escort. Daubeney and Wykes were in a similar state of apprehension, and to crown all, it was said that there was to be a special commission to inquire of riots, in which the Duke of Suffolk and Yelverton would be commissioners. If so, every man that had taken Paston’s part was pretty sure of being hanged.[221-3]

[Footnote 221-3: No. 593.]

Sir John Paston, however, acquired great credit for having withstood so numerous a force as Lipyate and the bailiff of Cossey had brought against him. It will be readily understood that his position must have been a strong one. He and his mother were then living at a mansion in Hellesdon, which probably stood on comparatively low ground near the river.[222-1] But on the brow of the hill, nearer Drayton, stood a quadrangular fortress of which the ruins still exist, known at this day by the name of Drayton Lodge. This lodge lay within what was then called Hellesdon Warren, and commanded the entrance to the property. From its elevated position it must have been peculiarly difficult to attack. The country around was open heath, and the approach of an enemy could be descried distinctly in the distance. From the mansion below, where he had quartered his garrison of 60 men, he could doubtless bring up with ease at any time as many as seemed necessary for the defence of the lodge;[222-2] while from the battlements of the lodge a heavy fire could be opened on the advancing foe.[222-3]

[Footnote 222-1: At Hellesdon North Hall, the property of Mr. J. H. Gurney, old foundations have been recently discovered, which are in all probability those of John Paston’s house. The place is about 400 yards from Hellesdon Church.]

[Footnote 222-2: One day in the beginning of May as many as sixty men were placed in the lodge itself, and kept there all day. At that time an attack was continually expected, but not more than sixteen or twenty persons could sleep in the building. _See_ No. 581, at p. 139 (vol. iv.).]

[Footnote 222-3: ‘The ruined Lodge at Drayton’ is the subject of an interesting paper by the late Mr. Henry Harrod in the _Norfolk Archæology_, vol. ii. p. 363. There are no remains of battlements now, but most probably they once existed.]

Living within a house that was threatened with siege, Margaret Paston, at this juncture, seems to have taken an active part along with her son in the preparations for defence. Her husband in London writes to her as a commander-in-chief might do to the governor of a besieged fort:--‘In good faith ye acquit you right well and discreetly, and heartily to your worship and mine, and to the shame of your adversaries: and I am well content that ye avowed that ye kept possession at Drayton and so would do.’ But the task imposed upon her had impaired her health; and John Paston, though for some potent reasons he was not able even now to come to her aid, was anxious to give her every comfort and encouragement in his power. ‘Take what may do your ease and spare not,’ he says in the same letter; ‘and in any wise take no thought nor too much labour for these matters, nor set it not so to your heart that ye fare the worse for it. And as for the matter, so they overcome you not with force or boasting, I shall have the manor surelier to me and mine than the duke shall have Cossey, doubt ye not.’ In fact, if it were a question of law, John Paston’s title seems to have been greatly superior to any that could possibly have been advanced by the duke: in proof of which he points out a few facts which he tells his wife she may if she think proper lay before the Bishop of Norwich. The manor of Drayton had belonged to a merchant of London called John Hellesdon, long before any of the De la Poles held land in Norfolk or Suffolk. It had descended to his daughter Alice, and John Paston was able to show his title to her property. On the other hand he traced the pedigree of the Duke of Suffolk from ‘one William Poole of Hull, which was a worshipful man grown by fortune of the world,’ and whose son Michael, the first Earl of Suffolk, had been so created by King Richard II. since Paston’s father was born; and if any of their lineage held the manor of Drayton he would lose £100, if the duke would be bound in as much to prove the contrary. But the duke must not expect him to show his title to one who tried to oust him by violence. On this point John Paston was resolute. ‘Let my lord of Norwich wit that it is not profitable, nor the common weal of gentlemen, that any gentleman should be compelled by an entry of a lord to show his evidence or title to his land, nor I will not begin that example ne thraldom, of gentlemen nor of other. It is good a lord take sad counsel ere he begin any such matter.’[223-1]

[Footnote 223-1: No. 595.]

