Part 35

[Sidenote: Mode of reckoning.] Of their modes of computing other things we have little indication in these volumes except in money accounts, which are always kept in Roman figures. No separate columns are set apart in MSS. of this date (although for the convenience of the reader this has sometimes been done in print) for the different denominations of pounds, shillings, pence, and marks, so that it would have been impossible for the best arithmetician easily to cast up totals after the modern fashion. The arithmeticians of that day, in fact, had a totally different method of reckoning. They used counters, and had a counting-board or abacus, on which they set up the totals.[321-2] An instance of this occurs in the first volume, where John Paston, in superintending the works at Caister Castle, or, as we now rather suspect, at Mautby, thought it advisable to change the room in which his coffers and his ‘countewery’ should be set. In connection with this incident one other point is worthy of observation. On taking the measure of the new room, John Paston’s wife reported that he would find it less convenient than the former one. ‘There is no space,’ she wrote, ‘beside the bed, though the bed were removed to the door, to set both your board and your coffers there, and to have space to go and sit beside.’[321-3] When it is considered that the room in question was a ‘draught chamber,’ that is to say, that it contained a privy in addition to the furniture which Paston intended to introduce, want of space ought certainly to have been a very serious objection.

[Footnote 321-2: The modern mode of adding up columns of arabic numerals was called _Algorism_ or _Awgrym_. Thus Palsgrave gives as an example of the use of the word--‘I shall reken it syxe times by aulgorisme, or you can caste it ones by counters.’--_Promptorium Parv._ i. 18.]

[Footnote 321-3: No. 224.]

[Sidenote: Manner of living.] The neglect of sanitary considerations in domestic architecture--indeed, in domestic matters generally--was no doubt a prolific source of disease and pestilence. Yet the general plan of daily life pursued by our ancestors was, it must be owned, more wholesome than that of the nineteenth century. It is well known that they were early risers. Innumerable patent kinds of artificial light did not tempt them to waste the natural hours of rest either in study or in dissipation. Their meals too were earlier. Their dinner was at noon, if not before; and after dinner, in the long summer days, it was customary to take some additional repose. Thus Henry Windsor concludes a letter to John Paston--‘Written in my sleeping time at afternoon, on Whitsunday.’[322-1] This practice of sleeping in the daytime was so universal that in the case of labourers it was only thought necessary to keep it within certain limits, and to restrict it by Act of Parliament to a quarter of the year, from the middle of May to the middle of August.[322-2]

[Footnote 322-1: No. 332.]

[Footnote 322-2: Statute 6 Hen. VIII. ch. 3.]

[Sidenote: Sending dinners out.] A curious practice in relation to dining mentioned in Letter 423 has already been incidentally alluded to. It was the year after Sir John Fastolf’s death, and John Paston’s wife had gone out of Norwich to reside at Hellesdon. Paston’s increased importance in the county was shown by the Mayor and Mayoress of Norwich one day _sending their dinners out_ to Hellesdon, and coming to dine with Margaret Paston. Of this kind of compliment we have another illustration in More’s _History of Richard III._ It is well known how, when just after the death of Edward IV. the Earl of Rivers and Lord Richard Grey were conducting the boy king Edward V. up to London, they were overtaken by the Duke of Gloucester at Stony Stratford, and placed under arrest. As the story is reported by More, Gloucester at first treated his prisoners with courtesy, and at dinner sent a dish from his own table to Lord Rivers, praying him to be of good cheer, for all should be well enough. ‘And he thanked the duke,’ continues the historian, ‘and prayed the messenger to bear it to his nephew the Lord Richard with the same message for his comfort, who he thought had more need of comfort as one to whom such adversity was strange; but himself had been all his days in ure therewith, and therefore could bear it the better.’

