Part 30

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.]