Volume VI, Part 2 (Index): see https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42494

This edition, published by arrangement with Messrs. ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LIMITED, is strictly limited to 650 copies for Great Britain and America, of which only 600 sets are for sale, and are numbered 1 to 600.

No. 47

[[The number 47 is handwritten.]]

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THE PASTON LETTERS

A.D. 1422-1509

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The PASTON LETTERS A.D. 1422-1509

NEW COMPLETE LIBRARY EDITION

Edited with Notes and an Introduction

By JAMES GAIRDNER of the Public Record Office

_VOLUME I_

London Chatto & Windus

[Decoration]

Exeter James G. Commin 1904

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

PREFACE

[Sidenote: First publication of the Letters.] Public attention was first drawn to the Paston Letters in the year 1787, when there issued from the press two quarto volumes with a very lengthy title, setting forth that the contents were original letters written ‘by various persons of rank and consequence’ during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III. The materials were derived from autographs in the possession of the Editor, a Mr. Fenn, of East Dereham, in Norfolk, who was well enough known in society as a gentleman of literary and antiquarian tastes, but who had not at that time attained any great degree of celebrity. Horace Walpole had described him, thirteen years before, as ‘a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good sort of man.’ What the great literary magnate afterwards thought of him we are not informed, but we know that he took a lively interest in the Paston Letters the moment they were published. He appears, indeed, to have given some assistance in the progress of the work through the press. On its appearance he expressed himself with characteristic enthusiasm:--‘The letters of Henry VI.’s reign, etc., are come out, and _to me_ make all other letters not worth reading. I have gone through one volume, and cannot bear to be writing when I am so eager to be reading. . . . There are letters from _all_ my acquaintance, Lord Rivers, Lord Hastings, the Earl of Warwick, whom I remember still better than Mrs. Strawbridge, though she died within these fifty years. What antiquary would be answering a letter from a living countess, when he may read one from Eleanor Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk?’[1-1]

[Footnote 1-1: _Walpole’s Letters_ (Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.]

So wrote the great literary exquisite and virtuoso, the man whose opinion in those days was life or death to a young author or a new publication. And in spite of all that was artificial and affected in his character,--in spite even of the affectation of pretending a snobbish interest in ancient duchesses--Walpole was one of the fittest men of that day to appreciate such a publication. [Sidenote: What was thought of them by some.] Miss Hannah More was less easily pleased, and she no doubt was the type of many other readers. The letters, she declared, were quite barbarous in style, with none of the elegance of their supposed contemporary Rowley. They might perhaps be of some use to correct history, but as letters and fine reading, nothing was to be said for them.[2-1] It was natural enough that an age which took this view of the matter should have preferred the forgeries of Chatterton to the most genuine productions of the fifteenth century. The style of the Paston Letters, even if it had been the most polished imaginable, of course could not have exhibited the polish of the eighteenth century, unless a Chatterton had had some hand in their composition.

[Footnote 2-1: Roberts’s _Memoirs of Hannah More_, ii. 50.]

[Sidenote: General interest in the work.] Yet the interest excited by the work was such that the editor had no reason to complain of its reception. The Paston Letters were soon in everybody’s hands. The work, indeed, appeared under royal patronage, for Fenn had got leave beforehand to dedicate it to the King as ‘the avowed patron’ of antiquarian knowledge. This alone had doubtless some influence upon the sale; but the novel character of the publication itself must have excited curiosity still more. A whole edition was disposed of in a week, and a second edition called for, which, after undergoing some little revision, with the assistance of Mr. George Steevens, the Shakspearian editor, was published the same year. Meanwhile, to gratify the curious, the original MS. letters were deposited for a time in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries; but the King having expressed a wish to see them, Fenn sent them to Buckingham Palace, then called the Queen’s Palace, requesting that, if they were thought worthy of a place in the Royal Collection, His Majesty would be pleased to accept them. They were accordingly, it would seem, added to the Royal Library; and as an acknowledgment of the value of the gift, Fenn was summoned to Court, and received the honour of knighthood.

But the two volumes hitherto published by Fenn contained only a small selection out of a pretty considerable number of original letters of the same period in his possession. The reception these two volumes had met with now encouraged him to make a further selection, and he announced with his second edition that another series of the Letters was in preparation, which was to cover the same period as the first two volumes, and to include also the reign of Henry VII. Accordingly a third and fourth volume of the work were issued together in the year 1789, containing the new letters down to the middle of Edward IV.’s reign. A fifth and concluding volume, bringing the work down to the end of Henry VII.’s reign, was left ready for publication at Sir John Fenn’s death in 1794, and was published by his nephew, Mr. Serjeant Frere, in 1823.

Of the original MSS. of these letters and their descent Fenn gives but a brief account in the preface to his first volume, which we will endeavour to supplement with additional facts to the best of our ability. [Sidenote: The MSS.] The letters, it will be seen, were for the most part written by or to particular members of the family of Paston in Norfolk. Here and there, it is true, are to be found among them State papers and other letters of great interest, which must have come to the hands of the family through some indirect channel; but the great majority are letters distinctly addressed to persons of the name of Paston, and in the possession of the Pastons they remained for several generations. In the days of Charles II. the head of the family, Sir Robert Paston, was created Earl of Yarmouth; but his son William, the second bearer of the title, having got into debt and encumbered his inheritance, finally died without male issue, so that his title became extinct. While living in reduced circumstances, he appears to have parted with a portion of his family papers, which were purchased by the great antiquary and collector, Peter Le Neve, Norroy King of Arms. Le Neve was a Norfolk man, possessed of considerable estates at Witchingham and elsewhere in the county; and he made it a special object to collect MSS. and records relating to Norfolk and Suffolk. Just before his death in 1729 he made a will,[4-1] by which he bequeathed his MSS. to the erudite Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph’s, and Thomas Martin of Palgrave; but this bequest was subject to the condition that within a year after his death they should ‘procure a good and safe repository in the Cathedral Church of Norwich, or in some other good and public building in the said city’ for their preservation, the object being to make them at all times accessible to those who wished to consult them. The condition, however, was not fulfilled, and the bequest would naturally have become null; but ‘honest Tom Martin of Palgrave’ (to give him the familiar name by which he himself desired to be known) married the widow of his friend, and thus became possessed of his MSS. by another title.

[Footnote 4-1: _See_ Appendix after Introduction, No. I.]

The Le Neve collection, however, contained only a portion of the Paston family papers. On the death, in 1732, of the Earl of Yarmouth, who outlived Le Neve by three years, some thirty or forty chests of valuable letters and documents still remained at the family seat at Oxnead. These treasures the Rev. Francis Blomefield was allowed to examine three years later with a view to his county history, for which purpose he boarded at Oxnead for a fortnight.[4-2] Of the results of a general survey of the papers he writes, on the 13th May 1735, to Major Weldon a number of interesting particulars, of which the following may be quoted as bearing upon the subject before us:--‘There is another box full of the pardons, grants, and old deeds, freedoms, etc., belonging to the Paston family only, which I laid by themselves, for fear you should think them proper to be preserved with the family; they don’t relate to any estates. . . . There are innumerable letters of good consequence in history still lying among the loose papers, all which I laid up in a corner of the room on a heap which contains several sacks full.’[5-1] But Blomefield afterwards became the owner of a considerable portion of these papers; for he not only wrote his initials on several of them, and marked a good many others with a mark by which he was in the habit of distinguishing original documents that he had examined and noted, but he also made a present to a friend of one letter which must certainly have once been in the Paston family archives. He himself refers to his ownership of certain collections of documents in the Preface to his _History of Norfolk_, where he informs the reader that he has made distinct reference to the several authors and originals he had made use of in all cases, ‘except’ (these are his words) ‘where the originals are either in Mr. Le Neve’s or my own collections, which at present I design to join to his, so that, being together, they may be consulted at all times.’ Apparently honest Tom Martin was still intending to carry out Le Neve’s design, and Blomefield purposed to aid it further by adding his own collections to the Le Neve MSS. But though Martin lived for nearly forty years after his marriage with Le Neve’s widow, and always kept this design in view, he failed to carry it out. His necessities compelled him to part with some of his treasures, but these apparently were mainly books enriched with MS. notes, not original ancient MSS., and even as he grew old he did not altogether drop the project. He frequently formed resolutions that he would, _next year_, arrange what remained, and make a selection for public use. But at last, at the age of seventy-four, he suddenly died in his chair without having given effect to his purpose.

[Footnote 4-2: _Cursory Notices of the Reverend Francis Blomefield._ By J. Wilton Rix, Esq.]

[Footnote 5-1: _Norfolk Archæology_, ii. 210, 211.]

Neither did his friend Blomefield, who died nine years before him, in January 1762, succeed in giving effect to _his_ good intention of uniting his collections with the Le Neve MSS. For he died deeply in debt, and by his will, made just before death, he directed all his personal property to be sold in payment of his liabilities. His executors, however, declined to act, and administration was granted to two principal creditors. Of the Paston MSS. which were owned by him, a few are now to be found in one of the volumes of the Douce Collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These, it would seem, were first purchased by the noted antiquary John Ives,[6-1] who acquired a number of Le Neve’s, Martin’s, and Blomefield’s MSS.; and after his library was sold by auction in March 1777, they became part of the collections relating to the counties of Oxford and Cambridge, which Gough, in his _British Topography_ (vol. ii. p. 5), informs us that he purchased at the sale of Mr. Ives’ papers. To this same collection, probably, belonged also a few of the scattered documents relating to the Paston family which have been met with among the miscellaneous stores of the Bodleian Library, for a knowledge of which I was indebted to the late Mr. W. H. Turner of Oxford.

[Footnote 6-1: _See_ Nichols’s _Literary Anecdotes_, iii. 199.]

Martin’s executors seem to have done what they could to preserve the integrity of his collections. A catalogue of his library was printed at Lynn in 1771, in the hope that some purchaser would be found to take the whole. Such a purchaser did present himself, but not in the interest of the public. [Sidenote: By Mr. Worth.] A certain Mr. John Worth, a chemist at Diss, bought both the library and the other collections, as a speculation, for £630. The printed books he immediately sold to a firm at Norwich, who disposed of them by auction; the pictures and smaller curiosities he sold by auction at Diss, and certain portions of the MSS. were sent, at different times, to the London market. But before he had completed the sale of all the collections, Mr. Worth died suddenly in December 1774. That portion of the MSS. which contained the Paston Letters he had up to that time reserved. Mr. Fenn immediately purchased them of his executors, and they had been twelve years in his possession when he published his first two volumes of selections from them.

So much for the early history of the MSS. Their subsequent fate is not a little curious. On the 23rd May 1787, Fenn received his knighthood at St. James’s, having then and there presented to the King three bound volumes of MSS. which were the originals of his first two printed volumes.[6-2] Yet, strange to say, these MSS. were afterwards lost sight of so completely that for a whole century nobody could tell what had become of them. They were not in the Royal Library afterwards given up to the British Museum; they were not to be found in any of the Royal Palaces. The late Prince Consort, just before his death, caused a careful search to be made for them, but it proved quite ineffectual. Their hiding-place remained unknown even when I first republished these Letters in the years 1872-75.

[Footnote 6-2: The following announcement appears in the _Morning Chronicle_ of the 24th May 1787: ‘Yesterday, John Fenn, Esq., attended the levee at St. James’s, and had the honour of presenting to His Majesty (bound in three volumes) the original letters of which he had before presented a printed copy; when His Majesty, as a mark of his gracious acceptance, was pleased to confer on him the honour of knighthood.’]

To this mystery succeeded another of the same kind. The originals of the other three volumes were not presented to the king; but they, too, disappeared, and remained for a long time equally undiscoverable. Even Mr. Serjeant Frere, who edited the fifth volume from transcripts left by Sir John Fenn after his death, declared that he had not been able to find the originals of that volume any more than those of the others. Strange to say, however, the originals of that volume were in his house all the time, and were discovered by his son, Mr. Philip Frere, in the year 1865, just after an ingenious _littérateur_ had made the complete disappearance of _all_ the MSS. a ground for casting doubt on the authenticity of the published letters. It is certainly a misfortune for historical literature, or at all events was in those days, that the owners of ancient MSS. commonly took so little pains to ascertain what it was that they had got. Since then the proceedings of the Historical MSS. Commission, which have brought to light vast stores of unsuspected materials for history, have awakened much more interest in such matters.

Thus three distinct portions of MSS. that had been carefully edited had all been lost sight of and remained undiscoverable for a long series of years. The originals of the first two volumes presented to the King could not be found. The originals of volumes iii. and iv. could not be found. The originals of volume v. could not be found. These last, however, after a time, came to light, as we have seen, in 1865, having been discovered in the house of the late Mr. Philip Frere at Dungate, in Cambridgeshire; and with them were found a large number of additional MSS., also belonging to the Paston Collection, among which was the original of one of the letters of volume iii. separated from all its fellows, whose place of concealment remained still unknown.

This discovery, however, was important, and at once suggested to me the possibility of producing a new edition of the Letters arranged in true chronological order, and augmented by those hitherto unedited. It suggested, moreover, that more of the originals might even yet be discovered with a little further search, perhaps even in the same house. But a further search at Dungate, though it brought to light a vast quantity of papers of different ages, many of them very curious, did not lead to the discovery of any other than the single document above referred to belonging to any of the first four volumes. All that Mr. Philip Frere could find belonging to the Paston Collection he sold to the British Museum, and the rest he disposed of by auction.

The question then occurred: Since the originals of volumes iii. and iv. had not been found at Dungate, might they be in the possession of the head of the Frere family, the late Mr. George Frere of Roydon Hall, near Diss, in Norfolk? This was suggested to me as probable by Mr. Philip Frere, his cousin, and I wrote to him accordingly on the 3rd December 1867. I received an answer from him dated on the 6th, that he did not see how such MSS. should have found their way to Roydon, but if they turned up at any time he would let me know. Unluckily he seems to have dismissed the subject from his mind, and I received no answer to further inquiries repeated at various intervals. At last it appeared hopeless to wait longer and defer my edition of the Letters indefinitely on the chance of finding more originals anywhere. So the first volume of my edition went to press, and the second, and the third. But just after I had printed off two Appendices to vol. iii., a friend of Mr. George Frere’s called upon me at the Record Office, and informed me that a number of original Paston letters had been discovered at Roydon, which he had conveyed up to London. After some further communication with Mr. Frere himself I was allowed to inspect them at his son’s chambers in the Temple, when I found among them those very originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes which eight years before he could not believe were in his possession! Every one of them, I think, was there with just two exceptions--the first a document which, as already mentioned, was found at Dungate; the second a letter (No. 52 in this edition) now preserved at Holland House, the existence of which was made known to me before my second volume was issued by a recent book of the Princess Marie Liechtenstein.[9-1]

[Footnote 9-1: _Holland House._ By Princess Marie Liechtenstein, vol. ii. p. 198.]

It was mortifying, I confess, not to have received earlier intelligence of a fact that I had suspected all along. But it was better to have learned it at the last moment than not till after my last volume was published. So, having made two Appendices already to that volume, the only thing to do was to add a third, in which the reader would find a brief note of the discovery, with copies of some of the unpublished letters, and as full an account of the others belonging to the same period as circumstances would permit. Altogether there were no less than ninety-five new original letters belonging to the period found at Roydon Hall, along with the originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes.

In July 1888 these Roydon Hall MSS. were offered for sale at Christie’s. They consisted then of 311 letters, mainly the originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes, and of those described in my third Appendix. Of the former set there were only four letters wanting, viz. the two in volume iii. whose existence is accounted for elsewhere, and two in volume iv. ‘which,’ the sale catalogue observes, ‘are noted by Fenn himself as being no longer in his possession.’ As to the letters in my Appendix the catalogue goes on to say:--

‘Of the ninety-five additional letters above mentioned (Gairdner, 992-1086) _four_ are missing (Nos. 1016, 1029, 1077, 1085). On the other hand, on collating the present collection with the printed volumes, it was found to contain _four others_ of which no record exists either in Fenn’s or Mr. Gairdner’s edition, and which consequently appear to have escaped the notice of the latter gentleman while examining the treasures at Roydon Hall.’

‘The latter gentleman’ begs leave to say here that he never was at Roydon Hall in his life, and was only allowed to examine such of the ‘treasures’ found there as were placed before him in the year 1875 in a certain chamber in the Temple. A well-known bookseller purchased the MSS. offered at Christie’s for 500 guineas, and some years later (in 1896), sold them to the British Museum. They are thus, at length, available for general consultation. The number of missing originals, however, is not quite as given in Christie’s sale catalogue. There are four, not two, lacking of volume iv. On the other hand, only two letters of the Appendix are wanting.[10-1]

[Footnote 10-1: The missing letters of volume iv. are Nos. 24, 97, 99, and 105 (Nos. 551, 726, 735, and 758 of this edition). The last never formed part of Fenn’s collection. I do not know of any other noted by him as ‘no longer in his possession.’ The letters missing of the Appendix are only Nos. 997 and 1019. Of the four said to be missing in Christie’s catalogue, 1016 is not a document at all, the number having been accidentally skipped in the Inventory, and the other three are in the British Museum. No. 1077, however, is inaccurately described in the Appendix.]

About fifteen years after the discovery at Roydon there came another discovery elsewhere. On the 29th March 1890 it was announced in the _Athenæum_ that the missing originals of Fenn’s first and second volumes--that is to say, the MSS. presented to King George III.--had likewise come to light again. They were found at Orwell Park, in Suffolk, in 1889, after the death of the late Colonel Tomline, and they remain there in the possession of his cousin, Mr. E. G. Pretyman, M.P., now Secretary to the Admiralty, who kindly showed them to me at his house soon after their discovery. They have come to him among family papers and heirlooms of which, being only tenant for life, he is not free to dispose until some doubts can be removed as to their past history; and I accordingly forbear from saying more on this point except that their place of deposit indicates that they may either have got mixed with the private papers and books of Pitt, of which a large number are in the Orwell library, or with those of his old tutor and secretary, Dr. George Pretyman, better known as Bishop Tomline. Dr. Pretyman had just been appointed Bishop of Lincoln when Fenn published his first two volumes, and it was many years afterwards that he assumed the name of Tomline. But whether these MSS. came to his hands or to Pitt’s, or under what circumstances they were delivered to either, there is no evidence to show. Possibly the King’s illness in 1788 prevented their being placed, or, it may be, replaced, in the Royal Library, where they were intended to remain.

The edition of these Letters published by Mr. Arber in 1872-75 was in three volumes. It was printed from stereotype plates, and has been reissued more than once by the Messrs. Constable with corrections, and latterly with an additional volume containing the Preface and Introduction by themselves, and a Supplement giving the full text of those newly-found letters of which the reader had to be content with a bare catalogue in 1875. My original aim to have a complete collection of all extant Paston Letters had been defeated; and there seemed nothing for it but to let them remain even at the last in a general series, an Appendix and a Supplement. The present publishers, however, by arrangement with Messrs. Constable, were anxious to meet the wants of scholars who desired to possess the letters, now that the collection seems to be as complete as it is ever likely to be, in a single series, and in a more luxurious form than that in which they have hitherto appeared. I have accordingly rearranged the letters as desired--a task not altogether without its difficulties when nice chronological questions had to be weighed and the story of the Pastons in all its details had for so many years ceased to occupy a foremost place in my thoughts; and I trust that the unity of the series will now give satisfaction. At the same time, the opportunity has not been lost of rectifying such errors as have been brought to my notice, which could not have been conveniently corrected in the stereotype editions.

Notwithstanding the recovery of the originals of the letters printed by Fenn, it has not been thought necessary to edit these anew from the MSS. Whether such a thing would be altogether practicable even now may perhaps be a question; at all events it would have delayed the work unduly. Fenn’s editing is, as I have shown in previous editions, fairly satisfactory on the whole, and it is not to be supposed that a comparison of all the printed letters with the original MSS. would lead to results of very material consequence. A large number have been compared already, and the comparison inspires the greatest confidence in his care and accuracy. His misreadings are really very few, his method of procedure having been such as to prevent their being either many or serious; while as to his suppressions I have found no reason to believe, from what examination I have been able to make, that any of them were of very material importance.

It was not editorial carelessness on Fenn’s part which made a new edition desirable in 1872. It was, first of all, the advance of historical criticism since his day--or rather, perhaps, I should say, of the means of verifying many things by the publication of historical sources and the greater accessibility of historical records. And secondly, the discovery of such a large number of unprinted documents belonging to the Paston Collection made it possible to study that collection as a whole, and fill up the outlines of information which they contained on matters both public and private. On this subject I may be allowed simply to quote what I said in 1872 in the preface to the first volume:--

‘The errors in Fenn’s chronology are numerous, and so exceedingly misleading that, indispensable as these Letters now are to the historian, there is not a single historian who has made use of them but has misdated some event or other, owing to their inaccurate arrangement. Even writers who have been most on their guard in some places have suffered themselves to be misled in others. This is no reproach to the former Editor, whose work is indeed a perfect model of care and accuracy for the days in which he lived; but historical criticism has advanced since that time, and facilities abound which did not then exist for comparing one set of documents with another, and testing the accuracy of dates by public records. The completion of Blomefield’s _History of Norfolk_, and the admirable index added to that work of late years by Mr. Chadwick, have also been of eminent service in verifying minute facts. Moreover, the comprehensive study of the whole correspondence, with the advantage of having a part already published to refer to, has enabled me in many cases to see the exact bearing of particular letters, which before seemed to have no certain place in the chronology, not only upon public events, but upon the Private affairs of the Paston family. . . .

[Sidenote: Accuracy of Fenn’s text.] ‘The care taken by Sir John Fenn to secure the accuracy of his text can be proved by many tests. It might, indeed, be inferred from the elaborate plan of editing that he adopted, exhibiting in every case two transcripts of the same letter, the one to show the precise spelling and punctuation of the original, the other to facilitate the perusal by modern orthography. A work on which so much pains were bestowed, and which was illustrated besides by numerous facsimiles of the original handwritings, signatures, paper-marks, and seals of the letters, was not likely to have been executed in a slovenly manner, in so far as the text is concerned. But we are not left in this case to mere presumptive evidence. The originals of the fifth volume have been minutely examined by a committee of the Society of Antiquaries, and compared all through with the printed text, and the general result of this examination was that the errors are very few, and for the most part trivial. Now, if this was the case with regard to that volume, which it must be remembered was published after Fenn’s death from transcripts prepared for the press, and had not the benefit of a final revision of the proof-sheets by the editor, we have surely every reason to suppose that the preceding volumes were at least not less accurate.

‘At all events, any inaccuracies that may exist in them were certainly not the result of negligence. I have been favoured by Mr. Almack, of Melford, near Sudbury, in Suffolk, with the loan of several sheets of MS. notes bequeathed to him by the late Mr. Dalton, of Bury St. Edmunds, who transcribed a number of the original MSS. for Sir John Fenn. These papers contain a host of minute queries and criticisms, which were the result of a close examination of the first four volumes, undertaken at Fenn’s request. Those on the first two volumes are dated on the 3rd and 7th of May 1788, more than a year after the book was published. But on vols. iii. and iv. there are two separate sets of observations, the first of which were made on the transcripts before they were sent to press, the other, like those on the two first volumes, on the published letters. From an examination of these criticisms, and also from the results of the examination of the fifth volume by the committee of the Society of Antiquaries,[13-1] I have been led to the opinion that the manner in which Sir John Fenn prepared his materials for the press was as follows:-- [Sidenote: Mode in which Fenn prepared the letters for publication.] Two copies were first made of every letter, the one in the exact spelling and punctuation of the original, the other in modern orthography. Both these copies were taken direct from the original, and possibly in the case of the first two volumes they were both made by Fenn himself. In vols. iii. and iv., however, it is stated that many of the transcripts were made by Mr. Dalton, while those of vol. v. were found to be almost all in his handwriting when that volume was sent to press in 1823.[13-2] But this statement probably refers only to the copies in the antique spelling. Those in modern spelling I believe to have been made for the most part, if not altogether, by Fenn himself. When completed, the two copies were placed side by side, and given to Mr. Dalton to take home with him. Mr. Dalton then made a close comparison of the two versions, and pointed out every instance in which he found the slightest disagreement between them, or where he thought an explanation might be usefully bracketed into the modern version. These comments in the case of vol. iii. are upwards of 400 in number, and extend over eighteen closely written pages quarto. It is clear that they one and all received the fullest consideration from Sir John Fenn before the work was published. Every one of the discrepancies pointed out between the two versions is rectified in the printed volume, and there cannot be a doubt that in every such case the original MS. was again referred to, to settle the disputed reading.

‘One or two illustrations of this may not be unacceptable to the reader. The following are among the observations made by Mr. Dalton on the transcripts of vol. iii. as prepared for press. [Sidenote: Examples.] In Letter viii. was a passage in which occurred the words, “that had of your father certain lands _one_ seven years or eight years agone.” Mr. Dalton’s experience as a transcriber appears to have suggested to him that “one” was a very common misreading of the word “over” in ancient MSS., and he accordingly suggested that word as making better sense. His surmise turned out to be the true reading, and the passage stands corrected accordingly in the printed volume. In Letter xxiv. there was a discrepancy in the date between the transcript in ancient spelling and the modern version. In the latter it was “the 4th day of December,” whereas the former gave it as the 3rd. On examination it appears that the _modern_ version was found to be correct, a Roman “iiij.” having been misread in the other as “iij.” Thus we have very sufficient evidence that the modern copy could not have been taken from the ancient, but was made independently from the original MS. Another instance of the same thing occurs in the beginning of Letter xli., where the words “to my power” had been omitted in the literal transcript, but were found in the modern copy.

‘Mr. Dalton’s part in the work of transcription appears clearly in several of his observations. One of the transcripts is frequently referred to as “my copy”; and an observation made on Letter lxxxvi. shows pretty clearly that the copy so referred to was the literal one. At the bottom of that letter is the following brief postscript:--“Utinam iste mundus malignus transiret et concupiscentia ejus”; on which Mr. Dalton remarks as follows:--“I have added this on _your_ copy as supposing it an oversight, and hope it is properly inserted.” Thus it appears that Mr. Dalton’s own transcript had the words which were deficient in the other, and that, being tolerably certain they existed in the original, he transferred them to the copy made by Fenn. Now when it is considered that these words are written in the original MS. with peculiarly crabbed contractions, which had to be preserved in the literal version as exactly as they could be represented in type,[15-1] it will, I think, appear evident that Mr. Dalton could never have ventured to supply them in such a form without the original before him. It is clear, therefore, that his copy was the literal transcript, and that of Fenn the modern version.

‘Again, in Letter xxxi. of the same volume, on the second last line of page 137, occur the words, “that he obey not the certiorari.” On this passage occurs the following query--“The word for ‘obey’ seems unintelligible. Have I not erred from the original in my copy?” Another case will show how by this examination the errors of the original transcripts were eliminated. In Letter xxxiv., at the bottom of pp. 144-5, occurs the name of Will or William Staunton. It appears this name was first transcribed as “Robert Fraunton” in the right or modern version; on which Mr. Dalton remarks, “It is William in orig.” (Mr. Dalton constantly speaks of the transcript in ancient spelling as the “original” in these notes, though it is clear he had not the real original before him at the time he made them). Strangely enough, Mr. Dalton does not suspect the surname as well as the Christian name, but it is clear that both were wrong, and that they were set right in consequence of this query directing the editor’s attention once more to the original MS.’

[Footnote 13-1: _Archæol._ vol. xli. p. 39.]

[Footnote 13-2: _See_ Advertisement in the beginning of the volume, p. vii.]

[Footnote 15-1: The following is the exact form in which they stand in the literal or left-hand version:--‘Utia’z iste mu’d maligu{s} t’nsir{t} & c’up’ia e{s}.’]

[[‘The care taken by Sir John _opening quotation mark missing_]]

To this I may add some further evidences of Fenn’s editorial care and accuracy. When the second volume of my first edition was published in 1874, my attention was called, as already mentioned, to the existence at Holland House of the original of one of those letters[15-2] which I had reprinted from Fenn. It was one of the letters in Fenn’s third volume, and only one[15-3] other letter in that volume had then turned up. I carefully compared both these papers with the documents as printed, and in both, as I remarked in the Preface to vol. ii., the exact spelling was given with the most scrupulous accuracy, so that there was scarcely the most trivial variation between the originals and the printed text. But a more careful estimate, alike of Fenn’s merits and of his defects as an editor, became possible when, on the publication of the third volume of the same edition, I was able, as I have already shown, to announce at the last moment the result of a cursory inspection of the originals of his third and fourth volumes. And what I said at that time may be here transcribed:--

‘The recovery of these long-lost originals, although, unfortunately, too late to be of the use it might have been in this edition, is important in two ways: first, as affording an additional means of testing Fenn’s accuracy as an editor; and secondly, as a means of testing the soundness of some occasional inferences which the present Editor was obliged to draw for himself in the absence of the originals. More than one instance occurs in this work in which it will be seen that I have ventured to eliminate from the text as spurious a heading printed by Fenn as if it were a part of the document which it precedes. Thus, in No. 19,[16-1] I pointed out that the title, in which Judge Paston is called “Sir William Paston, knight,” could not possibly be contemporaneous; and the document itself shows that this opinion was well founded. It bears, indeed, a modern endorsement in a handwriting of the last century much to the same effect as Sir John Fenn’s heading; but this, of course, is no authority at all. In the same way I showed that the title printed by Fenn, as a heading to No. 191,[16-2] was utterly erroneous, and could not possibly have existed in the original MS. This conclusion is also substantiated by the document, which, I may add, bears in the margin the heading “Copia,” showing that it was a transcript. The document itself being an important State Paper, there were probably a number of copies made at the time; but as no others have been preserved, it is only known to us as one of the Paston Letters.

‘Another State Paper (No. 238),[16-3] of which a copy was likewise sent to John Paston, has a heading which Sir John Fenn very curiously misread. It is printed in this edition[16-4] as it stands in the first, _Vadatur J. P._, meaning apparently “John Paston gives security, or stands pledged.” But it turns out on examination that the reading of the original is _Tradatur J. P._ (Let this be delivered to John Paston).

‘To return to No. 19, it will be seen that I was obliged to reprint from Fenn in the preliminary note a few words which he had found written on the back of the letter, of which it was difficult to make any perfect sense, but which seemed to imply that the bill was delivered to Parliament in the 13th year of Henry VI. I pointed out that there seemed to be some error in this, as no Parliament actually met in the 13th year of Henry VI. The original endorsement, however, is perfectly intelligible and consistent with facts, when once it has been accurately deciphered. The handwriting, indeed, is very crabbed, and for a considerable time I was puzzled; but the words are as follows:--“Falsa billa Will’i Dallyng ad parliamentum tempore quo Henricus Grey fuit vicecomes, ante annum terciodecimum Regis Henrici vj{ti}.” I find as a matter of fact that Henry Grey was sheriff (_vicecomes_) of Norfolk, first in the 8th and 9th, and again in the 12th and 13th year of Henry VI., and that Parliament sat in November and December of the 12th year (1433); so that the date of the document is one year earlier than that assigned to it.

‘Again, I ventured to question on internal evidence the authorship of a letter (No. 910)[17-1] which Fenn had assigned to William Paston, the uncle of Sir John Paston. At the end is the signature “Wyll’m Paston,” with a reference in Fenn to a facsimile engraved in a previous volume. But the evidence seemed to me very strong that the William Paston who wrote this letter was not Sir John’s uncle, but his brother. The inspection of the original letter itself has proved to me that I was right. The signatures of the two Williams were not altogether unlike each other; but the signature appended to this letter is unquestionably that of the younger man, not of his uncle; while the facsimile, to which Fenn erroneously refers the reader, is that of the uncle’s signature taken from a different letter.

‘It may perhaps be conceived that if even these few errors could be detected in Fenn’s work by one who had not yet an opportunity of consulting the original MSS., a large number of others would be discovered by a minute comparison of the printed volumes with the letters themselves. This suspicion, however, is scarcely borne out by the facts. I cannot profess to have made anything like an exhaustive examination, but so far as I have compared these MSS. with the printed text, I find no evidence of more than very occasional inaccuracy, and, generally speaking, in matters very immaterial. On the contrary, an inspection of these last recovered originals has greatly confirmed the opinion, which the originals previously discovered enabled me to form, of the scrupulous fidelity and care with which the letters were first edited. For the most part, not only the words, but the exact spelling of the MSS. is preserved, with merely the most trifling variations. Sir John, indeed, was not a trained archivist, and there are what may be called errors of system in his mode of reading, such as, for instance, the omission of contractions that may be held to represent a final _e_, or the rendering a final dash by _s_ instead of _es_. In such things the plan that he pursued was obvious. But it is manifest that in other respects he is very accurate indeed; for he had made so careful a study of these MSS. that he was quite familiar with most of the ancient modes of handwriting, and, on the whole, very seldom mistook a reading.

‘I may add, that this recent discovery enables me to vindicate his accuracy in one place, even where it seemed before to be very strangely at fault. At the end of Letter iii. of the fifth volume,[18-1] occurs in the original edition the following postscript:--“I warn you keep this letter close, and lose it not; rather burn it.” On comparing this letter with the original, the Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, some years ago, were amazed to find that there was no such postscript in the MS., and they were a good deal at a loss to account for its insertion. It now appears, however, that this letter was preserved in duplicate, for among the newly-recovered MSS. I discovered a second copy, being a corrected draft, in Margaret Paston’s own hand, at the end of which occurs the P.S. in question.

‘It must be acknowledged, however, that Fenn’s mode of editing was not in all respects quite so satisfactory. Defects, of which no one could reasonably have complained in his own day, are now a serious drawback, especially where the original MSS. are no longer accessible. Occasionally, as we have seen, he inserts a heading of his own in the text of a document without any intimation that it is not in the original; but this is so rare a matter that little need be said about it. A more serious fault is, that in vols. iii. and iv. he has published occasionally mere extracts from a letter as if it were the whole letter. In vols. i. and ii. he avowedly left out passages of little interest, and marked the places where they occurred with asterisks; but in the two succeeding volumes he has not thought it necessary to be so particular, and he has made the omissions _sub silentio_. For this indeed no one can seriously blame him. The work itself, as he had planned it, was only a selection of letters from a correspondence, and a liberal use of asterisks would not have helped to make it more interesting to the public. Occasionally he even inverts the order of his extracts, printing a postscript, or part of a postscript, in the body of a letter, and placing at the end some passage that occurs in the letter itself, for no other reason apparently than that it might read better as a whole.

‘Thus Letter 37 of this edition[18-2] (vol. iii., Letter vi., in Fenn) is only a brief extract, the original being a very long letter, though the subjects touched upon are not of very great interest. So also Letter 171 (Letter xxx. in Fenn’s third volume)[18-3] is a set of extracts. Letter 182 (vol. iii., Letter xxxix., in Fenn)[18-4] is the same; and the first part of what is given as a postscript is not a postscript in the original, but actually comes before the first printed paragraph.

‘In short, it was the aim of Sir John Fenn to reproduce with accuracy the spelling and the style of the MSS. he had before him; but as for the substance, to give only so much as he thought would be really interesting. The letters themselves he regarded rather as specimens of epistolary art in the fifteenth century than as a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the times. To have given a complete transcript of every letter, or even a _résumé_ in his own words of all that concerned lawsuits, leases, bailiffs’ accounts, and a number of other matters of equally little interest, formed no part of his design; but the task that he had really set himself he executed with admirable fidelity. He grudged no labour or expense in tracing facsimiles of the signatures, the seals, and the watermarks on the paper. All that could serve to illustrate the manners of the period, either in the contents of the letters, or in the handwritings, or the mode in which they were folded, he esteemed most valuable; and for these things his edition will continue still to be much prized. But as it was clearly impossible in that day to think of printing the whole correspondence, and determining precisely the chronology by an exhaustive study of minutiæ, there seemed no good reason why he should not give two or three paragraphs from a letter without feeling bound to specify that they were merely extracts. Yet even these defects are not of frequent occurrence. The omissions are by no means numerous, and the matter they contain is generally unimportant in itself.’

[Footnote 15-2: No. 38 in that edition, No. 52 in this.]

[Footnote 15-3: It was Letter 1 in Fenn’s third volume, No. 18 in my first edition, No. 24 in this.]

[Footnote 16-1: No. 25 in present edition.]

[Footnote 16-2: No. 230 in present edition.]

[Footnote 16-3: No. 282 in present edition.]

[Footnote 16-4: That is to say, in the edition published by Mr. Arber in 1875, when it was impossible to correct the text.]

[Footnote 17-1: No. 1033 in present edition.]

[Footnote 18-1: No. 787 of this edition.]

[Footnote 18-2: No. 51 of present edition.]