[Sidenote: Chivalry and courtesy.] The courtesies of life were certainly not less valued in those rough unquiet days than in our own. Although men like Caxton lamented the decline of chivalry, its civilising influence continued, and its most important usages were still kept up. Among the books which William Ebesham transcribed for Sir John Paston at the rate of twopence a leaf, was one which was called _The Great Book_, treating of ‘the Coronation and other Treatises of Knighthood,’ ‘of the manner of making joust and tournaments,’ and the like.[323-1] His library, or that of his brother John, contained also ‘the Death of Arthur,’ the story of Guy of Warwick, chronicles of the English kings from Cœur de Lion to Edward III., the legend of Guy and Colbrand, and various other chronicles and fictions suited to knightly culture; besides moral treatises, like Bishop Alcock’s _Abbey of the Holy Ghost_, and poetical and imaginative books, such as the poems of Chaucer--at least his _Troilus and Cressida_, his _Legend of Ladies_ (commonly called _The Legend of Good Women_), his _Parliament of Birds_, the _Belle Dame sauns Mercie_, and Lydgate’s _Temple of Glass_. Books like these formed part of the recreations of a country gentleman. They contained, doubtless, the fund of ideas which fathers communicated to their children around the winter fire. And the children were the better qualified to appreciate them by an education which was entirely founded upon the principles of chivalry.

[Footnote 323-1: Nos. 695, 987.]

[Sidenote: The training of the young.] It was in accordance with these principles, and to maintain a true sense of order in society, that the sons of knights and gentlemen were sent at an early age to serve in other gentlemen’s houses. Thus John Paston the youngest was sent to be brought up in the family of the Duke of Norfolk; and so common was this practice, so necessary was it esteemed to a young gentleman’s education, that, as we have seen, his father was reproached for keeping his elder brother at home and unemployed. In a new household, and especially in that of a man of rank, it was considered that a youth would learn something of the world, and fit himself best for the place he was to fill in it. It was the same also, to some extent, with the daughters of a family, as we find Margaret Paston writing to her son Sir John to get his sister placed in the household either of the Countess of Oxford or of the Duchess of Bedford, or else ‘in some other worshipful place.’[324-1] This we have supposed to be his sister Margery, who (no doubt for want of being thus taken care of) shortly after married Richard Calle, to the scandal and disgust of the whole family. His other sister, Anne, was placed in the household of a gentleman named Calthorpe, who, however, afterwards desired to get rid of her, alleging that he wished to reduce his household, and suggested that she ‘waxed high, and it were time to purvey her a marriage.’ It is curious that the prospect of her being sent home again does not seem to have been

## particularly agreeable even to her own mother. Margaret Paston wonders

why Calthorpe should have been so anxious to get rid of the young lady without delay. Perhaps she had given him offence, or committed some misdemeanour. Her mother therefore writes to her son John the youngest in London to see how Cousin Clere ‘is disposed to her-ward,’ that she may not be under the necessity of having her home again, where she would only lose her time, and be continually trying her mother’s patience, as her sister Margery had done before her.[324-2]

[Footnote 324-1: No. 704.]

[Footnote 324-2: No. 766.]

[Sidenote: Want of domestic feeling.] And was this, the reader may well ask, the spirit of domestic life in the fifteenth century? Could two generations of one family not ordinarily live together in comfort? Was the feeling of older people towards children only that they ought to be taught the ways of the world, and learn not to make themselves disagreeable? Alas! I fear, for the most part it amounted to little more than this. Children, and especially daughters, were a mere burden to their parents. They must be sent away from home to learn manners, and to be out of the way. As soon as they grew up, efforts must be made to marry them, and get them off their parents’ hands for good. If they could not be got rid of that way, and were still troublesome, they could be well thrashed, like Elizabeth Paston, the aunt of the last-mentioned young ladies, who, as will be remembered, was allowed to speak to no one, was beaten once or twice a week, and sometimes twice in one day, and had her head broken ‘in two or three places’ in consequence.[325-1]

[Footnote 325-1: No. 94, and p. 155 of this Introduction.]

