Part 31

[Sidenote: A.D. 1474.] [Sidenote: Effects of severe taxation.] The taxation pinched every one severely. ‘The king goeth so near us in this country,’ wrote Margaret Paston, ‘both to poor and rich, that I wot not how we shall live but if the world amend.’ The two taxes came so close upon each other that they had to be paid at one and the same time.[283-3] And to those who, like Sir John Paston, were in debt and trying to raise money for other purposes, the hardship was extreme. So many were selling corn and cattle that very little was to be realised in that way. Wheat was but 2s. 4d. a comb, and malt and oats but tenpence. During the year 1473 Sir John had applied in vain to his mother for a loan of £100 to redeem the manor of Sporle, which he had been obliged to mortgage. He had already been driven to sell a portion of the wood, and had thoughts of giving a seven years’ lease of the manor to a neighbour of the name of Cocket, on receiving six years’ rent in ready money.[283-4] But in 1474, having received £100 from the executors of Lyhart, Bishop of Norwich, in satisfaction of some old claim, his mother consented to lend another sum of like amount, which would enable him, with a very little further help from some other quarter, to meet the demands of Townsend the mortgagee.[283-5] In the end, however, a sum of £142: 13: 4 was advanced by his uncle William, and some other moneys by Margaret Paston, partly on the security of her own plate, and partly on that of Sir John Paston’s lands in the hundred of Flegg.[283-6]

[Footnote 283-3: No. 871. ‘William Pecock shall send you a bill what he hath paid for you for two tasks (_taxes_) at this time.’ Margaret Paston to Sir John, 23rd May 1475.]

[Footnote 283-4: Nos. 828, 831, 842, 865.]

[Footnote 283-5: No. 856.]

[Footnote 283-6: No. 865.]

[Sidenote: Arrangement with Bishop Waynflete.] About the same time Sir John came to an understanding with Bishop Waynflete about the lands of Sir John Fastolf; [Sidenote: The college at Caister abandoned.] and the bishop having obtained a dispensation from the Pope enabling him to apply the endowments of Fastolf’s intended college at Caister to the support of Magdalen College, Oxford, a division was made of the Norfolk lands between him and Paston. Sir John was allowed to enjoy Caister and the lands in Flegg, if he could recover them from the Duke of Norfolk, with the manor of Hellesdon, Tolthorpe, and certain tenements in Norwich and Earlham; but he gave up Drayton to the bishop. And so terminated one long-standing controversy.[284-1]

[Footnote 284-1: Nos. 834, 859.]

[Sidenote: Anne Paston engaged to William Yelverton.] An event in the family now claims our notice, although the allusions to it are but slight, and the manner in which it is referred to is quite in keeping with that strange absence of domestic feeling which is so painfully characteristic of the times. Anne Paston, Sir John’s sister, had come to a marriageable age; and her mother disposed of her hand to William Yelverton, a grandson of the judge, although she had an offer from one of the family of Bedingfield.[284-2] The engagement had lasted at least a year and a half, when Sir John Paston in London heard news that she had been exceedingly unwell; on which he quietly remarks that he had imagined she was already married. It seems scarcely possible to attribute this ignorance to any unusual detention of letters between Norwich and London; so that we are almost driven to conclude that his sister’s marriage was an event of which Sir John did not expect to receive any very special intimation. The news even of her sickness, I suspect from the manner in which he refers to it, was conveyed to him not by letters from home, but by Yelverton, her intended husband, who had come up to London. Nor must it be supposed that Yelverton himself was deeply concerned about her state of health; for it was certainly not with a lover’s anxiety that he communicated the intelligence to Sir John. In fact the marriage, so far from being a thing already accomplished, as Sir John supposed, was a matter that still remained uncertain. ‘As for Yelverton,’ writes Sir John himself, ‘he said but late that he would have her if she had her money, and else not; wherefore me thinketh that they be not very sure.’ Still the old song of ‘Property, property,’ like Tennyson’s ‘Northern Farmer.’ And how very quietly this cold-hearted brother takes the news that the marriage which he thought already accomplished might very likely never take place at all! ‘But among all other things,’ he adds, ‘I pray you beware that the old love of Pampyng renew not.’ What, another sister ready to marry a servant of the family? If she could not have Yelverton, at least let her be preserved from that at all hazards.[285-1]

[Footnote 284-2: No. 804.]