[Footnote 18-3: No. 205.]

[Footnote 18-4: No. 221.]

I took advantage, however, at that time, of the recovery of so many of the missing originals to make a cursory examination for the further testing of Fenn’s editorial accuracy. Two or three letters I compared carefully with the originals throughout, and in others I made special reference to passages where doubts were naturally suggested, either from the obscurity of the words or from any other cause as to the correctness of the reading. The results of this examination I gave in an Appendix at the end of the Introduction to the third volume in 1875, and such errors as I was then able to detect are corrected in the present edition.

Apart from such corrections, the letters are here reproduced as they are printed in previous editions, only in a better order. Fenn’s text has been followed, where no corrections have been found, in all the letters printed by him except those of his fifth volume. The exact transcript given on the left-hand pages of Fenn’s edition has been strictly adhered to, except that contractions have been extended; and even in this process we have always been guided by the interpretation given by Fenn himself in his modern version on the right-hand pages. All the other letters in this publication are edited from the original MSS., with a very few exceptions in which these cannot be found. In some places, indeed, where the contents of a letter are of very little interest, it has been thought sufficient merely to give an abstract instead of a transcript, placing the abstract in what is believed to be its true place in the series chronologically. Abstracts are also given of documents that are too lengthy and formal to be printed, and, in one case, of a letter sold at a public sale, of which a transcript is not now procurable. In the same manner, wherever I have found the slightest note or reference, whether in Fenn’s footnotes or in Blomefield’s _Norfolk_--where a few such references may be met with--to any letter that appears originally to have belonged to the Paston correspondence, even though the original be now inaccessible, and our information about the contents the most scanty, the reader will find a notice of all that is known about the missing document in the present publication.

I wish it were in my power to make the present edition better still. But there have been always formidable obstacles to completeness during the thirty years and more since I first took up the business of editing the letters; and though many of these obstacles have been removed, my energies are naturally not quite what they once were. The publishers, however, have thought it time for a more satisfactory edition, and I hope I have done my best. It remains to say a few words about the original MSS. and the places in which they now exist.

Of those at Orwell Park I have already spoken. They are contained in three half-bound volumes, and are the originals of the letters printed by Fenn in his first and second volumes.

In the British Museum are contained, first of all, four volumes of the ‘Additional MSS.’ numbered 27,443 to 27,446, consisting of the originals of volume v. of Fenn’s edition which was published after his death, and a number of other letters first printed by me in the edition of 1872-75. The nine volumes which follow these, viz. ‘Additional MSS.,’ 27,447-27,455, contain also Paston letters but of a later date, and papers relating to Sir John Fenn’s publication. There is also a separate volume of ‘Paston letters’ in ‘Additional MS.’ 33,597; but these, too, are mostly of later date, only eight being of the fifteenth century. Further, there are the Roydon Hall MSS. (including with, I believe, only two exceptions the originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes), which are contained in the volumes ‘Additional,’ 34,888-9. And finally there are two Paston letters (included in this edition) in ‘Additional MS.’ 35,251. These are all that are in the British Museum. Besides these there are, as above noticed, a few MSS. in a volume of the Douce Collection and the other stray MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford above referred to. At Oxford, also, though not strictly belonging to the Paston family correspondence, are a number of valuable papers, some of which are included in this edition, having an important bearing on the fortunes of the family. These are among the muniments contained in the tower of Magdalene College. As the execution of Sir John Fastolf’s will ultimately devolved upon Bishop Waynflete, who, instead of a college at Caister, made provision for a foundation of seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalene College, a number of papers relative to the disputes between the executors and the arrangement between the Bishop and John Paston’s sons have been preserved among the documents of that college. My attention was first called to these many years ago by Mr. Macray, through whom I obtained copies, in the first place, of some entries from an old index of the deeds relating to Norfolk and Suffolk, which had already been referred to by Chandler in his Life of Bishop Waynflete. Afterwards Mr. Macray, who had for some time been engaged in a catalogue of the whole collection, was obliging enough to send me one or two abstracts of his own made from the original documents even before he was able to refer me to his report on the muniments of Magdalene College, printed in the Fourth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission. It will be seen that I have transcribed several interesting entries from this source.

Further, there are just a few Paston letters preserved in Pembroke College, Cambridge.

What remains to be said is only the confession of personal obligations, incurred mainly long ago in connection with this work. The lapse of years since my first edition of these letters was issued, in 1872, naturally reminds me of the loss of various friends who favoured and assisted it in various ways. Among these were the late Colonel Chester, Mr. H. C. Coote, Mr. Richard Almack of Melford, Mr. W. H. Turner of Oxford, Mr. J. H. Gurney, Mr. Fitch, and Mr. L’Estrange of Norwich. On the other hand, I am happy to reckon still among the living Dr. Jessopp, Mr. Aldis Wright, Miss Toulmin Smith, and Mr. J. C. C. Smith, now a retired official of the Probate Office at Somerset House, who all gave me kindly help so long ago. And I have further to declare my obligations to Mr. Walter Rye, a gentleman well known as the best living authority on Norfolk topography and families, for most friendly and useful assistance in the way of notes and suggestions towards later editions. I have also quite recently received help (confessed elsewhere) from the Rev. William Hudson of Eastbourne, and have further had my attention called to significant documents in the Public Record Office by some of my old friends and colleagues there.

But among the departed, there is one whom I have reserved for mention by himself, not so much for any particular assistance given me long ago in the preparation of this work as for the previous education in historical study which I feel that I received from intercourse with him. I had been years engaged in the public service, and always thought that the records of the realm ought to be better utilised than they were in those days for the purpose of historical research; but how even Record clerks were to become well acquainted with them under the conditions then existing it was difficult to see. For each of us had his own little task assigned to him, and had really very little opportunity, if ever so willing, to go beyond it. Nor was there too much encouragement given under official regulations to anything like historical training; for the Record Office, when first constituted, was supposed to exist for the sake of litigants who wanted copies of documents, rather than for that of historical students who wanted to read them with other objects. Besides, people did not generally imagine then that past history could be rewritten, except by able and graphic pens which, perhaps, could put new life into old facts without a very large amount of additional research. The idea that the country contained vast stores of long-neglected letters capable of yielding up copious new information to supplement and to correct the old story of our national annals had hardly dawned upon anybody--least of all, perhaps, on humble officials bound to furnish office copies of ‘fines’ and ‘recoveries’ and antiquated legal processes. Even the State Papers, at that time, were kept apart from the Public Records, and could only be consulted by special permission from a Secretary of State. No clerk, either of the Record or State Paper Department, knew more than was contained within his own particular province. But by the wise policy of the late Lord Romilly these red-tape bands were ultimately broken; and just at that time I had the rare privilege of being appointed to assist the late Reverend John S. Brewer in one of the great works which his Lordship set on foot to enable the British public to understand the value of its own MSS. It was to this association with Mr. Brewer that I feel I owe all my historical training, and I made some acknowledgment of that debt in 1872 when I dedicated to him my first edition of this work.

INTRODUCTION

_The Paston Family_

The little village of Paston, in Norfolk, lies not far from the sea, where the land descends gently behind the elevated ground of Mundesley, and the line of the shore, proceeding eastward from Cromer, begins to tend a little more towards the south. It is about twenty miles north of Norwich. The country, though destitute of any marked features, is not uninteresting. Southwards, where it is low and flat, the ruins of Bromholm Priory attract attention. But, on the whole, it is an out-of-the-way district, unapproachable by sea, for the coast is dangerous, and offering few attractions to those who visit it by land. Indeed, till quite recently, no railways had come near it, and the means of access were not superabundant. Here, however, lived for several centuries a family which took its surname from the place, and whose private correspondence at one particular epoch sheds no inconsiderable light on the annals of their country.

Of the early history of this family our notices are scanty and uncertain. A Norman descent was claimed for them not only by the county historian Blomefield but by the laborious herald, Francis Sandford, author of a _Genealogical History of the Kings of England_, on the evidence of documents which have been since dispersed. Sandford’s genealogy of the Paston family was drawn up in the year 1674, just after Sir Robert Paston had been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Yarmouth, before he was promoted to the higher dignity of earl. It still remains in MS.; but a pretty full account of it will be found in the fourth volume of _Norfolk Archæology_. The story of the early ancestors, however, does not concern us here. At the time the family and their doings become best known to us, their social position was merely that of small gentry. One of these, however, was a justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of Henry VI., whose uprightness of conduct caused him to be commonly spoken of by the name of the Good Judge. He had a son, John, brought up to the law, who became executor to the old soldier and statesman, Sir John Fastolf. This John Paston had a considerable family, of whom the two eldest sons, strange to say, both bore the same Christian name as their father. They were also both of them soldiers, and each, in his time, attained the dignity of knighthood. But of them and their father, and their grandfather the judge, we shall have more to say presently. After them came Sir William Paston, a lawyer, one of whose daughters, Eleanor, married Thomas Manners, first Earl of Rutland. He had also two sons, of whom the first, Erasmus, died before him. [Sidenote: Clement Paston.] The second, whose name was Clement, was perhaps the most illustrious of the whole line. Born at Paston Hall, in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea, he had an early love for ships, was admitted when young into the naval service of Henry VIII., and became a great commander. In an engagement with the French he captured their admiral, the Baron de St. Blankheare or Blankard, and kept him prisoner at Caister, near Yarmouth, till he had paid 7000 crowns for his ransom, besides giving up a number of valuables contained in his ship. Of this event Clement Paston preserved till his death a curious memorial among his household utensils, and we read in his will that he bequeathed to his nephew his ‘standing bowl called the Baron St. Blankheare.’ He served also by land as well as by sea, and was with the Protector Somerset in Scotland at the battle of Pinkie. In Mary’s reign he is said to have been the person to whom the rebel Sir Thomas Wyat surrendered. In his later years he was more peacefully occupied in building a fine family seat at Oxnead. He lived till near the close of the reign of Elizabeth, having earned golden opinions from each of the sovereigns under whom he served. ‘Henry VIII.,’ we are told, ‘called him his champion; the Duke of Somerset, Protector in King Edward’s reign, called him his soldier; Queen Mary, her seaman; and Queen Elizabeth, her father.’[27-1]

[Footnote 27-1: Blomefield’s _History of Norfolk_, vi. 487, 488.]

Clement Paston died childless, and was succeeded by his nephew, another Sir William, whose name is well known in Norfolk as the founder of North Walsham School, and whose effigy in armour is visible in North Walsham Church, with a Latin epitaph recording acts of munificence on his part, not only to the grammar-school, but also to the cathedrals of Bath and Norwich, to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and to the poor at Yarmouth.

From Sir William the line descended through Christopher Paston (who, on succeeding his father, was found to be an idiot, incapable of managing his affairs), Sir Edmund and Sir William Paston, Baronet, to Sir Robert Paston, who, in the reign of Charles II., was created, first Viscount and afterwards Earl of Yarmouth. [Sidenote: The Earl of Yarmouth.] He is described as a person of good learning, and a traveller who brought home a number of curiosities collected in foreign countries. Before he was raised to the peerage he sat in Parliament for Castle Rising. It was he who, in the year 1664, was bold enough to propose to the House of Commons the unprecedented grant of two and a half millions to the king for a war against the Dutch.[27-2] This act not unnaturally brought him into favour with the Court, and paved the way for his advancement. Another incident in his life is too remarkable to be passed over. On the 9th of August 1676 he was waylaid while travelling in the night-time by a band of ruffians, who shot five bullets into his coach, one of which entered his body. The wound, however, was not mortal, and he lived six years longer.

[Footnote 27-2: Clarendon’s _Life_, ii. 440.]

His relations with the Court were not altogether of good omen for his family. We are told that he once entertained the king and queen, and the king’s brother, James, Duke of York, with a number of the nobility, at his family seat at Oxnead. His son, William, who became second Earl of Yarmouth, married the Lady Charlotte Boyle, one of King Charles’s natural daughters. This great alliance, and all the magnificence it involved, was too much for his slender fortunes. Earl William was led into a profuse expenditure which involved him in pecuniary difficulties. He soon deeply encumbered his inheritance; the library and the curiosities collected by his accomplished father had to be sold. The magnificent seat at Oxnead was allowed to fall into ruin; and on the death of this second earl it was pulled down, and the materials turned into money to satisfy his creditors. The family line itself came to an end, for Earl William had survived all his male issue, and the title became extinct.

From this brief summary of the family history we must now turn to a more specific account of William Paston, the old judge in the days of Henry VI., and of his children. [Sidenote: Thrifty ancestors.] Of them, and of their more immediate ancestor Clement, we have a description drawn by an unfriendly hand some time after the judge’s death; and as it is, notwithstanding its bias, our sole authority for some facts which should engage our attention at the outset, we cannot do better than quote the paper at length:--

‘_A remembrance of the worshipful kin and ancestry of Paston, born in Paston in Gemyngham Soken._

‘First, There was one Clement Paston dwelling in Paston, and he was a good, plain husband (_i.e._ husbandman), and lived upon his land that he had in Paston, and kept thereon a plough all times in the year, and sometimes in barlysell two ploughs. The said Clement yede (_i.e._ went) at one plough both winter and summer, and he rode to mill on the bare horseback with his corn under him, and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart with divers corns to Wynterton to sell, as a good husband[man] ought to do. Also, he had in Paston a five score or a six score acres of land at the most, and much thereof bond land to Gemyngham Hall, with a little poor water-mill running by a little river there, as it appeareth there of old time. Other livelode nor manors had he none there, nor in none other place.

‘And he wedded Geoffrey of Somerton (whose true surname is Goneld)’s sister, which was a bondwoman, to whom it is not unknown (to the prior of Bromholm and Bakton also, as it is said) if that men will inquire.

‘And as for Geoffrey Somerton, he was bond also, to whom, etc., he was both a pardoner and an attorney; and then was a good world, for he gathered many pence and half-pence, and therewith he made a fair chapel at Somerton, as it appeareth, etc.

‘Also, the said Clement had a son William, which that he set to school, and often he borrowed money to find him to school; and after that he yede (went) to court with the help of Geoffrey Somerton, his uncle, and learned the law, and there begat he much good; and then he was made a serjeant, and afterwards made a justice, and a right cunning man in the law. And he purchased much land in Paston, and also he purchased the moiety of the fifth part of the manor of Bakton, called either Latymer’s, or Styward’s, or Huntingfield, which moiety stretched into Paston; and so with it, and with another part of the said five parts he hath seignory in Paston, but no manor place; and thereby would John Paston, son to the said William, make himself a lordship there, to the Duke (qu. Duchy?) of Lancaster’s great hurt.

‘And the said John would and hath untruly increased him by one tenant, as where that the prior of Bromholm borrowed money of the said William for to pay withal his dismes, the said William would not lend it him unless the said prior would mortgage to the said William one John Albon, the said prior’s bondsman, dwelling in Paston, which was a stiff churl and a thrifty man, and would not obey him unto the said William; and for that cause, and for evil will that the said William had unto him, he desired him of the prior. And now after the death of the said William, the said John Albon died; and now John Paston, son to the said William, by force of the mortgage sent for the son of the said John Albon to Norwich.’

The reader will probably be of opinion that several of the facts here recorded are by no means so discreditable to the Pastons as the writer certainly intended that they should appear. The object of the whole paper is to cast a stigma on the family in general, as a crafty, money-getting race who had risen above their natural rank and station. It is insinuated that they were originally mere _adscripti glebæ_; that Clement Paston was only a thrifty husbandman (note the original signification of the word, ‘housebondman’), that he married a bondwoman, and transmitted to his son and grandson lands held by a servile tenure; and the writer further contends that they had no manorial rights in Paston, although William Paston, the justice, had purchased land in the neighbourhood, and his son John was endeavouring to ‘make himself a lordship’ there to the prejudice of the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster. It is altogether a singular statement, very interesting in its bearing upon the obscure question of the origin of copyholds, and the gradual emancipation of villeins. Whether it be true or false is another question; if true, it appears to discredit entirely the supposed Norman ancestry of the Pastons; but the remarkable thing is that an imputation of this kind could have been preferred against a family who, whatever may have been their origin, had certainly long before obtained a recognised position in the county.

It would appear, however, from the accuser’s own statement, that Clement Paston, the father of the justice, was an industrious peasant, who tilled his own land, and who set so high a value on a good education that he borrowed money to keep his son at school. With the help of his brother-in-law, he also sent the young man to London to learn the law, a profession which in that day, as in the present, was considered to afford an excellent education for a gentleman.[30-1] The good education was not thrown away. [Sidenote: William Paston the justice.] William Paston rose in the profession and became one of its ornaments. He improved his fortunes by marrying Agnes, daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund Berry of Harlingbury Hall, in Hertfordshire. Some years before his father’s death, Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich, appointed him his steward. In 1414 he was called in, along with two others, to mediate in a dispute which had for some time prevailed in the city of Norwich, as to the mode in which the mayors should be elected; and he had the good fortune with his coadjutors to adjust the matter satisfactorily.[30-2] In 1421 he was made a serjeant, and in 1429 a judge of the Common Pleas.[30-3] Before that time we find him acting as trustee for various properties, as of the Appleyard family in Dunston,[30-4] of Sir Richard Carbonel,[30-5] Sir Simon Felbrigg,[30-6] John Berney,[31-1] Sir John Rothenhale,[31-2] Sir John Gyney of Dilham,[31-3] Lord Cobham,[31-4] and Ralph Lord Cromwell.[31-5] He was also executor to Sir William Calthorp.[31-6] The confidence reposed in him by so many different persons is a remarkable testimony to the esteem in which he was held. He was, moreover, appointed one of the king’s council for the duchy of Lancaster, and on his elevation to the judicial bench the king gave him a salary of 110 marks (£73, 6s. 8d.), with two robes more than the ordinary allowance of the judges.

[Footnote 30-1: ‘Here everything good and virtuous is to be learned; all vice is discouraged and banished. So that knights, barons, and the greatest nobility of the kingdom, often place their children in those Inns of Court; not so much to make the law their study, much less to live by the profession (having large patrimonies of their own), but to form their manners, and to preserve them from the contagion of vice.’--_Fortescue de Laudibus Legum Angliæ_ (ed. Amos), 185.]

[Footnote 30-2: Blomefield’s _Norfolk_, iii. 126.]

[Footnote 30-3: Dugdale’s _Origines_.]

[Footnote 30-4: Blomefield, v. 56.]

[Footnote 30-5: _Ibid._ ii. 257, 285; vii. 217.]

[Footnote 30-6: _Ibid._ viii. 109.]

[Footnote 31-1: Blomefield, x. 67.]

[Footnote 31-2: _See_ Letter 13.]

[Footnote 31-3: Blomefield, vi. 353.]

[Footnote 31-4: _Ibid._ x. 176.]

[Footnote 31-5: _Ibid._ v. 27.]

[Footnote 31-6: _Ibid._ vi. 517.]

In addition to all this he is supposed to have been a knight, and is called Sir William Paston in Fenn’s publication. But this dignity was never conferred upon him in his own day. [Sidenote: Not a knight.] There is, indeed, one paper printed by Fenn from the MSS. which were for a long time missing that speaks of him in the heading as ‘Sir William Paston, Knight’; but the original MS. since recovered shows that the heading so printed is taken from an endorsement of a more modern date. This was, indeed, a confident surmise of mine at a time when the MS. was inaccessible; for it was clear that William Paston never could have been knighted. His name occurs over and over again on the patent rolls of Henry VI. He is named in at least one commission of the peace every year to his death, and in a good many other commissions besides, as justices invariably were. He is named also in many of the other papers of the same collection, simply as William Paston of Paston, Esquire; and even in the body of the petition so inaccurately headed, he is simply styled William Paston, one of the justices. Nor does there appear to be any other foundation for the error than that single endorsement. He left a name behind him of so great repute, that Fuller could not help giving him a place among his ‘Worthies of England,’ although, as he remarks, it did not fall strictly within the plan of his work to notice a lawyer who was neither a chief justice nor an author.

[Sidenote: His character.] Of his personal character we are entitled to form a favourable estimate, not only from the honourable name conferred on him as a judge, but also from the evidences already alluded to of the general confidence felt in his integrity. True it is that among these papers we have a complaint against him for accepting fees and pensions when he was justice, from various persons in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk;[32-1] but this only proves, what we might have expected, that he had enemies and cavillers as well as friends. Of the justice of the charges in themselves we have no means of forming an independent judgment; but in days when all England, and not least so the county of Norfolk, was full of party spirit and contention, it was not likely that a man in the position of William Paston should escape imputations of partiality and one-sidedness. Before his elevation to the bench, he had already suffered for doing his duty to more than one client. Having defended the Prior of Norwich in an action brought against him by a certain Walter Aslak, touching the advowson of the church of Sprouston, the latter appears to have pursued him with unrelenting hatred. The county of Norfolk was at the time ringing with the news of an outrage committed by a band of unknown rioters at Wighton. On the last day of the year 1423, one John Grys of Wighton had been entertaining company, and was heated with ‘wassail,’ when he was suddenly attacked in his own house. [Sidenote: Outrage by William Aslak.] He and his son and a servant were carried a mile from home and led to a pair of gallows, where it was intended to hang them; but as ropes were not at once to be had, they were murdered in another fashion, and their bodies horribly mutilated before death.[32-2] For nearly three years the murderers went unpunished, while the country stood aghast at the crime. But while it was still recent, at a county court holden at Norwich, Aslak caused a number of bills, partly in rhyme, to be posted on the gates of Norwich priory, and of the Grey Friars, and some of the city gates, distinctly threatening William Paston with the fate of John Grys, and insinuating that even worse things were in store for him.

[Footnote 32-1: No. 25.]

[Footnote 32-2: _See_ No. 6. Compare J. Amundesham Annales, 16. In the latter Grys’s Christian name is given as William, and the outrage is said to have taken place on Christmas Day instead of New Year’s Eve.]

Against open threats like these William Paston of course appealed to the law; but law in those days was but a feeble protector. Aslak had the powerful support of Sir Thomas Erpingham, by which he was enabled not only to evade the execution of sentence passed against him, but even to continue his persecution. He found means to deprive Paston of the favour of the Duke of Norfolk, got bills introduced in Parliament to his prejudice, and made it unsafe for him to stir abroad. The whole country appears to have been disorganised by faction; quarrels at that very time were rife in the king’s council-chamber itself, between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Protector, and Bishop Beaufort; nor was anything so firmly established by authority but that hopes might be entertained of setting it aside by favour.

William Paston had two other enemies at this time. ‘I pray the Holy Trinity,’ he writes in one place, ‘deliver me of my three adversaries, this cursed Bishop for Bromholm, Aslak for Sprouston, and Julian Herberd for Thornham.’ The bishop whom he mentions with so much vehemence, claimed to be a kinsman of his own, and named himself John Paston, but William Paston denied the relationship, maintaining that his true name was John Wortes. [Sidenote: John Wortes.] He appears to have been in the first place a monk of Bromholm, the prior of which monastery having brought an action against him as an apostate from his order, engaged William Paston as his counsel in the prosecution. Wortes, however, escaped abroad, and brought the matter before the spiritual jurisdiction of the court of Rome, bringing actions against both the prior and William Paston, the latter of whom he got condemned in a penalty of £205. On this William Paston was advised by friends at Rome to come at once to an arrangement with him; but he determined to contest the validity of the sentence, the result of which appears to have been that he was excommunicated. His adversary, meanwhile, found interest to get himself appointed and consecrated Bishop of Cork; and though his name does not appear in the ordinary lists of bishops of that see, the Vatican archives show that he was provided to it on the 23rd May 1425.[34-1]

[Footnote 34-1: Nos. 10, 11, 12. Maziere Brady in his book on the _Episcopal Succession_, vol. ii. p. 79, gives the following entry from the archives of the Vatican:--

‘Die 10{o} kal. Junii 1425, provisum est ecclesiæ Corcagen. in Hibernia, vacanti per mortem Milis (_Milonis_), de persona Ven. Fratris Johannis Pasten, prioris conventualis Prioratus Bromholm, Ordinis Cluniacensis.’--_Vatican_.

Also on Sept. 14, 1425, ‘Johannes Paston, Dei gratia electus Korkagen, solvit personaliter 120 florenos auri,’ etc. --_Obligazioni_.]

[[Fratris Johannis Pasten ... Ordinis Cluniacensis.’ _text reads ‘Fratis ... Chuniacensis’_]]

As for Julian Herberd, William Paston’s third enemy, we have hitherto known nothing of her but the name. It appears, however, by some Chancery proceedings[34-2] recently discovered, that Julian Herberd was a widow who considered herself to have been wronged by Paston as regards her mother’s inheritance, of which he had kept her from the full use for no less than forty years. Paston had, indeed, made her some pecuniary offers which she did not think sufficient, and she had attempted to pursue her rights against him at a Parliament at Westminster, when he caused her to be imprisoned in the King’s Bench. There, as she grievously complains, she lay a year, suffering much and ‘nigh dead from cold, hunger, and thirst.’ The case was apparently one of parliamentary privilege, which she had violated by her attempted action, though she adds that he threatened to keep her in prison for life if she would not release to him her right, and give him a full acquittance. She also accuses him of having actually procured one from her by coercion, and of having by false suggestion to the Lord Chancellor caused her committal to the Fleet, where she was kept for a whole year, ‘beaten, fettered, and stocked,’ that no man might know where she was. At another time, also, she says he kept her three years in the pit within Norwich Castle on starvation diet. The accusation culminates in a charge which seems really inconceivable:--

‘Item, the said Paston did bring her out of the Round House into your Palace and brought her afore your Chief Justice, and then the said Paston commanded certain persons to bring her to prison to your Bench, and bade at his peril certain persons to smite the brain out of her head for suing of her right; and there being in grievous prison during half year and more, fettered and chained, suffering cold, hunger, thirst, in point of death, God and ye, gracious King, help her to her right.’

[Footnote 34-2: Printed in Appendix to this introduction.]

What we are to think of all this, not having Paston’s reply, I cannot say.

Scanty and disconnected as are the notices we possess of William Paston, we must not pass by without comment his letter to the vicar of the abbot of Clugny, in behalf of Bromholm Priory.[35-1] It was not, indeed, the only occasion[35-2] on which we find that he exerted himself in behalf of this ancient monastery, within a mile of which, he tells us, he was born. [Sidenote: Bromholm Priory.] Bromholm Priory was, in fact, about that distance from Paston Hall, as miles were reckoned then (though it is nearer two of our statute miles), and must have been regarded with special interest by the family. It was there that John Paston, the son of the judge, was sumptuously buried in the reign of Edward IV. It was a monastery of some celebrity. Though not, at least in its latter days, one of the most wealthy religious houses, for it fell among the smaller monasteries at the first parliamentary suppression of Henry VIII., its ruins still attest that it was by no means insignificant. Situated by the sea-shore, with a flat, unbroken country round about, they are conspicuous from a distance both by sea and land. Among the numerous monasteries of Norfolk, none but Walsingham was more visited by strangers, and many of the pilgrims to Walsingham turned aside on their way homeward to visit the Rood of Bromholm. For this was a very special treasure brought from Constantinople two hundred years before, and composed of a portion of the wood of the true Cross. Many were the miracles recorded to have been wrought in the monastery since that precious relic was set up; the blind had received their sight, the lame had walked, and lepers had been cleansed; even the dead had been restored to life. It was impossible that a native of Paston could be uninterested in a place so renowned throughout all England.

[Footnote 35-1: No. 20.]

[Footnote 35-2: _See_ No. 47, p. 56.]

Yet about this time the priory must have been less prosperous than it had once been. Its government and constitution were in a transition state. It was one of the twenty-eight monasteries in England which belonged to the Cluniac order, and were originally subject to the visitation of the Abbot of Clugny in France. Subjection to a foreign head did not tend at any time to make them popular in this country, and in the reign of Henry V. that connection was suddenly broken off. An act was passed suppressing at once all the alien priories, or religious houses that acknowledged foreign superiors. The priors of several of the Cluniac monasteries took out new foundation charters, and attached themselves to other orders. Those that continued signed deeds of surrender, and their monasteries were taken into the king’s hands. About nine or ten years later, however, it would seem that a vicar of the Abbot of Clugny was allowed to visit England, and to him William Paston made an appeal to profess in due form a number of virtuous young men who had joined the priory in the interval.

[Sidenote: Land purchased by Judge Paston.] From the statement already quoted as to the history of the Paston family, it appears that William Paston purchased a good deal of land in Paston besides what had originally belonged to them. It was evidently his intention to make a family residence, and transmit to his sons a more absolute ownership in the land from which they derived their name. Much of his father’s land in Paston had been copyhold belonging to the manor of Gimingham Hall; but William Paston bought ‘a moiety of the fifth part’ of the adjacent manor of Bacton, with free land extending into Paston. He thus established himself as undoubted lord of the greater part of the soil, and must have felt a pardonable pride in the improved position he thereby bequeathed to his descendants. At Paston he apparently contemplated building a manor house; for he made inquiry about getting stone from Yorkshire conveyed by sea to Mundesley, where there was then a small harbour[36-1] within two miles of Paston village. To carry out the improvements [Sidenote: Highways diverted.] he proposed to make there and on other parts of his property, he obtained licence from the king a year before his death to divert two public highways, the one at Paston and the other at Oxnead, a little from their course.[36-2] The alterations do not appear to have been of a nature that any one had a right to complain of. Full inquiry was made beforehand by an inquisition _ad quod damnum_[37-1] whether they would be to the prejudice of neighbours. At Paston the extent of roadway which he obtained leave to enclose was only thirty-two and a half perches in length by one perch in breadth. It ran on the south side of his mansion, and he agreed to make a new highway of the same dimensions on the north side. The vicar of Paston seems to have been the neighbour principally concerned in the course that the new thoroughfare was to take, and all particulars had been arranged with him a few months before William Paston died.

[Footnote 36-1: No. 7.]

[Footnote 36-2: Patent 6th July, 21 Henry VI., p. 1, m. 10.]

[Footnote 37-1: _Inquis. a. q. d._ (arranged with _Inquisitions post-mortem_), 21 Henry VI., No. 53.]

[Sidenote: John Paston has disputes with his neighbours.] But it would seem upon the judge’s death his great designs were for some time interrupted. The family were looked upon by many as upstarts, and young John Paston, who was only four-and-twenty, though bred to the law like his father, could not expect to possess the same weight and influence with his neighbours. A claim was revived by the lord of Gimingham Hall to a rent of eight shillings from one of Paston’s tenants, which had never been demanded so long as the judge was alive. The vicar of Paston pulled up the ‘doles’ which were set to mark the new highway, and various other disturbances were committed by the neighbours. It seems to have required all the energies not only of John Paston upon the spot, but also of his brother Edmund, who was in London at Clifford’s Inn, to secure the rights of the family; insomuch that their mother, in writing to the latter of the opposition to which they had been exposed, expresses a fear lest she should make him weary of Paston.[37-2] And, indeed, if Edmund Paston was not weary of the dispute, his mother herself had cause to be; for it not only lasted years after this, but for some years after Edmund Paston was dead the stopping of the king’s highway was a fruitful theme of remonstrance. When Agnes Paston built a wall it was thrown down before it was half completed; threats of heavy amercements were addressed to her in church, and the men of Paston spoke of showing their displeasure when they went in public procession on St. Mark’s day.[37-3]

[Footnote 37-2: Letter 62.]

[Footnote 37-3: Nos. 194, 195, 196.]

[Sidenote: Oxnead.] The Manor of Oxnead, which in later times became the principal seat of the family, was also among the possessions purchased by Judge Paston. He bought it of William Clopton of Long Melford, and settled it upon Agnes, his wife. But after his death her right to it was disputed. It had formerly belonged to a family of the name of Hauteyn, and there suddenly started up a claimant in the person of one John Hauteyn, whose right to hold property of any kind was [Sidenote: John Hauteyn.] supposed to have been entirely annulled by the fact of his having entered the Order of Carmelite Friars. It seems, however, he had succeeded in getting from the Pope a dispensation to renounce the Order on the plea that he had been forced into it against his will when he was under age, and being thus restored by the ecclesiastical power to the condition of a layman, he next appealed to the civil courts to get back his inheritance. This danger must have been seen by William Paston before his death, and a paper was drawn up (No. 46) to show that Hauteyn had been released from his vows on false pretences. Nevertheless he pursued his claim at law, and although he complained of the difficulty of getting counsel (owing, as he himself intimated, to the respect in which the bar held the memory of Judge Paston, and the fact that his son John was one of their own members), he seems to have had hopes of succeeding through the influence of the Duke of Suffolk. His suit, however, had not been brought to a successful determination at the date of Suffolk’s fall. It was still going on in the succeeding summer; but as we hear no more of it after that, we may presume that the altered state of the political world induced him to abandon it. According to Blomefield, he and others of the Hauteyn family released their rights to Agnes Paston ‘about 1449’; but this date is certainly at least a year too early.[38-1]

[Footnote 38-1: Nos. 63, 87, 93, 128; Blomefield, vi. 479.]

William Paston also purchased various other lands in the county of Norfolk.[38-2] Among others, he purchased from Thomas Chaucer, a son of the famous poet, the manor of Gresham,[39-1] of which we shall have something more to say a little later. We also find that in the fourth year of Henry VI. he obtained, in conjunction with one Thomas Poye, a grant of a market, fair and free-warren in his manor of Shipden which had belonged to his father Clement before him.[39-2]

[Footnote 38-2: It would appear that he had also an estate at Therfield, in Hertfordshire, as shown by an inscription in the east window of the north aisle of the parish church, in which were portraits of himself and his wife underwritten with the words, _Orate pro animabus domini Willelmi Paston et Agnetis uxoris ejus, benefactorum hujus ecclesiæ_ (Chauncey’s _Hertfordshire_, 88).]

[Footnote 39-1: Blomefield, viii. 127.]

[Footnote 39-2: _Patent Roll_, 4 Henry VI., p. 2, m. 13; Blomefield, viii. 102. A further notice relating to Judge Paston has been given me by Sir James Ramsay in the following memorandum:--‘£432 for arrears of salary due to late William Paston, paid to his executor, John Paston, from _parva custuma_ of the port of London. L.T.R. Enrolled Customs Account of Henry VI. (entry 8 Nov. 37 Hen. VI.--Mich. 38 Hen. VI.)’ in Public Record Office. So the arrears of the judge’s salary were only paid in 1458, fourteen years after his death.]

[Sidenote: John Paston’s marriage.] The notices of John Paston begin when he was on the eve of marrying, a few years before his father’s death. The match was evidently one that was arranged by the parents, after the fashion of the times. The lady was of a good family--daughter and heiress of John Mauteby, Esq. of Mauteby in Norfolk. The friends on both sides must have been satisfied that the union was a good one; for it had the one great merit which was then considered everything--it was no disparagement to the fortunes or the rank of either family. Beyond this hard business view, indeed, might have been found better arguments to recommend it; but English men and women in those days did not read novels, and had no great notion of cultivating sentiment for its own sake. Agnes Paston writes to her husband to intimate ‘the bringing home of the gentlewoman from Reedham,’ according to the arrangement he had made about it. It was, in her words, ‘the first acquaintance between John Paston and the said gentlewoman’ (one would think Dame Agnes must have learned from her husband to express herself with something of the formality of a lawyer); and we are glad to find that the young lady’s sense of propriety did not spoil her natural affability. ‘She made him gentle cheer in gentle wise, and said he was verily your son; and so I hope there shall need no great treaty between them.’ Finally the judge is requested by his wife to buy a gown for his future daughter-in-law, to which her mother would add a goodly fur. ‘The gown,’ says Dame Agnes, ‘needeth for to be had; and of colour it would be a goodly blue, or else a bright sanguine.’[40-1]

[Footnote 40-1: No. 34.]

[Sidenote: Character of his wife.] ‘The gentlewoman’ thus introduced to John Paston and the reader proved to the former a most devoted wife during about six-and-twenty years of married life. Her letters to her husband form no inconsiderable portion of the correspondence in these volumes, and it is impossible to peruse them without being convinced that the writer was a woman not only of great force of character, but of truly affectionate nature. It is true the ordinary style of these epistles is very different from that of wives addressing their husbands nowadays. There are no conventional expressions of tenderness--the conventionality of the age seems to have required not tenderness but humility on the part of women towards the head of a family; the subjects of the letters, too, are for the most part matters of pure business; yet the genuine womanly nature is seen bursting out whenever there is occasion to call it forth. Very early in the correspondence we meet with a letter of hers (No. 47) which in itself is pretty sufficient evidence that women, at least, were human in the fifteenth century. Her husband was at the time in London just beginning to recover from an illness which seems to have been occasioned by some injury he had met with. His mother had vowed to give an image of wax the weight of himself to Our Lady of Walsingham on his recovery, and Margaret to go on a pilgrimage thither, and also to St. Leonard’s at Norwich. That she did not undertake a journey of a hundred miles to do more efficient service was certainly not owing to any want of will on her part. The difficulties of travelling in those days, and the care of a young child, sufficiently account for her remaining in Norfolk; but apparently even these considerations would not have deterred her from the journey had she not been dissuaded from it by others. ‘If I might have had my will,’ she writes, ‘I should have seen you ere this time. I would ye were at home, if it were for your ease (and your sore might be as well looked to here as it is there ye be), now liever than a gown, though it were of scarlet.’ Could the sincerity of a woman’s wishes be more artlessly expressed?