Such a state of matters, however repulsive to our feelings, is by no means unaccountable. That age was certainly not singular, however much mistaken, in its belief that a sense of what is due to the State is more important than a sense of what is due to the family. Our ancestors forgot the fact--as we too, in this age of enforced schooling are too apt to leave it out of account--that the most important part of education, good or bad, must inevitably be that which a child receives at home. They were rewarded for their forgetfulness by a loss of natural affection, for which their high sense of external order afforded but imperfect compensation. Admirable as the feudal system was in maintaining the necessary subordination of different classes, it acted most injuriously upon the homes, where all that makes up a nation’s real worth must be carefully tended in the first instance. [Sidenote: Wardships.] The very foundation of domestic life was in many cases vitiated by a system which put the wardship and marriage of heirs under age at the disposal of their superior lords. In the case of an important landowner who held of the Crown, it was a regular matter of bargain and sale. The wardship and marriage were granted away to such a person as could offer the Treasury a satisfactory sum for the privilege; and if the heir took it upon himself to marry without licence of such person, he incurred a heavy fine.[325-2] Thus was the most sacred of all human relations made a matter of traffic and sale, and the best feelings of the human heart were systematically crushed by considerations the most sordid.

[Footnote 325-2: We have already referred, at p. 154, to the case of Stephen Scrope, whose wardship was sold by his stepfather, Sir John Fastolf, to Judge Gascoigne, but was afterwards bought back again to prevent the judge marrying him to one of his own daughters, both the original sale and the redemption being equally against the will of Stephen Scrope himself, who complained that Fastolf had ‘bought and sold him like a beast.’ The particulars of these transactions are not obtained from the Paston Letters, but there will be found several notices of another wardship, viz. that of Thomas Fastolf of Cowhaw, kinsman of Sir John Fastolf, which was bought by Sir John of the king, and committed by patent to John Paston and Sir Thomas Howes, and which became the subject of a good deal of controversy.--_See_ Nos. 248, 263, 266, 267, 271, 292, and 352.]

[Sidenote: Remarks of a Venetian on the English.] The absence of domestic affection among the English people generally was, in fact, a subject of observation to foreigners in that day. The earliest extant report of a Venetian ambassador on the state of this country was written in the reign of Henry VII., and in this we find some very strong comments on the subject, showing that the cold-heartedness of parents towards their children, the want of tenderness in husbands towards their wives, the mercenary way in which marriages were contracted by parents or guardians for the young people under their charge, was such as to shock the sensibility of strangers from the warmer lands of the South. To the Italian mind it seemed as if there was no real human nature in Englishmen at all. There was licentiousness among them, to be sure, but our Venetian almost doubted whether in high or low society an Englishman was ever known to be in love. He had witnessed nothing of the sort himself. On the contrary, he had seen young noblemen content to marry old widows for the sake of fortunes, which they hoped to share soon with younger partners; and he suspected that although Englishmen were very jealous husbands, the most serious offences against married life might be condoned for money.[326-1]

[Footnote 326-1: _Italian Relation of England_ (Camden Soc.), pp. 24-27.]

[Sidenote: Freedom of manners.] It is impossible to deny that these comments, except the last, which we would fain hope was a mistake, must have been largely justified. The Paston letters bear strong additional testimony to the general truth of what our Italian critic saw in England. Yet, acute as his observation was, an ambassador from the stately Signory of Venice was perhaps not altogether in a position to read the deepest mysteries of the English heart. To this day the warmth of the English nature lies covered by a cold exterior; yet even in the external manners of the people the genial Erasmus found touches which our Venetian cared not for, and did not deign to notice. While feudalism still kept down the natural emotions, insisting on a high respect for order, there was a freedom in social intercourse, and in England more than elsewhere, which has long ago been chilled among ourselves by the severity of Puritanism. In his own amusing way Erasmus tells us how in this delightful island ladies and gentlemen kissed each other freely whenever they met, in the streets or in their houses. There were kisses when you came, and kisses when you went away--delicate, fragrant kisses that would assuredly tempt a poet from abroad to stay in England all his days.[327-1] So the witty Dutchman informed a friend in the unrestrained freedom of epistolary correspondence. And we may believe that in most cases the severity of home was mitigated by a greater freedom of communication with the world outside. Only in cases of very severe displeasure were the daughters of a family shut up for a time, like Elizabeth Paston, and forbidden to speak to any one. For the most part, they received the salutations of strangers, and conversed with them without reserve, as marriage was quite understood to be a thing which depended entirely upon arrangements made by their parents.