[Footnote 285-1: Nos. 842, 843.]

[Sidenote: Married to him.] Such was the state of matters in November 1473. And it seems by the course of events that Pampyng was not allowed to follow the example of Richard Calle. Anne Paston remained unmarried for about three and a half years longer, and the family, despairing of Yelverton, sought to match her somewhere else;[285-2] but between March and June of the year 1477, the marriage with Yelverton actually took place.[285-3] Of the married life of this couple we have in the Paston Letters no notices whatever; but one incident that occurred in it we learn from another source. Yelverton brought his bride home to his own house at Caister St. Edmund’s, three miles from Norwich. Some time after their marriage this house was burned down by the carelessness of a servant girl while they were away at the marriage of a daughter of Sir William Calthorpe. The year of the occurrence is not stated, but must, I think, have been 1480, for it happened on a Tuesday night, the 18th of January, the eve of St. Wolstan’s Day.[285-4] Now the 18th of January did not fall on a Tuesday during their married life in any earlier year, and it did not so fall again till 1485, when William Worcester, in whose itinerary the event is recorded, was certainly dead.

[Footnote 285-2: No. 885.]

[Footnote 285-3: Margaret Paston speaks of ‘my son Yelverton’ in June 1477.--No. 913. But Anne appears to have been unmarried at least as late as the 8th March 1477.--_See_ No. 901.]

[Footnote 285-4: ‘Memorandum, quod manerium. . . . Yelverton generosi in villa de Castre Sancti Edmundi, per iii. miliaria de civitate Norwici, in nocte diei Martis, 18 diei Januarii, videlicet in vigilia Sancti Wolstani, dum modo dictus Yelverton, cum filia Johannis Paston senioris, uxore dicti Yelverton, fuerunt ad nupcias filiæ Willelmi Calthorp militis, fuit per negligenciam parvæ puellæ in lectisternio leti (_qu._ lecti?) per candelam igne consumptum.’ --W. Worc. _Itin._, 269.]

[[per candelam igne consumptum.’ _close quote missing_]]

[Sidenote: John Paston’s marriage prospects.] John Paston, too, was seriously thinking of taking a wife; and, that he might not be disappointed in an object of so much importance, he had two strings to his bow. We must not, however, do him the injustice to suppose that he had absolutely no preference at all for one lady over another; for he writes his full mind upon the subject to his brother Sir John in London, whom he commissions to negotiate for him. If Harry Eberton the draper’s wife were disposed to ‘deal’ with him, such was the ‘fantasy’ he had for Mistress Elizabeth Eberton, her daughter, that he requests his brother not to conclude ‘in the other place,’ even though old Eberton should not be disposed to give her so much dowry as he might have with the second lady. Nevertheless Sir John is also requested to ascertain ‘how the matter at the Black Friars doth; and that ye will see and speak with the thing yourself, and with her father and mother or ye depart; and that it like you to desire John Lee’s wife to send me a bill in all haste possible, how far forth the matter is, and whether it shall be necessary for me to come up to London hastily or not, or else to cast all at the cock.’[286-1] The reader, we trust, is fully impressed with the businesslike character of this diplomacy, and he ought certainly not to be less so with the appropriateness of the language employed. ‘If Mrs. Eberton will _deal_ with me,’ and ‘Speak with _the thing_ yourself.’ How truly does it indicate the fact that young ladies in those days were nothing but mere chattels!

[Footnote 286-1: No. 850.]