Let not the reader suppose, however, that Margaret Paston’s acknowledged love of a scarlet gown indicates anything like frivolity of character or inordinate love of display. We have little reason to believe from her correspondence that dress was a ruling passion. The chief aim discernible in all she writes--the chief motive that influenced everything she did--was simply the desire to give her husband satisfaction. And her will to do him service was, in general, only equalled by her ability. During term time, when John Paston was in London, she was his agent at home. It was she who negotiated with farmers, receiving overtures for leases and threats of lawsuits, and reported to her husband everything that might affect his interests, with the news of the country generally. Nor were threats always the worst thing she had to encounter on his account. For even domestic life, in those days, was not always exempt from violence; and there were at least two occasions when Margaret had to endure, in her husband’s absence, things that a woman ought to have been spared.

[Sidenote: The Manor of Gresham.] One of these occasions we proceed to notice. The manor of Gresham, which William Paston had purchased from the son of the poet Chaucer, had been in the days of Edward II. the property of one Edmund Bacon, who obtained from that king a licence to embattle the manor-house. It descended from him to his two daughters, Margaret and Margery. The former became the wife of Sir William de Kerdeston, and her rights were inherited by a daughter named Maud, who married Sir John Burghersh.[41-1] This moiety came to Thomas Chaucer by his marriage with Maud Burghersh, the daughter of the Maud just mentioned. The other became at first the property of Sir William Molynes, who married Bacon’s second daughter Margery. But this Margery having survived her husband, made a settlement of it by will, according to which the reversion of it after the decease of one Philip Vache and of Elizabeth his wife, was to be sold; and William, son of Robert Molynes, was to have the first option of purchase. This William Molynes at first declined to buy it, being apparently in want of funds; but he afterwards got one Thomas Fauconer, a London merchant, to advance the purchase-money, on an agreement that his son should marry Fauconer’s daughter. The marriage, however, never took effect; the Molynes family lost all claim upon the manor, and the same Thomas Chaucer who acquired the other moiety by his wife, purchased this moiety also, and conveyed both to William Paston.[42-1]

[Footnote 41-1: _Inquisitions post-mortem_, 27 Edw. III., No. 28, and 30 Edw. III., No. 42. Blomefield inaccurately makes Maud, whom Sir John Burghersh married, the daughter of Edmond Bacon instead of his granddaughter.--(_Hist. of Norf._ viii. 127.)]

[Footnote 42-1: No. 16. Blomefield gives a somewhat different account, founded doubtless on documents to which I have not had access. He says that Margery, widow of Sir William Molynes, settled her portion of the manor on one Thomas de la Lynde, with the consent of her son Sir William Molynes, who resigned all claim to it.]

[[Footnote 41-1: _Inquisitions post-mortem_, 27 Edw. III., _comma after “III.” missing_]]

The whole manor of Gresham thus descended to John Paston, as his father’s heir. But a few years after his father’s death he was troubled in the possession of it by Robert Hungerford, son of Lord Hungerford, who, having married Eleanor Molynes, a descendant of the Sir William Molynes above referred to, had been raised to the peerage as Lord Molynes,and laid claim to the whole inheritance of the [Sidenote: Claimed by Lord Molynes.] Molynes family. He was still but a young man,[42-2] heir-apparent to another barony; and, with the prospect of a great inheritance both from his father and from his mother, who was the daughter and sole heir of William Lord Botraux, he certainly had little occasion to covet lands that were not his own. Nevertheless he listened to the counsels of John Heydon of Baconsthorpe, a lawyer who had been sheriff and also recorder of Norwich, and whom the gentry of Norfolk looked upon with anything but goodwill, regarding him as the ready tool of every powerful oppressor. His chief patron, with whom his name was constantly coupled, was Sir Thomas Tuddenham; and the two together, especially during the unpopular ministry of the Duke of Suffolk, exercised an ascendency in the county, of which we hear very numerous complaints. Heydon persuaded Lord Molynes that he had a good claim to the manor of Gresham; and Lord Molynes, without more ado, went in and took possession on the 17th of February 1448.[43-1]

[Footnote 42-2: According to the inquisition taken on his father’s death (_Inq. p. m._, 37 Hen. VI., No. 17), he was over thirty in June 1459. If we are to understand that he was then only in his thirty-first year, he could not have been twenty when he first dispossessed John Paston of Gresham. But ‘over thirty’ may perhaps mean two or three years over.]

[Footnote 43-1: No. 102.]

To recover his rights against a powerful young nobleman connected with various wealthy and influential families required, as John Paston knew, the exercise of great discretion. Instead of resorting at once to an action at law, he made representations to Lord Molynes and his legal advisers to show how indefensible was the title they had set up for him. He secured some attention for his remonstrances by the intercession of Waynflete, bishop of Winchester.[43-2] Conferences took place between the counsel of both parties during the following summer, and the weakness of Lord Molynes’ case was practically confessed by his solicitors, who in the end told Paston to apply to his lordship personally. Paston accordingly, at no small expense to himself, went and waited upon him at Salisbury and elsewhere, but was continually put off. At last, on the 6th of October, not, as I believe, the same year, but the year following, he succeeded in doing to Lord Molynes to some extent what Lord Molynes had already done to him. He took possession of ‘a mansion within the said town,’ and occupied it himself, having doubtless a sufficiency of servants to guard against any sudden surprise. After this fashion he maintained his rights for a period of over three months. The usual residence of Lord Molynes was in Wiltshire, and his agents probably did not like the responsibility of attempting to remove John Paston without express orders from their master. But on the 28th of January 1450, while John Paston was away in London on business, there came before the mansion at Gresham a company of a thousand persons, sent to recover possession for Lord Molynes. They were armed with cuirasses and brigandines, with guns, bows, and arrows, and with every kind of offensive and defensive armour. They had also mining instruments, long poles with hooks, called cromes, used for pulling down houses, ladders, pickaxes, and pans with fire burning in them. With these formidable implements they beset the house, at that time occupied only by Margaret Paston and twelve other persons; and having broken open the outer gates, they set to work undermining the very chamber in which Margaret was. Resistance under the circumstances was impossible. Margaret was forcibly carried out. The house was then thoroughly rifled of all that it contained--property estimated by John Paston at £200[44-1]--the doorposts were cut asunder, and the place was left little better than a ruin. Further, that there might be no mistake about the spirit in which the outrage was perpetrated, the rioters declared openly, that if they had found John Paston, or his friend John Damme, who had aided him with his counsel about these matters, neither of them should have escaped alive.[44-2]

[Footnote 43-2: No. 79.]

[Footnote 44-1: A value probably equal to about £3000 of our money.]

[Footnote 44-2: Nos. 102, 135.]

John Paston drew up a petition for redress to Parliament, and another to the Lord Chancellor; but it was some months before his case could be attended to, for that year was one of confusion and disorder unparalleled. It was that year, in fact, which may be said to have witnessed the first outbreak of a long, intermittent civil war. History has not passed over in silence the troubles of 1450. [Sidenote: Troubled times, A.D. 1450.] The rebellion of Jack Cade, and the murder of two bishops in different parts of the country, were facts which no historian could treat as wholly insignificant. Many writers have even repeated the old slander, which there seems no good reason to believe, that Jack Cade’s insurrection was promoted by the intrigues of the Duke of York; but no one appears to me to have realised the precise nature of the crisis that necessarily followed the removal of the Duke of Suffolk. And as we have now arrived at the point where the Paston Letters begin to have a most direct bearing on English history, we must endeavour in a few words of historical retrospect to make the matter as clear as possible.

_The Duke of Suffolk_

[Sidenote: Fall of the Duke of Suffolk.] As to the causes of Suffolk’s fall we are not left in ignorance. Not only do we possess the full text of the long indictment drawn up against him this year in Parliament, but a number of political ballads and satires, in which he is continually spoken of by the name of Jack Napes, help us to realise the feeling with which he was generally regarded. Of his real merits as a statesman, it is hard to pronounce an opinion; for though, obviously enough, his whole policy was a failure, he himself seems to have been aware from the first that it was not likely to be popular. Two great difficulties he had to contend with, each sufficient to give serious anxiety to any minister whatever: the first being the utter weakness of the king’s character; the second, the practical impossibility of maintaining the English conquests in France. To secure both himself and the nation against the uncertainties which might arise from the vacillating counsels of one who seems hardly ever to have been able to judge for himself in State affairs, he may have thought it politic to ally the king with a woman of stronger will than his own. At all events, if this was his intention, he certainly achieved it. The marriage of Henry with Margaret of Anjou was his work; and from Margaret he afterwards obtained a protection which he would certainly not have received from her well-intentioned but feeble-minded husband.

[Sidenote: The king’s marriage.] This marriage undoubtedly recommended itself to Henry himself as a great means of promoting peace with France. The pious, humane, and Christian character of the king disposed him favourably towards all pacific counsels, and gave him a high opinion of the statesman whose policy most obviously had in view the termination of the disastrous war between France and England. King René, the father of Margaret of Anjou, was the brother of the French king’s consort; so it was conceived that by his and Margaret’s intercession a permanent peace might be obtained, honourable to both countries. For this end, Henry was willing to relinquish his barren title to the kingdom of France, if he could have been secured in the possession of those lands only, such as Guienne and Normandy, which he held irrespective of that title.[45-1] He was willing to relinquish even the duchies of Anjou and Maine, King René’s patrimony, though the latter had long been in the possession of the English. It was of course out of the question that Henry should continue to keep the father of his bride by force out of his own lands. Suffolk therefore promised to give them up to the French king, for the use of René and his brother, Charles of Anjou; so that instead of the former giving his daughter a dower, England was called upon to part with some of her conquests. But how would the English nation reconcile itself to such a condition? Suffolk knew well he was treading in a dangerous path, and took every possible precaution to secure himself. He pleaded beforehand his own incompetency for the charge that was committed to him. He urged that his familiarity with the Duke of Orleans and other French prisoners lately detained in England brought him under suspicion at home, and rendered him a less fitting ambassador for arranging matters with France. Finally he obtained from the King and Council an instrument under the Great Seal, pardoning him beforehand any error of judgment he might possibly commit in conducting so critical a negotiation.[46-1]

[Footnote 45-1: Stevenson’s _Wars of the English in France_, i. 132.]

[Footnote 46-1: Rymer, xi. 53.]

His success, if judged by the immediate result, seemed to show that so much diffidence was unnecessary. The people at large rejoiced in the marriage of their king; the bride, if poor, was beautiful and attractive; the negotiator received the thanks of Parliament, and there was not a man in all the kingdom,--at least in all the legislature--durst wag his tongue in censure. The Duke of Gloucester, his chief rival and opponent in the senate, was the first to rise from his seat and recommend Suffolk, for his services, to the favour of the Crown.[46-2] If he had really committed any mistakes, they were as yet unknown, or at all events uncriticised. Even the cession of Maine and Anjou at this time does not seem to have been spoken of.

[Footnote 46-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 73. That Gloucester secretly disliked Suffolk’s policy, and thought the peace with France too dearly bought, is more than probable. At the reception of the French ambassadors in 1445, we learn from their report that Henry looked exceedingly pleased, especially when his uncle the French king was mentioned. ‘And on his left hand were my Lord of Gloucester, at whom he looked at the time, and then he turned round to the right to the chancellor, and the Earl of Suffolk, and the Cardinal of York, who were there, smiling to them, and it was very obvious that he made some signal. And it was afterwards mentioned by-------- (_blank in orig._), that he pressed his Chancellor’s hand and said to him in English, “I am very much rejoiced that some who are present should hear these words. They are not at their ease.”’--Stevenson’s _Wars of the English in France_, i. 110-11.]

Happy in the confidence of his sovereign, Suffolk was promoted to more distinguished honour. From an earl he was raised to the dignity of a marquis; from a marquisate, a few years later, to a dukedom. He had already supplanted older statesmen with far greater advantages of birth and pre-eminence of rank. [Sidenote: Suffolk’s ascendency.] The two great rivals, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Cardinal Beaufort, were both eclipsed, and both died, within six weeks of each other, two years after the king’s marriage, leaving Suffolk the only minister of mark. But his position was not improved by this undisputed ascendency. [Sidenote: A.D. 1447.] The death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, aroused suspicions in the public mind that were perhaps due merely to time and circumstance. Duke Humphrey, with many defects in his character, had always been a popular favourite, and just before his death he had been arrested on a charge of treason. That he could not possibly have remained quiet under the new _régime_ is a fact that we might presume as a matter of course, but there is no clear evidence that he was guilty of intrigue or conspiracy. The king, indeed, appears to have thought he was so, but his opinions were formed by those of Suffolk and the Queen; and both Suffolk and the Queen were such enemies of Duke Humphrey, that they were vehemently suspected of having procured his death.[47-1]

[Footnote 47-1: An interesting and valuable account of the death of Duke Humphrey, from original sources, will be found in _The Hall of Lawford Hall_, pp. 104-13.]

Complaints against the minister now began to be made more openly, and his conduct touching the surrender of Anjou and Maine was so generally censured, that he petitioned the king that a day might be appointed on which he should have an opportunity of clearing himself before the Council. On the 25th of May 1447 his wish was granted, and in the presence of a full Council, including the Duke of York, and others who might have been expected to be no very favourable critics, he gave a detailed account of all that he had done. How far he made a really favourable impression upon his hearers we do not know; but in the end he was declared to have vindicated his integrity, and a proclamation was issued forbidding the circulation of such slanders against him in future, under penalty of the king’s displeasure.[48-1]

[Footnote 48-1: Rymer, xi. 173.]

The nature of the defence that he set up can only be a matter of speculation; but it may be observed that as yet no formal delivery of Anjou or Maine had really taken place at all. The former province, though it had been before this overrun and laid waste by the English, does not appear ever to have been permanently occupied by them. Delivery of Anjou would therefore have been an idle form; all that was required was that the English should forbear to invade it. But with Maine the case was different. It had been for a long time in the hands of the English, and pledges had certainly been given for its delivery by Suffolk and by Henry himself in December 1445.[48-2] As yet, however, nothing had been concluded by way of positive treaty. No definite peace had been made with France. Difficulties had always started up in the negotiations, and the ambassadors appointed on either side had been unable to do more than prolong from time to time the existing truce, leaving the matter in dispute to be adjusted at a personal interview between the two kings, for which express provision was made at the time of each new arrangement. But the personal interview never took place. In August 1445 it was arranged for the following summer. In January 1446 it was fixed to be before November. In February 1447 it was again to be in the summer following. In July it was settled to be before May 1448; but in October the time was again lengthened further.[48-3] There can be little doubt that these perpetual delays were due merely to hesitation on the part of England to carry out a policy to which she was already pledged. Charles, of course, could not allow them to go on for ever. In the treaty of July 1447, an express provision was for the first time inserted, that the town and castle of Le Mans, and other places within the county of Maine, should be delivered up to the French. It seems also to have been privately arranged that this should be done before the 1st of November; and that the further treaty made at Bourges on the 15th of October should not be published until the surrender was accomplished.[49-1] But the year 1447 had very nearly expired before even the first steps were taken to give effect to this arrangement. At length, on the 30th of December, an agreement was made by Matthew Gough, who had the keeping of Le Mans, that the place should be surrendered by the 15th of January, on receipt of letters patent from the King of France, for compensation to be made to grantees of the English crown.

[Footnote 48-2: _See_ Stevenson’s _Wars of the English in France_, ii. [639] to [642].]

[Footnote 48-3: Rymer, xi. 97, 108, 151, 182, 189, etc.]

[Footnote 49-1: Stevenson’s _Wars_, ii. [714, 715].]

Even this arrangement, however, was not adhered to. Matthew Gough still found reasons for refusing or delaying the surrender, although the English Government protested the sincerity of its intentions. But Charles now began to take the matter into his own hands. [Sidenote: Siege of Le Mans, A.D. 1448.] Count Dunois and others were sent to besiege the place, with a force raised suddenly out of various towns; for France had been carefully maturing, during those years of truce, a system of conscription which was now becoming serviceable. At the first rumour of these musters the English Government was alarmed, and Sir Thomas Hoo, Lord Hastings, Henry’s Chancellor of France, wrote urgently to Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Poitou, who had been the chief negotiator of the existing truce, deprecating the use of force against a town which it was the full intention of his Government to yield up honourably.[49-2] Such protests, however, availed nothing in the face of the obvious fact that the surrender had not taken place at the time agreed on. The French continued to muster forces. In great haste an embassy was despatched from England, consisting of Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, and Sir Thomas Roos; but the conduct of the garrison itself rendered further negotiation nugatory. By no means could they be induced, even in obedience to their own king, to surrender the city peacefully. Dunois and his army accordingly drew nearer. Three sharp skirmishes took place before the siege could be formed; but at length the garrison were fully closed in. All that they could now do was to make a composition with the enemy; yet even this they would not have attempted of themselves. The efforts of the English envoys, however, secured for the besieged most favourable terms of surrender. Not only were they permitted to march out with bag and baggage, but a sum of money was delivered to each of the captains, by the French king’s orders; with which, and a safe-conduct from Charles, they departed into Normandy.[50-1]

[Footnote 49-2: Stevenson’s _Wars_, i. 198. _See_ also a letter of the 18th Feb. 1448, of which an abstract is given in vol. ii. of the same work, p. 576.]

[Footnote 50-1: _Chron. de Mat. de Coussy_ (in Buchon’s collection), p. 34.]

It was on Friday, the 15th of March 1448, the day on which the truce between the two countries was to have expired, that the brave Matthew Gough, along with his colleague, Fulk Eton, formally delivered up to the French, not only the town and castle of Le Mans, but also the whole county of Maine except the lordship of Fresnay. [Sidenote: Its surrender.] Standing on the outer bridge, they made a public protest before their soldiers, and caused a notary to witness it by a formal document, that what they did was only in obedience to their own king’s commands, and that the king himself, in giving up possession of the county of Maine, by no means parted with his sovereign rights therein; that he only gave up actual possession in order that King René and his brother, Charles of Anjou, might enjoy the fruits of their own lands, and in the hope that a firm peace might be established between England and France. Four days before this was done the truce had been prolonged for two years more.[50-2]

[Footnote 50-2: Rymer, xi. 199, 204. Stevenson’s _Wars_, i. 207.]

The reluctant cession of such a valuable province as Maine boded ill for the security of the neighbouring duchy of Normandy. The government of Normandy was at this time committed to Edmund Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset, who had just been created Duke of Somerset. His appointment to the post had been due rather to favour than to merit. The Duke of York was then Regent of France, and had given good proof of his competence to take charge of the entire kingdom. But Somerset, who was head of the house of Beaufort, nearly allied in blood to the Crown, and who had come into possession of immense wealth by the death of his uncle, the Cardinal of Winchester, had the ambition of an Englishman to show his talent for governing. His influence with the king and Suffolk obtained for him the government of Normandy; and that he might exercise it undisturbed, York was recalled from France. The change was ill advised; for the times demanded the best of generalship, and the utmost political discretion. Somerset, though not without experience in war, had given no evidence of the possession of such qualities; and they had been notoriously wanting in his brother John, who was Duke of Somerset before him, when his ambition, too, had been gratified by a command in France. Duke John, we are told, absolutely refused to give any one his confidence as to what he was going to do at any period of the campaign. He used to say that if his shirt knew his plans he would burn it; and so, with a great deal of manœuvring and mystery, he captured a small place in Britanny called La Guerche, made a vain attempt to reduce another fortress, and then returned to England.[51-1] It may have been owing to public discontent at the small result of his great preparations, that he was accused of treason on his return; when, unable to endure so great a reproach, he was believed to have put an end to his own life.[51-2]

[Footnote 51-1: Basin, _Histoire de Charles VII._ etc. i. 150-1.]

[Footnote 51-2: _Hist. Croylandensis Continuatio_ in Fulman’s _Scriptores_, p. 519.]

With a full recollection of the indiscretions of his brother John, the King’s Council must have hesitated to confide to Duke Edmund such an important trust as the government of Normandy. They must have hesitated all the more, as the appointment of Somerset involved the recall of the Duke of York. And we are told that their acts at the time betrayed symptoms of such irresolution; insomuch that one day a new governor of Normandy was proclaimed at Rouen, and the next his commission was revoked and another named in his stead.[51-3] But at last the influence of Somerset prevailed. He was not, however, permitted to go abroad without warning of the dangers against which he had to provide. The veteran Sir John Fastolf drew up a paper for his guidance, pointing out that it was now peculiarly important to strengthen the fortifications on the new frontier, to protect the seaports, to preserve free communication with England, and (what was quite as politic a suggestion as any) to appoint a wise chancellor and a council for the impartial administration of justice, so as to protect the inhabitants from oppression.[52-1] From the comment made upon these suggestions, either by Fastolf himself or by his secretary William Worcester, it would seem that they were not acted upon; and to this cause he attributed the disasters which soon followed in quick succession, and brought upon the Duke of Somerset the indignation and contempt of a large number of his countrymen. These feelings, probably, were not altogether just. The duke had done good service before in France, and part of the blame of what occurred may perhaps be attributed to divided management--more especially to the unruly feelings of a number of the English soldiers.

[Footnote 51-3: Basin, i. 192.]

[Footnote 52-1: Stevenson’s _Wars_, ii. [592].]

The garrison which had been compelled against its will to give up Le Mans found it hard to obtain quarters in Normandy. It was doubtful whether they were not labouring under their own king’s displeasure, and the captains of fortified towns were afraid to take them in. At last they took possession of Pontorson and St. James de Beuvron, two towns situated near the confines of Britanny which had been laid waste during the previous wars and had since been abandoned. They began to victual and fortify themselves in these positions, to the alarm of their neighbours, until the Duke of Britanny felt it necessary to complain to the Duke of Somerset, requesting that they might be dislodged. Somerset, in reply, promised to caution them not to do anything in violation of the truce, but declined to bid them evacuate their positions. Diplomatic intercourse went on between one side and the other, always in the most courteous terms, but every day it was becoming more apparent that all confidence was gone.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1449.] At last, in March 1449, the English justified the suspicions that had long been entertained of them. A detachment of about 600 men, under François de Surienne, popularly named L’Arragonois, a leader in the pay of England,[53-1] who had, not long before, been knighted by Henry, crossed the frontier southwards into Britanny, [Sidenote: Capture of Fougères.] took by assault the town and castle of Fougères, and made dreadful havoc and slaughter among the unsuspecting inhabitants. The place was full of wealthy merchants, for it was the centre of a considerable woollen manufacture, and the booty found in it was estimated at no less than two millions of gold.[53-2] Such a prize in legitimate warfare would undoubtedly have been well worth the taking; but under the actual circumstances the deed was a glaring, perfidious violation of the truce. Somerset had been only a few days before protesting to the King of France that, even if all his towns were open and undefended, they would be perfectly secure from any assault by the English;[53-3] yet here was a town belonging to the Duke of Britanny, a vassal of the King of France who had been expressly included in the truce, assaulted and taken by fraud. Somerset disavowed the deed, but refused to make restitution. He professed to write to the king for instructions how to act; but he utterly destroyed his flimsy pretence of neutrality by writing to the King of France, desiring him not to give assistance to the Duke of Britanny.[53-4]

[Footnote 53-1: Stevenson’s _Wars_, i. 473; ii. 573.]

[Footnote 53-2: Stevenson’s _Reductio Normanniæ_, 406.]

[Footnote 53-3: _Ibid._ 402.]

[Footnote 53-4: _Ibid._ 406.]

The truth is that the expedition had been fully authorised, not only by Somerset in Normandy, but by the king and the Duke of Suffolk in England. It was suggested to L’Arragonois when he was in England by Suffolk himself, who assured him that he would do the king a most excellent service by taking a place of so much consequence. He was further given to understand that he incurred no danger or responsibility; for even if he were besieged by the Duke of Britanny, ample succours would be despatched to relieve him. Unfortunately, during the next few months, the English had too much to do to keep their word, and L’Arragonois was compelled to surrender the place again to the Duke of Britanny after a five weeks’ siege. Feeling himself then absolved from every engagement to England, he next year sent back the Order of the Garter to Henry, declaring himself from that time a subject of his natural lord the King of Arragon, in whose country he proposed to spend the remainder of his days.[54-1]

[Footnote 54-1: Stevenson’s _Wars_, i. 275, 278, etc.]

Notwithstanding the richness of the booty won by the capture of Fougères, the English ought to have been aware that they would have a heavy price to pay for it. The alienation of a friend in the Duke of Britanny evidently did not grieve them, although that in itself should have been a matter of some concern; for the duke, though nearly related to the French king, had studied to keep himself neutral hitherto. To his and his father’s pacific policy it was owing that the commerce of Britanny had prospered and Fougères itself become rich, while neighbouring districts were exposed to the ravages of war. But the resentment of the Duke of Britanny was not a cause of much apprehension. The effect of the outrage upon the French people was a much more serious matter, and this was felt immediately. The King of France, when he heard the news, was at Montils by Tours on the point of starting for Bourges. He immediately changed his purpose and turned back to Chinon that he might be nearer Britanny. A secret treaty was made between the king and the duke to aid each other on the recommencement of hostilities with the English. [Sidenote: Pont-de-l’Arche taken by the French.] A plot was also laid to surprise the town of Pont-de-l’Arche on the Seine, just as Fougères had been surprised by the English. It was completely successful, and Pont-de-l’Arche was captured by stratagem early in the morning of the 16th of May, by a body of adventurers professedly in the service of Brittany. There could be no mistake about the significance of the retribution. To the Duke of Britanny the capture of Pont-de-l’Arche was of no value, except in the way of retaliation, for it was at a great distance from his borders; while to France it was a most important gain if used with a view to the recovery of Normandy. But France was quite as free to disavow the deed as the English Government had been to disavow the taking of Fougères.

Charles had, in fact, gained, in a strategic point of view, quite as great an advantage as the English had gained in point of material wealth. But morally his advantage was greater still, for he showed himself perfectly open to treat for the redress of outrages on both sides, and was willing to put Pont-de-l’Arche again into the hands of the English if they would have restored Fougères. All conferences, however, were ineffectual, and the French followed up their advantage by taking Gerberoy and Conches. In the south they also won from the English two places in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.[55-1] Still, Charles had not yet declared war, and these things were avowedly no more than the acts of desultory marauders. His ambassadors still demanded the restitution of Fougères, which possibly the English might now have been willing to accord if they could have had the French captures restored to them, but that in the surrender of the place they would have had to acknowledge Britanny as a feudal dependency of Charles.[55-2] Negotiations were accordingly broken off, and Charles having besides received particulars of a breach of the truce with Scotland in the preceding year, which even an English writer does not venture to defend,[55-3] at length made a formal declaration of hostilities.[55-4]

[Footnote 55-1: _Reductio Normanniæ_, 251.]

[Footnote 55-2: _Ibid._ 503.]

[Footnote 55-3: ‘Eodem anno [26 Hen. VI.], Rex visitans boreales partes Angliæ usque Donelmense monasterium, quasi omnes domini et alii plebei illius patriæ in magna multitudine quotidie ei in obviam ostendebant, quare, concilio habito, minus formidabant interrumpere trugas inter ipsum et Regem Scotiæ prius suis sigillis fidelitatis confirmatas; sed posterius hujus trugarum interruptio vertebatur Anglicis multo magis in dispendium quam honorem, quia recedente Rege Scoti magnam partem Northumbriæ bina vice absque repulsu destruxerunt, et juxta Carlele erant ex Anglicis capti et interfecti ad numerum duorum millium; et sic tandem Rex Angliæ cum ejus concilio pro saniori deliberatione cum damnis ad pacem inclinare reducitur.’--_Incerti Scriptoris Chronicum_ (Ed. Giles), Hen. VI. p. 36.]

[Footnote 55-4: _Reductio Normanniæ_, 254.]

Never, it must be owned, did England incur the grave responsibilities of war with a greater degree of foolhardiness. Somerset himself seemed only now to have wakened up to the defenceless state of Normandy. He had just sent over Lord Hastings and the Abbot of Gloucester with a message to the English Parliament desiring immediate aid. The French, he said, were daily reinforcing their garrisons upon the frontier, and committing outrages against the truce. General musters were proclaimed throughout the kingdom, and every thirty men of the whole population were required to find a horseman fully equipped for war. Meanwhile, the English garrisons in Normandy were too feeble to resist attack. Not a single place was furnished with sufficient artillery, and the fortifications, almost everywhere, had fallen into such decay that even if filled with men and guns they could not possibly be defended. Besides this, the whole province was in such extreme poverty that it could no longer endure further imposts for the charges of its own defence.[56-1]

[Footnote 56-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 147.]

[Sidenote: Progress of the French.] No marvel, therefore, that the progress of the French arms was, from this time, uninterrupted. On the 19th July the town of Verneuil was taken by the aid of a miller who had been maltreated by some of the garrison; and, some time afterwards, the castle also surrendered. In August operations were carried on in several parts of the Duchy at once. Towns near the sea and towns near the French frontier were attacked at the same time; and Pont-Audemer, Lisieux, Mantes, Vernon, and other places were recovered from the English. Then followed in quick succession the capture of Essay, Fécamp, Harcourt, Chambrois, Roche-Guyon, and Coutances. In October, Rouen, the capital of the province, was invested. On the 19th the inhabitants with one accord rose in arms against the English, who found it necessary to retreat into the castle. In this stronghold Somerset himself was assailed by the King of France, and, after a vain attempt to secure better terms, agreed to surrender not only it but the fortresses of Arques, Caudebec, and several other places, leaving the gallant Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, as a hostage until they were delivered up. Meanwhile, the Duke of Britanny overran Lower Normandy and recovered his own Fougères after a siege of little more than a month. François L’Arragonois, finding no hope of succours, surrendered the place and afterwards went over to the French.

In short, before the end of the year, the English had lost nearly everything in the North of France. The inhabitants everywhere conspired to betray towns and garrisons, and every man not English-born took part against the English. Even King René, Henry’s father-in-law, assisted Charles at the siege of Rouen, and shared the honours of his triumphal entry. At the end of the year 1449 the English held nothing in Normandy except a few towns upon the sea-coast or a little way inland--the chief of these being Honfleur, Bayeux, Caen, and Cherbourg. The last-named fortress remained untaken till the 12th of August in the following year. When it surrendered, the whole of Normandy was finally lost.

The news of these reverses so rapidly following each other of course produced in England the most profound dissatisfaction. The Parliament to which Somerset had applied for aid had been removed after Whitsunday to Winchester on account of the insalubrity of the air in London and Westminster, and had been finally dissolved on the 16th of July. A new Parliament was then called for a winter session to provide for the defence of Normandy, when, in fact, it was too late.[57-1] By the time it had assembled Rouen was already lost. [Sidenote: Unpopularity of Suffolk.] The secret odium with which the policy of Suffolk had been viewed for years past could now no longer be restrained. It was difficult to persuade the many that the disgrace which had befallen the English arms was not due to treachery as much as to incompetence. The cession of Maine and Anjou was more loudly blamed than ever, and Suffolk was considered to have negotiated the king’s marriage mainly with a view to his own advantage. It was remembered how he had once imprudently boasted that he possessed no less weight in the counsels of the King of France than in those of his own sovereign; it was again murmured that he had been the cause of Gloucester’s death. And notwithstanding the protection of the Court, these feelings found expression in Parliament.

[Footnote 57-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 143, 171. Even when the new Parliament met at Westminster on the 6th November it was obliged to adjourn to the City of London on account of the unhealthiness of the air. We must remember that Westminster was then little better than a flat muddy island, with a vast extent of marshy land and stagnant pools between Pimlico and the Thames.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1450.] At the beginning of the New Year, an incident occurred which served still further to precipitate his ruin. [Sidenote: Murder of the Bishop of Chichester.] Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, keeper of the Privy Seal, who, as we have seen, had been sent over to France in the beginning of 1448, to arrange the peaceful cession of Le Mans, was at this time sent to Portsmouth to pay the wages of certain soldiers and sailors. He was a scholar as well as a statesman, and corresponded occasionally with the celebrated Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II.[58-1] But, like Suffolk, he was believed to make his own advantage out of public affairs. He had the reputation of being very covetous; the king’s treasury was ill supplied with money, and he endeavoured to force the men to be satisfied with less than their due. On this they broke out into open mutiny, cried out that he was one of those who had sold Normandy, and thereupon put him to death.[58-2] This was on the 9th day of January 1450. During the altercation he let fall some words, probably in justification of his own conduct, which were considered to reflect most seriously upon that of the Duke of Suffolk,[58-3] and a cry arose for the duke’s impeachment in Parliament.

[Footnote 58-1: _Æneæ Sylvii Epp._ 80, 186.]

[Footnote 58-2: According to his friend, Æneas Sylvius, the mode of death inflicted on him was decapitation. (_Opera_, 443.)]

[Footnote 58-3: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 176.]

It must certainly be acknowledged by any candid student of history that the state of the English Constitution in early times did not admit of true and impartial justice being done to an accused minister. So long as a man in Suffolk’s position was upheld by the power of the Crown, it was to the last degree dangerous to say anything against him; but when the voice of complaint could no longer be restrained, the protection he had before received ceased to be of any use to him. It became then quite as dangerous to say anything in his favour as it had been formerly to accuse him. The Crown could not make common cause with one whose conduct was under suspicion; for the king could do no wrong, and the minister must be the scapegoat. The party, therefore, which would insist on any inquiry into the conduct of a minister, knew well that they must succeed in getting him condemned, or be branded as traitors themselves. Such proceedings accordingly began inevitably with intrigue. Lord Cromwell was Suffolk’s enemy at the council-table, and used his influence secretly with members of the House of Commons, to get them to bring forward an impeachment in that chamber. That he was a dangerous opponent Suffolk himself was very well aware. A little before Christmas, William Tailboys, one of the duke’s principal supporters, had set a number of armed men in wait for him at the door of the Star Chamber, where the council met, and Lord Cromwell narrowly escaped being killed. The attempt, however, failed, and Tailboys was committed to the Tower; from which it would seem that he must soon afterwards have been released. Cromwell then brought an action against him in the Court of Exchequer to recover damages for the assault, and was awarded £3000; on which Tailboys was committed to the Sheriff of London’s prison; and this was all the redress obtained by Cromwell till, by a special Act in the ensuing Parliament, Tailboys was removed from that place of confinement, and lodged in the Tower once more, for a period of twelve months. Owing to the king’s protection he was not brought to trial.[59-1]

[Footnote 59-1: W. Worc. _Rolls of Parl._ v. 200. I find by an entry in the _Controlment Roll_, 30 Hen. VI., that on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1451, William Tailboys and nineteen other persons belonging to South Kyme, in Lincolnshire, were outlawed at the suit of Elizabeth, widow of John Saunderson, for the murder of her husband.]

An evil day, nevertheless, had arrived for the Duke of Suffolk, which not all the influence of the king, nor the still greater influence of Margaret of Anjou, who owed to him her proud position as Henry’s consort, was able to avert. On the 22nd of January the duke presented a petition to the king that he might be allowed to clear himself before Parliament of the imputations which had been cast on him in consequence of the dying words of Bishop Moleyns. He begged the king to remember how his father had died in the service of King Henry V. at Harfleur--how his elder brother had been with that king at Agincourt--how two other brothers had fallen in the king’s own days at Jargeau, when he himself was taken prisoner and had to pay £20,000 for his ransom--how his fourth brother had been a hostage for him in the enemies’ hands and died there. He also reminded the king that he had borne arms for four-and-thirty years, had been thirty years a Knight of the Garter, and had served in the wars abroad for seventeen years at a time, without ever coming home. Since then he had been fifteen years in England about the king’s person, and he prayed God that if ever he died otherwise than in his bed, it might be in maintaining the quarrel that he had been at all times true to Henry.[60-1]

[Footnote 60-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 176.]

