Part 29
[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.]