It happened, however, that neither the ‘thing’ at the Black Friars, nor the lady for whom he had the somewhat greater ‘fantasy,’ was to be attained. Apparently the former was the daughter of one Stockton, and was married about four months later to a man of the name of Skerne. She herself confidentially told another woman just before her marriage that Master Paston had once come to the place where she was with twenty men, and endeavoured to take her away. As for Eberton’s daughter, the matter quietly dropped, but before it was quite broken off John Paston had engaged his brother’s services as before in a new matter with the Lady Walgrave. Sir John Paston executed his commission here too with the utmost zeal to promote his brother’s suit; but he received little comfort from the lady, and could not prevail upon her to accept John Paston’s ring. Indeed she told him plainly she meant to abide by an answer she had already given to John Paston himself, and desired Sir John no more to intercede for him. Sir John, however, had secured possession of a small article belonging to her, a muskball, and told her he meant to send it to his brother, without creating in her any feeling of displeasure. Thus the lover was still left with some slight gleam of hope--if, at least, he cared to indulge it further; but it does not appear by the correspondence that he thought any more either of Lady Walgrave or of Elizabeth Eberton.[287-1]

[Footnote 287-1: Nos. 858, 860.]

[Sidenote: John Paston’s pilgrimage to Compostella.] We have omitted to notice an incident characteristic of the times, which ought not to pass altogether unrecorded. The year before these love passages took place, John Paston took a voyage to Spain on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella. He sailed, or was about to sail, from Yarmouth early in July, for the letters only allude to the voyage when he was on the eve of departure, and he declared his purpose of coming home again by Calais, where his brother expected to see him within a month after he left.[287-2] It does not appear what prompted this pious expedition, unless it was the prevalence of sickness and epidemics in England. Margaret Paston’s cousin, John Berney of Reedham, died in the beginning of that year;[287-3] and the letter, which first speaks of John Paston’s intended pilgrimage, records also the deaths of the Earl of Wiltshire and the Lord Sudley, and mentions a false rumour of the death of Sir William Stanley.[287-4] The death of Sir James Gloys, Margaret Paston’s priest, occurred about four months later; and the same letter in which that event is mentioned says also that Lady Bourchier (I presume John Paston’s old flame, though she was now the wife of Thomas Howard) had been nearly dead, but had recovered.[287-5] It is evident that the year was one of great mortality, though not perhaps quite so great as that of two years before.

[Footnote 287-2: Nos. 833, 836.]

[Footnote 287-3: No. 825.]

[Footnote 287-4: No. 833.]

[Footnote 287-5: No. 842.]

[Sidenote: Illness of Sir John Paston.] During the autumn of the year following, Sir John Paston had an illness, which probably attacked him in London, and induced him to remove into Norfolk. After a little careful nursing by his mother, his appetite returned, and he felt himself so much stronger that he went back again to London to see to his pecuniary affairs, which required careful nursing as much as he had done himself. His brother Edmund, too, had been ill in London about the same time, but he found him ‘well amended’; which was, perhaps, not altogether the case with himself, for during the winter he had a return of fever, with pain in the eyes and in one of his legs, particularly in the heel.[288-1] Sir John, however, was not the man to make much of a slight indisposition. About Christmas or the New Year he had gone over to Calais; and while his mother was solicitous about the state of his health, he said nothing about it, but wrote that he was going into Flanders, and hoped to get a sight of the siege of Neuss.[288-2] On receipt of his mother’s letter, however, he wrote back that he was perfectly well again, except that the parts affected were still tender.[288-3]

[Footnote 288-1: Nos. 856, 862, 863, 865.]

[Footnote 288-2: No. 861.]

[Footnote 288-3: No. 865.]

[[Footnote 288-3: _missing number “3” added_]]

[Sidenote: Siege of Neuss.] This siege of Neuss--a town on the Rhine near Düsseldorf--was an undertaking of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on which the eyes of the whole world were riveted, and especially of Englishmen. A body of 3000 English took part in the operations.[288-4] But the work was arduous, and in the end proved ineffectual. Not only was the attempt a failure, but it caused the breakdown of other projects besides. The duke had hoped to be master of the place before the truce with France expired in June 1475, and afterwards to join with Edward in an invasion of that country, in which he was bound by treaty to co-operate. But month after month slipped away, and the Burgundian forces were still detained before Neuss, so that he was unable strictly to fulfil his engagement. His cunning enemy Louis saw his advantage in the circumstance, and contrived to cool Edward’s ardour for the war by arts peculiarly his own. He received with the greatest possible politeness the herald sent by Edward to defy him; asked him to a private conference; told him he was sure his master had not entered on the expedition on his own account, but only to satisfy the clamour of his own people and the Duke of Burgundy. He remarked that the duke, who had not even then returned from Neuss, had lost the flower of his army in the siege, and had occasioned the waste of so much time that the summer was already far spent. He then suggested that the herald might lay these and other considerations before his master to induce him to listen to a peace; and he dismissed him with a handsome present.[289-1]