Four days after this a deputation from the Commons waited on the Lord Chancellor, desiring that as Suffolk had confessed the prevalence of injurious reports against him, he might be committed to custody. This request was laid by the Chancellor before the king and council on the following day, and the opinion of the judges being taken as to the legality of the proposed arrest, he was allowed to remain at liberty until a definite charge should be brought against him. Such a charge was accordingly declared two days later by the Speaker, who did not hesitate to tell the Lord Chancellor, in the name of the Commons, that Suffolk was believed to be in league with the French king to promote an invasion of England, and had fortified the castle of Wallingford with a view of assisting the invaders. The duke, on this, was committed to the Tower.

[Sidenote: Suffolk impeached.] On the 7th of February he was formally impeached by the Commons. A copy of the articles of impeachment will be found in the Paston Letters (No. 76). Nothing was said in them of the fortification of Wallingford Castle, but a number of specific charges were made, many of them authenticated by the exact day and place when the alleged treasonable acts were committed, tending to show that in his communications with the French he had been invariably opposed to the interests of his own country. It was alleged that he had been bribed to deliver Anjou and Maine, and that as long ago as the year 1440 he was influenced by corrupt motives to promote the liberation of the Duke of Orleans; that he had disclosed the secrets of the English council-chamber to the French king’s ambassadors; that he had even given information by which France had profited in the war, and that he had rendered peace negotiations nugatory by letting the French know beforehand the instructions given to the English envoys. Further, in the midst of invasion and national disgrace, he had hoped to gratify his own ambition. The king, who was still childless, was to be deposed; and the duke had actually hoped to make his own son king in his place. It seems that he had obtained some time before a grant of the wardship of Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the late Duke of Somerset, who was the nearest heir to the Crown in the Lancastrian line, and since his arrest he had caused her to be married to his own son, Lord John De la Pole.[61-1] Such was the foundation on which the worst charge rested.

[Footnote 61-1: So it is stated in the impeachment. According to the inquisition on Suffolk’s death, his son was born on the 27th September 1442, and was therefore at this time only in his eighth year.--Napier’s _Historical Notices of Swyncombe and Ewelme_, 108.]

A month passed before he was heard in his own defence. The Commons impeached, but it was for the Lords to try him. Meanwhile, another bill of indictment had been prepared by the malice of his enemies, in which all the failures of his policy were visited upon him as crimes, and attributed to the worst and most selfish motives. For his own private gain, he had caused the Crown to be prodigal of grants to other persons, till it was so impoverished that the wages of the household were unpaid, and the royal manors left to fall into decay. He had granted the earldom of Kendal, with large possessions both in England and in Guienne, to a Gascon, who ultimately sided with the French, but had happened to marry his niece. He had weakened the king’s power in Guienne, alienated the Count of Armagnac, and caused a band of English to attack the king’s German allies; he had disposed of offices to unworthy persons without consulting the council, granted important possessions in Normandy to the French king’s councillors, given to the French queen £13,000 of the revenues of England, appropriated and misapplied the king’s treasure and the subsidies granted by Parliament for the keeping of the sea. These and some minor charges formed the contents of the second bill of indictment.[61-2]

[Footnote 61-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 179-182.]

He was brought from the Tower on the 9th day of March, and required to make answer before the Lords to the contents of both bills. He requested of the king that he might have copies, which were allowed him; and that he might prepare his answer more at ease, he was removed for a few days to a tower within the king’s palace at Westminster. [Sidenote: His defence.] On the 13th he was sent for to make his answer before the king and lords. Kneeling before the throne, he replied to each of the eight articles in the first bill separately. He denied their truth entirely, and offered to prove them false in whatever manner the king would direct. He declared it absurd to consider Margaret Beaufort as heir-presumptive to the Crown, and used other arguments to show the improbability of his designs on the succession. In all else he showed that the other lords of the council were quite as much committed as he; and as to the delivery of Anjou and Maine, he laid the responsibility entirely upon the murdered Bishop of Chichester.[62-1]

[Footnote 62-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 182.]

Next day, the Chief Justice, by the king’s command, asked the Lords what advice they would give the king in the matter. It was a Saturday, and the Lords deferred their answer till the following Monday; but on the Monday nothing was done. On the Tuesday the king sent for all the Lords then in London to attend him in his own palace, where they met in an inner chamber. When they were assembled, Suffolk was sent for, and kneeling down, was addressed briefly by the Lord Chancellor. He was reminded that he had made answer to the first bill of the Commons without claiming the right of being tried by the peers; and he was asked if he had anything further to say upon the subject. He replied that the accusations were too horrible to be further spoken of, and he hoped he had sufficiently answered all that touched the king’s person, and the state of his kingdom. Nevertheless, he submitted himself entirely to the king, to do with him whatever he thought good.[62-2]

[Footnote 62-2: _Ibid._]

On this an answer was returned to him in the king’s name by the Lord Chancellor. A miserably weak and evasive answer it was, showing clearly that the king desired to protect his favourite, but had not the manliness to avow he thought him worthy of protection. The Lord Chancellor was commissioned to say, that as to the very serious charges contained in the first bill, the king regarded Suffolk as not having been proved either guilty or innocent; but touching those contained in the second bill, which amounted only to misprisions, as Suffolk did not put himself upon his peerage, but submitted entirely to the king, the latter had determined, without consulting the Lords, and not in the way of judgment (for he was not sitting in tribunal), but merely in virtue of the duke’s own submission, [Sidenote: He is ordered to leave England.] to bid him absent himself from England for five years, from the first day of May ensuing.[63-1]

[Footnote 63-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 183.]

It is clear upon the face of the matter, that although the king was made to take the sole responsibility of this decision, it was really a thing arranged, and not arranged without difficulty, between the friends of Suffolk and some of the leading members of the House of Lords. Immediately after it was pronounced, Viscount Beaumont, who was one of Suffolk’s principal allies, made a protest on behalf of the Lords, that what the king had just done, he had done by his own authority, without their advice and counsel. He accordingly besought the king that their protest might be recorded in the rolls of Parliament, for their protection, so that the case might not henceforth be made a precedent in derogation of the privileges of the peerage.[63-2] Thus it was clearly hoped on all sides a great crisis had been averted. Suffolk was got rid of, but not condemned. A victim was given over to popular resentment, but the rights of the Peers for the future were to be maintained. And though the Crown lowered itself by an avowed dereliction of duty, it was not severely censured for preferring expediency to justice.

[Footnote 63-2: _Ibid._]

On the following night the duke left Westminster for Suffolk. The people of London were intensely excited, and about two thousand persons sallied out to St. Giles’ hoping to intercept his departure, but they succeeded only in capturing his horse and some of his servants, whom they maltreated, as might have been expected. Even after this the excitement was scarcely diminished. Seditious manifestoes were thrown about in public and secretly posted on church doors.[64-1] The duke had more than a month to prepare for leaving England, and seems to have spent the time in the county of Suffolk. [Sidenote: He embarks for Flanders.] On Thursday the 30th of April he embarked at Ipswich for Flanders; but before going he assembled the gentlemen of the county, and, taking the sacrament, swore he was innocent of the sale of Normandy and of the other treasons imputed to him.[64-2] He also wrote an interesting letter of general admonitions for the use of his young son, at that time not eight years old, whom he was not to see again for at least five years, and too probably not at all. This letter, which is known to us only by a copy preserved in the Paston correspondence (No. 117), can hardly fail to awaken sympathy with the writer. As an evidence of unaffected piety to God and sincere loyalty to his king, it will probably outweigh with most readers all the aspersions cast by Parliament on the purity of his intentions.

[Footnote 64-1: Rymer, xi. 268.]

[Footnote 64-2: W. Worc. 468, 469.]

Two ships and a little pinnace conveyed him from the Suffolk coast southwards till he stood off Dover, when he despatched the small vessel with letters to certain persons in Calais to ascertain how he should be received if he landed there. The pinnace was intercepted by some ships which seem to have been lying in wait for his passage; and when it was ascertained where the duke actually was, they immediately bore down upon him. Foremost among the pursuers was a ship called the _Nicholas of the Tower_, the master of which, on nearing Suffolk’s vessel, sent out a boat to ask who they were. Suffolk made answer in person, and said that he was going by the king’s command to Calais; on which they told him he must speak with their master. They accordingly conveyed him and two or three others in their boat to the _Nicholas_. When he came on board the master saluted him with the words, ‘Welcome, traitor!’ and sent to know if the shipmen meant to take part with the duke, which they at once disowned all intention of doing. The duke was then informed that he must die, but was allowed the whole of the next day and night to confess himself and prepare for the event.[64-3] On Monday the 2nd of May the rovers consummated their design. In sight of all his men Suffolk was drawn out of the _Nicholas_ into a boat in which an axe and block were prepared. [Sidenote: Is murdered at sea.] One of the crew, an Irish churl, then bade him lay down his head, telling him in cruel mockery that he should be fairly dealt with and die upon a sword. A rusty sword was brought out accordingly, and with nearly half a dozen strokes the fellow clumsily cut off his head. He was then stripped of his russet gown and velvet doublet. His body was brought to land and thrown upon the sands at Dover; and his men were at the same time allowed to disembark.[65-1]

[Footnote 64-3: _English Chronicle_, ed. Davies, p. 69.]

[Footnote 65-1: _Paston Letters_, Nos. 120, 121.]

The source from which we learn most of these particulars is a letter of William Lomner to John Paston written when the news was fresh. The writer seems to have been quite overpowered by the tragic character of the event, and declares he had so blurred the writing with tears that he fears it would not be easy to decipher. Indications of genuine human feeling like this are so rare in letters of an early date that we are in danger of attributing to the men of those days a coldness and brutality which were by no means so universal as we are apt to suppose. The truth is that when men related facts they regarded their own feelings as an impertinence having nothing whatever to do with the matter in hand.[65-2] The art of letter-writing, besides, had not yet acquired the freedom of later days. It was used, in the main, for business purposes only. We shall meet, it is true, in this very correspondence, with one or two early specimens of jesting epistles; but, on the whole, I suspect paper was too valuable a commodity and writing too great a labour to be wasted on things irrelevant.

[Footnote 65-2: Even the passage above referred to would probably be an illustration of this if the original letter were examined. As we have reprinted it from Fenn, it stands thus: ‘Right worshipful Sir, I recommend me to you, and am right sorry of that I shall say, _and have so wesshe this little bill with sorrowful tears that uneathes ye shall read it_.’ The words in italics would probably be found to be an interlineation in the original, for though they stand at the beginning of the letter, they were clearly written after it was penned, and the only reason why they were inserted was to excuse the illegibility of the writing.]

But whatever feeling may have been excited by the news of Suffolk’s murder in men like William Lomner, who possibly may have known the duke personally, we may well believe that the nation at large was neither afflicted nor very greatly shocked at the event. Even the prior of Croyland, the head of a great religious community in Lincolnshire, speaks of it as the just punishment of a traitor, and has not a word to say in reprobation.[66-1] Mocking dirges were composed and spread abroad, in which his partisans were represented as chanting his funeral service, and a blessing was invoked on the heads of his murderers. These were but the last of a host of satires in which the public indignation had for months past found a vent.[66-2] Suffolk had been represented on his imprisonment as a fox driven into his hole, who must on no account be let out again. He had been rhymed at as the Ape with his Clog who had tied Talbot our good dog, in allusion to the fact of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, having been given up as a hostage to the French after the surrender of Rouen.[66-3] He had been reviled as an upstart who had usurped the place of better men, and who systematically thwarted and neutralised all that better men could do. If any one wept for the fall of such a man, it was not on public grounds.

[Footnote 66-1: _Contin. of Croyland Chronicle_, p. 525.]

[Footnote 66-2: Wright’s _Political Poems_ (in Rolls series), ii. 232.]

[Footnote 66-3: _Ibid._ 222, 224.]

As a specimen of these political satires we cannot resist the temptation to quote a short poem which must have been composed towards the close of the year 1449, after the surrender of Rouen and before Suffolk’s fall. It is far less personal than the others, being not so much an invective against Suffolk as a wail over the loss of England’s great men, and the decay of her fortunes. The leading statesmen and warriors of that and the former age are here spoken of by their badges, which the reader will find interpreted in the margin:--

‘The Root[a] is dead, the Swan[b] is gone, The fiery Cresset[c] hath lost his light. Therefore England may make great moan Were not the help of God Almight’. The Castle[d] is won where care begun, The Portè-cullis[e] is laid adown; Yclosèd we have our Velvet Hat[f] That covered us from many stormes brown. The White Lion[g] is laid to sleep, Thorough the envy of th’ Apè[h] Clog; And he is bounden that our door should keep; That is Talbot, our good dog. The Fisher[i] has lost his angle hook; Get them again when it will be. Our Millè-sail[k] will not about, It hath so long gone empty. The Bear[l] is bound that was so wild, For he hath lost his Ragged Staff. The Carte-nathe[m] is spoke-less For the counsel that he gaf. The Lily[n] is both fair and green; The Conduit[o] runneth not, I wean. The Cornish Chough[p] oft with his train Hath made our Eagle[q] blind. The White Hart[r] is put out of mind Because he will not to them consent; Therefore, the Commons saith, is both true and kind, Both in Sussex and in Kent. The Water Bouge[s] and the Wine Botell With the Fetterlock’s[t] chain bene fast. The Wheat Ear[u] will them sustain As long as he may endure and last. The Boar[w] is far into the West, That should us help with shield and spear. The Falcon[x] fleeth and hath no rest Till he wit where to bigg his nest.’

[Footnote a: The Regent Bedford.]

[Footnote b: Humphrey, Duke of Glo’ster.]

[Footnote c: The last Duke of Exeter.]

[Footnote d: Rouen Castle.]

[Footnote e: The Duke of Somerset.]

[Footnote f: The Cardinal Beaufort.]

[Footnote g: The Duke of Norfolk, who had gone on pilgrimage to Rome in 1447. (Dugdale.)]

[Footnote h: The Duke of Suffolk.]

[Footnote i: Lord Fauconberg who was taken prisoner by the French at the capture of Pont-de-l’Arche.]

[Footnote k: Robert, Lord Willoughby.]

[Footnote l: The Earl of Warwick.]

[Footnote m: The Duke of Buckingham.]

[Footnote n: Thomas Daniel. He and the two next are courtiers.]

[Footnote o: John Norris.]

[Footnote p: John Trevilian.]

[Footnote q: The King.]

[Footnote r: Earl of Arundel.]

[Footnote s: Lord Bouchier.]

[Footnote t: Prior of St. John’s.]

[Footnote u: The Duke of Exeter.]

[Footnote w: The Earl of Devonshire.]

[Footnote x: The Duke of York, who had been sent into Ireland to be out of the way.]

Almost concurrently with the news of Suffolk’s murder came tidings, mentioned by William Lomner in the very same letter, of another disaster in France, more gloomy, if possible, than any that had occurred before. [Sidenote: Defeat of Sir T. Kiriel.] A force under Sir Thomas Kiriel had been sent to the aid of the Duke of Somerset in Normandy after the loss of Rouen. It disembarked at Cherbourg, and proceeding towards Caen, where the duke had now taken up his position, besieged and took Valognes. They were now in full communication with the garrisons of Caen and Bayeux, when they were suddenly attacked at the village of Fourmigni, and routed with great slaughter. Between three and four thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the field; Kiriel himself was taken prisoner; even the brave Matthew Gough (well known to Frenchmen of that day as Matago) found it needful to fall back with his company of 1500 men for the safeguard of Bayeux, which a month afterwards he was compelled after all to give up to the enemy.[68-1]

[Footnote 68-1: Berry’s narrative in Stevenson’s _Expulsion of the English from Normandy_, 336. _Wars of the Engl._ ii. [360]. _Paston Letters_, No. 120.]

Meanwhile the Parliament, which had been prorogued over Easter, was ordered to meet again at Leicester instead of Westminster. The reason given for the change of place was still, as before, the unhealthiness of the air about Westminster; and doubtless it was a very true reason. It is possible, however, that the political atmosphere of London was quite as oppressive to the Court as the physical atmosphere could be to the Parliament. During their sitting at Leicester a much needed subsidy was voted to the king, and an Act passed for the application of certain revenues to the expenses of the Royal Household in order to stop the exactions of purveyors. But they had hardly sat a month when the session was suddenly put an end to from a cause which we proceed to notice.

_Rebellion of Jack Cade_

The murder of the Duke of Suffolk had not made things better than they had been before. The ablest of the ministers, who had hitherto guided the king’s counsels, was now removed, but his place was left for a time altogether unsupplied. The men of Suffolk’s party, such as Lord Say, Viscount Beaumont, and Thomas Daniel, still remained about the king, and were nearly as unpopular as he had been. The offices formerly held by Suffolk were divided among them and their particular friends.[68-2] Even if the Court had desired to call in men of greater weight, they were not then at hand. The Duke of Somerset was in France, and the Duke of York in Ireland; so that some time must have elapsed before either of them could have taken part in public affairs at home. Meanwhile it was said that the resentment of the Court for Suffolk’s murder would be visited upon the county of Kent; and the county of Kent was of opinion that it suffered abuses enough already. The exactions of the king’s officers, both in the way of taxation and purveyance, were felt to be extortionate and capricious. The collectors of the revenue were appointed by the knights of the shire, and these, instead of being freely chosen by the people, were but the nominees of a few great men who compelled their tenants to vote according to their pleasure. There were, besides, grave cases of injustice in which people were accused of treason, and kept in prison without trial, on the information of persons about the Court who had influence to obtain grants of their lands from the Crown.

[Footnote 68-2: _See_ No. 123. William Worcester says Lord Beauchamp was made treasurer, and Lord Cromwell the king’s chamberlain. Lord Beauchamp’s appointment is on the _Patent Rolls_. See _Calendarium Rot. Patent_, p. 294.]

[Sidenote: Cade’s Rebellion.] Hence arose Jack Cade’s rebellion, a movement which we must not permit ourselves to look upon as a vulgar outbreak of the rabble. Whole districts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex rose in arms, clamouring for redress of grievances; and it is certain that the insurgents met with a large amount of sympathy, even from those who did not actually take part with them.[69-1] As their leader, they selected a man who called himself Mortimer, and who, besides some experience in war, was evidently possessed of no small talent for generalship. It afterwards turned out that his real name was Cade, that he was a native of Ireland, and that he had been living a year before in the household of Sir Thomas Dacre in Sussex, when he was obliged to abjure the kingdom for killing a woman who was with child. He then betook himself to France and served in the French war against England. What induced him to return does not appear, unless we may suppose, which is not unlikely, that some misdemeanour when in the service of France made the French soil fully as dangerous to him as the English. In England he seems to have assumed the name of Aylmer, and passed himself off as a physician. He married a squire’s daughter, and dressed in scarlet; and when the rebellion broke out in Kent he called himself John Mortimer, a cousin of the Duke of York.

[Footnote 69-1: The late Mr. Durrant Cooper, in an interesting paper read before a meeting of the Kent Archæological Society, examined the long list of names given on the _Patent Roll_ of 28 Henry VI., and proved from them that the insurrection was by no means of a very plebeian or disorderly character. ‘In several hundreds,’ he says, ‘the constables duly, and as if legally, summoned the men; and many parishes, particularly Marden, Penshurst, Hawkhurst, Northfleet, Boughton-Malherbe, Smarden, and Pluckley, furnished as many men as could be found in our day fit for arms.’]

The first disturbances took place at Whitsuntide in the latter end of May. In the second week of June[70-1] a considerable army from the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex encamped upon Blackheath. The king, who, on receiving news of the rising, had dissolved the parliament then sitting at Leicester, arrived in London on Saturday the 13th, and took up his quarters at the priory of St. John’s, near Smithfield. He had with him 20,000 men under arms, but for some reason or other did not set out against the rebels till the following Thursday, the 18th.[70-1] They, meanwhile, had withdrawn in the night-time,[70-2] and the king and his host occupied their position on Blackheath. The royal forces, however, proceeded no further. Only a detachment, under Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother William, was sent to pursue the insurgents. An encounter took place at Sevenoaks on the 18th,[70-3] in which both the Staffords were killed. Their defeat spread dismay and disaffection in the royal camp. The noblemen who had accompanied the king to Blackheath could no longer keep their men together, the latter protesting that unless justice were done on certain traitors who had misled the king, they would go over to the Captain of Kent. To satisfy them, Lord Say was arrested and sent to the Tower; but even with this concession the king did not dare presume upon their loyalty. He withdrew to Greenwich, and the whole of his army dispersed. The king himself returned to London by water, and made preparations during the next two or three days to remove to Kenilworth. The mayor and commons of the city went to him to beseech him to remain, offering to live and die with him, and pay half a year’s cost of his household. But all was to no purpose. The king had not even the manliness of Richard II. at Smithfield, and he took his departure to Kenilworth.[71-1]

[Footnote 70-1: These dates were given differently in previous issues of this Introduction. For a rectification of the chronology of the rebellion I am indebted to Kriehn’s _English Rising_ in 1450, pp. 125 and following.]

[Footnote 70-2: According to No. 119 of our collection this retreat would appear to have been on the 22nd June, but that date is certainly an error.]

[Footnote 70-3: The 18th June is given as the date of Sir Humphrey Stafford’s death in _Inquis. post mortem_, 28 Henry VI. No. 7.]

[Footnote 71-1: W. Worc.--_Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_ (edited by me for the Camden Soc.), 67.--Chronicle in MS. Cott. Vitell. A. xvi.]

The city, thus deserted by its sovereign, knew not for a time what to do. A party within the Common Council itself ventured to open negotiations with the insurgents, and Alderman Cooke passed to and fro under the safe-conduct of the Captain.[71-2] To many it may have seemed doubtful loyalty to support the government of Lord Say and his friends against an oppressed population. On the 1st day of July[71-3] the insurgents entered Southwark. On the 2nd a Common Council was called by the Lord Mayor to provide means for resisting their entry into the city; but the majority voted for their free admission, and Alderman Robert Horne, who was the leading speaker against them, was committed to prison for his boldness. [Sidenote: The rebels enter London.] That same afternoon the so-called Mortimer and his followers passed over London Bridge into the city. The Captain, after passing the drawbridge, hewed the ropes asunder with his sword. His first proceedings were marked by order and discipline. He issued proclamations in the king’s name against robbery and forced requisitions, but he rode through the different streets as if to place the capital under military government; and when he came to London Stone, he struck it with his sword, saying, ‘Now is Mortimer lord of this city.’ Finally, he gave instructions to the Lord Mayor about the order to be kept within his jurisdiction, and returned for the night to his quarters in Southwark. On the following morning, Friday the 3rd, he again entered the city, when he caused Lord Say to be sent for from the Tower. That no resistance was made to this demand by Lord Scales, who had the keeping of the fortress, may seem strange. But there was a reason for it which most of the chroniclers do not tell us. The king had been obliged to listen to the grievances of his ‘Commons’ and to withdraw his protection from his favourites. He had granted a commission ‘to certain lords and to the mayor and divers justices, to inquire of all persons that were traitors, extortioners, or oppressors of the king’s people.’[72-1] Lord Say was accordingly formally arraigned at a regular sessions at the Guildhall. But when the unfortunate nobleman claimed the constitutional privilege of being tried by his peers, the pretence of law was finally laid aside. A company of the insurgents took him from the officers and hurried him off to the Standard in Cheap, where, before he was half shriven, his head was cut off and stuck upon a long pole. A son-in-law of his named Crowmer, who was then very unpopular as sheriff of Kent, met with a similar fate. He was beheaded in Cade’s presence at Mile End. Barbarity now followed violence. The lifeless heads of Say and Crowmer were carried through the streets, and made to kiss each other. At the same time one Bailey was beheaded at Whitechapel on a charge of necromancy, the real cause of his death being, as it was reported, that he was an old acquaintance of Cade’s who might have revealed something of his past history.

[Footnote 71-2: Holinshed, iii. 632.]

[Footnote 71-3: I leave this part of the story as it was originally written, though here, too, the chronology seems to require rectification, especially from sources since published, for which the reader may consult Kriehn’s work, p. 129.]

[Footnote 72-1: MS. Vitellius A. xvi. fol. 107, quoted by Kriehn, p. 92.]

It may have been the expectation of inevitable exposure that induced Cade now to relax discipline, and set an example of spoliation himself. He entered and pillaged the house of Philip Malpas, an alderman known as a friend of the Court, and therefore unpopular in the city. Next day he dined at a house in the parish of St. Margaret Pattens, and then robbed his host. At each of these acts of robbery the rabble were sharers of the spoil. But, of course, such proceedings completely alienated all who had anything to lose, and the mayor and aldermen began to devise measures for expelling Cade and his followers from the city. For this end they negotiated with Lord Scales and Matthew Gough, who had then the keeping of the Tower.

For three days successively Cade had entered the city with his men, and retired in the evening to Southwark. But on Sunday, the 5th of July, he for some reason remained in Southwark all day. In the evening the mayor and citizens, with a force under Matthew Gough, came and occupied London Bridge to prevent the Kentish men again entering the city. [Sidenote: Battle on London Bridge.] The Captain called his men to arms, and attacked the citizens with such impetuosity, that he drove them back from the Southwark end of the bridge to the drawbridge in the centre. This the insurgents set on fire, after inflicting great losses on the citizens, many of whom were slain or drowned in defending it. Matthew Gough himself was among those who perished. Still, the fight was obstinately contested, the advantage being for the moment now with one party and now with the other. It continued all through the night till nine on the following morning; when at last the Kentish men began to give way, and a truce was made for a certain number of hours.

[[Sidenote: Battle on London Bridge. _final . missing_]]

A favourable opportunity now presented itself for mediation. Although the king had retired to Kenilworth, he had left behind him in London some leading members of his council, among whom were Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York,[73-1] then Lord Chancellor, and Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester. The former had taken refuge in the Tower, under the protection of Lord Scales; and he called to him the latter, who lay concealed at Holywell.[73-2] A conference was arranged between them and the insurgents, and both the Cardinal and Bishop Waynflete[73-3] with some others crossed the river and met with Cade in St. Margaret’s Church in Southwark. In the end matters were satisfactorily arranged, and the bishop produced two general pardons prepared by the Chancellor, the first for the Captain himself, and the second for his followers. The offer was embraced with eagerness. The men were by this time disgusted with their leader, and alarmed at the result of their own acts. By thousands they accepted the amnesty and began to return homewards. But Cade, who knew that his pardon would avail him little when the history of his past life came to be investigated, wisely made friends to himself after the fashion of the Unjust Steward. He broke open the gaols of the King’s Bench and Marshalsea, and formed a new company out of the liberated prisoners.[74-1] He then despatched to Rochester a barge laden with the goods he had taken from Malpas and others in London, and prepared to go thither himself by land. He and his new following appear to have been still in Southwark on the 8th of July, but to have passed through Dartford to Rochester on the 9th, where they continued still in arms against the king on the 10th and 11th.[74-2] An attempt they made upon the castle of Queenborough was resisted by Sir Roger Chamberlain, to whom a reward was given in the following year in acknowledgment of his services.[74-3] Meanwhile a proclamation was issued offering a reward of a thousand marks for Cade’s apprehension, and ten marks for that of any of his followers; ‘for,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘it was openly known that his name was not Mortimer; his name was John Cade; and therefore his charter stood in no strength.’[74-4]

[Footnote 73-1: Inaccurately called Archbishop of Canterbury by Fabyan and others. He was not translated to Canterbury till 1452.]

[Footnote 73-2: Hall’s _Chronicle_. Holy Well was a mineral spring to the north of London, much frequented before the Reformation, when it was stopped up as being considered a place of superstitious resort. A century afterwards it was discovered anew by a Mr. Sadler, from whom the locality is named to this day Sadler’s Wells.]

[Footnote 73-3: Some doubt seems to be thrown on Hall’s statement that both prelates crossed the river, as earlier writers say the Chancellor _sent_ pardons under the Great Seal. William Worcester, moreover, makes no mention of the cardinal, but says that the Bishop of Winchester and others of the king’s council spoke with the Captain of Kent. But the ‘Short English Chronicle’ in the _Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_, edited by me for the Camden Society in 1880 (p. 68), does exactly the reverse, and omitting all reference to the Bishop of Winchester, says: ‘And forthewithe went the Chaunseler to the Capteyne and sessed him and gave him a chartur and his men an other.’]

[Footnote 74-1: Hall’s _Chronicle_.]

[Footnote 74-2: See _Act of Attainder_, 29 Hen. VI. _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 224.]

[Footnote 74-3: Devon’s _Issue Rolls_, 471. Davies’ _English Chron._ 67.]

[Footnote 74-4: _Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_, 68.]

The feeble remains of the rebellion were already quarrelling about the booty Cade had conveyed out of London. Their leader now took horse and escaped in disguise towards the woody country about Lewes. He was pursued by Alexander Iden, a gentleman who had just been appointed sheriff of Kent in place of the murdered Crowmer. [Sidenote: Capture and death of Cade.] Iden overtook him in a garden at Heathfield, and made him prisoner, not without a scuffle, in which Cade was mortally wounded, so that on being conveyed to London he died on the way. It only remained to use his carcass as a terror to evil-doers. His head was cut off and placed upon London Bridge, with the face looking towards Kent. His body was drawn through the streets of London, then quartered, and the quarters sent to four different places very widely apart,--one of them to Blackheath, one to Norwich, one to Salisbury, and one to Gloucester.[75-1]

[Footnote 75-1: W. Worc. Fabyan. Davies’ _English Chronicle_ (Camden Soc.), 67. Ellis’ _Letters_, 2nd Series i. 115.]

If the dispersion of traitors’ limbs for exhibition in many places could have effectually repressed disloyalty, the whole realm ought now to have been at rest. The quarters of another Kentish rebel, who, under the name of Bluebeard, had raised disturbances in the preceding February, were at that moment undergoing public exhibition in London, Norwich, and the Cinque Ports. Those of two others were about this time despatched by the sheriffs of London to Chichester, Rochester, Portsmouth, Colchester, Stamford, Coventry, Newbury, and Winchester. The heads of all these wretches were set upon London Bridge, which in the course of this miserable year bore no less than twenty-three such horrid ornaments.[75-2]

[Footnote 75-2: Ellis, _ib._ MS. Vitell. A. xvi.]

[Sidenote: Further disturbances.] But with all this, sedition was not put down, even in the county of Kent; for I find by the evidence of authentic records that a new rising took place in August at Feversham, under one William Parminter, who, undeterred by the fate of Cade, gathered about him 400 men, and called himself _the second_ Captain of Kent. This affair is quite unnoticed by historians, and all I know of it is derived from a pardon to one of those engaged in it.[75-3] But even Parminter was not the last ‘Captain of Kent’ that made his appearance this year; for the very same title was immediately afterwards assumed by one John Smyth, for whose capture a reward of £40 was ordered to be paid to the Duke of Somerset on the 3rd of October.[75-4] And the chroniclers, though they do not mention these disturbances, tell us that such things were general over all the kingdom. In Wiltshire, at the time that Cade was at Blackheath, William Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, had one day said mass at Edington, when he was dragged from the altar by a band of his own tenants and murdered in his alb and stole at the top of a neighbouring hill. He was the second bishop who had been murdered that year by the populace. Another insurrection in the same county in August is mentioned in a letter of James Gresham’s, the number of the insurgents being reported at nine or ten thousand men.[76-1] These instances may suffice as evidence of the widespread troubles of the time.

[Footnote 75-3: _See_ document in Appendix to this Introduction; also Devon’s _Issue Rolls_, p. 472. It would seem as if the entry there dated 5th August ought to have been 5th September, as Parminter does not seem to have been taken even on the last day of August.]

[Footnote 75-4: Nicolas’s _Proceedings of the Privy Council_, vi. 101.]

[Footnote 76-1: _See_ No. 131.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Fastolf.] Of the degree of private suffering and misery inflicted in particular cases by these commotions we have a lively picture in Letter 126. At the time when Cade and his followers were encamped upon Blackheath, Sir John Fastolf, a noted warrior of the time, of whom we shall have much to say hereafter, was residing at his house in Southwark. He was a man who had not succeeded in standing well with his contemporaries, and the fact may have contributed not a little to the sensitiveness of a naturally irascible character. In one engagement with the French[76-2] he was actually accused of cowardice, a charge which he seems afterwards satisfactorily to have disproved. For some years, however, he had given up soldiering and returned to his native country, where he served the king in a different manner as a member of his Privy Council. But in this capacity too he was unpopular. His advice should have been valuable at least in reference to the affairs of France; but it does not seem to have been taken. The warnings and counsels which he gave with reference to the maintenance of the English conquests in France he caused his secretary, William Worcester, to put in writing for his justification; but though his admonitions were neglected by those to whom they were addressed, popular rumour held him partly accountable for the loss of Normandy. Of this opinion some evidence was given in the course of Cade’s insurrection.

[Footnote 76-2: The Battle of Patay.]

As a member of the King’s Council Fastolf thought it right to send a messenger to ascertain what were the demands of the insurgents. [Sidenote: John Payn and the rebels.] He therefore commanded one John Payn, who was in his service, to take a man with him and two of the best horses of his stable, and ride to Blackheath. When he arrived there, Cade ordered him to be taken prisoner. To save his master’s horses from being stolen, Payn gave them to the attendant, who galloped away with them as fast as he could, while he himself was brought before the Captain. Cade then asked him what he had come for, and why he had caused his fellow to run away with the horses. He answered that he had come to join some brothers of his wife, and other companions who were among the insurgents. On this some one called out to the Captain that he was a man of Sir John Fastolf’s, and that the two horses were Sir John’s. The Captain raised a cry of ‘Treason!’ and sent him through the camp with a herald of the Duke of Exeter before him, in the duke’s coat-of-arms. At four quarters of the field the herald proclaimed with an _Oyez_ that Payn had been sent as a spy upon them by the greatest traitor in England or France, namely, by one Sir John Fastolf, who had diminished all the garrisons of Normandy, Le Mans, and Maine, and thereby caused the loss of all the king’s inheritance beyond sea. It was added that Sir John had garrisoned his place with the old soldiers of Normandy, to oppose the Commons when they came to Southwark; and, as the emissary of such a traitor, Payn was informed that he should lose his head.

He was brought to the Captain’s tent, where an axe and block were produced. But fortunately he had friends among the host; and Robert Poynings, Cade’s swordbearer and carver, who afterwards married John Paston’s sister Elizabeth, declared plainly that there should die a hundred or two others if Payn were put to death. He was therefore allowed to live on taking an oath that he would go to Southwark and arm himself, and return to join the Commons. He accordingly carried to Fastolf a statement of their demands, advising him at the same time to put away his old soldiers and withdraw himself into the Tower. The old warrior felt that the advice was prudent; he left but two of his servants in the place, and but for Payn the insurgents would have burned it to the ground. The faithful dependant, however, had to pay the full penalty of his master’s unpopularity. He seems to have entertained the rioters for some time at his own cost. Afterwards the Captain took from him some valuable clothes and armour, and sent men to ransack his chamber of bonds, money, and other stores. The insurgents also robbed his house in Kent, and threatened to hang his wife and children. Finally, on the night of the battle on London Bridge, Cade thrust him into the thickest of the combat, where he continued six hours unable to extricate himself, and was dangerously wounded.

To have passed through all this was surely a severe enough trial; yet after that commotion he had further trouble to endure. He was impeached by the Bishop of Rochester, and thrown into the Marshalsea by command of the queen. He was also threatened to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, in order that he might accuse his master Fastolf of treason; but in the end his friends succeeded in procuring for him a charter of pardon. To earn this, however, as we find from the document itself, he had to appear before the king in person, during a progress which he made in Kent the year after the rebellion, and, amid a crowd of other supplicants whose bodies were stripped naked down to their legs, humbly to beg for mercy.[78-1]

[Footnote 78-1: _See_ Appendix to Introduction.]

_The Dukes of York and Somerset_

[Sidenote: The Duke of York.] Cade’s rebellion was attributed by the Court to the machinations of the Duke of York. The disturbances that had prevailed for some months previously seem to have been partly associated with his name. When Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, was murdered in the beginning of the year, the malcontents talked of inviting York over from Ireland to redress the wrongs of the people. The exclusion of York and other lords of royal blood from the king’s councils was also made an express ground of complaint by the Kentish insurgents. The repetition of his name in the mouths of the disaffected was anything but grateful to the party then in power. It was construed as being in itself an evidence of his disloyalty. But the popular complaints as to his treatment were both just and reasonable, for it was a matter that concerned the public weal. The rank, wealth, and lineage of the Duke of York, his connection with the blood-royal, his large possessions, and finally his well-proved ability both as a general and an administrator--all marked him out as one who ought to have been invited to take a leading part in the government of the realm; but a faction about the king had taken care to keep him as much as possible at a distance from the Court. Moreover, it had maligned and aspersed him in his absence, so that it would have been positively insecure for himself to allow the charges to accumulate. A time had clearly come when it was no longer his duty to obey the orders of others. His enemies were becoming more and more unpopular every day, and the only hope of improving the administration of affairs depended upon his taking the initiative.