[Footnote 327-1: _Erasm. Epp._ lib. v. 10.]

[Sidenote: Urbanity.] With all this, there was an urbanity of manners, a courtesy of address, and a general external refinement, on which more recent times have not improved. And in these things England was pre-eminent. Our Venetian could not help noticing that the English were a very polite people. Another Italian of that day, Polydore Vergil, has recorded that in this respect they resembled his own countrymen. The hard schooling which they received at home, the after-training elsewhere in the houses of ‘worshipful’ persons, had taught them from their early years to consider above all things what was due to others. In every relation of life, in the freest social intercourse, the honour due to parents, to strangers, to noblemen, or to kings, was never for a moment forgotten. In the most familiar letters the son asks his father’s or mother’s blessing, and the wife addresses her husband as ‘right worshipful.’ When people talked to each other on the street, they did so with heads uncovered. Even kings at the mention of other potentates’ names took off their hats with reverence.[328-1]

[Footnote 328-1: _Italian Relation_, pp. 22-32; Polydore Vergil, 14-15. Henry VII., in conference with the Spanish ambassador, De Puebla, always took off his hat when the names of Ferdinand and Isabella were mentioned (Bergenroth’s _Spanish Calendar_, vol. i. p. 10). I have also seen notices of the same custom elsewhere.]

[Sidenote: Importance of maintaining authority.] An age which, with all its many drawbacks, cultivated ideas such as these cannot be looked upon as despicable or barbarous. We could have wished to see something more of the element of love in families--something more of the easy rule of natural affection occasionally superseding the hard notions of feudal or parental discipline. But the anxiety to uphold authority, to preserve honour for whom it was due, to maintain social and political order in spite of influences which were conspicuously at work breaking it up before men’s eyes, was a true and wholesome feeling, to the strength of which we owe a debt unspeakable even in these days of progress. At no time in England’s history was there a stronger feeling of the needful subordination of the different parts of society to each other; but under a king incapable of governing, this feeling bred a curse, and not a blessing. The great lords, who should have preserved order under the king, fell out among themselves, and in spite of the fervid loyalty of the age, the greatest subject became a kingmaker.

[Sidenote: The Earl of Warwick’s household.] That civil war should have broken out in a state of society like this need occasion no surprise. The enormous retinues of feudal noblemen were in themselves sufficiently dangerous to the peace of the kingdom, and when the sense of feudal subjection to one sovereign was impaired, the issue could not be doubtful. At the table of the great Earl of Warwick, Stow informs us that the flesh of six entire oxen was sometimes consumed in a single meal. With the profuse hospitality of the Middle Ages, he entertained not only all his regular dependants, but all chance comers who had any acquaintance in his household. Visitors were also allowed to carry off joints from his table, and the taverns in the neighbourhood of Warwick’s inn were actually full of his meat.[329-1] Such a nobleman had no difficulty in obtaining friends to fight for him in the day of battle. He maintained, in fact, what might be called a little standing army at all times, and if an emergency arose, doubtless many who had dined at his table would flock to his standard, and take his wages.[329-2]

[Footnote 329-1: Stow’s _Chronicle_, 421.]

[Footnote 329-2: _See_ No. 760.]