[Footnote 288-4: Comines, Book iv. ch. i.]

[Footnote 289-1: Comines, Book iv. ch. v.]

[Sidenote: Edward IV. and Louis XI.] The herald did what was expected of him, and the result told in two ways. Edward’s vanity was flattered and his cupidity was excited. The King of France, it seemed, stood in awe of him, and did not wish to fight. He was willing to pay handsomely for peace. How much easier, after all, to accept a large yearly tribute in recognition of his sovereignty over France than to vindicate it by conquering the country! Arguments, too, were not wanting in the shape of private pensions offered by Louis to the Lords of the English Council. Not, of course, that English noblemen regarded these gratuities as bribes--Lord Hastings, at least, stood upon his dignity and refused to give a receipt for money which was but a free-will offering on the one part, and involved no obligation on the other.[289-2] Still the money was very acceptable, and there was no doubt a great deal of weight in the arguments addressed by Louis to the herald. Indeed, any one worthy to be called a statesman knew quite well that the idea of conquering France was altogether chimerical.

[Footnote 289-2: _Ibid._ ch. viii.]

This was true; but it would scarcely have been pleasant news to the nation at large, which had been taxed and taxed again for the sake of that same chimerical idea, to have been informed of what was going on in the king’s council-chamber. For not only had a tenth been voted one year, and a tenth and fifteenth another, but the wealthy had been solicited to make still further contributions in a form till now unheard of--contributions called ‘benevolences,’ [Sidenote: Benevolences.] because they were supposed, by a cruel irony, to be offered and given with good will.[290-1] For the nation was quite sufficiently aware--there were many then alive who could testify it from past experience--that it was a difficult and costly business to make any conquests in France; and everybody had been pricked and goaded to furnish what he could towards the equipment of the expedition out of his own resources.

[Footnote 290-1: _Contin. Chron. Croyl._ p. 558. The king, as is well known, went about soliciting contributions personally. During the year 1474, as appears by his Privy Seal dates, he visited Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Coventry, Guildford, Farnham, Kenilworth, Worcester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Cirencester, in different excursions, returning to London in November; after which he again set out, going this time into Suffolk. He was at Bury on the 5th and 7th December, and at West Thorpe, on the northern confines of the county, on the 8th. From this it appears (though the Privy Seal dates do not show it) that he must have gone on to Norwich. After which we find him at Coventry on the 26th, so that he probably spent his Christmas there. That he visited Norwich about that time, and solicited benevolences there, is evident from Letter 863.]

[Sidenote: Peace with France.] Sir John Paston’s brothers, John[290-2] and Edmund,[290-3] and probably another named Clement, of whom we have very little notice in the correspondence, went over in the king’s great army to Calais. Sir John himself had been in Calais for some time before, and his mother commended his younger brothers to his care, urging him to give them the benefit of his advice and experience for their safety, as some of them were but young soldiers.[290-4] Margaret Paston need not have been so anxious if she had been in the secrets of the Cabinet. No blood was drawn in that campaign. The army had crossed the sea in the end of June, and peace was already made in the end of August. Nominally, indeed, it was but a seven years’ truce, but it was intended to be lasting. For a payment of 75,000 crowns in ready money, a pension of 50,000 crowns a year, and an undertaking that the Dauphin should hereafter marry Edward’s eldest daughter, and that Louis should give her a dowry of 60,000 livres a year, the king consented to withdraw his forces and trouble France no longer with his claims.[290-5]

[Footnote 290-2: Nos. 868, 876.]