[Sidenote: Comes over from Ireland.] He accordingly determined to avail himself of the privilege due to his rank, and lay his requests at the foot of the throne. A little before Michaelmas he came over from Ireland, collected 4000 of his retainers upon the Welsh Marches, and with them proceeded to London. His coming, although unsolicited by the king and without leave asked, was nevertheless not altogether unexpected. Attempts were made to stop his landing at Beaumaris, and bodies of men lay in wait for him in various places to interrupt his progress. For this, however, he could not have been unprepared. He knew well the hatred entertained towards him at the Court, for he had experienced pretty much the same thing years before in going to Ireland, as now in coming from it. Although he was sent to that country in the king’s service, and as the king’s lieutenant, there were persons commissioned to apprehend him at several points in his journey thither; and now on his return similar efforts were made to prevent his advance to London. As regards himself they were altogether fruitless; but it is not improbable that they succeeded in deterring many of his followers from joining him. William Tresham, the Speaker of the last Parliament, having received a summons from the duke to meet him, was waylaid and murdered in Northamptonshire by a body of the retainers of Lord Grey of Ruthin. For two months the murderers went at large. The sheriff of the county durst not arrest them, and it was only on the meeting of Parliament that a special act was passed for their punishment.[80-1]

[Footnote 80-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 211-12.]

York, however, pursued his way, in spite of all opposition, to the royal presence, and great was the dismay of those then about the king. According to an act passed against him nine years later, his approach was not unaccompanied by violence. He and his followers, it is said, came in warlike array to Westminster Palace, and ‘beat down the spears and walls’ in the king’s chamber. If so, we should infer that his access to the king was opposed even at the last moment. But the opposition was ineffectual, and the reception he met with from Henry himself did not indicate that the king at all resented his conduct.

It must have been on his first interview with Henry that he presented a petition and received a reply from him, which are printed in Holinshed as follows:--

_Richard, Duke of York: his letter to King Henry_[80-2]

Please it your Highness to conceive that since my departing out of this your realm by your commandment, and being in your service in your land of Ireland, I have been informed that divers language hath been said of me to your most excellent estate which should sound to my dishonour and reproach and charge of my person; howbeit that I have been, and ever will be, your true liegeman and servant, and if there be any man that will or dare say the contrary or charge me otherwise, I beseech your rightwiseness to call him before your high presence, and I will declare me for my discharge as a true knight ought to do. And if I do not, as I doubt not but I shall, I beseech you to punish me as the poorest man of your land. And if he be found untrue in his suggestion and information, I beseech you of your highness that he be punished after his desert in example of all other.

Please it your Excellency to know that as well before my departing out of this your realm for to go into your land of Ireland in your full noble service, as since, certain persons have lain in wait for to hearken upon me, as Sir John Talbot, knight, at the castle of Holt, Sir Thomas Stanley, knight, in Cheshire, Pulford at Chester, Elton at Worcester, Brooke at Gloucester, and Richard, groom of your chamber, at Beaumaris; which had in charge, as I am informed, to take me, and put me into your castle of Conway, and to strike off the head of Sir William Oldhall, knight, and to have put in prison Sir William Devereux, knight, and Sir Edmund Malso (Mulso), knight, withouten enlarging until the time that your Highness had appointed their deliverance.

Item, at such time as I was purposed for to have arrived at your haven of Beaumaris, for to have come to your noble presence to declare me your true man and subject, as my duty is, my landing was stopped and forebarred by Henry Norris, Thomas Norris, William Buckley, William Grust, and Bartholomew Bould, your officers in North Wales, that I should not land there, nor have victuals nor refreshing for me and my fellowship, as I have written to your Excellency here before; so far forth, that Henry Norris, deputy to the chamberlain of North Wales, said unto me that he had in commandment that I should in no wise have landing, refreshing, nor lodging, for men nor horse, nor other thing that might turn to my worship or ease; putting the blame upon Sir William Say, usher of your chamber, saying and affirming that I am against your intent and [held] as a traitor, as I am informed. And, moreover, certain letters were made and delivered unto Chester, Shrewsbury, and to other places, for to let mine entry into the same.

Item, above all wrongs and injuries above said, done unto me of malice without any cause, I being in your land of Ireland in your honourable service, certain commissions were made and directed unto divers persons, which for the execution of the same sat in certain places, and the juries impanelled and charged. Unto the which juries certain persons laboured instantly to have me indicted of treason, to the intent for to have undone me and mine issue, and corrupted my blood, as it is openly published. Beseeching your Majesty royal of your righteousness to do examine these matters, and thereupon to do such justice in this behalf as the cause requireth; for mine intent is fully to pursue to your Highness for the conclusion of these matters.

[Footnote 80-2: The whole of this correspondence is attributed by Holinshed and Stow to the year 1452; but it appears to me clearly to belong to the year 1450, when the Duke had just returned from Ireland. See _Chronicle of London_, 136; though internal evidence alone will, I think, satisfy the careful student.]

_The Answer of King Henry to the Duke of York_

Cousin, we have seen the bill that ye took us late, and also understand the good humble obedience that ye in yourself show unto us, as well in word as in deed; wherefore our intent is the more hastily to ease you of such things as were in your said bill. Howbeit that at our more leisure we might answer you to your said bill, yet we let you wit that, for the causes aforesaid, we will declare you now our intent in these matters. Sith it is that a long time among the people hath been upon you many strange language, and in especial anon after your [qu. their?][82-1] disordinate and unlawful slaying of the bishop of Chichester,[82-2] divers and many of the untrue shipmen and other said, in their manner, words against our estate, making menace to our own person by your sayings, that ye should be fetched with many thousands, and ye should take upon you that which ye neither ought, nor, as we doubt not, ye will not attempt; so far forth that it was said to our person by divers, and especially, we remember, of one Wasnes which had like words unto us. And also there were divers of such false people that went on and had like language in divers of our towns of our land, which by our subjects were taken and duly executed. Wherefore we sent to divers of our courts and places to hearken and to take heed if any such manner coming were, and if there had been, for to resist it; but coming into our land our true subject as ye did, our intent was not that ye, nor less of estate of our subjects, nor none of your servants should not have been letted nor warned, but in goodly wise received; howbeit that peradventure your sudden coming, without certain warning, caused our servants to do as they did, considering the causes abovesaid. And as to the indictment that ye spoke of, we think verily and hold for certain, that there was none such. And if ye may truly prove that any person was thereabouts, the matter shall be demeaned as the case shall require, so that he shall know it is to our great displeasure. Upon this, for the easing of your heart in all such matters, we declare, repute and admit you as our true and faithful subject, and as our faithful cousin.

[Footnote 82-1: I have no doubt this is a misreading of the contracted form ‘y{r}’ which was intended for ‘their.’ To accuse York of the murder of the Bishop of Chichester, and apparently as a principal, not an accessory in that murder, when he was at the time in Ireland, would have been absurd. Besides, the tenor of the whole of this reply is to exculpate York of all charges.]

[Footnote 82-2: Misprinted ‘Chester’ in Holinshed.]

So far, York had gained his object. The charges against him were repudiated by the highest authority in the kingdom. But it was impossible that the matter could rest there. His own interests and those of the public alike compelled him to demand a full inquiry into the machinations of his adversaries, and when admitted to freer intercourse with Henry he was able to support this request by most inconvenient arguments. Town and country now listened with eagerness for news of a long looked-for crisis, while, as it seemed, the old _régime_ was being quietly laid aside at Westminster. [Sidenote: A change of government.] ‘Sir, and it please,’ writes one newsmonger, William Wayte, the clerk of Justice Yelverton, ‘Sir, and it please, I was in my lord of York’s house, and I heard much thing more than my master writeth unto you of. I heard much thing in Fleet Street. But, sir, my lord was with the king, and he visaged so the matter that all the king’s household was and is afraid right sore. And my said lord hath put a bill to the king and desired much thing which is much after the Commons’ desire; and all is upon justice, and to put all those that be indicted under arrest without surety or mainprise, and to be tried by law as law will; insomuch that on Monday Sir William Oldhall was with the king at Westminster more than two hours, and had of the king good cheer.’[83-1]

[Footnote 83-1: _See_ No. 142.]

Sir William Oldhall, a friend and companion-in-arms of the Duke of York in France, had been summoned to the king’s councils more than once before.[83-2] But the last occasion was eleven years before this, at a time when it was doubtless felt to be necessary to obtain the sanction beforehand of all parties in the State to the proposed negotiations for peace at Calais. From that day till now we do not hear of him, and we may presume that he was not invited to Court. By the Duke of York’s letter just quoted, it would seem that courtiers had planned to have him beheaded. But now the old exclusiveness was defeated. Men whose patriotism and generalship, it was believed, would have averted the loss of France, were at length allowed free access to their sovereign; while men who were believed to have culpably misdirected the king, and by their favouritism and partiality to have perverted the course of justice throughout the kingdom, stood in fear of a strict inquiry being made into their misdeeds. For such was the sole purport of the ‘bill,’ or petition presented by the Duke of York as mentioned by William Wayte, the exact text of which will be seen in No. 143. The king’s answer to this is preserved in Holinshed as follows:--

[Footnote 83-2: Nicolas’s _Proceedings of the Privy Council_, iv. 212, v. 108.]

_The Answer of King Henry to the Duke of York_

Cousin, as touching your bill last put up to us, we understand well that ye, of good heart, counsel and advertise us to the setting up of justice and to the speedy punishing of some persons indicted or noised, offering your service to be ready at commandment in the same; sith it is, that for many causes moving us to have determined in our soul to stablish a sad and substantial Council, giving them more ample authority and power than ever we did before this, in the which we have appointed you to be one. But sith it is not accustomed, sure, nor expedient, to take a conclusion and conduct by advice or counsel of one person by himself, for the conservation (?) it is observed that the greatest and the best, the rich and the poor, in liberty, virtue and effect of their[84-1] voices be equal; we have therefore determined within ourself to send for our Chancellor of England and for other Lords of our Council, yea and all other, together within short time, ripely to common of these and other our great matters. In the which communication such conclusions, by the grace of God, shall be taken, as shall sound to His pleasure, the weal of us and our land, as well in these matters as in any other.

[Footnote 84-1: Misprinted ‘your’ in Holinshed.]

[Sidenote: Politics in Norfolk.] The time was favourable to men like John Paston, who had been wronged by a powerful neighbour such as Lord Molynes, and had been hitherto denied redress. There seemed also a hope of destroying, once for all, the influence of Tuddenham and Heydon in the county of Norfolk. It was proposed that on the Duke of York visiting Norfolk, which he intended to do, the mayor and aldermen of Norwich should ride to meet him, and that complaints should be preferred against the party of Tuddenham and Heydon in the name of the whole city. ‘And let that be done,’ adds William Wayte, ‘in the most lamentable wise; for, Sir, but if (_i.e._ unless) my Lord hear some foul tales of them, and some hideous noise and cry, by my faith they are else like to come to grace.’ Owing to the influence of the Duke of York, a new Parliament was summoned to meet in November, and John Paston was urged by some friends to get himself returned as a member. But it was still more strongly recommended that the Earl of Oxford should meet the duke, apparently with the view of arranging the list of candidates--a responsibility which the earl, for his part, seems to have declined. The Duke of Norfolk met with the Duke of York at Bury St. Edmunds, and these two dukes settled that matter between them. The Earl of Oxford modestly contented himself with reporting their decision, and advising that their wishes should be carried into effect.[85-1]

[Footnote 85-1: Nos. 142, 145, 148, and 149. The influence of a powerful nobleman on the elections was evidently quite a matter of course. What use York made of it, or attempted to make of it, cannot so easily be determined. Of the two candidates proposed by him for the county of Norfolk, only one was returned, the name of Sir Miles Stapleton being substituted for that of Sir William Chamberlain (_see_ vol. ii. p. 185 note 1). It appears from two of the above cited letters that Stapleton was a favourite candidate with the Pastons and their friends, and that he was urged to wait on the Duke of York on his coming to Norwich.]

The Parliament met on the 6th November, and Sir William Oldhall was chosen Speaker. About the same time a commission of _Oyer and Terminer_ which had been issued as early as the first of August,[85-2] began its labours at Norwich, and the Earl of Oxford stayed away from Parliament to attend it. Mr. Justice Yelverton was sent down from Westminster to sit on that tribunal along with him. There seemed hope at last of redress being had for the wrongs and violence that had prevailed in the county of Norfolk; but the course of justice was not yet an easy one. Great pressure had been put upon the king, even at the last moment, that Yelverton should be countermanded, and Lord Molynes had spoken of his own dispute with Paston in the king’s presence in a manner that made the friends of the latter wish he had been then at Westminster to see after his own interests. The Lords of the Council, however, determined that Yelverton should keep his day for going into Norfolk. When he arrived there, he had occasion to report that there were many persons ill-disposed towards Tuddenham and Heydon, but that it was most important they should be encouraged by a good sheriff and under-sheriff being appointed, else there would be a total miscarriage of justice. For the annual election of sheriffs had been delayed this year, apparently owing to the state of parties. Until the Duke of York arrived in London for the Parliament, his friends would not allow them to be nominated; and the state of suspense and anxiety occasioned by this delay is clearly shown in the letters written during November.[86-1]

[Footnote 85-2: _See_ No. 119.]

[Footnote 86-1: Nos. 151, 153, 154, 155, 156.]

The truth is, the Duke of York had not yet succeeded in establishing the government upon anything like a firm or satisfactory basis. In times like our own there is little difficulty in determining the responsibility of ministers; but in the rough judgment of the ‘Commons’ of those days an error in policy was nothing short of treason. Whoever took upon him to guide the king’s counsels knew very well the danger of the task; and York (if I understand his character aright) was anxious, until he was driven desperate, never to assume more authority than he was distinctly warranted in doing. He could not but remember that his father had suffered death for conspiring to depose Henry V., and that his own high birth and descent from Edward III. caused his acts to be all the more jealously watched by those who sought to estrange him from his sovereign. He therefore made it by no means his aim to establish for himself a marked ascendency. He rather sought to show his moderation. I find, indeed, that at this particular period he not only removed two members of the Council, Lord Dudley and the Abbot of St. Peter’s at Gloucester, but sent them prisoners to his own castle of Ludlow.[86-2] This, however, he could hardly have done without permission from the king, as it was the express object of his petition above referred to, that persons accused of misconducting themselves in high places should be committed for trial; and judging from the terms of the king’s answer, I should say that it must have been done by the authority of the new Council, which Henry therein declared it to be his intention to constitute.

[Footnote 86-2: Stow’s _Chronicle_, p. 392.]

This new Council was probably what we should call in these days a coalition ministry. [Sidenote: The Duke of Somerset.] York’s great rival, the Duke of Somerset, had come over from Normandy a little before York himself came over from Ireland. On the 11th of September, while Cardinal Kemp, who was then Lord Chancellor, was sitting at Rochester on a commission of _Oyer and Terminer_ to try the Kentish rebels,[87-1] he affixed the Great Seal to a patent appointing Somerset Constable of England.[87-2] In that capacity, as we have already seen, the duke arrested one of the new Kentish leaders that started up after Cade’s rebellion had been quelled. There is no doubt that he stood high in the king’s confidence, and that he was particularly acceptable to Queen Margaret. He was, nevertheless, one of the most unpopular men in England, on account of his surrender of Caen and total loss of Normandy in the preceding year; and as the Parliament was now called, among other reasons, expressly to provide for the defence of the kingdom, and for speedy succours being sent to preserve the king’s other dominions in France,[87-3] it was impossible that his conduct should not be inquired into. The short sitting of Parliament before Christmas was greatly occupied by controversy between York and Somerset.[87-4] On the 1st of December the latter was placed under arrest. His lodgings at the Black Friars were broken into and pillaged by the populace, and he himself was nearly killed, but was rescued from their violence by a barge of his brother-in-law the Earl of Devon. Next day the Dukes of York and Norfolk caused proclamation to be made through the city that no man should commit robbery on pain of death, and a man was actually beheaded in Cheap for disobeying this order. As a further demonstration against lawlessness, the king and his lords, on Thursday the 3rd December, rode through the city in armour, either side of the way being kept by a line of armed citizens throughout the route of the procession. It was the most brilliant display of the kind the Londoners of that day had ever seen.[88-1]

[Footnote 87-1: _See_ vol. ii. pp. 161-2.] [[Letter 131]]

[Footnote 87-2: Rymer, xi. 276.]

[Footnote 87-3: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 210.]

[Footnote 87-4: W. Worc.]

[Footnote 88-1: MS. Cott. Vitell. A. xvi. Stow in his _Chronicle_ dates this procession a day later.]

The Duke of Somerset did not long remain in prison. Very soon after Christmas the king made him captain of Calais, and gave him the entire control of the royal household.[88-2] The Court was evidently bent on the restoration of the old order of things, so far as it dared to do so. The chief obstacle to this undoubtedly was the Parliament, which was, on the whole, so favourable to the Duke of York, that one member, Young of Bristol, had even ventured to move that he should be declared heir to the crown.[88-3] Parliament, however, could be prorogued; and, as Young found shortly afterwards, its members could be committed to the Tower. The speech of the Lord Chancellor on the meeting of Parliament had declared that it was summoned for three important causes: first, to provide for the defence of the kingdom, and especially the safeguard of the sea; secondly, for the speedy relief of the king’s subjects in the south of France, and aid against the French; thirdly, for pacifying the king’s subjects at home, and punishing the disturbances which had lately been so frequent. But practically nothing was done about any of these matters before Christmas. An act was passed for the more speedy levying of a subsidy granted in the last Parliament, and also an act of attainder against the murderers of William Tresham. The Lord Chancellor then, in the king’s name and in his presence, prorogued the Parliament till the 20th of January, declaring that the matters touching the defence of the kingdom were too great and difficult to be adequately discussed at that time. The same excuse, however, was again used for further prorogations until the 5th of May; and meanwhile fears began to be entertained in the country that all that had been done hitherto for a more impartial administration of justice was about to be upset.[88-4]

[Footnote 88-2: W. Worc.]

[Footnote 88-3: _The Chronicle of London_ (p. 137) says that ‘all the Commons’ agreed to this proposition, and stood out for some time against the Lords on the subject.]

[Footnote 88-4: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 210-14.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1451.] During the whole course of the succeeding year matters were in a very unsettled condition. At the very opening of the year we hear complaints that the sheriff, Jermyn, had not shown himself impartial, but was endeavouring to suppress complaints against certain persons at the coming sessions at Lynn. It was feared the king would pardon Tuddenham and Heydon the payment of their dues to the Exchequer for Suffolk; and if they did, payment of taxes would be generally refused, as Blake, the Bishop of Swaffham, having gone up to London, informed the Lord Chancellor himself. From London, too, men wrote in a manner that was anything but encouraging. The government was getting paralysed alike by debt and by indecision. ‘As for tidings here,’ writes John Bocking, ‘I certify you all is nought, or will be nought. The king borroweth his expenses for Christmas. The King of Arragon, the Duke of Milan, the Duke of Austria, the Duke of Burgundy, would be assistant to us to make a conquest, and nothing is answered nor agreed in manner save abiding the great deliberation that at the last shall spill all together.’ Chief-Justice Fortescue had been for a week expecting every night to be assaulted.[89-1] The only symptom of vigour at headquarters was the despatch of a commission of _Oyer and Terminer_ into Kent, for the trial of those who had raised disturbances during the preceding summer. As for the county of Norfolk, the only hope lay in a strong clamour being raised against oppressors. Sir John Fastolf showed himself anxious about the prosecution of certain indictments against Heydon, and his servant Bocking, and Wayte, the servant of Judge Yelverton, urged that strong representations should be made to Lord Scales against showing any favour to that unpopular lawyer.[89-2]

[Footnote 89-1: In earlier issues of this Introduction was added: ‘probably for no other reason than his high impartiality.’ Mr. Plummer, I find, who knows him better, has not the same opinion of Fortescue’s impartiality as a politician, but considers that he was in danger just because he was so strong a Lancastrian. _See_ Introduction to _The Governance of England_, p. 50.]

[Footnote 89-2: Nos. 167, 169-174.]

[Sidenote: Tuddenham and Heydon.] By and by it was seen what good reason the friends of justice had for their apprehensions. It had been arranged that Tuddenham and Heydon should be indicted at a sitting of the commission of _Oyer and Terminer_ at Norwich in the ensuing spring. Rumours, however, began to prevail in Norwich that they who had promoted this commission in the county of Norfolk--the Earl of Oxford and Justice Yelverton, as well as John Paston and John Damme--were to be indicted in Kent by way of revenge. John Damme had before this caused Heydon to be indicted of treason for taking down one of those hideous memorials of a savage justice--the quarter of a man exposed in public. The man was doubtless a political victim belonging to Heydon’s own party; but Heydon was now looking to recover his influence, and he contrived to get the charge of treason retorted against Damme. Symptoms were observed in Norwich that the unpopular party were becoming bolder again. ‘Heydon’s men,’ wrote James Gloys to John Paston, ‘brought his own horse and his saddle through Aylesham on Monday, and they came in at the Bishop’s Gates at Norwich, and came over Tombland and into the Abbey; and sithen they said they should go to London for Heydon. Item, some say that Heydon should be made a knight, and much other language there is which causeth men to be afeard, weening that he should have a rule again.’[90-1]

[Footnote 90-1: Nos. 179 and 180.]

Full well might Sir John Fastolf and others apprehend that if Heydon or Tuddenham appeared in answer to the indictment, it would be with such a following at his back as would overawe the court. No appearance was put in for them at all at several of the sessions of _Oyer and Terminer_. One sitting was held at Norwich on the 2nd of March. Another was held just after Easter on the 29th of April, and Justice Prisot, not the most impartial of judges, was sent down to Norwich to hold it. Strong complaints were put in against Tuddenham and Heydon on the part of the city of Norwich, and also by the town of Swaffham, by Sir John Fastolf, Sir Harry Inglos, John Paston, and many others; but, as Fastolf’s chaplain afterwards informed his master, ‘the judges, by their wilfulness, might not find in their heart to give not so much as a beck nor a twinkling of their eye toward, but took it to derision, God reform such partiality!’ The one-sidedness of Prisot, indeed, was such as to bring down upon him a rebuke from his colleague Yelverton. ‘Ah, Sir Mayor and your brethren,’ said the former, ‘as to the process of your complaints we will put them in continuance, but in all other we will proceed.’ Yelverton felt bound to protest against such unfairness. [Sidenote: Partial justice.] Yet even this was not the worst; for Prisot, seeing that, with all he could do, the result of the proceedings at Norwich would scarcely be satisfactory to Tuddenham and Heydon, took it upon him, apparently by his own authority, to remove them to Walsingham, where they had most supporters. And there, accordingly, another session was opened on Tuesday the 4th of May.[91-1]

[Footnote 91-1: Nos. 119, 185, 186, 192.]

It was, according to Sir Thomas Howys, ‘the most partial place of all the shire.’ All the friends and allies of Tuddenham and Heydon, knights and squires, and gentlemen who had always been devoted to their pleasure, received due warning to attend. A body of 400 horse also accompanied the accused, and not one of the numerous complainants ventured to open his mouth except John Paston. Even he had received a friendly message only two days before that he had better consider well whether it was advisable to come himself, as there was ‘great press of people and few friends’; and, moreover, the sheriff was ‘not so whole’ as he had been. What this expression meant required but little explanation. As Sheriff of Norfolk, John Jermyn was willing to do Paston all the service in his power, but simple justice he did not dare to do.[91-2]

[Footnote 91-2: Nos. 189, 192.]

[Sidenote: John Paston and Lord Molynes.] He had but too good an excuse for his timidity. Of John Paston’s complaint against Tuddenham and Heydon we hear no more; we can easily imagine what became of it. But we know precisely what became of an action brought by Paston at this sessions against his old adversary Lord Molynes, for his forcible expulsion from Gresham in the preceding year. John Paston, to be sure, was now peaceably reinstated in the possession of that manor;[91-3] but he had the boldness to conceive that undermining his wife’s chamber, turning her forcibly out of doors, and then pillaging the whole mansion, were acts for which he might fairly expect redress against both Lord Molynes and his agents. He had accordingly procured two indictments to be framed, the first against his lordship, and the second against his men. But before the case came on at Walsingham, Sheriff Jermyn gave notice to Paston’s friends that he had received a distinct injunction from the king to make up a panel to acquit Lord Molynes.[92-1] Royal letters of such a tenor do not seem to have been at all incompatible with the usages of Henry VI.’s reign. John Paston himself said the document was one that could be procured for six-and-eightpence.

[Footnote 91-3: No. 178.]

[Footnote 92-1: No. 189.]

There was no hope, therefore, of making Lord Molynes himself responsible for the attack on Gresham. The only question was whether the men who had done his bidding could not be made to suffer for it. After the acquittal of their master, John Osbern reports a remarkable conversation that he had with Sheriff Jermyn in which he did his best to induce him to accept a bribe in Paston’s interest. The gift had been left with the under sheriff for his acceptance. Jermyn declined to take it until he had seen Paston himself, but Osbern was fully under the impression that he would be glad to have it. Osbern, however, appealed also to other arguments. ‘I remembered him,’ he tells Paston, ‘of his promises made before to you at London, when he took his oath and charge, and that ye were with him when he took his oath and other divers times; and for those promises made by him to you at that time, and other times at the _Oyer and Terminer_ at Lynn, ye proposed you by the trust that ye have in him to attempt and rear actions that should be to the avail of him and of his office.’ The prospect of Paston being valuable to him as a litigant had its weight with the sheriff, and he promised to do him all the good in his power except in the action against Lord Molynes’ men; for not only Lord Molynes himself but the Duke of Norfolk had written to him to show them favour, and if they were not acquitted he expected to incur both their displeasure and the king’s. In vain did Osbern urge that Paston would find sufficient surety to save the sheriff harmless. Jermyn said he could take no surety over £100, and Lord Molynes was a great lord who could do him more injury than that.[93-1]

[Footnote 93-1: No. 193.]

[[The gift had been left with the under sheriff _text unchanged: expected form “under-sheriff”_]]

The diplomacy on either side seems to have been conducted with considerable _finesse_. Jermyn declared that he had been offered twenty nobles at Walsingham in behalf of the Lord Molynes, but that he had never received a penny either from him or from any of Paston’s adversaries. Osbern then offered if he would promise to be sincere towards Paston, that the latter would give him a sum in hand, as much as he could desire, or would place it in the hands of a middle man whom Jermyn could trust. In the end, however, he was obliged to be satisfied with Jermyn’s assuring him that if he found it lay within his power to do anything for Paston, he would take his money with good will. The negotiator’s impression was that he was fully pledged to get Lord Molynes’ men acquitted, but that in all other actions he would be found favourable to Paston.[93-2]

[Footnote 93-2: _Ibid._]

[Sidenote: Parliament.] About this time Parliament, which had now been prorogued for nearly five months, met again at Westminster. The king’s necessities were doubtless the all-sufficient cause why its meeting could no longer be dispensed with. The Crown was already in debt to the sum of £372,000, and was daily becoming more so. The expenses of the royal household amounted to £24,000 a year, while the yearly revenue out of which they should have been paid was only £5000. Nor was it by any means advisable to remedy the matter by imposing fresh taxation; for the people were so impoverished by the payment of subsidies, the exactions of the king’s purveyors, and the general maladministration of justice, that the experiment could hardly have been made with safety. An act of resumption was the only expedient by which it seemed possible to meet the difficulty; and all grants of crown lands made to any persons since the first day of the reign were accordingly recalled by statute.[93-3] In return for this the Commons preferred a petition to the king that he would for ever remove from his presence and counsels a number of persons to whom they alleged it was owing both that his possessions had been diminished, and that the laws had not been carried into execution. Foremost on the list was the Duke of Somerset; and with him were named Alice, widow of the late Duke of Suffolk, William Booth, Bishop of Chester (that is to say, of Coventry and Lichfield),[94-1] Lord Dudley, Thomas Daniel, and twenty-five others. It was petitioned that they should never again be permitted to come within twelve miles of the royal presence, on pain of forfeiture of lands and goods. But the days had not yet come when a petition against ministers by the Commons was tantamount to their dismissal. The king indeed felt it best on this occasion to yield somewhat; but he yielded on no principle whatever. He declared in reply that he himself saw no cause for their removal; but he was content to dismiss the most of them for a year, during which period accusations brought against any of them might be inquired into. Those who were Peers of the realm, however, he refused to send away; and he insisted on retaining the services of one or two others who had been accustomed continually to wait upon him.[94-2]

[Footnote 93-3: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 217.]

[Footnote 94-1: The modern see of Chester was separated from this diocese in the time of Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 94-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 216.]

Parliament seems shortly after this to have been dissolved, and no parliament met again till two years later. Of course the influence of Somerset increased when both Lords and Commons were dismissed into the country; and we perceive that by the end of the year Thomas Daniel, one of the old unpopular adherents of the Duke of Suffolk, who, nevertheless, had not always been acceptable to the Court, was expecting to recover favour by means of Somerset.[94-3] He is represented as having cultivated the Duke’s friendship for a quarter of a year; so that we may conclude Somerset’s ascendency was at this time unmistakable. With what degree of discretion he made use of it there is little evidence to show. One advantage that Daniel hoped to gain through his influence was the friendship of Tuddenham and Heydon, by whose means, and by the good offices of Lord Scales, he expected to be allowed to re-enter the manor of Bradeston, of which he had already dispossessed one Osbert Munford last year, but had subsequently been dispossessed himself. The value of a disputed title in any part of England probably depended very much upon who was supreme at Court.

[Footnote 94-3: No. 206. Daniel had been out of favour at one time during Suffolk’s ascendency. _See_ No. 75, p. 86.]

But high as Somerset stood in the king’s favour, the course of events did not tend to make him more acceptable to the people. The loss of Normandy, in the preceding year, was itself a thing not likely to be readily forgotten; but the misfortunes of the English arms did not end with the loss of Normandy. So great, indeed, was the despondency occasioned by that event that, in the opinion of French writers, Calais itself would not have been able to hold out if the French had immediately proceeded to attack it. But Charles was afraid he might have been deserted by the Duke of Burgundy, whose interests would hardly have been promoted by the French king strengthening himself in that quarter, and he declined to attempt it.[95-1] Relieved, however, of the necessity of maintaining a large force in Normandy, he found new occupation for his troops in completing the conquest of Guienne, of which a beginning had already been made by the capture of Cognac and of some places near Bayonne and the Pyrenees. In November 1450 the French laid siege to Bourg and Blaye on the Garonne, both of which places capitulated in the spring of the following year. They were the keys of the more important city of Bordeaux, which, now perceiving that there was no hope of succour from England, was obliged to follow their example. This was in June 1451. [Sidenote: Loss of Gascony and Guienne.] Two months afterwards Bayonne, too, was obliged to capitulate; and with it the whole of Gascony and Guienne was as completely lost to the English as Normandy had been in the preceding year. Calais was now all that remained to them of their conquests and possessions in France; nor were they without considerable apprehension that they might be expelled from Calais too.

[Footnote 95-1: Basin, i. 247-48.]

These disasters, which were but the natural sequel to the loss of Normandy, only served to make more bitter the reflection how the government of that duchy had been taken out of the able hands of the Duke of York and given to the incompetent Somerset. The jealousy with which the latter regarded his rival was heightened by the consciousness of his own unpopularity. The Duke of York was living in seclusion at his castle of Ludlow, but Somerset seems to have regarded him with daily increasing apprehension. He was continually instilling into the king distrust of York’s fidelity as a subject; until at last the latter thought it expedient to make a public declaration of his loyalty. [Sidenote: York’s manifesto.] He accordingly issued the following manifesto:--

[Sidenote: A.D. 1452.]

Forasmuch as I, Richard Duke of York, am informed that the King, my sovereign lord, is my heavy lord, greatly displeased with me, and hath in me a distrust by sinister information of mine enemies, adversaries, and evil-willers, where[as] God knoweth, from whom nothing is hid, I am, and have been, and ever will be, his true liegeman, and so have I before this, divers times, as well by mouth as by writing, notified and declared to my said sovereign lord: And for that this notice so comen unto me of the displeasure of my said sovereign lord is to me so grievous, I have prayed the reverend father in God, the Bishop of Hereford,[96-1] and my cousin the Earl of Shrewsbury, to come hither and hear my declaration in this matter; wherein I have said to them that I am true liegeman to the King my sovereign lord, ever have been, and shall be to my dying day. And to the very proof that it is so, I offer myself to swear that on the blessed Sacrament, and receive it, the which I hope shall be my salvation at the day of doom. And so for my special comfort and consolation I have prayed the said lords to report and declare unto the King’s highness my said offer; and to the end and intent that I will be ready to do the same oath in presence of two or three lords, such as shall please the King’s highness to send hither to accept it. In witness whereof I have signed this schedule with my sign manual, and set thereunto my signet of arms. Written in my castle of Ludlow, the 9th of January, the 30th year of the reign of my sovereign lord, King Henry the Sixth.[96-2]

[Footnote 96-1: Reginald Butler or Boulers, whose appointment to the see, dated 23rd December 1450, was no doubt due to the Duke of York’s influence.]

[Footnote 96-2: Stow’s _Chronicle_, p. 393.]

He appears to have waited nearly a month to learn the effect of this remonstrance. Meanwhile reports came that the French were advancing to lay siege to Calais. At such a juncture it was peculiarly intolerable that the administration of affairs should still be intrusted to hands so notoriously incompetent as those of Somerset; and York, as being the only man who could stir in such a matter with effect, now made up his mind to take active steps for Somerset’s removal. Nothing, however, could be done for such an object without a considerable force of armed men to support him. York accordingly issued the following address to the burgesses of Shrewsbury:--

Right worshipful friends, I recommend me unto you; and I suppose it is well known unto you, as well by experience as by common language said and reported throughout all Christendom, what laud, what worship, honour, and manhood, was ascribed of all nations unto the people of this realm whilst the kingdom’s sovereign lord stood possessed of his lordship in the realm of France and duchy of Normandy; and what derogation, loss of merchandize, lesion of honour, and villany, is said and reported generally unto the English nation for loss of the same; namely (_i.e._ especially) unto the Duke of Somerset, when he had the commandance and charge thereof: the which loss hath caused and encouraged the King’s enemies for to conquer and get Gascony and Guienne, and now daily they make their advance for to lay siege unto Calais, and to other places in the marches there, for to apply them to their obeisance, and so for to come into the land with great puissance, to the final destruction thereof, if they might prevail, and to put the land in their subjection, which God defend. And on the other part it is to be supposed it is not unknown to you how that, after my coming out of Ireland I, as the King’s true liegeman and servant (and ever shall be to my life’s end) and for my true acquittal, perceiving the inconvenience before rehearsed, advised his Royal Majesty of certain articles concerning the weal and safeguard, as well of his most royal person, as the tranquillity and conservation of all this his realm: the which advertisements, howbeit that it was thought that they were full necessary, were laid apart, and to be of none effect, through the envy, malice, and untruth of the said Duke of Somerset; which for my truth, faith, and allegiance that I owe unto the King, and the good will and favour that I have to all the realm, laboreth continually about the King’s highness for my undoing, and to corrupt my blood, and to disinherit me and my heirs, and such persons as be about me, without any desert or cause done or attempted, on my part or theirs, I make our Lord Judge. Wherefore, worshipful friends, to the intent that every man shall know my purpose and desire for to declare me such as I am, I signify unto you that, with the help and supportation of Almighty God, and of Our Lady, and of all the Company of Heaven, I, after long sufferance and delays, [though it is] not my will or intent to displease my sovereign lord, seeing that the said Duke ever prevaileth and ruleth about the King’s person, [and] that by this means the land is likely to be destroyed, am fully concluded to proceed in all haste against him with the help of my kinsmen and friends; in such wise that it shall prove to promote ease, peace, tranquillity, and safeguard of all this land: and more, keeping me within the bounds of my liegeance, as it pertaineth to my duty, praying and exhorting you to fortify, enforce, and assist me, and to come to me with all diligence, wheresoever I shall be, or draw, with as many goodly and likely men as ye may, to execute the intent abovesaid. Written under my signet at my castle of Ludlow, the 3rd day of February.

Furthermore I pray you that such strait appointment and ordinance be made that the people which shall come in your fellowship, or be sent unto me by your agreement, be demeaned in such wise by the way, that they do no offence, nor robbery, nor oppression upon the people, in lesion of justice. Written as above, etc.

Your good friend, R. YORK.[98-1]

To my right worshipful friends, the bailiffs, burgesses and commons of the good town of Shrewsbury.

[Footnote 98-1: Ellis’s _Letters_, First Series, i. 11-13.]