[[Footnote 329-2: _missing “2” added_]]

[Sidenote: The Tudor policy.] The causes which had produced the wars of the Roses were carefully watched by the Tudor sovereigns, and one by one rooted out. Laws were passed against noblemen keeping large retinues, and were not suffered to remain a dead letter. The nobility of England learned to stand in awe of the Crown in a way they never did before, and never have done since. Every branch of the royal family, except the reigning dynasty, was on one pretext or another lopped away. Every powerful nobleman knew that just in proportion as he was great, it was necessary for him to be circumspect. Under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, birth and rank counted for very little, and the peers became submissive instruments, anxious, and indeed eager, to carry out the sovereign’s will. In short, the unity of a divided nation was restored under a set of politic kings, who enforced the laws, kept down the nobility, and, in spite of their despotism, were generally loved by the people.

APPENDIX TO PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION

I. WILL OF PETER LE NEVE.--See p. 3.

The following extracts from the will of Peter Le Neve, as contained in the principal register at Doctors’ Commons, are curious in other respects besides their bearing on the history of the Paston MSS.

Item, I give and bequeath unto the Reverend Doctor Tanner, Chancellor of Norwich, and Mr. Thomas Martin of Palgrave, all my abstracts out of records, old deeds, books, petigrees, seals, papers, and other collections which shall only relate to the antiquityes and history of Norfolk and Suffolk, or one of them, upon condicion that they, or the survivor of them, or the executors or administrators of such survivor, do and shall, within twelve months next after my decease, procure a good and safe repository in the Cathedral Church of Norwich, or in some other good and publick building in the said city, for the preservation of the same collections, for the use and benefitt of such curious persons as shall be desirous to inspect, transcribe, or consult the same. And I doe hereby give full power to the said Doctor Tanner and Thomas Martin, and to the survivor of them, and to the executors or administrators of such survivor, to fix and prescribe such rules and orders for the custody and preservation of the said collecions as they shall think proper. . . .

Item, my will and mind is, that if my said wife Frances shall at any time hereafter intermarry with Thomas Allen, my late clerk, then I will that she shall have and enjoy but the annuity or summe of forty pounds per annum from the time of such her intermarryage, and noe more shall be paid unto her by my aforesaid trustees; and I strickly charge and forbid her, the said Frances, to permitt the said Thomas Allen to come into any of my studys, or to lend or give him any of my books or papers, or to suffer him in any respect to intermeddle with my affairs. Item, I give unto my said wife Frances such goods and things att Bow and Wychingham as I shall mencion and sett down in a certain paper to be signed and left by me for that purpose. Item, I give unto my said wife Frances my crown, silver gilt, my collar, silver party, my jewell, my herald’s coat and chain. Item, I give unto Henrietta Beeston the summe of twelve pence per week, to be paid to her from the first day of August last for so long time as she shall continue with me at Wychingham. Item, I will that all my shelves, presses, drawers, and boxes now in my study att Wychingham shall goe along with my Norfolk and Suffolk collections to Norwich. . . .

Item, the residue of my printed or manuscript books, arms, and things relating to antiquity, I give them unto such person and persons, and bodyes, politic or corporate, as I shall direct and appoint, in a paper to be signed and left by me for that purpose.

_The above will was proved 7th November 1729._

[[I. WILL OF PETER LE NEVE.--See p. 3. _final . missing_]]

[[p. 3 = under sidenote “the MSS.”]]

II. JULIAN HERBERD.--See pp. 33, 34.

The following documents in the case of Julian Herberd _v._ William Paston are preserved in the Record Office among ‘Chancery, Parliamentary and Council Proceedings.’ The date, it will be seen, must be after 1432:--

MEMBRANE 1

William Paston.

S{r} Rauf, parson of Bronham, steward with my maister Cromwell. Austinne Bange of Norwiche. John Roppys with hem priour of the Abbey of Norwiche. Rob’t Chapelleyn of Norwiche. Rob’t Grygge of litel Plomstede in the cuntie of Norwiche. S{r} William, the vicaire of Seint Stephenes Chirche in Norwiche.

MEMBRANE 2