[Footnote 290-3: No. 873.]

[Footnote 290-4: No. 871.]

[Footnote 290-5: Rymer, xii. 14-21.]

Was it a triumph or a humiliation? an easy victory of Edward over Louis, or of Louis over Edward? The thing might be, and was, looked at from different points of view. The English considered that they had forced France to pay tribute; the French king chuckled at having made Edward his pensioner. Louis, doubtless, had the best of the bargain, for he had managed to sow division between England and Burgundy, and to ward off a very serious danger from France. But common-place, dull-witted Englishmen saw the thing in a different light, and Sir John Paston gave thanks to God when he reported that the king’s ‘voyage’ was finished and his host returned to Calais.[291-1]

[Footnote 291-1: No. 875.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Paston ill again.] Sir John, however, was the worse of his abode in Calais air.[291-2] He had felt himself strong and vigorous when upon the march, but on the return of the army to Calais he was again taken ill in eight days. We may, perhaps, suspect that it was another outbreak of his old disease, and that he never allowed himself sufficient rest to make a perfect recovery. But it may be that from the general neglect of proper sanitary arrangements, pestilence was still rife both in Calais and in England. Six weeks later his brother John at Norwich was also much troubled with sickness.[291-3]

[Footnote 291-2: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 291-3: No. 877.]

_Sir John Paston and Caister_

[Sidenote: William Paston.] When Sir John Paston returned to England, the first thing that he had to consider was how to meet a debt to his uncle William which was due at Michaelmas.[291-4] William Paston is a member of the family of whom we totally lose sight for many years after the very beginning of Edward’s reign; but his pecuniary relations with his nephew about this time cause him again to be spoken of and to take

## part in the correspondence.[291-5] He was, doubtless, a rich man,

although we find him pledging some of his plate to Elizabeth Clere of Ormesby.[291-6] He was one of the trustees of Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford, the mother of the banished earl.[291-7] He had married, probably since the decease of his brother the eldest John Paston, the Lady Anne Beaufort, third daughter of Edmund, Duke of Somerset, a lady of a wealthy family; and he occupied the great mansion called Warwick’s Inn, near Newgate, which had been the town-house of the mighty Kingmaker. His mother, Agnes Paston, lived there along with him.[292-1] Of his family we may mention here that the first child he had by the Lady Anne was a daughter named Mary, born, as we know from an old register, on St. Wolstan’s Day, the 19th January 1470. The second, more than four years later, was also a daughter, and having been born on Tuesday the 19th July 1474, the eve of St. Margaret’s Day,[292-2] was christened Margaret next day at St. Sepulchre’s Church, having for her godfather the Duke of Buckingham, and for her godmothers, Margaret, Duchess of Somerset,[292-3] and Anne, Countess of Beaumont.[292-4] Neither of these two daughters, however, survived him. The second, Margaret, died four months after her birth, at a time when her father was absent from London, and was buried before he came home.[292-5] In the end, the lands of William Paston descended to two other daughters, for he had no sons.

[Footnote 291-4: No. 875.]

[Footnote 291-5: Nos. 854, 855, 856.]

[Footnote 291-6: No. 851.]

[Footnote 291-7: No. 845.]

[Footnote 292-1: No. 856.]

[Footnote 292-2: Our authority is very particular as to the time, and gives not only the day but the hour: ‘Inter horam post nonam et horam ante horam secundam, viz., fere dimidiam horam ante horam secundam, luna curren., et erat clara dies.’]

[Footnote 292-3: Mother of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, who was the mother of King Henry VII.]

[Footnote 292-4: So according to Sandford’s Genealogy of the Paston family in Mr. Worship’s communication to the _Norfolk Archæology_. But who was Anne, Countess of Beaumont? I find no Earl Beaumont in the peerage, but there was a William, Viscount Beaumont, who succeeded his father in that title in 1459. According to Dugdale, he had two wives, the first of whom was named Elizabeth, and the second Joan. His mother, who may have been living at this time, was also named Elizabeth, but I can find no Anne.]

[Footnote 292-5: No. 857.]