[Sidenote: York marches towards London.] Having thus collected a sufficient body of followers, the duke began his march to London. The Earl of Devonshire, Lord Cobham, and other noblemen also collected people and joined him.[98-2] The king and Somerset, however, being informed of his intentions, set out from the capital to meet him, issuing, at the same time, an imperative summons to Lord Cobham, and probably to the duke’s other adherents, to repair immediately to the royal presence.[98-3] But the duke, who had no desire to engage the king’s forces, turned aside and hoped to reach London unmolested. He sent a herald before him to desire liberty for himself and his allies to enter the city; but strict injunctions to the contrary had been left by the king, and his request was refused. Disappointed in this quarter, it was natural that he should look for greater sympathy in Kent, where, doubtless, smouldered still the remains of past disaffection. He accordingly crossed the Thames at Kingston Bridge, and proceeded with his host to Dartford. The king’s army followed and pitched their camp upon Blackheath. And so, on the 1st of March 1452, there lay, within eight miles of each other, two formidable hosts, which any further movement must apparently bring into collision.

[Footnote 98-2: _English Chronicle_ (ed. Davies), 69.]

[Footnote 98-3: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 116. According to Fabyan, the king and Somerset set out on the 16th of February. The summons to Lord Cobham, though dated Westminster, was issued on the 17th.]

To judge from one contemporary account,[99-1] the duke’s position must have been a strong one. He had a body of ordnance in the field, with no less than 3000 gunners. He himself had 8000 men in the centre of his position; while the Earl of Devonshire lay to the south with another detachment of 6000, and Lord Cobham by the river-side commanded an equal force. Seven ships lay on the water filled with the baggage of the troops. But the strength of the king’s army appears to have largely exceeded these numbers;[99-2] and even if the duke had wished to provoke a conflict, it was evidently more prudent to remain simply on the defensive. He accordingly left the responsibility of further action to those of the king’s party.

[Footnote 99-1: _Cottonian Roll_, ii. 23. _See_ Appendix to this Introduction.]

[Footnote 99-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 346. The statement in the Act of Attainder passed against the Duke of York seven years afterwards, that he was ‘of no power to withstand’ the king on this occasion, is liable to suspicion, but it is confirmed by the testimony of Whethamstede, 348.]

In this crisis the lords who were with the king took counsel together, and determined, if possible, to labour for a compromise.[99-3] An embassy was appointed to go to the Duke of York, and hear what he had to say. It consisted of the wise and good prelate Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, and Bourchier, Bishop of Ely (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Sudeley, and some others. The answer made by York was, that no ill was intended against either the king or any of his Council; that the duke and his followers were lovers of the commonweal; but that it was their intention to remove from the king certain evil-disposed persons, through whose means the common people had been grievously oppressed. Of these the Duke of Somerset was declared to be the chief; and, indeed, his unpopularity was such that even those on the king’s side would seem to have seconded the Duke of York’s demand. After a consultation the king consented that Somerset should be committed to custody until he should make answer to such charges as York would bring against him.[100-1]

[Footnote 99-3: ‘The Lords, both spiritual and temporal, took the matter in hand.’ _Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_ (Camden Soc.), 69. So also _Chronicle of London_, 137.]

[Footnote 100-1: Fabyan.]

Nothing more seemed necessary to avert civil war. On a simple pledge given by the king that Somerset should be placed in confinement, and afterwards put on his trial, the Duke of York at once broke up his camp and ordered his men home. He then repaired himself to the king’s tent to express his loyalty. [Sidenote: York is entrapped,] But no sooner had he arrived there than he found he was deceived. The king, in violation of his promise, kept the Duke of Somerset attending upon him as his chief adviser, and York was virtually a prisoner. He was sent on to London in advance of the king, in a kind of honourable custody, attended by two bishops, who conducted him to his own residence; but what to do with him when he got there was a difficulty. His enemies feared to send him to the Tower. There were 10,000 men yet remaining in the Welsh Marches, who, on such a rumour, would have come up to London; and it was not very long before they were reported to be all under arms, and actually on the march, with the duke’s young son at their head--Edward, Earl of March, boy as he was, not yet quite ten years old.[100-2]

[Footnote 100-2: Fabyan. _Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_, 69, and the MS. Chronicle, Vitell. A. xvi.]

York had distinctly accused the Duke of Somerset as a traitor. He was now in Somerset’s power, but the latter did not dare to retort the charge upon him. Yet if Somerset was not a traitor, the course pursued by York was utterly indefensible. He had actually taken up arms against the Crown, to remove by force the minister in whom the king had placed his confidence. But unfortunately Somerset knew too well that if he made this a ground of accusation against his rival, recrimination would be sure to follow, and he himself would incur a weight of public odium which might possibly lead to the same result as in the case of Suffolk. The wisest and most politic course for himself was not to impeach the Duke of York, but, if possible, to shut his mouth and let him go free. No accusation, therefore, was drawn up. [Sidenote: and compelled to swear allegiance.] An oath of allegiance, binding him over to keep the peace in time coming, was all that was required. It was on the 1st of March that York had repaired to the king’s tent and found himself in his rival’s power. On the 10th he was brought to St. Paul’s, and there publicly made oath as follows:--

I, Richard, Duke of York, confess and beknow that I am and ought to be humble subject and liegeman to you, my sovereign Lord, King Henry the Sixth, and owe therefore to bear you faith and truth as to my sovereign lord, and shall do all the days unto my life’s end; and shall not at any time will or assent, that anything be attempted or done against your noble person, but wheresoever I shall have knowledge of any such thing imagined or purposed I shall, with all the speed and diligence possible to me, make that your Highness shall have knowledge thereof, and even do all that shall be possible to me to the withstanding thereof, to the utterest of my life. I shall not in no wise any thing take upon me against your royal estate or the obeisance that is due thereto, nor suffer any other man to do, as far forth as it shall lie in my power to let it; and also I shall come at your commandment, whensoever I shall be called by the same, in humble and obeisant wise, but if [_i.e._ unless] I be letted by any sickness or impotency of my person or by such other causes as shall be thought reasonable to you, my sovereign lord. I shall never hereafter take upon me to gather any routs, or make any assembly of your people, without your commandment or licence, or in my lawful defence. In the interpretation of which my lawful defence, and declaration thereof, I shall report me at all times to your Highness, and, if the case require, unto my peers: nor anything attempt by way of faite against any of your subjects, of what estate, degree, or condition that they be. But whensoever I find myself wronged or aggrieved, I shall sue humbly for remedy to your Highness, and proceed after the course of your laws, and in none other wise, saving in mine own lawful defence in manner above said; and shall in all things abovesaid and other have me unto your Highness as an humble and true subject ought to have him to his Sovereign Lord.

All these things above said I promise truly to observe and keep, by the Holy Evangelists contained in this book that I lay my hand upon, and by the Holy Cross that I here touch, and by the blessed Sacrament of our Lord’s body that I shall now with His mercy receive. And over this I agree me and will that if I any time hereafter, as with the grace of our Lord I never shall, anything attempt by way of fear or otherwise against your royal majesty and obeisance that I owe thereto, or anything I take upon me otherwise than is above expressed, I from that time forth be unabled, [held and taken as an untrue and openly forsworn man, and unable][102-1] to all manner of worship, estate, and degree, be it such as I now occupy, or any other that might grow unto me in any wise.

And this I here have promised and sworn proceedeth of mine own desire and free voluntee and by no constraining or coercion. In witness of all the which things above written I, Richard, Duke of York above named, subscribe me with mine own hand and seal, with this mine own seal, &c.[102-2]

[Footnote 102-1: These words are not in the copy in the _Rolls of Parliament_, but they occur in that given in Holinshed’s _Chronicle_.]

[Footnote 102-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 346.]

With this guarantee for his future loyalty, the duke was permitted to return into his own country.

Somerset might well be pleased that the matter should be settled thus; for if the charges York brought, or at least was prepared to have brought, against him were only one-half true (and some of them certainly were true altogether), his administration of the Duchy of Normandy was a mixture of indiscretion and dishonesty at which the nation had good right to be indignant. We have already seen how in concert with the Duke of Suffolk he had authorised a perfidious breach of the truce with France in the capture of Fougères. We have also seen how ill prepared he was for the consequences; how he discovered too late the weakness of all the garrisons; how the French king recovered town after town, and the English were finally expelled from Normandy in less than a year and a half after the unjustifiable outrage. [Sidenote: York’s charges against Somerset.] But if any credit may be given to the further charges brought against him by the Duke of York,--charges which agree only too well with the character attributed to him by the most impartial authorities[102-3]--Somerset had himself to blame in great measure for the defenceless condition of the country committed to his protection. On his first going into Normandy he had jobbed the offices under his control. For the sake of private emolument he had removed a number of trusty and experienced captains, filling their places with creatures of his own, or men who had paid _douceurs_ for their posts; and only on receipt of still greater bribes would he consent to restore any of those that had been put out. He had, however, actually reduced many garrisons, while he had taxed the inhabitants of the Duchy beyond all reason for the means of defence. His administration of justice, too, had been such as to excite the most vehement dissatisfaction, and had made the whole native population impatient of English government. He had, moreover, pocketed the compensation given by France to the dispossessed Englishmen of Anjou and Maine. Worse still, after all his maladministration and ill success, he had prevailed on the king to make him captain of Calais, which it seemed as if he was on the point of losing also in as careless and culpable a manner as he had already lost Normandy.

[Footnote 102-3: The character given of the Duke of Somerset by the contemporary historian Basin is on the whole favourable, and may be supposed to be impartial. He describes him as handsome in person, gentle and urbane in manner, and well inclined towards justice; but all these graces were marred by an insatiable avarice which would not let him rest content with the immense wealth he had inherited from Cardinal Beaufort; and by continually coveting the riches of others he brought ruin on himself. Basin, i. 193.]

Here, however, is the full text of the accusation,[103-1] as prepared by York himself:--

Thies articles and pointes folowyng yeve, shewe and ministre I, Richard Duc of York, youre true liegman and servaunt unto youre highnesse, summarily purposyng and declaryng thaym ayeinst Edmond Duc of Somerset for the grete welfare and the comen availle and interesse of youre mageste Roiall and of this youre noble roialme, aswell to bryng to knawlege and understondyng the meanes and causes of the grete myscheves and inconvenientz which late befe[l] unto this youre said noble roiame, as in losse of youre lyvelode by yonde thee see and otherwyse in ponisshment of deservitours and excuse of innocencie, and also in puttyng aside and eschuyng of the grete and importable hurte and prejudice which ben like, withouten that purviaunce be had of remedie, to succede in shorte tyme. To the which articles and every of theym I, the seid Duc of York, desire of youre egall and indifferent rightwesnesse that the seid Edmond answere by his feith and trouth, the sacrement of his othe thereuppon made, duly and truly as lawe and conscience requireth; I also desiryng, for the veraly examinacion and knowlech of trouth theruppon to be had, and for the grete and singuler weel of this youre said Roiame, to be admytted to the prefe, and to yeve evidence in the said articles that folowyn in such as he woll denye, after the equite and consideracion of lawe in such case, and processe had, and also of good feith and conscience justice thereafter to be don and executid.

First, I article and declare that the seid Edmond Duc of Somersett hath be meane, consenter, occasioner, cause and mediatour, both by his inwarde knowlege and expresse consent, by counseill, and worchyng thurghe diverse subtyle weyes and meanes, as by violent presumpcion and otherwyse is knowen and understonde, and furthermore also by his inordinate negligence, lacchesse and wilfull rechelessnes and insaciate covetyse, of the losse and amission of youre Duchie of Normandie, rejoissed and possessed at this tyme, for the defence of his negligent kepyng and otherwyse before reherced, by youre enemyes. Which may clerly by (_sic_) understonde by the meanes and causes that folowen; of the which and for such one he is openly called, reputed and had by the comen fame and voice. Of the which oon cause is that the seid Duc of Somersett, at his first comyng into Normandie, chaunged and putt out of theire occupacion and youre service, withoute skyll, cause or reason, all the true and feithfull officers, for the most partie, of all Normandie, and put in such as hym liked for his owne singuler availe and covetyse, as it apperith well, inasmoch as ther coude noon of theym that were so put out be restored agayn withoute grete giftes and rewardes, which was full unfittyng. And furthermore did put in prison many diverse and notable persones of youre seid Duchie, withoute cause, justice or any ordinarie processe made agayn theym or due examinacion, and by that meane did grete extorcions and rered unlawfully grete sommes undre colour of amendes and composicions, wherby the cuntre for such wrong and faute of justice grucched sore agayn hym and his governaunce and caused the people to arise in theire conseytes and to take grete displeasir; and that was a grete occasion and cause of the losse of youre said Duchie of Normandie.

Item, the seid Edmond Duc of Somerset was cause and consenter voluntarie of the brekyng of the trues and pais for a tyme had betwene youre highnes and youre uncle of Fraunce, which was well understond at the taking of Fogiers in Britaigne by Sir Fraunceys Larragonneys thurgh his avise, consentement, and counseile; and also duryng the said trues made more strong and fortified diverse places disopered by youre commaundement, as Morteyn and Seint Jakes de Beveron, ageyn the appointement of the seid trues; uppon which youre uncle did sommon hym to make a-seeth [_satisfaction_] and for to disimpaire the seid fortifying and wrong don agayn the trues, and in asmoch as non aseeth by hym was don, nor [he] lefte not of his seid fortifiyng, caused youre seid uncle to have, as he pretende, cause to breke the said trues on his partie; which brekyng of trues was oon of the verray cause of losse of Normandie. And thus he brake the seide trues ayeinst his promysse and true feith made to youre highnes, which was to kepe and entretyn the said trues, and so did ayen the lawe in this behalve and youre statutes of the roiame.

Item, he put away and diminisshed diverse garnisons and other strong places of youre seid Duchie of Normandie of soudiours and of men of werre which were accustumed to abide uppon the suerte and saufgarde of the same, howe be hit he had verrayly knowlege that youre ennmyes were full determi[ned] for to ley seges to put the same places in theire subjeccion, not paiyng duely nor contentyng such soudiours as abode uppon the defences of the same places; he reryng at that tyme in youre said Duchie as grete tailles and aides as were in long tyme before duryng the werre; and that caused the soudiours in diverse strong places for poverte, not havyng hors nor harneys, and also the nombre diminisshed, to be of non poiaire to make resistence, and that was a grete cause of the losse of Normandie. The losse of which caused the perdicion of Gascoigne and Guyen.

Item, the Duc of Somersett wold yeve noo counseile, aide ne helpe unto the capitanis of diverse stronge places and garnisons which at that tyme, constreyned by nede, desired of hym provision and relief for abillement of werre to resiste the malice of theire enemyes daily makyng fressh feetes of werre uppon theym; he gevyng theym noone aide nor help, but lete theym contynue in theire malice, howe be it that diverse places were lost before: and what tyme that the said places were beseged and sent for help and socour unto hym he wold graunte no maner of comforte, but suffred hem appoint and compounde with here enemyes as well as they myght for theire ease and suertee, makyng no maner of provision for the kepyng of the places which remayned; insomuch that he made non ordinaunce nor provision for the toun, castell, and places of Rouen, neither of men, stuffe ne vitaile, the knowlage that he had of youre enemyes comyng thereunto notwithstondyng, yevyng licence unto the Archiebisshopp, chanons and burgeys of the same toun for to goo or sende to compounde with youre enemyes for the deliveraunce of the same, notwithstondyng that afore that tyme the enemyes which were entred in to the same toun were worshiply put oute and betyn of by the Erle of Shrowesbury and other notable persones, and withdrawen to Pontlarge and Loviers, and at that tyme, they beyng so withdrawen, licenced to appointe as it is aforeseid. Which was plainly ayeinst his promys, feith and liegeaunce that he of right oweth unto you, and ayeinst the tenure of the endentures made betwix youre highnes and hym of the charge of that londe, the which licence, and it had not ben don, the seid toun had abiden undre youre obeisaunce, the losse of whiche was a verray ope . . . .[106-1] cause of the perdicion of Normandie.

Item, the said Duc of Somersett, for to colour his defautes and wilfull purp[o]s in the premisses, entred in to youre palaice of Rouen not vitailed nor fo[rnisshed][106-1] for defence, where he myght savely absentid hym, and yeldid up the said Palaice and Castell, and moreover other good tounes, castels and [fortresses],[106-1] as Caudebek, and other diverse, as Tancarville, Moustervillers, Arques, key of all Caulx, not beseged nor in perell of losse at that tyme, for the enlargisshyn[g] and deliveraunce of hym, his childre and goodes; which myght not, nor hath not, be done nor seen by lawe, resoun or cronikel, or by cours or a . . . . . . any leftenant, all though that he had be prisoner: Witnesse the Duc of Orliaunce, the Duc of Burbon, the Duc of Alansum and other . . . . . . for whom was none delyvered, al though they had many strong places of theire owen. And furthermore fore the suertee of delyveraunce of . . . . . . tounes, castell and forteresses which were wel furnysshed for to have resisted youre enemyes, and to have biden within youre obeisaunce, delyvered in ostage the Erle of Shrowesbury, that tyme Marescall of Fraunce, and other notable persones which shuld have defended youre lande there ayens the malice of youre enemyes; and in likewyse apointed to delyver Honflu, which was in noo gret perell, ne had be that it was retardyd by youre lettres and so by that fraudelent and inordinat meane all was lost and yoldon up, as hereafter by more evident declaracions it shalbe clerely [proved].[106-2]

Item, the said Duc of Somerset hath contrived and ymagined, helped or consented to the grete and importable losse of Cales to be undre the obeisaunce of the Duc of Burgoyn, as it apperith openly by diverse skilles, evidencez, and resons; that is to sey, in asmuch as he desired and made laboures, or at the lest toke uppon hym, for to be capiten of the seid Toun of Cales, knowyng and understondyng well the grete murmur and sclaunder which daily rennyth agayn hym for the losse and sale, as it is surmyttid, of Normandie, to the grete discoragyng of the soudiours of the said Toun; where as the comen fame is that he will bylike sotill meanes contrive and ymagyn the losse and amission of youre said Toun of Cales, like as he hath afore causid the perdicion of youre Duchie of Normandie; which apperith well, in asmoch as he hath desirid the terme of a monyth without more, that, in case that the said Toun were besegid and not rescuyd within the said monyth, that than he shuld stond discharged though it were delyvered to youre enemyes; within which tyme it were impossible, or at the lest full unlikly, that never myght be assembled for the rescu therof, where as it may and hath be here-before kept ayens the force of youre enemyes moche lenger tyme in grete jupardy; which is so grete an hevynesse and trouble to youre said soudiours, that by theire langage, demenyng and communicacion it may be understond that they will not be so herty nor feithfull to the welfare and defence of the said Toun as they shuld be in case they had a captayn more agreable unto theym. And also this premisse apperith well in asmoch as the comen voyce, langage, and fame is, and also grete prefe and evidence shalbe made theruppon, that the seid Duc of Somerset, in hope of mariage to be doon and had be twix the Duc son of Burgoyn[107-1] and one of his doughters, had made a promysse and behest to the said Duc of Burgoyne, or Duchesse by his meane, concent and massangers, of the delyverey of the Toun of Cales, to be done by such sotill meanes as shuld not be understond neither of youre highenes nor of youre subgettz.

Item, the said Duc of Somerset is cause of grete hurte, robbery, manslauter and other myscheves daily done and contynued in this youre roialme, in asmoch as he resceyved and had at the delyverey of Anjoy and Mayn iij.{xx} xij.{m} (72,000) frankes or there aboutes, which were graunted and ordeyned to the Englisshmen havyng theire [_there_] lyvelode for theire recompense and asyth for the lyverey up of theire seid lyvelode at the said delyveraunce, and wold not dispose the same money nor departe therfrom, bot kepith it still to his owne use and singuler availe, notwithstondyng that he was recompensid for his lyvelode in that cuntrey in youre Duchie of Normandie of a more value than the gift therof was worth, which causith the said Englisshmen to be here in grete povertee; of which povertee no doute commyth grete myscheve daily within your said roiame. And also in so muche as many diverse soudiours of Normandye were not paied theire wages, where he rerid grete and notable sommes of youre Duchie of Normandie for ther agrement, which non paiement and poverte causith also daily grete inconvenientz within this your lande.

Item, that these forsaid articles and poyntz be just and true it may well appere by many grete presumpcions beside evident prefes that shalbe made thereuppon with open and notarie fame and voice of the people, and also inasmoch as the said Duc of Somerset hath be double and untrue in many and diverse pointes, and in especiall that he hath desirid a recompense of youre highnes for the counte of Mayn for the delyverance therof, where it was specified in youre lettres patentes of your graunte therof to hym made that ye shuld be at your libertee to dispose it at your pleasere in case that ye for the meane of the pease wold do make a lyverey thereof unto youre uncle of Fraunce; and yit at the tyme of delyveraunce thereof he wold not agree therto unto tyme that he were recompensid, as it is aforesaid, in youre Duchie of Normandie to a more value than his said graunte drue to.

Item, thees forsaid articles, everyche of theym and every parte of theym, purposyth and ministre I, Richard, Duc of York, ayens the said Duc of Somersett joyntly and severally not atteigne to a more strate nor chargeable prefe than your lawe in such case and processe will require; desiryng of youre highnesse and rightuous justice that in asmoche as lawfully may ayenst hym be foundon or previd, that jugement in that partie be had and executid unto youre highnes for yours and youre roialmes prosperite and welfare, indende not elles bot the salvacion and indempnite of youre most roiale persone, and also alle youre feithfull subgettz, in which y reporte me to God and all the word [_world_].

[Footnote 103-1: Printed in this Introduction for the first time from the original in the Cottonian MS., Vesp. C. xiv. f. 40. The first paragraph of this document is quoted by Stowe in his _Chronicle_, p. 397, and the charges are referred by him to the thirty-third year of the king’s reign, _i.e._ the latter part of A.D. 1454, which is certainly erroneous. The date which he intended, indeed, was the latter part of the year 1453, when the Duke of Somerset was arrested and sent to the Tower; but this date also is quite impossible.]

[Footnote 106-1: MS. mutilated.]

[Footnote 106-2: A line seems here to be cut off in the MS. at the bottom of the leaf.]

[Footnote 107-1: Charles, afterwards Charles the Bold, son of Philip the Good, who was at this time Duke of Burgundy.]

[[Anjoy and Mayn iij.{xx} xij.{m} (72,000) frankes _the letters shown as {superscripts} were printed directly above the preceding numbers_]

I imagine this paper must have been really handed in by York to the lords of the king’s Council. It is preserved among the MSS. in the Cottonian Library, a large number of which were undoubtedly at one time part of the public records of the realm. But in any case we can hardly doubt that Somerset understood quite sufficiently the grounds on which he was so generally hated; nor is it by any means improbable that the armed remonstrance of the Duke of York produced some real effect, if only for a time. This at least we know, that only four days after the oath taken by York at St. Paul’s, active and energetic measures began to be taken for the defence of Calais. [Sidenote: Defence of Calais.] Historians, as Sir Harris Nicolas truly remarks, do not seem hitherto to have been aware of the imminent danger in which even Calais at this time stood of being lost, like the other English conquests, a full century before it was actually recovered by the French. Rumours that Calais would be besieged reached England in the beginning of May 1450, along with the news of the Duke of Suffolk’s murder.[108-1] In August 1451 a reinforcement of 1150 men was sent thither in twelve vessels, under the Lords Beauchamp and Sudeley. In the February following, as we have seen, York wrote of the success of the French in Gascony having emboldened them to lay siege to Calais again. And now, on the 14th of March, when Charles was advancing towards the last English stronghold, with the most formidable army that had been seen for years, and when men had begun to fear that he would be able not only to gain possession of Calais with ease, but even to invade and ravage England, steps were at last taken for the immediate formation of a fleet.

[Footnote 108-1: Letter 121.]

A royal navy had undoubtedly existed for a long time before the days of Henry VI., but it never amounted in itself to a very formidable force, and in time of war recourse was always had to impressment on the large scale. But the neglect of the sea was during this reign the constant complaint of Englishmen. For want of an efficient fleet the mercantile interest continually suffered, the fisheries could not safely be visited, and even the dwellers at home were insecure. The fact was confessed by the greatest eulogists of Henry VI., who had not a thought of impugning his government. ‘Our enemies,’ says Capgrave in his _Illustrious Henries_,--‘Our enemies laugh at us. They say, “Take off the ship from your precious money, and stamp a sheep upon it to signify your sheepish minds.” We who used to be conquerors of all nations are now conquered by all. The men of old used to say that the sea was England’s wall, and now our enemies have got upon the wall; what think you they will do to the defenceless inhabitants? Because this business has been neglected for so many years it now happens that ships are scanty, and sailors also few, and such as we have unskilled for want of exercise. May God take away our reproach and raise up a spirit of bravery in our nation!’[109-1]

[Footnote 109-1: _Capgrave de Illust. Henricis_, 135.]

There were already available for the king’s service a certain number of ships in the Thames, and at Winchelsea and Sandwich. The chief of these vessels was called the _Grace Dieu_--a name which was perhaps traditional, for it was handed down to Tudor times when, with the king’s own Christian name prefixed, it was always given to the largest of the fleet.[109-2] The Earl of Shrewsbury[110-1] was appointed to take the command of the whole army at sea, and efforts were made to augment the squadron with as large a force as possible. On the 14th of March 1452 a commission was given to Lord Clifford, which was doubtless one of a number given to various noblemen, to negotiate for this purpose with shipowners, knights, and gentlemen in the district where he commonly resided; and he was instructed to take the command of all such vessels as he could raise, and bring them into the Downs to join with Shrewsbury. The appeal to patriotism was not made in vain. Many shipowners came forward, offering not only to lend but to victual their own ships for the service. But full powers were also given to arrest ships, shipmasters, and mariners, to make up a sufficient number. To every man not furnished with victuals by the benevolence of others, twelve pence a week was offered on the king’s behalf, with a customary share in any booty that he might help to capture at sea. Captains of ships were to have in addition a reward of ten marks, or £10, at the discretion of Lord Clifford. Altogether we may presume that the defensive measures taken at this time were sufficient, for we hear no more during the next few years of any attempt to lay siege to Calais.

[Footnote 109-2: The _Henry Grace Dieu_ of Henry VIII.’s time is, however, better known by its popular epithet of the _Great Harry_.]

[Footnote 110-1: The Earl of Shrewsbury, as already mentioned, had been given up to the French in 1449 as a hostage for the delivery of certain towns in Normandy. It is said that he only recovered his liberty on taking oath never to bear arms again against the French, but that on visiting Rome in the year of Jubilee, 1450, he obtained an absolution from this engagement.--_Æneæ Sylvii Opera_, 441.]

_Amnesty at Home--Disaster Abroad_

[Sidenote: General pardon.] As to internal dissensions at home, it was quite in accordance with the weakness of the king’s character to believe that he had now stilled the chief elements of danger. His piety suggested to him to complete the good work by a general political amnesty. The year 1450, as being the concluding year of a half-century, had been celebrated as a jubilee at Rome, during which a general indulgence and pardon were granted to all who visited the Imperial City. There was also, according to precedent, a bull issued at the close of the year to extend these benefits still further. Taking his example from the great Spiritual Ruler, the king, on Good Friday, the 7th of April 1452, offered publicly a general pardon to all who had been guilty of acts of disloyalty to himself, and who would apply to his Chancery for letters patent.[111-1] The offer was, undoubtedly, both gracious and humane. It sprang from a genuine love of peace on the king’s part, and probably went far to make the government of Somerset endurable for some months longer. Amid the confusion and troubles of the times, thousands must have felt that they needed the royal clemency to protect them against the severity of the laws. One hundred and forty-four persons, among whom was Thomas Young of Bristol--he who had proposed in Parliament that York should be proclaimed heir to the crown--obtained sealed pardons on that very Good Friday. Some two or three thousand others laid claim to the like indulgence, and had patents granted to them at a later date.[111-2] Only a very few persons were excepted on account of the enormity of their offences.

[Footnote 111-1: Whethamstede, 317.]

[Footnote 111-2: The names are all entered on the _Pardon Roll_ of 30 and 31 Henry VI. Among the hosts of less interesting names, we find that the Duke of York took out a pardon on the 3rd of June; the Duke of Norfolk and the young Duke of Suffolk on the 23rd of the same month; Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, on the 1st; Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, on the 20th, and Sir William Oldhall, who is called of Hunsdon, on the 26th. Ralph, Lord Cromwell, had one on the 22nd May, and Robert Wynnyngton of Dartmouth (the writer of Letter 90) on the 28th July. On the 12th July a joint pardon was given to Sir Henry Percy, Lord Ponynges, and Eleanor, his wife, kinswoman and heir of Sir Robert Ponynges. At later dates we have also pardons to Henry, Viscount Bourchier, and Sir John Talbot, son and heir of the Earl of Shrewsbury.]

One part of his kingdom, however, Henry himself did not expect to pacify by such means only. The state of the county of Norfolk had been so represented to him that he felt it necessary to send thither the Duke of Norfolk. ‘Great riots, extortions, horrible wrongs and hurts,’ were the subject of complaint, and nothing but an impartial inquiry would give satisfaction. The duke on coming into the country issued a proclamation, urging all who had any complaints to make to lay them freely and fearlessly before him. But free and fearless evidence was not likely to be had without a strong guarantee for the protection of witnesses. Already the news of the duke’s coming had got wind, and some of the dependants of Lord Scales, who had been amongst the principal offenders, had given notice that any complaints against _them_ would be redressed in another fashion after the duke’s departure. In the absence of the duke Lord Scales had been always hitherto the natural ruler of the county, and it was under his protection that Sir Thomas Tuddenham, Sir Miles Stapleton, John Heydon, and others had dared to make themselves unpopular. Norfolk accordingly declared in the same proclamation that he intended henceforth to vindicate for himself so long as he lived the chief power and authority in the county which bore his name, subject only to that of the king himself. [Sidenote: Intended royal visit to Norfolk.] And to give still greater encouragement to the well-disposed, he announced that the king himself would shortly visit the county, before whom all who desired it should have their grievances redressed.[112-1]

[Footnote 112-1: No. 210.]

That the king actually visited Norfolk at this time I do not find from any other evidence. A letter written on St. George’s Day says that he had been expected at Norwich or Claxton for ten days past. Encouraged by the duke’s proclamation, several gentlemen of the county had drawn up a complaint against Charles Nowell, and were waiting to know in what manner they should present it. [Sidenote: Complaint against Charles Nowell.] This Charles and a number of others appear to have been keeping the country east of Norwich at the time in continual alarm and confusion. They held their rendezvous at the house of one Robert Ledeham, from which they would issue out in bands of six, or twelve, or sometimes thirty or more, fully armed with bows and arrows, spears and bills, jacks and sallets.[112-2] No place was sacred from their outrages. On Mid-Lent Sunday they had attacked two servants of the Bishop of Norwich inside the church at Burlingham, and would have killed them behind the priest’s back while they were kneeling at the mass. On the 6th of April they had endeavoured to break into the White Friars at Norwich on pretence of wishing to hear evensong; but having publicly declared in the town that they intended to get hold of certain citizens, either alive or dead, the doors were shut against them. Happily, before they accomplished their purpose the mayor and aldermen came to the spot. A multitude of people had meanwhile assembled in the streets, and the rioters, finding the odds considerably against them, quietly took their departure.[113-1]

[Footnote 112-2: Coats of mail and helmets.]

[Footnote 113-1: Nos. 211, 217, 241.]

[Sidenote: John Paston assaulted at Norwich Cathedral.] John Paston had a complaint of his own to make against these wrongdoers. Charles Nowell himself, and five others, had attacked him at the door of Norwich Cathedral. He had with him at the time two servants, one of whom received a blow on the naked head with a sword; and he himself was seized and had his arms held behind him, while one of the company struck at him. But for a timely rescue his death would seem to have been certain. On the very day on which this occurred his wife’s uncle, Philip Berney, was waylaid by some of the same fellowship, in the highway under Thorpe Wood. Berney was riding, accompanied by a single servant, when their two horses first were wounded by a discharge of arrows. They were then speedily overtaken by their assailants, who broke a bow over Philip Berney’s head, and took him prisoner, declaring him to be a traitor. To give a further colour to their proceedings, they led him prisoner to the Bishop of Norwich, demanding surety of him to keep the peace, and, when they had obtained it, let him go. Philip Berney lived more than a year after the adventure, but he never recovered from the effects of this rough usage.[113-2]

[Footnote 113-2: Nos. 212, 213, 227, 228, 241.]

Outrages like these, it must be remembered, were not the work of lawless brigands and recognised enemies of the whole community. They were merely the effect of party spirit. The men who did them were supported by noblemen and country gentlemen. One, by name Roger Church, probably the most daring, and at the same time the most subtle, of the gang, had got himself made bailiff of the hundred of Blofield.[113-3] Charles Nowell was a friend of Thomas Daniel, who, after being a year and a half out of favour, had recently recovered his influence in Norfolk through the medium of the Duke of Somerset.[114-1] By this means he seems again to have obtained possession of the manor of Bradeston, the right to which he had disputed in 1450, apparently more by arms than by law, with Osbert Mountford, marshal of Calais. Charles Nowell was appointed by Daniel bailiff of the manor, with the slender but not insignificant salary of twopence a day; and he and his fellows, Roger Church, Robert Ledeham, John Ratcliff, and Robert Dalling, made it their chief business to maintain Daniel in possession.

[Footnote 113-3: Nos. 214, 241.]

[Footnote 114-1: No. 206.]

To put an end to such a state of matters as this, the Duke of Norfolk’s coming must have been truly welcome. But if any man expected that the power of duke or king could suddenly terminate the reign of anarchy, and initiate an era of plain impartial justice, he must have been a sanguine mortal. As one of the first effects of the duke’s coming, some of the leading oppressors of the country were driven to a course of chicanery instead of violence. [Sidenote: Roger Church.] Roger Church got himself arrested by some of his own company, and was brought before the duke as a promoter of sedition. He was accused of having taken part in an unlawful assembly at Postwick, with the view of stirring up an insurrection. He confessed the fact, and offered to turn king’s evidence on his accomplices. He then named a number of thrifty husbandmen, farmers, and gentlemen of the neighbourhood, alleging that about three hundred persons were implicated in the intended rising. The truth, as it presently turned out, and as Church himself afterwards confessed, was, that the movement had been got up by himself, at the instigation of Robert Ledeham, who promised to procure his pardon through the influence of Daniel. By solicitations addressed to various unsteady characters he had induced some to believe that an insurrection would be well supported. A little company of fifteen men accordingly met him under a wood at Postwick, and he told them he had discovered an excellent name for their captain, who should be called John Amend-All. But beyond this meeting and naming of the captain nothing seems ever to have come of the project.[114-2]

[Footnote 114-2: Nos. 214, 217, 218, 219, 241.]

John Paston was certainly one of those mentioned by Church. The chief persons accused were the friends of Osbert Mountford, and Paston was one of them. But John Falgate, one of the deluded victims who had been present at the meeting at Postwick, being subjected to examination before the sheriff, exonerated Paston, and, while acknowledging his own share in the conspiracy, pronounced the tale told by Roger Church in his confession to be altogether an invention. We need not be surprised to hear that after this a petition from the county of Norfolk was sent up to the Lord Chancellor, praying that Church should not be allowed the benefit of the general pardon, offered upon Good Friday.[115-1] But Church persevered in his policy. He appears to have been a reckless kind of adventurer. He probably claimed the benefit of clergy, for we find him three months after his arrest in the hands of officers of the Bishop of Norwich. His goods also were seized for a debt that he owed the bishop. But in spite of the contradictions given by other witnesses, in July he adhered to what he had said in April, and instead of retracting his former accusations, said he meant to impeach some one else whom he could not at that time name,--a man who, he said, had more money in his purse than all of those whom he had accused before. The coolness with which he persisted in these statements gave an impression that he was even yet relying upon powerful friends to support him.[115-2]

[Footnote 115-1: The petition, I think, must have been effectual, for I did not find Church’s name on the _Pardon Roll_, 30 and 31 Henry VI.]

[Footnote 115-2: Nos. 214, 216, 218.]