It might have been supposed that after the duke’s attempt on Hellesdon, nothing but impediments of the most serious kind would have prevented John Paston from going down to Norfolk to take charge of his own interests and relieve his wife’s anxiety. But it appears that he hardly expected to be able to leave London, and in the same letter from which we have just been quoting he desires that if he be not home within three weeks his wife will come to him. In that case she is, before leaving, to put everything under proper rule both at Caister and Hellesdon, ‘if the war hold.’ The state of matters between him and Suffolk was such as could only be spoken of as a state of war, even by plain matter-of-fact John Paston. And if the enemy offered peace his wife was to send him word.

What could have been the obstacle that prevented John Paston leaving London? It appears for one thing that he was at this time called upon to undergo an examination before the spiritual court of Canterbury, in defence of his claim to be Sir John Fastolf’s executor. This alone was, perhaps, sufficient to detain him, for it was a thing on which his most important interests depended. But there is no doubt that additional obstacles were raised up for him expressly by the malice of his enemies; [Sidenote: John Paston imprisoned a third time.] for it could not have been many weeks after his first examination that John Paston again found himself a prisoner in the Fleet, and within the walls of that prison his further depositions were taken.[224-1]

[Footnote 224-1: No. 606.]

It was the malicious ingenuity of Judge Yelverton that had devised the means to inflict upon him this new incarceration. And the means employed were such as to make captivity doubly painful and humiliating. The king’s clandestine marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had taken place in May of the preceding year. At Michaelmas it was openly avowed; and if it displeased, as no doubt it did, Warwick and the old nobility, even from the first, it informed a whole world of time-servers and place-hunters that there was a new avenue to fortune in securing the favour of the Woodvilles. Already Rivers had been created Lord Treasurer and advanced to the dignity of an earldom. Already marriages had been made for the queen’s brothers and sisters, which were evidently provocative of envy, jealousy, and indignation.[224-2] The king’s liberality towards his new relations was unbounded, and sycophants were not wanting to suggest to him how he might gratify their cupidity, sometimes at the expense of others than himself. Sir William Yelverton, accordingly, contrived to whisper in the royal ear that the king might fairly dispose of some fine property in Norfolk and Suffolk; for John Paston, who claimed to be the owner, was come of servile blood, and was really the king’s bondman.[225-1]

[Footnote 224-2: W. Worc. _Annales_, 501, 506.]

[Footnote 225-1: _Itin._ Will. de Worc., 323.]

The reader will remember the curious paper[225-2] in which it is set forth that the grandfather and father of John Paston had held lands in the village of Paston, by servile tenures, and that John Paston himself, without having any manor place, was endeavouring to ‘make himself a lordship there,’ to the prejudice of the duchy of Lancaster. There can be little doubt that this statement was drawn up in the year 1465 and that its author was Judge Yelverton. He had been at this time endeavouring to ingratiate himself with Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, the queen’s brother, and it was in the interest of that nobleman that he made this attempt to asperse the lineage of the Pastons. [Sidenote: Lord Scales seeks to obtain Caister.] For Lord Scales had begun to cast covetous eyes on the magnificent castle at Caister; and if it were but satisfactorily shown that John Paston was disqualified from possessing it, no doubt the king, his brother-in-law, would be only too willing to grant it to himself. The case was already prejudged; Caister and the lordship of Cotton as well were his by anticipation, and some time before Paston was committed to prison it was known that Lord Scales meant to ride down into Norfolk and oust him from his property.[225-3]

[Footnote 225-2: _See_ pp. 28, 29.]

[[pp. 28-29 = letter headed “A remembrance of the worshipful kin and ancestry of Paston”]]

[Footnote 225-3: No. 598. It appears by the city records of Norwich, an extract from which, kindly communicated to me by the Rev. William Hudson, will be found in the Appendix to this Introduction, that Lord Scales arrived in the city ‘a second time’ towards the close of the year 1465--apparently just before Christmas day, for the date was within eighteen days of a document dated 10th January, 5 Edward IV.--for the express purpose of taking possession of all the goods and chattels of John Paston, whom the king had seized as his ‘native.’ This raised an awkward question about the privileges of the city, in which John Paston possessed a house. But the civic authorities found a way out of the difficulty, and agreed that Lord Scales should be allowed to enter by the act of John Paston’s feoffees; for it was understood that certain aldermen and common council men were co-feoffees along with him, of the messuage which he held. Thus the city’s liberty was theoretically preserved without offence to the higher powers.]