The conclusion of the affair must be a matter of speculation, for we hear nothing more of it. The political history of England, too, is, at this point, almost a blank. We know from the Privy Council Proceedings that there was some difficulty in the spring of 1452 in preserving friendly relations with Scotland in consequence of some Border outrages perpetrated by the Earl of Douglas. And this is absolutely all the light we have on the domestic affairs of England for about a twelvemonth after the Duke of York’s oath of allegiance at St. Paul’s. I have found, however, by an examination of the dates of privy seals, [Sidenote: A royal progress.] that in July the king began a progress into the west of England, which is not altogether without significance. He reached Exeter on the 18th, and from thence proceeded by Wells, Gloucester, Monmouth, and Hereford to Ludlow, where he arrived on the 12th of August, and from which he returned homewards by Kenilworth and Woodstock, arriving at Eltham in the beginning of September. In October he made another circuit northwards by St. Albans to Stamford, Peterborough, and Cambridge. There can hardly be a doubt the object of these journeys was mainly to conciliate those who had declared their opposition to the Duke of Somerset, especially when we consider that the visit to Ludlow must have been nothing less than a visit to the Duke of York. York was now more than pardoned. He was honoured by his sovereign.

Financially, however, we may well suppose that the duke was not the better of the royal visit. Perhaps also the state of the country did not conduce to the prosperity of great landowners. At all events we find that at the end of the year York was glad to pledge some pieces of jewellery to Sir John Fastolf for a loan of £437, to be repaid next Midsummer.[116-1] The transaction is in every way curious, as illustrating the sort of dealings in money matters which were at that time by no means uncommon among knights and noblemen. It is certainly highly characteristic of such a knight as Sir John Fastolf, who, quite unlike the Falstaff of the dramatist, instead of being always needy, was always seeking to increase the wealth that he had amassed by long years of thrift and frugality.

[Footnote 116-1: No. 223.]

[Sidenote: Sir John Fastolf.] We have had occasion to mention the historic Fastolf before; and it is time that we should now direct attention to the circumstances of his private life and his connection with the Paston family. John Paston, as the reader has already been informed, was ultimately his executor, and to this circumstance may safely be attributed the preservation of so many of his letters, most of which have certainly been handed down with the papers of the Paston family. Nevertheless, up to the time at which we have now arrived we do not find that he directly corresponded with any of them. We can see, however, that he had a high regard for John Paston’s advice in business, and sometimes sent letters and documents of importance by him to his agent in Norfolk, Sir Thomas Howes.[117-1] He seems to have been related in blood to John Paston’s wife,[117-2] and he acknowledges Paston himself as his cousin in his will. From the general tenor of most of his letters we should certainly no more suspect him of being the old soldier that he actually was than of being Shakespeare’s fat, disorderly knight. Every sentence in them refers to lawsuits and title-deeds, extortions and injuries received from others, forged processes affecting property, writs of one kind or another to be issued against his adversaries, libels uttered against himself, and matters of the like description. Altogether the perusal is apt to give us an impression that Sir John would have made an acute and able, though perhaps not very highminded, solicitor. If ever his agent, Sir Thomas Howes, was, or seemed to be, a little remiss in regard to some particular interest, he was sure to hear of it, and yet woe to him if he did things on his own responsibility which turned out afterwards to be a failure.[117-3] Sir John was not the man to pass over lightly injuries done by inadvertence.

[Footnote 117-1: Nos. 153, 159, 162, 186, 188, 203.]

[Footnote 117-2: Note the passages in Margaret Paston’s letter (No. 222):--‘Yet I suppose Sir John, if he were spoken to, would be gladder to let his kinsmen have part than strangers.’ And again:--‘Assay him in my name of such places as ye suppose is most clear.’]

[Footnote 117-3: No. 202.]

The familiarity shown by Fastolf with all the forms and processes of the law is probably due not so much to the peculiarity of his personal character as to the fact that a knowledge of legal technicalities was much more widely diffused in that day than it is in ours. Even in the days when Master Shallow first made himself ridiculous to a London audience by claiming to be justice of the peace and _coram_, _custalorum_, and _ratolorum_, there can hardly be a doubt that the knowledge of legal terms and processes was not a thing so entirely professional as it is now. But if we go back to an earlier time, the Paston letters afford ample evidence that every man who had property to protect, if not every well-educated woman also, was perfectly well versed in the ordinary forms of legal processes. Sir John Fastolf had a great deal of property to take care of, and consequently had much more occasion to make use of legal phraseology than other people. Had it been otherwise we should hardly have had any letters of his at all; for the only use of writing to him, and probably to most other people in those days, was to communicate on matters of business.

There are also parts of his correspondence from which we might almost infer that Sir John was a merchant as well as a lawyer. His ships were continually passing between London and Yarmouth, carrying on the outward voyage building materials for his works at Caister, and bringing home malt or other produce from the county of Norfolk. In two of his letters we have references to his little ship _The Blythe_,[118-1] which, however, was only one of several; for, in the year 1443, he obtained a licence from the Crown to keep no less than six vessels in his service. These are described as of four different kinds: two being what were called ‘playtes,’ a third a ‘cog-ship,’ a fourth a ‘farecoft,’ and the two others ‘balingers,’ for the carriage of goods and building materials for the use of his household. These vessels were to be free from all liability to arrest for the service of the king.[118-2]

[Footnote 118-1: Nos. 171, 173.]

[Footnote 118-2: Rymer, xi. 44.]

[Sidenote: Building of Caister Castle.] The object of these building operations was the erection of a stately castle at Caister, not far from Yarmouth, the place of the old warrior’s birth. As early as the reign of Henry V., it seems, he had obtained licence to fortify a dwelling there, ‘so strong as himself could devise’;[118-3] but his occupation in the French wars had suspended a design which must have been a special object with him all through life. The manor of Caister had come to him by natural descent from his paternal ancestry; but even during his mother’s widowhood, when Sir John was a young man of about six-and-twenty, we find that she gave up her life tenure of it to vest it entirely in her son.[119-1] Since that day he had been abroad with Henry V. at Agincourt and at the siege of Rouen. He had afterwards served in France under the Regent Bedford,--had taken several strong castles and one illustrious prisoner,[119-2]--had held the government of conquered districts, and had fought, generally with success and glory, in almost every great battle of the period. Nor had he been free, even on his return to England, to go at once and spend the rest of his days on his paternal domains in Norfolk. His counsels were needed by his sovereign. His experience abroad must have qualified him to give important advice on many subjects of vital interest touching both France and England, and we have evidence that he was, at least occasionally, summoned to take part in the proceedings of the Privy Council. But now, when he was upwards of seventy years of age, the dream of his youth was going to be realised. Masons and bricklayers were busy at Caister,[119-3] building up for him a magnificent edifice, of which the ruins are at this day the most interesting feature in the neighbourhood. Sadly imperfect ruins indeed they are,--in some places even the foundations would seem to have disappeared, or else the plan of the building is not very intelligible; but a noble tower still rises to a height of ninety feet,--its top possessed by jackdaws,--and a large extent of mouldered walls, pierced with loopholes and surmounted by remains of battlements, enable the imagination to realise what Caister Castle must have been when it was finished over four hundred years ago. A detached fragment of these ruins, too, goes by the name of the Bargehouse; and there, beneath a low-browed arch still visible, tradition reports that Sir John Fastolf’s barge or barges would issue out on their voyages or enter on their return home.

[Footnote 118-3: Dawson Turner’s _Historical Sketch of Caister Castle_, p. 31. He does not state his authority.]

[Footnote 119-1: _See_ ‘Early Documents’ in vol. ii. p. 4.]

[Footnote 119-2: The Duke of Alençon.]

[Footnote 119-3: Nos. 224, 225.]

According to Dawson Turner, the foundations of Caister Castle must have enclosed a space of more than six acres of ground.[119-4] The inventory of the furniture contained in it at Fastolf’s death[119-5] enumerates no less than six-and-twenty chambers, besides the public rooms, chapel, and offices. An edifice on such a scale must have been some time in building:--many years, we should suppose, passed away before it was completed. And we are not without evidence that such was actually the case; for a chamber was set apart for the Lady Milicent, Fastolf’s wife, who is believed to have died in 1446, and yet the works were still going on in 1453. In this latter year we find that John Paston was allowed to have some control of the building operations, and that chambers were to be built for him and his wife. Meanwhile it appears he had chosen an apartment in which to set up his coffers and his counting-board for the time. Possibly when he was able to visit Caister he may have acted as paymaster of the works.[120-1]

[Footnote 119-4: _Historical Sketch_, p. 4.]

[Footnote 119-5: No. 389.]

[Footnote 120-1: Nos. 224, 225.]

The great castle, however, was now not far from completion; and before the end of the following year Sir John Fastolf had removed from London and taken up his residence at Caister, where, with the exception of one single visit to the capital, he seems to have spent all the remainder of his days.

We have said that very few notices are to be found of the internal affairs of England in the year 1452, subsequent to the Duke of York swearing allegiance at St. Paul’s. But just about that time, or not very long after, the affairs of Guienne came once more to demand the serious consideration of the Council. It is true that Guienne and Gascony were now no longer English possessions. [Sidenote: Attempt to recover Guienne.] Bayonne, the last stronghold, had been given up in the preceding August, and, the English forces being now expelled, all hope of recovering the lost provinces might well have been abandoned, but that the inhabitants were desirous to put themselves once more under the protection of the King of England. The fact is that the Gascons, who had been three centuries under English rule, did not at all relish the change of masters. Under the crown of England they had enjoyed a liberty and freedom from taxation which were unknown in the dominions of Charles VII.; and on the surrender of Bordeaux and Bayonne, the French king had expressly promised to exempt them from a number of impositions levied elsewhere. But for this promise, indeed, those cities would not so readily have come to terms.[121-1] Unfortunately, it was not very long before the ministers of Charles sought to evade its fulfilment. They represented to the people that for their own protection, and not for the benefit of the royal treasury, the imposition of a _taille_ would enable the king to set a sufficient guard upon the country, and that the money would not in reality be taken from them, as it would all be spent within the province. The English, it was to be feared, would not remain patient under the loss, not only of the provinces themselves, but also of a very valuable commerce that they had hitherto maintained with the south of France; for Gascony supplied England with wine, and was a large consumer of English wool. Hence there was every reason to fear that some attempt would be made by the enemy to recover the lands from which he had been expelled, and it was the interest of the inhabitants themselves to provide an adequate force to ward off invasion.[121-2]

[Footnote 121-1: Basin, i. 251.]

[Footnote 121-2: _Ibid._ 257.]

With arguments like these the French king’s officers went about among the people endeavouring to compel them to forego a liberty which had been secured to them under the Great Seal of France. In vain were deputations sent from Bordeaux and Gascony beseeching the king to be faithful to his promise. The petitioners were sent back with an answer urging the people to submit to exactions which were required for the defence of the country. The citizens of Bordeaux were greatly discontented, and an embassy, headed by the Sieur de l’Esparre, was sent over to the King of England to offer him the allegiance of the lost provinces once more, on his sending a sufficient fleet and army to their rescue. The proposal being laid before a meeting of the English Council, was of course most readily agreed to; and it was arranged that a fleet, under the command of the Earl of Shrewsbury, should sail for the Garonne in October. On the 18th of that month the earl accordingly embarked with a body of 4000 or 5000 soldiers. The French army having withdrawn, he easily obtained possession of Bordeaux, and sent its captain, Oliver de Coëtivy, a prisoner into England. Other towns then readily opened their gates to the invaders, of which one of the principal was Castillon in Perigord; and very soon, in spite of the opposition of their French governors, the greater part of the lost provinces had put themselves again under the protection of the English.[122-1]

[Footnote 122-1: Basin, i. 258-261. Leclerq (in Petitot’s Collection), 37-38.]

[[sent its captain, Oliver de Coëtivy _spelling unchanged: expected form “Olivier”_]]

The suddenness with which these things were done seems for a time to have disconcerted the French king. Winter was now coming on, and probably nothing effective could be done for some time, so Charles lay maturing his plans in silence. As he surveyed the position at leisure, he probably found that any further efforts of the invaders could be checked with tolerable facility. France still retained possession of the two little towns of Bourges and Blaye, which we have already mentioned as being the keys of Bordeaux, and also of various other strong places in which he had been careful to leave considerable garrisons. [Sidenote: A.D. 1453.] It was therefore the beginning of June in the following year before he took any active steps to expel the enemy from their conquests. He then marched southwards from Lusignan, near Poitiers, and laid siege to Chalais in Perigord, on the borders of Saintonge. In the space of five days it was taken by assault. Out of a garrison of 160 men no less than half were cut to pieces. The other half took refuge in a tower where they still held out for a time in the vain hope of succours, till at last they were compelled to surrender unconditionally. Of the prisoners taken, such as were of English birth were ransomed; but as for those who were Gascons, as they had sworn fealty to Charles and departed from their allegiance, they were all beheaded. After this, one or two other ill-defended places fell into the hands of the French. On the 14th July siege was laid to Castillon on the Dordogne, a position which when won gave the French free navigation into the Gironde. The besieging army was furnished with the most perfect mechanism of war that the skill or science of that age could supply. It had a train of artillery, with no less than 700 gunners, under the conduct of two able engineers of Paris, the brothers Bureau. The place was thoroughly closed in, when Shrewsbury, hearing of the danger in which it stood, came with haste out of Bordeaux with a body of 800 or 1000 horse, followed shortly after by 4000 or 5000 foot.[123-1]

[Footnote 123-1: Basin, i. 261-4. Leclerq, 39-41. Matt. de Coussy, 121.]

At daybreak on the 17th, the earl came suddenly upon the besiegers, and succeeded without difficulty in thoroughly defeating a body of archers, who had been posted at an abbey outside the town. This detachment being completely taken by surprise, was obliged to save itself by flight, and after a little skirmishing, in which some 80 or 100 men were slain on both sides, the greater number of the Frenchmen succeeded in gaining a park in which the main body of the besiegers had entrenched themselves. Further pursuit being now unnecessary, the English returned to the abbey, where they were able to refresh themselves with a quantity of victuals which the French had left behind them. ‘And because the said skirmish,’ writes the French chronicler De Coussy, ‘had been begun and was done so early that as yet Talbot had not heard mass, his chaplain prepared himself to sing it there; and for this purpose the altar and ornaments were got ready.’ But this devout intention the earl presently abandoned; for a cloud of dust was seen in the distance, and it was reported to him that even the main body of the French were rapidly retreating. Immediately the earl was again on horseback, and as he left the abbey he was heard to say, ‘I will hear no mass to-day till I have overthrown the company of Frenchmen in the park before me.’[123-2]

[Footnote 123-2: Basin, i. 264-5. De Coussy, 122.]

Unfortunately, it turned out that the report of the retreat of the French was utterly unfounded. The cloud of dust had been raised by a body of horses which they had sent out of the camp to graze. The French army remained in its position, with artillery drawn up, ready to meet the earl on his advance. The English, nevertheless, came on with their usual shout, ‘A Talbot! A Talbot! St. George!’ and while their foremost men just succeeded for an instant in planting their standard on the barrier of the French lines, they were mowed down behind by the formidable fire of the French artillery. Against this all valour was fruitless; about 500 or 600 English lay dead in front; and the French, opening the barrier of their park, rushed out and fought with their opponents hand to hand. For a while the conflict was still maintained, with great valour on both sides; but the superior numbers of the French, and the advantage they had already gained by their artillery, left very little doubt about the issue. After about 4000 Englishmen had been slain in the hand-to-hand encounter, the remainder fled or were made prisoners. Some were able to withdraw into the town and join themselves to the besieged garrison; others fled through the woods and across the river, in which a number of the fugitives were drowned. [Sidenote: Defeat and death of Talbot.] In the end the body of the veteran Talbot was found dead upon the field, covered with wounds upon the limbs, and a great gash across the face.[124-1]

[Footnote 124-1: De Coussy, 124.]

So fell the aged warrior, whose mere name had long been a terror to England’s enemies. By the confession of a French historian, who hardly seems to feel it a disgrace to his countrymen, the archers, when they closed around him, distinctly refused to spare his life, so vindictively eager were they to despatch him with a multitude of wounds.[124-2] Yet it must be owned that in this action he courted his own death, and risked the destruction of a gallant army. For though he was led to the combat by a false report, he was certainly under no necessity of engaging the enemy when he had discovered his mistake, and he was strongly dissuaded from doing so by Thomas Everingham.[124-3] But his own natural impetuosity, inflamed probably still more by the unreasonable taunts of the men of Bordeaux, who, it seems, were dissatisfied that no earlier attempt had been made to resist the advance of the French king into Guienne,[124-4] induced him to stake everything on the issue of a most desperate and unequal conflict.

[Footnote 124-2: Basin, i. 267-8.]

[Footnote 124-3: _Ibid._ 265.]

[Footnote 124-4: De Coussy, 122.]

With him there also died upon the field his eldest son, Lord Lisle, his illegitimate son, Henry Talbot, Sir Edward Hull, and thirty other knights of England. About double that number were taken prisoners, the most notable of whom was John Paston’s old persecutor, the Lord Moleyns.[125-1] Never had the English arms experienced such a disastrous overthrow.

[Footnote 125-1: J. Chartier, 265; Berry, 469.]

The Gascons now gave up their cause as altogether hopeless. A fresh army had lately marched into their country, and was laying siege to several places at once towards the east of Bordeaux, so that it was manifest that city would soon be shut in by the royal forces. Castillon was no longer able to hold out. It surrendered on the second day after Talbot’s death. About the same time Charles in person laid siege to Cadillac, one of the most important places in the neighbourhood, protected by a strong castle. The town was speedily carried by assault, and a few weeks later the castle was also taken. Other places in like manner came once more into the power of the French king. At Fronsac an English garrison capitulated and was allowed to leave the country, each soldier bearing in his hand a baton till he reached the seaside. Very soon Bordeaux was the only place that held out; nor was the defence even of this last stronghold very long protracted. Its surrender was delayed for a time only in consequence of the severity of the conditions on which Charles at first insisted; but a sickness which began to ravage his camp at length inclined him to clemency. On the 17th of October the city submitted to Charles, the inhabitants engaging to renew their oaths of allegiance, and the English having leave to return in their own ships to England. To secure himself against their future return, or any fresh rebellion of the citizens, Charles caused to be built and garrisoned, at the expense of the latter, two strong towers, which were still standing at the beginning of the last century. Thus was Gascony finally lost to the Crown of England.

We must now return to the domestic affairs of the kingdom. Matters had been hung up, as it were, in a state of unstable equilibrium ever since Good Friday 1452. The political amnesty, proceeding, as it did, from the king’s own heart, and removing every stain of disloyalty from those who had laboured most to change his policy, helped, in all probability, to keep up a precarious state of tranquillity much longer than it could otherwise have been preserved. The danger of Calais, too, had passed away for the time, although it was always recurring at intervals so long as Henry VI. was king. So that, perhaps, during the latter part of the year 1452, the country was in as quiet a state as could reasonably have been expected. At least, the absence of information to the contrary may be our warrant for so believing. [Sidenote: A.D. 1453.] But the new year had no sooner opened than evidences of disaffection began to be perceived. [Sidenote: Robert Poynings.] On the 2nd of January Robert Poynings--the same who had taken a leading part in Cade’s rebellion, and had, it will be remembered, saved the life of one of Sir John Fastolf’s servants from the violence of the insurgents--called together an assembly of people at Southwark, many of whom were outlaws. What his object was we have no distinct evidence to show. He had received the king’s general pardon for the part he took in the movement under Cade; but he had been obliged to enter into a recognisance of £2000, and find six sureties of £200 each, for his good behaviour; so that he, of all men, had best cause to beware of laying himself open to any new suspicion of disloyalty. Yet it appears he not only did so by this meeting at Southwark, but that immediately afterwards he confederated with one Thomas Bigg of Lambeth, who had been one of Cade’s petty captains, and having met with him and about thirty others at Westerham in Kent, tried to stir up a new rising in the former seat of rebellion. From Kent he further proceeded into Sussex, and sent letters to two persons who had been indicted of treason, urging them to come and meet him at Southwark on the last day of February; ‘at which time and place,’ says the Parliament Roll, ‘the same Robert Poynings gave them money, thanking them heartily of their good will and disposition that they were of unto him in time past, praying them to continue their good will, and to be ready and come to him at such time as he should give them warning.’[126-1] Altogether it would appear from the record of the charge itself that nothing very serious came of this display of disaffection on the part of Poynings; but it must at least be noted as a symptom of the times.

[Footnote 126-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 396. _See_ also the pardon granted to him five years later. _Patent Roll_, 36 Hen. VI. m. 12.]

[Sidenote: Parliament.] Soon after this a Parliament was called. The Crown was in need of money; but Somerset did not dare to convoke the legislature at Westminster. It met in the refectory of the abbey of Reading on the 6th of March. In the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Kemp, who was Chancellor, the Bishop of Lincoln[127-1] opened the proceedings by a speech on behalf of the king, declaring the causes of their being summoned; which were merely stated to be, in general terms, for the good government of the kingdom and for its outward defence. The necessity of sending reinforcements into Gascony was not mentioned, and apparently was not thought of; for up to this time the success of Shrewsbury had been uninterrupted, and the French king had not yet begun his southward march. The Commons elected one Thomas Thorpe as their Speaker, and presented him to the king on the 8th. Within three weeks they voted a tenth and fifteenth, a subsidy of tonnage and poundage, a subsidy on wools, hides, and woolfells, and a capitation tax on aliens,--all these, except the tenth and fifteenth, to be levied for the term of the king’s natural life. They also ordained that every county, city, and town should be charged to raise its quota towards the levying of a body of 20,000 archers within four months. For these important services they received the thanks of the king, communicated to them by the Chancellor, and were immediately prorogued over Easter, to sit at Westminster on the 25th of April.[127-2]

[Footnote 127-1: Called William, Bishop of Lincoln, on the _Rolls of Parliament_, but his name was John Chedworth.]

[Footnote 127-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 227-31.]

On their reassembling there, they proceeded to arrange the proportion of the number of archers which should be raised in each county, and the means by which they were to be levied. The Commons, however, were relieved of the charge of providing 7000 men of the number formerly agreed to, as 3000 were to be charged upon the Lords and 3000 more on Wales and the county palatine of Cheshire, while an additional thousand was remitted by the king, probably as the just proportion to be levied out of his own household. For the remaining 13,000, the quota of each county was then determined. But soon afterwards it was found that the need of such a levy was not so urgent as had at first been supposed, and the actual raising of the men was respited for two years, provided that no emergency arose requiring earlier need of their services.[128-1]

[Footnote 128-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 231-3.]

The possibility of their being required in Gascony after the success of the Earl of Shrewsbury in the preceding year, seems no more to have occurred to the Government, than the thought of sending them to Constantinople, where possibly, had the fact been known, they might at this very time have done something to prevent that ancient city from falling into the hands of the Turks. For it was in this very year, and while these things occupied the attention of the English Parliament, that the long decaying Eastern Empire was finally extinguished by the fall of its metropolis.

After this, some new Acts were passed touching the pay of the garrison at Calais, and for the making of jetties and other much-needed repairs there. For these purposes large sums of money were required, and the mode in which they were to be provided gives us a remarkable insight into the state of the exchequer. To the Duke of Somerset, as Captain of Calais, there was owing a sum of £21,648, 10s., for the wages of himself and his suite since the date of his appointment; and on the duke’s own petition, an Act was passed enabling him to be paid, not immediately, but after his predecessor, Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, should have received all that was due to him in a like capacity.[128-2] The pay of the officers of Calais, it would thus appear, but that it seems to have been discharged by the Captain for the time being out of his own resources, must at this time have been more than two years in arrear. If such was the state of matters, we gain some light on the causes which induced Somerset, after his loss of Normandy, to add to his unpopularity by accepting a post of so much responsibility as the Captainship of Calais. He was one of the few men in England whose wealth was such that he could afford to wait for his money; and he was too responsible for the rotten government which had led to such financial results to give any other man a post in which he would certainly have found cause of dissatisfaction.

[Footnote 128-2: _Ibid._ v. 233.]

It was necessary, however, to provide ready money for the repairs and the wages of the garrison from this time, and it was accordingly enacted that a half of the fifteenth and tenth already voted should be immediately applied to the one object, and a certain proportion of the subsidy on wools to the other. At the same time a new vote of half a fifteenth and tenth additional was found necessary to meet the extraordinary expenditure, and was granted on the 2nd of July.[129-1]

[Footnote 129-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 234-6.]

This grant being announced by the Speaker to the king, who was then sitting in Parliament, Henry thanked the Commons with his own mouth, and then commissioned the chancellor, Cardinal Kemp, to prorogue the assembly; alleging as his reasons the consideration due to the zeal and attendance of the Commons, and the king’s own intention of visiting different parts of his kingdom for the suppression of various malpractices. ‘The king, also,’ he added, ‘understood that there were divers petitions exhibited in the present Parliament to which no answer had yet been returned, and which would require greater deliberation and leisure than could now conveniently be afforded, seeing that the autumn season was at hand, in which the Lords were at liberty to devote themselves to hunting and sport, and the Commons to the gathering in of their harvests.’ As these weighty matters, whatever they were, required too much consideration to be disposed of before harvest-time, we might perhaps have expected an earlier day to be fixed for the reassembling of the legislature than that which was actually then announced. Perhaps, also, we might have expected that as the Parliament had returned to Westminster, it would have been ordered to meet there again when it renewed its sittings. But the king, or his counsellors, were of a different opinion; and the Parliament was ordered to meet again on the 12th of November at Reading.

Long before that day came, calamities of no ordinary kind had overtaken both king and nation. About the beginning of August,[130-1] news must have come to England of the defeat and death of the Earl of Shrewsbury; and Somerset at last was quickened into action when it was too late. Great preparations were made for sending an army into Guienne, when Guienne was already all but entirely lost. It is true the Government were aware of the danger in which Talbot stood for want of succours, at least as early as the 14th of July; even then they were endeavouring to raise money by way of loan, and to arrest ships and sailors. But it is evident that they had slept too long in false security, and when they were for the first time thoroughly awake to the danger, the disaster was so near at hand that it could not possibly have been averted.[130-2]

[Footnote 130-1: It appears not to have been known on the 4th of August. Stevenson’s _Wars_, ii. 487-8.]

[Footnote 130-2: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 151-4, 155-7. Stevenson’s _Wars_, ii. 481-92.]

_The King’s Prostration_

Whether it was in any degree owing to this national calamity,--in which case, the impression made by the event may well have been deepened by the knowledge that it was attributed to the remissness of Somerset,--or whether it was due entirely to physical or other causes quite unconnected with public affairs, [Sidenote: The king falls ill.] in August the king fell ill at Clarendon, and began to exhibit symptoms of mental derangement.[130-3] Two months later an event occurred in which, under other circumstances, he could not but have felt a lively interest. After eight years of married life, the queen for the first time bore him a child. It was a son and received the name of Edward; but for a long time afterwards the father knew nothing of the event. So entirely were his mental faculties in abeyance, that it was found impossible to communicate to him the news. The affairs of his kingdom and those of his family were for the time equally beyond his comprehension.

[Footnote 130-3: W. Worc. In an almanac of that time I find the following note, which dates the beginning of the king’s illness on the 10th of August:--‘In nocte S. Laurentii Rex infirmatur et continuavit usque ad Circumcisionem Anni 1455, in p. . . .’ (?) (a word unintelligible at the end). MS. Reg. 13, C. 1.]

[[began to exhibit symptoms of mental derangement _text reads “symptons”_]]

The failure of royalty to perform any of its functions, however weakly they might have been performed before, was a crisis that had not occurred till now. A heavier responsibility lay with Somerset and the Council, who could not expect that acts done by their own authority would meet with the same respect and recognition as those for which they had been able to plead the direct sanction of their sovereign. And now they had to deal with a factious world, in which feuds between powerful families had already begun to kindle a dangerous conflagration. In the month of August, probably of the year before this, Lord Thomas Nevill, a son of the Earl of Salisbury, married a niece of Lord Cromwell at Tattersall in Lincolnshire. After the wedding the earl returned into Yorkshire, when, having reached the neighbourhood of York, some disturbance arose between his retainers and those of Lord Egremont, son of the Earl of Northumberland.[131-1] As to the cause of the dispute we are left entirely ignorant; but it grew into a serious quarrel between the Nevills and the Percys. The chief maintainers of the feud were, on the one side, Sir John Nevill, a younger son of the Earl of Salisbury, and on the other Lord Egremont. Both parties were repeatedly summoned to lay their grievances before the Council; but the most peremptory letters and mandates had hitherto been ineffectual. Illegal gatherings of people on either side continued in spite of every prohibition; and the whole north of England seems to have been kept in continual disorder.[131-2]

[Footnote 131-1: W. Worc.]

[Footnote 131-2: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 140-2, 147-9, 154-5.]

The case was not likely to be improved when the source of all legal authority was paralysed. And yet so bad was the state of matters before, that the king’s illness, instead of being an aggravation of the evil, positively brought with it some perceptible relief. The Council were no longer able to avoid calling in the aid of one whose capacity to rule was as indisputable as his birth and rank. A Great Council was summoned for the express purpose of promoting ‘rest and union betwixt the lords of this land’; and according to the usage in such cases, every peer of the realm had notice to attend. Gladly, no doubt, would Somerset have omitted to send such notice to his rival; and it seems actually to have been the case that no summons was at first sent to the Duke of York. But afterwards the error was rectified, and York being duly summoned, came up to Westminster and took his seat at the Council-table[132-1] on the 21st of November. Before taking part in the proceedings, however, he addressed himself to the lords then assembled, declaring how he had come up in obedience to a writ of privy seal, and was ready to offer his best services to the king; but as a previous order had been issued, by what authority he could not say, to certain old councillors to forbear from attending the king’s councils in future, he required that any such prohibition might be removed. This was unanimously agreed to, and the government of England was at once restored to a free and healthy condition.[132-2]

[Footnote 132-1: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 163-5.]

[Footnote 132-2: _Patent Roll_, 32 Hen. VI. m. 20. _See_ Appendix to this Introduction.]

The Duke of Somerset was not present at this meeting of the Council. He doubtless saw too clearly the storm gathering against him. To his former responsibility for the loss of Normandy was now added further responsibility for the loss of Guienne. The accusations against him were accordingly renewed; but they were taken up this time, not by York but by the Duke of Norfolk. [Sidenote: Norfolk accuses Somerset.] A set of articles of impeachment was drawn up by the latter, to which Somerset made some reply, and was answered again by Norfolk. The accuser then pressed the matter further, urging that the loss of Normandy and of Guienne should be made a subject of criminal inquiry according to the laws of France; and that other misdemeanours charged upon him should be investigated according to the modes of procedure in England. Finally, lest his petition should be refused by the Council, Norfolk desired that it might be exemplified under the king’s Great Seal, protesting that he felt it necessary, for his own credit, that what he had done in the matter should be known as widely as possible.[132-3]

[Footnote 132-3: No. 230.]

In the end it was determined that the Duke of Somerset should be arrested and committed to the Tower. This resolution was carried into effect a little before Christmas, and the different lords retired during the festive season to their own country quarters. But all who had given their votes against Somerset knew well that they stood in considerable danger. The battle that he had lost would have to be fought over again with the queen, who now put in a claim to be intrusted with the entire government of the kingdom. Every man of Somerset’s party got his retainers in readiness, and while other lords were out of town, the harbinger of the Duke of Somerset secured for his company all the lodgings that were to be got in Thames Street, Mark Lane, St. Katherine’s, and the neighbourhood of the Tower. The Duke of Norfolk was warned by a faithful servant to beware of parties in ambush on his way to London. Everything clearly showed that the faction which had been dispossessed of power had sanguine hopes of reinstating themselves at an early opportunity.[133-1]

[Footnote 133-1: No. 235.]

And this, it is probable, they might have done with the greatest possible ease, were it not that the king’s loss of his faculties was so complete and absolute that it was impossible, by any means whatever, to obtain a semblance of acting upon his authority. [Sidenote: A.D. 1454.] About New Year’s Day, when the new-born prince was conveyed to Windsor, the Duke of Buckingham took the child in his arms and presented him to the king, beseeching him to give him a father’s blessing. Henry returned no answer. [Sidenote: The king and his child.] The duke remained some time with the child in the king’s presence, but could not extract from him the slightest sign of intelligence. The queen then came in, and taking the infant in her arms, presented him to his father, with the same request that the duke had made before her. But all their efforts were in vain; the king continued dumb, and showed not the slightest perception of what they were doing, except that for one moment only he looked upon the babe, and then cast down his eyes again.[133-2]

[Footnote 133-2: _Ibid._]

There were no hopes, therefore, that the king himself would interfere in any way to protect his favourites in the Council. [Sidenote: Every man looks to himself.] Every man felt it necessary to see to his own security. The Lord Chancellor himself, Cardinal Kemp, ‘commanded all his servants to be ready, with bow and arrows, sword and buckler, crossbows, and all other habiliments of war, to await upon the safeguard of his person.’ The Duke of Buckingham caused to be made ‘2000 bends with knots--to what intent,’ said a cautious observer, ‘men may construe as their wits will give them.’ Further from the court, of course, the old disturbances were increased. ‘The Duke of Exeter, in his own person, hath been at Tuxforth beside Doncaster, in the north country, and there the Lord Egremont met him, and the two be sworn together, and the duke is come home again.’ The Earl of Wiltshire and the Lord Bonvile made proclamations in Somersetshire, offering sixpence a day to every man that would serve them; and these two noblemen, along with the Lords Beaumont, Poynings, Clifford, and Egremont, were preparing to come up to London each with as strong a body of followers as he could possibly muster.[134-1]

[Footnote 134-1: No. 235.]

The Duke of York and his friends on their side did the same; and it was high time they should, otherwise the machinations of Somerset would certainly have been their ruin. The latter had spies in every great household, who reported to him everything that could be construed to the disadvantage of his opponents. [Sidenote: The Duke of York and Thorpe.] Among York’s private enemies, moreover, was Thomas Thorpe, Speaker of the House of Commons, who was also a Baron of the Exchequer. In the former capacity his functions had been for some time suspended; for Parliament, which had been prorogued to the 12th November at Reading, only met on that day to be prorogued again to the 11th February, in consequence of the mortality which prevailed in the town. Meanwhile, in Michaelmas term, the Duke of York took an action of trespass against him in his own Court of Exchequer, and a jury had awarded damages to the amount of £1000. On this judgment was given that he should be committed to the Fleet till the damages were paid, and in the Fleet the Speaker accordingly remained till the next meeting of Parliament.[135-1] In his confinement he was now busily employed in drawing up a bill of articles against the Duke of York, which doubtless, with the aid of a little favour at Court, would have been highly serviceable to the cause of Somerset.[135-2]

[Footnote 135-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 238-9.]

[Footnote 135-2: No. 235.]

The legal proceedings of which Thorpe was a victim appear doubtless to have been connected with party politics. His son and heir, Roger Thorpe, at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. procured an Act of Parliament in his favour, showing that both he and his father had suffered injustice in the cause of the House of Lancaster, and that the Duke of York’s action of trespass against his father was owing to his having arrested, at the king’s command, ‘certain harness and other habiliments of war of the said duke’s.’[135-3] No doubt this must have been the case, but was the king’s command constitutional? Or was it, perhaps, only the command of Somerset given in the king’s name? An agent had no right to obey an unconstitutional order.

[Footnote 135-3: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 295.]

About the 25th of January the Duke of York was expected in London, accompanied by a select body of men of his household retinue. With him came his son, the Earl of March, at this time not quite twelve years old; to whom, nevertheless, a separate household had already been assigned by his father, and consequently another company marched in the name of the Earl of March. These, however, were sent forward a little in advance. Along with the Duke of York there also came up, or was expected to come, his powerful friend the Earl of Warwick, who, besides the retinue by which he was attended, was to have a thousand men awaiting his arrival in London. Even these noblemen and their companies formed a most powerful confederacy. But there were two other great personages besides who travelled with them on the same road, whose sympathy and co-operation with York at this time no reader would have conjectured. The king’s two half-brothers, the Earls of Richmond and Pembroke, were expected to reach London in the duke’s company; and they, too, had wisely taken with them a good number of followers, for, notwithstanding their relation to the Crown, it was thought not unlikely that they would be arrested on their arrival.[136-1]

[Footnote 136-1: No. 235.]

In short, the continuance of the king’s infirmity had now rendered it clear to every man that unless the Council were willing to comply with the Queen’s demands, and yield up to her the uncontrolled management of public affairs, the government of the kingdom must be placed in the hands of the Duke of York. And yet some little time was necessarily allowed to pass before any special powers could be intrusted to him. Parliament was not to sit again till the 11th February, and Reading was still the place where it was appointed to assemble. The Earl of Worcester, who filled the office of Lord Treasurer, was commissioned to go down to Reading, and cause it to adjourn from the 11th to the 14th of the month, to meet that day at Westminster. Meanwhile a commission was granted to the Duke of York to act as the king’s lieutenant on its reassembling.[136-2]

[Footnote 136-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 238-9.]

[[on its reassembling.[136-2] _final . missing_]]

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Speaker.] On the 14th, accordingly, the Houses met in the royal palace of Westminster; but the Commons were without a Speaker, and another of their members, by name Walter Rayle, was also undergoing imprisonment, from what cause does not appear. The Commons, therefore, before proceeding to business, demanded of the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, that their ancient privileges should be respected, and their Speaker and the other member liberated. The case was taken into consideration by the Peers on the following day, when it was explained by the Duke of York’s counsel that the Speaker had a few months before gone to the house of Robert Nevill, Bishop of Durham, and there taken away certain goods and chattels belonging to the duke against his will; that for this he had been prosecuted in the Court of Exchequer, as it was a privilege of that court that its officers in such cases should not be sued before any other tribunal; that a jury had found him guilty of trespass, and awarded to the duke damages of £1000 and £10 costs. Speaker Thorpe had accordingly been committed to the Fleet for the fine due to the king. The proceedings against him had not been taken during the sitting of Parliament, and it was urged that if he should be released by privilege of Parliament a great wrong would be done to the duke. It was a delicate question of constitutional law, and the Lords desired to have the opinion of the judges. But the chief justices, after consultation with their brethren, answered, in the name of the whole body, that it was beyond their province to determine matters concerning the privilege of Parliament; ‘for this high court of Parliament,’ they said, ‘is so high and mighty in his nature that it may make law, and that that is law it may make no law; and the determination and knowledge of the privilege belongeth to the Lords of the Parliament, and not to the Justices.’ Nevertheless, as to the accustomed mode of procedure in the lower courts, the Judges remarked that in ordinary cases of arrest a prisoner was frequently liberated on a writ of _supersedeas_ to enable him to attend the Parliament; but no general writ of _supersedeas_, to surcease all processes, could be allowed; ‘for if there should be, it should seem that this high court of Parliament, that ministereth all justice and equity, should let the process of the common law, and so it should put the party complainant without remedy, for so much as actions at the common law be not determined in this high court of Parliament.’[137-1]

[Footnote 137-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 239-40.]

From this carefully considered reply it was clear to the Lords that they were at least nowise bound to interfere in behalf of the imprisoned Speaker, unless they considered the liberties of Parliament likely to be prejudiced by the circumstances of his particular case. It was accordingly decided that he should remain in prison, and that the Commons should be directed to choose another Speaker. This they did on the following day, and presented Sir Thomas Charleton to the Lord Chancellor as their new representative; who being accepted by that functionary in the name of the king, both Houses at once proceeded to business.[137-2]

[Footnote 137-2: _Ibid._ 240.]

A month later the Commons came before the Duke of York, as the king’s lieutenant, with two very urgent petitions. [Sidenote: Defence of Calais.] The first related to the defence of Calais and the safeguard of the sea. Notwithstanding the very liberal grants which had already been voted by this Parliament, Calais was still in danger, and the sea was still very insufficiently protected; insomuch that the Lord Chancellor had told the House of Commons £40,000 would be required to obviate very serious perils. The Commons were very naturally alarmed; a modern House of Commons would have been indignant also. They had in the preceding year voted no less than £9300 for Calais, partly for repairs and partly for making jetties, besides all the sums voted for the pay of the garrison and the tonnage and poundage dues, which ought to have been applied to general purposes of defence. They therefore humbly petitioned to be excused from making any further grants; ‘for they cannot, may not, ne dare not make any mo grants, considered the great poverty and penury that be among the Commons of this land, for whom they be comen at this time; and that this their excuse might be enacted in this high court of Parliament.’ The money already voted was evidently conceived to be somewhere, and was considered to be quite sufficient to do the work required; so the Commons were told in reply by my Lord Chancellor the Cardinal, ‘that they should have good and comfortable answer, without any great delay or tarrying.’[138-1]

[Footnote 138-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 240.]

[Sidenote: A council required.] The second petition was that ‘a sad and wise Council’ might be established, ‘of the right discreet and wise lords and other of this land, to whom all people might have recourse for ministering justice, equity, and righteousness; whereof they have no knowledge as yet.’ The Duke of York was only the king’s lieutenant in Parliament. With the assent of the Great Council he could prorogue or dissolve it and give the royal assent to any of its acts. But the business of the nation imperatively required that some smaller body of statesmen should be intrusted with more general powers. Even before the king’s illness the constitution of some such body had been promised to the Parliament at Reading as a thing contemplated by the king himself;[138-2] and it was now more necessary than ever. The only problem was how to confer upon it an authority that could not be disputed.

[Footnote 138-2: _Ibid._ 241.]

But while the Lords are taking this point into consideration, we invite the reader’s attention to a piece of private history.

[Sidenote: Thomas Denyes.] A few years before the date at which we have now arrived, one Thomas Denyes, a trusted servant of the Earl of Oxford, seems to have caused his master some little inconvenience by falling in love with a lady who resided in the neighbourhood of Norwich. We regret that we cannot inform the reader who she was. All that we know is that her Christian name was Agnes, which was at that time popularly corrupted into Anneys and frequently confounded with Anne, and that she was an acquaintance of John Paston’s. With John Paston, accordingly, the earl thought it best to communicate, and in doing so earned for himself the heartfelt gratitude of Denyes by one of those small but truly gracious acts which reveal to us better than anything else the secret of the power of the English aristocracy. The lady seems not to have given her admirer any great encouragement in his suit. She had property of her own worth 500 marks, and could have had a husband in Norfolk with land of 100 marks value, which was more than Denyes could offer her. But the Earl of Oxford requested John Paston to intercede with her in behalf of her wooer, promising her that if the marriage took effect the Earl would show himself liberal to them both. He further offered, if it would be any satisfaction to her, to go himself into Norfolk and visit her.[139-1]

[Footnote 139-1: Nos. 124, 240.]

This intercession was effectual, and the lady became the wife of Thomas Denyes. It was a triumph of love and ambition to a poor dependant on a great earl. But with increase of wealth, as others have found in all ages, Denyes experienced an increase of anxieties and of business also. A suit in Chancery was commenced against him and his wife by a gentleman of the name of Ingham, who considered himself to have a claim on the lady’s property for a considerable sum of money. Ingham’s son Walter was active in procuring the _subpœna_. But Denyes, strong, as he believed, in a great lord’s favour, conceived a plan by which he might either interrupt the suit or revenge it on the person of Walter Ingham. On the 11th of January 1454--just about the time the queen and Buckingham were making those vain attempts to introduce his child to the notice of the unhappy king--when, consequently, it was still uncertain whether York or Somerset would have the rule, and when lawless persons all over the country must have felt that there was more than usual immunity for bad deeds to be hoped for,--Thomas Denyes wrote a letter in the name of the Earl of Oxford to Walter Ingham, requiring his presence at the earl’s mansion at Wivenhoe, in Essex, on the 13th. This letter reached Ingham at Dunston, in Norfolk, and he at once set out in obedience to the summons. [Sidenote: Walter Ingham waylaid.] But as he was nearing his destination, on the 12th, he was waylaid by a party in ambush hired by Denyes, who beat him so severely upon the head, legs, and back that he was maimed for life, and compelled to go on crutches for the rest of his days. Ingham complained of the outrage to the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Kemp, who sent a sergeant-at-arms to arrest Denyes at Lincoln’s Inn; but he at first refused to obey the arrest. Shortly afterwards, however, he was committed to the Fleet prison; and Ingham, with the favour of the cardinal and the Earl of Oxford, who utterly repudiated the act of his dependant, presented a petition to Parliament that he should not be admitted to bail or mainprise until he had been tried for the outrage and all actions between him and Ingham had been fully discussed and settled.[140-1]

[Footnote 140-1: Nos. 238, 239.]

The Earl of Oxford seems to have been thoroughly incensed, and not without reason, against a servant who had so abused his trust. Cardinal Kemp, as chancellor, was not less righteously indignant; and a bill was actually passed through the House of Peers in accordance with the prayer of Ingham’s petition. Yet it is difficult to understand why the punishment of the wrong committed was not left to the operation of ordinary criminal law. The case, perhaps, affected too seriously the honour of a nobleman, and the discretion to be allowed to a retainer. But whatever may have been the cause, poor Denyes now becomes positively an object for compassion--all the more so because his chief feeling in the matter was not a selfish one. [Sidenote: Denyes and his wife in prison.] Besides imprisoning Denyes himself in the Fleet, the cardinal and the Earl of Oxford threw his wife into the Counter, and afterwards sent her to Newgate, where she suffered the discomforts of a gaol apart from her husband, although she was then with child. ‘Which standeth too nigh mine heart,’ is the brief expression in which he conveys his feelings to John Paston, while apparently he was expecting to hear that his wife was either dead or prematurely delivered; for the treatment she had met with brought on the pains of labour long before the right time had come. Denyes, however, made friends with the warden of the Fleet prison, who contrived in some manner to make interest for her with her gaoler, so that afterwards she was rather better treated, and at last admitted to bail.[141-1]

[Footnote 141-1: No. 239.]

Poor Denyes was in dread of still further evils arising out of the case when he wrote these facts to John Paston. The bill against him had already passed through the Lords, and he was in fear that it might pass through the Commons also, which we afterwards learn that it did not.[141-2] His adversary, moreover, was bent upon revenge; ‘for Ingham,’ he said, ‘lieth, beside that, to take away my wife’s daughter out of Westminster,[141-3] to make an end of my wife if he can, and also to arrest my servants, that I dread that she nor I shall have no creature to attend us ne help us; and such malice have I never heard of here before. And it is told me that beside that they will despoil, if any good they can find of mine in Norwich or Norfolk, and imprison my servants there.’ All this he urgently implored Paston to prevent to the best of his ability. And it must be said that John Paston, although he considered himself little bound to Denyes, except in so far as he had promoted his marriage at the Earl of Oxford’s solicitation, on this occasion stood his friend. He wrote a letter to the earl urgently interceding for the unhappy wife; and though it seems probable the letter that he first wrote was not actually sent, we may fairly presume that he either devised a second to the same effect, or used his influence otherwise to the same end. Certain it is that he made some effort for which Denyes was beyond measure grateful.[142-1]

[Footnote 141-2: No. 244.]

[Footnote 141-3: Apparently Agnes Denyes had taken sanctuary at Westminster before her imprisonment. The manner in which Denyes here speaks of her daughter gives us reason to believe that she was a widow before he married her.]

[Footnote 142-1: Nos. 240, 245.]

‘The cardinal is dead and the king is relieved.’ Such were the last words of a postscript which Denyes appended to his first melancholy letter, complaining of his own and his wife’s imprisonment. A rumour apparently had been spread that the king’s health was beginning to improve; for which, as we shall see, there was very little foundation. [Sidenote: Death of Cardinal Kemp.] But it was perfectly true that Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England, was dead. Little as we know, beyond a few broad facts of his career, whereby to judge his real character and aims, it is certain that he was an accomplished statesman. A follower originally of Cardinal Beaufort,--the man who of all others could serve two masters, Rome and England, with the least degree of repugnance, and of whom the best that can be said is, that he never scrupled to betray the former in what appeared to be the interest of the latter,--Kemp was, perhaps, as honest a specimen of the political churchman as an essentially bad system could produce. The clergy, however, were really needed as statesmen; few laymen had the ability, learning, or education to enable them to do the essential work of the nation; and Kemp was one who had gained for himself, by his own talents, the highest position to which a subject could aspire in England, not only in the realm but in the Church.

Thus, at a time when the functions of royalty itself were suspended, the chancellor, the official keeper of the king’s conscience, was suddenly taken away; and in him England also lost her primate, always one of the most important members of the Council. The formation of a governing Council was now more important than ever; but the most pressing questions of all were the appointment of a new chancellor and of a new archbishop. Who was to take upon himself to nominate either the one or the other? The queen’s modest claim to be invested with the functions of her husband had not been listened to by the Lords; but the powers as yet conferred upon the Duke of York were only to represent the king in Parliament.

It was upon the 19th of March that the Commons had pressed their petition for the establishment of a Council. Cardinal Kemp died on the 22nd. [Sidenote: Deputation of Lords to the king.] On the 23rd the Lords appointed twelve of their number as a deputation, headed by Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, to ride to Windsor and endeavour, if possible, to lay the state of matters before the king. Their instructions were drawn up in six articles, but only two were to be communicated to the king if they found him unable to pay attention to what was said. These two were a mere assurance of anxiety to hear of his recovery, and that the Lords, under the presidency of the duke as his lieutenant, were using their best discretion in the affairs of the nation. If any response were made to these two articles, the deputation was then to tell him of the death of Cardinal Kemp, and ask to know his pleasure who should be the new archbishop and who should be appointed chancellor. They were to say that for the security of the Great Seals (there were at this time no less than three Great Seals used in the Chancery)[143-1] the Lords had caused them to be produced in Parliament, and after being seen by all the Lords they were enclosed in a coffer sealed by a number of the Peers present, and then laid up in the Treasury. Finally, they were to ask the king’s mind touching the establishment of a Council, telling him how much it was desired by the Commons, and suggesting the names of certain Lords and persons whom it was thought desirable to appoint as Councillors. All these matters, however, were to be communicated only to the king in the strictest privacy.[143-2]

[Footnote 143-1: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vol. vi. preface, pp. clxxviii.-ix.]

[Footnote 143-2: _Rolls of Parl._ 240-1.]

The deputation returned two days after with a report of the total failure of their mission. They had waited on the king at Windsor just after he had dined, but could get from him no answer nor sign that he understood their message. [Sidenote: The king’s imbecility.] The Bishop of Winchester then told the king that the Lords had not dined, and that after they had they would wait on him again. After dinner accordingly they were again with him, and tried all they could to elicit an answer; but the king was speechless. They then proposed that he should go into another room, and he was led between two men into his bedchamber. A third and last effort was then made to rouse him by every expedient that could be imagined; and when all else failed, a question was put to him which involved no more than a simple yes or no. Was it his Highness’s pleasure that they should wait on him any longer? A long pause was allowed in the hope that any mere physical difficulty might be overcome. A faint nod, even a shake of the head, would have been regarded with some degree of satisfaction. But it was all in vain. ‘They could have no answer, word ne sign; and therefore with sorrowful hearts, came their way.’[144-1]

[Footnote 144-1: _Rolls of Parl._ 241.]

It was now clear that the highest constitutional authority resided for the time in the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. The reader, imbued with modern notions of the power and prestige of the House of Commons, may possibly think that their votes, too, should have been consulted in the formation of a Government. Such a view, however, would be radically erroneous. The influence which the House of Commons has in later times acquired--an influence so great that, at times unhappily, Acts are even passed by Peers against their own sense of right and justice, in deference to the will of the Lower Chamber--is a thing not directly recognised by the constitution, but only due to the control of the national purse-strings. Strictly speaking, the House of Commons is not a legislative body at all, but only an engine for voting supplies. The Peers of the realm, in Parliament or out of Parliament, are, according to the constitution, the sovereign’s privileged advisers. A king may, no doubt, at any time call to him what other councillors he pleases, and the prerogative of the Lords may lie dormant for a very long period of time; but the Peers of the realm have, individually or in a body, a right to tender their advice upon affairs of state, which belongs to no other class in the community.

On the 27th of March, therefore--two days after the report of the deputation that had seen the king at Windsor--the Lords took the first step towards the establishment of order and government, by electing Richard, Duke of York, as Protector and Defender of the realm. [Sidenote: The Duke of York Protector.] The title of Protector essentially implied an interim administrator during a period when the king, by legal or physical incapacity, was unable to exercise his regal functions in person. A Protector’s tenure of power was therefore always limited by the clause _quamdiu Regi placeret_. It was terminable by the king himself the moment he found himself able to resume the actual duties of royalty. Even a protectorship like that of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, instituted in consequence of the king being an infant, was terminated before the royal child was eight years old by the act of his coronation. The crowned and anointed infant became a king indeed, and therefore no longer required the services of a Protector; so from that day Duke Humphrey had ceased to wield any authority except that of an ordinary member of the Council. But, indeed, even during his protectorship, his powers were greatly circumscribed; and it had been expressly decided by the Council that he was not competent to perform an act of state without the consent of a majority of the other Lords. Richard, therefore, knowing that his powers would be limited, was most anxious that his responsibility should be accurately defined, that no one might accuse him thereafter of having exceeded the just limits of his authority. He delivered in a paper containing certain articles, of which the first was as follows:--

‘Howbeit that I am not sufficient of myself, of wisdom, cunning, nor ability, to take upon me that worthy name of Protector and Defender of this land, nor the charge thereto appertaining, whereunto it hath liked you, my Lords, to call, name, and desire me unworthy thereunto;--under protestation, if I shall apply me to the performing of your said desire, and at your instance take upon me, with your supportation, the said name and charge, I desire and pray you that in this present Parliament and by authority thereof it be enacted, that of yourself and of your free and mere disposition, ye desire, name and call me to the said name and charge, and that of any presumption of myself, I take them not upon me, but only of the due and humble obeisance that I owe to do unto the king, our most dread and Sovereign Lord, and to you the Peerage of this land, in whom by the occasion of the infirmity of our said Sovereign Lord, resteth the exercise of his authority, whose noble commandments I am as ready to perform and obey as any his liege man alive; and at such time as it shall please our blessed Creator to restore his noble person to healthful disposition, it shall like you so to declare and notify to his good grace.’[146-1]

[Footnote 146-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 242.]

In reply to this, it was put on record that it was ‘thought by the Lords that the said Duke desireth that of his great wisdom for his discharge.’ And they, too, for their own justification, resolved that an Act should be made according to a precedent during the king’s minority, setting forth that they themselves, from the sheer necessity of the case, had been compelled to take upon themselves the power of nominating a Protector. So jealous were the Lords of anything like an invasion of the royal prerogative!

Further, the duke required that the Lords would aid him cordially in the execution of his duties and would exactly define such powers and liberties as they meant him to exercise; that they would arrange what salary he should receive; and that all the Lords Spiritual and Temporal belonging to the King’s Council would agree to act in the Councils of the Protector. These matters being at length satisfactorily adjusted, the duke was formally created Protector by patent on the 3rd of April. It was, however, at the same time provided by another patent that the office should devolve on the king’s son as soon as he came of age.[146-2] After this, five Lords were appointed to have the keeping of the sea against the king’s enemies, and in addition to the subsidies already voted by Parliament for that object, a loan, amounting in all to £1000, was levied upon the different seaports.[146-3] This was but light taxation, and was no doubt cheerfully submitted to. The good town of Bristol, we know, did more than it was asked; for Sturmyn, the Mayor, fitted out a stately vessel expressly for the war.[146-4] Evidently there were zeal and patriotism in the country whenever there was a government that could make good use of them.

[Footnote 146-2: _Ibid._ 243.]

[Footnote 146-3: _Rolls of Parl._ 244-5.]

[Footnote 146-4: No. 249.]

[Sidenote: Calais again in danger.] And there was real need of that patriotism; for the French were again threatening Calais. They also made a descent in great force on the isles of Jersey and Guernsey, but were defeated by the valour and loyalty of the inhabitants, who killed or took prisoners no less than five hundred of their assailants.[147-1] A Council was called to meet at Westminster on the 6th of May, to take measures for the defence of Calais,[147-2] the result of which and of further deliberations on the subject was seen in the appointment of the Duke of York as captain or governor of the town, castle, and marches. This office was granted to him by patent on the 18th of July,[147-3] but he only agreed to undertake it, as he had done the Protectorship, subject to certain express conditions to which he obtained the assent of the Lords in Parliament. Among these was one stipulation touching his remuneration, in which he affirms that he had served the king formerly at his own cost in the important offices he had filled in France and in Ireland, so that owing to non-payment of his salary, he had been obliged to sell part of his inheritance and pawn plate and jewels which were still unredeemed.[147-4] A very different sort of governor this from the avaricious Somerset!

[Footnote 147-1: No. 247.]

[Footnote 147-2: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 174.]

[Footnote 147-3: Rymer, xi. 351. Carte’s _Gascon and French Rolls_.]

[Footnote 147-4: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 252.]

Meanwhile other changes had been made in the administration. On the 2nd of April--the day before the duke’s appointment as Protector--the Great Seal had been given to Richard Nevill, Earl of Salisbury, as chancellor; [Sidenote: Disturbances in the North.] and to prevent any renewal of disturbances in the North by the earl’s former opponent Lord Egremont, his father, the Earl of Northumberland, was summoned before the Council. But before the day came which was given him to make his appearance, news arrived that Lord Egremont had already been making large assemblies and issuing proclamations of rebellion, in concert with the Duke of Exeter. To restore tranquillity, it was thought proper that the Duke of York should go down into Yorkshire, where he no sooner made his appearance than his presence seems to have put an end to all disturbances. The Duke of Exeter disappeared from the scene and was reported to have gone up secretly to London; but the adherents of Lord Egremont continued to give some trouble in Westmoreland. Thither the Duke of York accordingly received orders from the Council to proceed; but he probably found it unnecessary, for on the 8th of June it is stated that he intended remaining about York till after the 20th. Every appearance of disturbance seems to have been quelled with ease; and a number of the justices having been sent into Yorkshire for the punishment of past offences, the Protector was able to return to London in the beginning of July.[148-1]

[Footnote 148-1: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 178, 193-7. Nos. 247, 249.]

It was at this time that the two eldest sons of the Duke of York, Edward, Earl of March, and Edmund, Earl of Rutland, who were of the ages of twelve and eleven respectively, addressed the following interesting letter to their father:[148-2]--

‘_To the ryght hiegh and myghty Prince, oure most worschipfull and gretely redoubted lorde and fader, the Duke of Yorke, Protector and Defensor of Englonde._

‘Ryght hiegh and myghty Prince, oure most worschipfull and gretely redoubted lorde and Fader, in as lowely wyse as any sonnes con or may we recomaunde us un to youre good lordeschip. And plaese hit youre hieghnesse to witte that we have receyved youre worschipful lettres yesturday by your servaunt William Cleton, beryng date at Yorke the xxix day of Maij, by the whiche William and by the relacion of John Milewatier we conceyve your worschipfull and victorious spede ageinest your enemyse, to ther grete shame, and to us the most comfortable tydinges that we desired to here. Where of we thonke Almyghty God of his yeftes, beseching Hym hertely to geve yowe that grace and cotidian fortune here aftur to knowe your enemyse and to have the victory of them. And yef hit plaese your hieghnesse to knowe of oure wilfare, at the makyng of this lettre we were in good helith of bodis, thonked be God; beseching your good and graciouse Faderhode of youre daily blessing. And where ye comaunde us by your said lettres to attende specialy to oure lernyng in our yong age that schulde cause us to growe to honour and worschip in our olde age, Please hit youre hieghnesse to witte that we have attended owre lernyng sith we come heder, and schall here aftur; by the whiche we trust to God youre graciouse lordeschip and good Fadurhode schall be plaesid. Also we beseche your good lordeschip that hit may plaese yowe to sende us Harry Lovedeyne, grome of your kechyn, whos service is to us ryght agreable; and we will sende yow John Boyes to wayte on youre good Lordeschip. Ryght hiegh and myghty Prince, our most worschipfull and gretely redoubted lorde and Fader, We beseche Almyghty God yeve yowe as good lyfe and longe as youre owne Princely hert con best desire. Writen at your Castill of Lodelow the iij day of June.--Youre humble sonnes,

‘E. MARCHE, ‘E. RUTLOND.’

[Footnote 148-2: Printed from the original in MS. Cott., Vespasian F. xiii. fol. 35.]

Soon after the duke had returned to London his presence was required at a Great Council summoned for the 18th of July, to consider the expediency of liberating on bail his great rival and personal enemy, the Duke of Somerset, who had been now seven months in prison. [Sidenote: The Duke of Somerset.] On this point York had only one piece of advice to offer, which was, that as he had been committed to custody upon suspicion of treason, the opinion of the judges should be taken before he was released from confinement. That he had remained so long without a trial was not unnatural, considering the nature of the times. It was a bold step indeed to try him at all, while there was a chance of the weak-minded king’s recovery; but this step was certainly resolved on. The 28th of October was the day appointed for his trial; and the Duke of Norfolk, who, as we have seen, had been the first to move the capital charge against him, was ordered by that day to be ready to produce his proofs. Meanwhile the lords concurred that it was clearly inexpedient to let him go, especially as the number of lords assembled was not so great as it should have been on the occasion; and the opinion of the Duke of York was not only agreed to, but at his request was put on record.[149-1]

[Footnote 149-1: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 207.]

Six days later it was agreed at another meeting of the Council that the Duke of York should return into the North with the Duke of Exeter in his custody, whom he was to confine in the castle of Pomfret as a state prisoner.[150-1]

[Footnote 150-1: Nicolas’s _Privy Council Proceedings_, vi. 217, 218.]

By these decisive steps the authority of the Duke of York was at length secured on something like a stable footing. During the remainder of his protectorate there could no longer be a doubt to whose hands power was committed; and England, at last, had the blessing of real government, able and vigorous, but at the same time moderate. The resolutions of the Council soon became known to the public. ‘As for tidings,’ wrote William Paston to his brother in Norfolk, ‘my lord of York hath taken my lord of Exeter into his award. The Duke of Somerset is still in prison, in worse case than he was.’ William Paston wrote in haste, but these were two matters of public importance to be mentioned before all private affairs whatever.[150-2] And yet the private affairs of which he wrote in the same letter will not be without interest to the readers of this Introduction. [Sidenote: Sir J. Fastolf goes to reside in Norfolk.] William Paston now reported to his brother that Sir John Fastolf was about to take his journey into Norfolk within a few days, and proposed to take up his residence at Caister. His going thither must have been regarded as an event not only in the neighbourhood of Yarmouth but even in the city of Norwich. At all events it was highly important to John Paston, whose advice the old knight valued in many matters. ‘He saith,’ wrote William Paston to his brother, ‘ye are the heartiest kinsman and friend that he knoweth. He would have you at Mauteby[150-3] dwelling.’ This must have been written in the latter part of July. Sir John did not actually go into Norfolk quite so soon as he intended; but he appears to have been there by the beginning of September.[150-4]

[Footnote 150-2: No. 254.]

[Footnote 150-3: The manor of Mauteby, which came to John Paston by his marriage, was only three miles distant from Caister.]

[Footnote 150-4: No. 260.]

There in his completed castle of Caister he had at length taken up his abode, to spend the evening of his days in the place of his birth, and on the inheritance of his ancestors. There during the next five years he spent his time, counting over the items of a number of unsettled claims he had against the crown,[151-1] and meditating also, it would seem, on another account he had with Heaven. For the latter the foundation of a college[151-2] or religious endowment, in which were to be maintained ‘seven priests and seven poor folk’ at Caister, might possibly liquidate his debts. But in his transactions with his fellowmen he was certainly for the most part a creditor, and by no means one of the most generous. Instances will be found in his letters in abundance showing with what vehemence (testy old soldier that he was!) he perpetually insisted on what was due to himself;--how he desired to know the names of those who would presume to resist his agent, Sir Thomas Howes--how they should be requited ‘by Blackbeard or Whitebeard, that is to say, by God or the Devil’;[151-3]--how he noted that Sir John Buck had fished his stanks and helped to break his dam;[151-4] how he had been informed that at a dinner at Norwich certain gentlemen had used scornful language about him, and desired to know who they were.[151-5] In this perpetual self-assertion he seems neither to have been over-indulgent towards adversaries nor even sufficiently considerate of friends and dependants. ‘Cruel and vengeable he hath been ever,’ says his own servant Henry Windsor, ‘and for the most part without pity and mercy.’[151-6] So also on the part of his faithful secretary, William Worcester, we find a complaint of shabby treatment, apparently at this very time when the household was removed to Caister. To a letter in which John Paston had addressed him as ‘Master Worcester,’ the latter replied with a request that he would ‘forget that name of mastership,’ for his position was by no means so greatly improved as to entitle him to such respect. His salary was not increased by one farthing in certainty--only ‘wages of household in common, _entaunt come nows plaira_’--which apparently means, assured to him only during his master’s pleasure. When he complained to his master of this, all the satisfaction he obtained was that Sir John expressed a wish he had been a priest, when he could have rewarded him with a living.[152-1]

[Footnote 151-1: Nos. 309, 310.]

[Footnote 151-2: Nos. 340, 350, 351, 385, 386, 387.]

[Footnote 151-3: No. 125.]

[Footnote 151-4: Nos. 160, 161.]

[Footnote 151-5: No. 272.]

[Footnote 151-6: No. 332.]

[Footnote 152-1: Nos. 258, 259.]

There are, indeed, in more than one of Worcester’s letters in this collection symptoms of ill-concealed chagrin and disappointment. Nor were such feelings unnatural in one who, probably out of regard for an ill-appreciated hero, had devoted the best energies of his life to the services of such a master as Fastolf. [Sidenote: William Worcester.] A native of Bristol, the son of one William Worcester, who lived in St. James’s Bec in that town, he was descended by the mother’s side from a wealthy family of Coventry, and often called himself, instead of Worcester, by his mother’s maiden name of Botoner. Born in the year 1415, he had entered the university of Oxford in 1432, and been four years a student at Hart Hall, now Balliol College; after which he had gone into Fastolf’s service. For many years he had been steward of Sir John’s manor of Castle Combe in Wiltshire, and MSS. still exist in his handwriting relating to the holding of manorial courts there.[152-2] He had also been Fastolf’s secretary in drawing up various statements regarding the wars in France in vindication of his master’s policy.[152-3] He was a man of literary tastes, who had already presented some compositions to his patron.[152-4] Later in life he wrote a book of annals, which is an important historical authority for the period. It seems to have been about a year before his master’s death that he set himself assiduously to learn French, under the tuition of a Lombard named Caroll Giles.[152-5] From this instructor he had purchased several books, and Henry Windsor suspected he had run himself into debt in consequence. He had fairly owned to Windsor ‘he would be as glad and as fain of a good book of French or of poetry, as my master Fastolf would be to purchase a fair manor.’[152-6] But he had a special object in view in which a knowledge of this language was important; for he had begun translating, at Fastolf’s request, from a French version, Cicero’s treatise _de Senectute_. This work appears to have been left on his hands at Sir John Fastolf’s death, and on the 10th of August 1473 he presented it to his patron’s old friend, Bishop Waynflete, at Esher. ‘Sed nullum regardum recepi de episcopo’ (but I received no reward from the bishop), is his melancholy comment on the occasion.[153-1] The work was ultimately printed by Caxton in 1481. Worcester was an assiduous collector of information on topics of every description, and a number of his commonplace books remain at this day. But like many men of letters after him, he found that industry of this sort may look in vain for any reward beyond the satisfaction of gratified curiosity.[153-2]

[Footnote 152-2: Add. MS. 28,208, B.M.]

[Footnote 152-3: Stevenson’s _Wars_, ii. [519], _sq._]

[Footnote 152-4: ‘Stellæ versificatæ pro anno 1440 ad instantiam J. Fastolfe militis.’ MS. Laud., B. 23 (according to the old pressmark).]

[Footnote 152-5: Letter 370.]

[Footnote 152-6: In previous editions it was here remarked:--‘This French zeal appears to have excited the contempt of some of his acquaintances--among others of Friar Brackley, who nicknamed him Colinus Gallicus.’ The discovery of additional letters, formerly published in a Supplement, but now incorporated with the series, seems to show that this was an error, or at all events very doubtful. It is clear from Letter 404 that a certain ‘W. W.’ and Colinus Gallicus were different persons (_see_ vol. iii. p. 213, note 3), and the references to ‘W. W.’ at p. 230 as the knight’s secretary and one of his executors remove any doubt that we might otherwise entertain that he was William Worcester. But a new difficulty arises from that identification, that Friar Brackley calls ‘W. W.’ an Irishman, which William Worcester was not; and the references at p. 220 of the same volume would imply that he was really an Irishman in nationality, and also a one-eyed man of dark visage. Such may have been Worcester’s personal appearance; but why was he called an Irishman?

It is with some hesitation that I hazard a new conjecture as to the person nicknamed Colinus Gallicus; but on comparing the different passages where that nickname occurs, I am inclined to think it was meant for Judge Yelverton.]

[[p. iii. 230 = Letter 417; p. iii. 220 = Letter 409]]

[Footnote 153-1: Itin. 368.]

[Footnote 153-2: Tanner’s _Bibliotheca_. _See_ also a notice of William Worcester in _Retrospective Review_, Second Series, ii. 451-4.]

Along with the announcement that Sir John Fastolf was about to go into Norfolk, William Paston informed his brother that the old knight’s stepson, Stephen Scrope, would reside at Caister along with him. [Sidenote: Stephen Scrope.] Of this Stephen Scrope our Letters make not unfrequent mention; but the leading facts of his history are obtained from other sources. He was the son of Sir Stephen Scrope, by his wife Lady Milicent, who married Fastolf after her husband’s death. At the time of this second marriage of his mother, young Scrope was about ten or twelve years of age, and being heir to a considerable property, his stepfather had the management of his affairs during his minority. Bitterly did he complain in after years of the manner in which Sir John had discharged the trust. According to the unfeeling, mercenary fashion in which such matters were then managed, Fastolf sold his wardship to Chief-Justice Gascoigne for 500 marks; ‘through the which sale,’ wrote Scrope at a later date, ‘I took sickness that kept me a thirteen or fourteen years [en]suing; whereby I am disfigured in my person and shall be whilst I live.’ Gascoigne held this wardship for three years, and by right of it intended to marry Scrope to one of his own daughters; but as the young lad’s friends thought the match unequal to his fortune, Fastolf bought the wardship back again.[154-1] Stephen Scrope, however, when he grew up, was not more grateful for the redemption than for the original sale of his person. ‘He bought me and sold me as a beast’ (so he writes of Sir John Fastolf), ‘against all right and law, to mine hurt more than 1000 marks.’ In consequence of the stinginess of his stepfather he was obliged, on coming of age, to sell a manor which was part of his inheritance and take service with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in France; by whom, according to his own account, he had some hope of obtaining restitution of the lordship of the Isle of Man, which had belonged to his uncle the Earl of Wiltshire in the days of Richard II. But Sir John Fastolf got him to give up his engagement with the duke and serve with himself, which he did for several years, to the satisfaction of both parties. Afterwards, however, on some dispute arising, Scrope returned to England, when Sir John sent home word that he must pay for his meat and drink. To do this he was driven to contract a marriage which, by his own account, was not the most advantageous for himself; and his stepfather, instead of showing him any compassion, brought an action against him by which he was deprived of all the little property that his wife had brought him.[154-2]

[Footnote 154-1: No. 97.]

[Footnote 154-2: Scrope’s _History of the Manor of Castle Combe_, pp. 264-283. The MSS. formerly at Castle Combe, to which Mr. Scrope refers in this work, have since been presented by him and Mr. Lowndes, the present lord of the manor, to the British Museum. One of them we have reprinted in No. 97.]

Of this first wife of Stephen Scrope we know nothing,[154-3] except that she died and left him a daughter some years before we find any mention of him in the Paston correspondence. His necessities now compelled him to resort to the same evil system of bargaining in flesh and blood of which he had complained in his own case. ‘For very need,’ he writes, ‘I was fain to sell a little daughter I have for much less than I should have done by possibility,’--a considerable point in his complaint being evidently the lowness of the price he got for his own child. It seems that he disposed of her wardship to a knight[155-1] whose name does not appear; but the terms of the contract became matter of interest some time afterwards to John Paston and his mother, when Scrope, who, besides being disfigured in person, was probably not far from fifty years of age, made an offer for the hand of Paston’s sister Elizabeth, a girl of about twenty. The proposed match did not take effect; but it was for some time seriously entertained. Agnes Paston writes that she found the young lady herself ‘never so willing to none as she is to him, if it be so that his land stand clear.’[155-2] The reader will perhaps think from this expression that the young lady had been pretty early taught the importance of considering worldly prospects; but there were other motives which not improbably helped to influence her judgment. ‘She was never in so great sorrow as she is now-a-days,’ wrote Elizabeth Clere to John Paston, as a reason for concluding the matter at once with Scrope, if no more desirable suitor presented himself. Her mother would not allow her to see any visitor, and was suspicious even of her intercourse with the servants of her own house. ‘And she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice in one day, and her head broken in two or three places.’[155-3] Such was the rough domestic discipline to which even girls in those days were occasionally subjected!

[Footnote 154-3: She is not unlikely to have been the lady mentioned in No. 97. ‘Fauconer’s daughter of London, that Sir Reynold Cobham had wedded.’ This I find need not have been, as I have stated in a footnote, the widow of Sir Reginald Cobham of Sterborough, who died in 1446; for there was an earlier Sir Reginald Cobham, whose widow Elizabeth was married to William Clifford as early as 1438. (_Inquisitions post mortem_, 16 Hen. VI. No. 31.) Thus there is the less difficulty in attributing