Although John Paston was thus unable to go home, as he wished to do, neither was Margaret Paston able for some time to go up and see him in London, as he had desired her. Wykes, who had promised to keep possession of the place at Hellesdon in her absence, did not go down into Norfolk so soon as he had intended, but remained in London taking care of Paston’s interests in another fashion in conferences with Nevill, Archbishop of York, at that time Lord Chancellor. Perhaps already the influence of Archbishop Nevill, like that of his brother the Earl of Warwick, had begun to decline, and Wykes was really wasting his labour in complaining to his lordship of the riotous attempt made by the Duke of Suffolk’s men at Hellesdon. There was but one pretext on which the outrage could be justified,--a matter concerning the payment of 100 marks, but the money had been paid long ago. His lordship, however, durst swear the Duchess of Suffolk had no knowledge of it; and with that he left town, promising an answer when he came back next Tuesday.[226-1]

[Footnote 226-1: No. 598.]

But Margaret Paston, though she could not yet come up to London, did not spend the time at home unprofitably. The judges had come down to Norwich on their circuit, when Margaret endeavoured to secure the advantage she had already gained in keeping possession at Drayton by getting a manor court held there in her husband’s name. But to do this she required the services of one or more faithful dependants who did not mind incurring a little personal risk in the interest of John Paston. Not many, certainly, were disposed to undertake the task. John Paston had written to his wife to have a body of men to escort the officer that would keep the court for him. But upon consultation it was thought better to keep all the men they could in reserve, as the duke’s officers had no less than 500 men ready to take advantage of the opportunity to force an entry into Hellesdon.

[Sidenote: Attempt of Margaret Paston to hold a court at Drayton.] Thomas Bond and an attached and confidential priest named Sir James Gloys were adventurous enough to go to Drayton alone for the purpose of holding a court on Lammas Day. They found, as might have been expected, that officers of the Duke of Suffolk were there before them. Harleston, along with Philip Lipyate, the parson of Salle, and William Yelverton, a grandson of the judge, who was to sit as steward, were in the courtyard of the manor, prepared to hold the court in the Duke of Suffolk’s name. They were accompanied by about sixty persons or more, besides the tenants of Drayton, some having rusty poleaxes and bills to enforce respect for the duke’s authority. In the face of this array, however, Bond and Gloys announced that they came to keep the court in the name of John Paston; on which the former was immediately delivered into the custody of William Ducket, a new bailiff of Drayton appointed by the duke, and was carried off to Cossey, his arms bound behind him with whipcord like a thief. But Margaret Paston spoke with the judges next morning before they went to the shirehouse, in presence of the bailiff of Cossey and the whole of the duke’s council; and the judges calling the bailiff before them, gave him a severe reproof, and sent the sheriff to see what company had been mustered at Drayton. The sheriff rode first to Hellesdon, and expressed himself satisfied with the demeanour of Paston’s men there. When he came to Drayton, the bands of Suffolk’s retainers had disappeared. He demanded that Thomas Bond should be delivered to him, and was told that he had been sent to the Duke of Suffolk; but he was afterwards delivered to him at Norwich, with a request that he should not be set at liberty without a fine, as he had troubled the king’s leet. The judges, however, on being informed of the real state of the case, commanded him to be set at liberty, and pronounced a very strong censure on the conduct of Suffolk’s officers.[227-1]

[Footnote 227-1: No. 599.]

As for the manors of Caister and Cotton, it does not appear that Lord Scales ever carried out his intention so far as the latter was concerned; nor had he taken possession even of the former some time after John Paston was committed to the Fleet. That occurrence must have taken place about the middle of the month of August,[227-2] and towards the end of September we have evidence that Sir John Paston was in Caister Castle keeping possession for his father.[227-3] But the Paston family had been warned of the danger, and we may be well assured that they did not neglect the warning in either case. Indeed, the question how to make matters secure at Caister seems to have been the principal difficulty that caused Margaret to delay her journey up to London. As to Cotton, we shall see ere long that very effectual means were taken to secure possession there.