THE PASTON LETTERS
A.D. 1422-1509

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

So wrote the great literary exquisite and virtuoso, the man 2 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. 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.

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. 3 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. 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. 4 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.

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 5 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.

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 6 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.

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. 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, 7 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.

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 8 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 9 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

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 10 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

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 11 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 12 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:—

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 letters15.2 which I had reprinted from Fenn. It was one of the letters in Fenn’s third volume, and only one15.3 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 16 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:—

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 20 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 21 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 23 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.

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 26 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. 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, 27 Protector in King Edward’s reign, called him his soldier; Queen Mary, her seaman; and Queen Elizabeth, her father.’27.1

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. 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.

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 28 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. 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:—

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. 30 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. 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 31 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.

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. 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.

His character.

Of his personal character we are entitled to form a favourable 32 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. 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 33 Grys, and insinuating that even worse things were in store for him.

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. 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 34 that see, the Vatican archives show that he was provided to it on the 23rd May 1425.34.1

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 proceedings34.2 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.’

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 occasion35.2 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. 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.

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 36 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.

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 harbour36.1 within two miles of Paston village. To carry out the improvements 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 37 an inquisition ad quod damnum37.1 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.

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

Oxnead.

The Manor of Oxnead, which in later times became the 38 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 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

William Paston also purchased various other lands in the county of Norfolk.38.2 Among others, he purchased from 39 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

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 40 be had; and of colour it would be a goodly blue, or else a bright sanguine.’40.1

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 41 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.

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 42 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

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 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 43 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

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. 44 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 £20044.1—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

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. 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.

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 45 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.

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 46 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

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 47 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.

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. 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. 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

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 48 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

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 49 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.

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. 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 50 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

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. 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

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 51 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

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 52 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.

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.

A.D. 1449.

At last, in March 1449, the English justified the suspicions 53 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, 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

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 54 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

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. 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 55 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

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 56 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

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. 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.

A.D. 1450.

At the beginning of the New Year, an incident occurred which served still further to precipitate his ruin. 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.

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 59 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

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 60 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

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.

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 61 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.

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

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. 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

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

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 63 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, 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

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.

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 64 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. 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.

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 65 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. 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

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.

But whatever feeling may have been excited by the news of Suffolk’s murder in men like William Lomner, who possibly 66 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.

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:—

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. 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 68 1500 men for the safeguard of Bayeux, which a month afterwards he was compelled after all to give up to the enemy.68.1

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.

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 69 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.

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 70 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.

The first disturbances took place at Whitsuntide in the latter end of May. In the second week of June70.1 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 71 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

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 July71.3 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. 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 72 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.

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 73 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. 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.

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 Waynflete73.3 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 74 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

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. 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 75 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

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

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 76 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.

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 French76.2 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.

As a member of the King’s Council Fastolf thought it 77 right to send a messenger to ascertain what were the demands of the insurgents. 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 78 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

Sidenote: Battle on London Bridge.
final . missing

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 79 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.

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 80 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

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 Henry80.2

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.

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. 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

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 84 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:—

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 their84.1 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.

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, 85 ‘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

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 86 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

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 87 the authority of the new Council, which Henry therein declared it to be his intention to constitute.

This new Council was probably what we should call in these days a coalition ministry. 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 88 procession. It was the most brilliant display of the kind the Londoners of that day had ever seen.88.1

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

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

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 90 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

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 91 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. 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

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

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 92 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.

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 93 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

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

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 94 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

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 95 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.

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. 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.

These disasters, which were but the natural sequel to the 96 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. York’s manifesto. He accordingly issued the following manifesto:—

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 97 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:—

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, 99 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.

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.

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 100 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

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. 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

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, 101 if possible, to shut his mouth and let him go free. No accusation, therefore, was drawn up. 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:—

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. 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 authorities102.3—Somerset had himself to blame in great measure for the defenceless condition of the country committed to his protection. 103 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.

Here, however, is the full text of the accusation,103.1 as prepared by York himself:—

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. 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 109 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.

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

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 110 Earl of Shrewsbury110.1 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.

The gift had been left with the under sheriff
text unchanged: expected form “under-sheriff”

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, 111 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.

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 112 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. 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

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. 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 113 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

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

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 114 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.

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. 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

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

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 116 dates of privy seals, 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.

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 117 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.

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 118 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

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 119 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.

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 death119.5 enumerates no less than six-and-twenty 120 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

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. 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 121 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

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 122 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

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. 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 123 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

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

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 124 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. 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

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.

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 125 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.

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, 126 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. A.D. 1453. But the new year had no sooner opened than evidences of disaffection began to be perceived. 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 127 came of this display of disaffection on the part of Poynings; but it must at least be noted as a symptom of the times.

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 Lincoln127.1 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

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 128 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

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 129 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.

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

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 130 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

sent its captain, Oliver de Coëtivy
spelling unchanged: expected form “Olivier”

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, 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.

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

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 132 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-table132.1 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

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. 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

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

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. 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. 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

There were no hopes, therefore, that the king himself would interfere in any way to protect his favourites in the 134 Council. 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

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. 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 135 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

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.

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 136 their relation to the Crown, it was thought not unlikely that they would be arrested on their arrival.136.1

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

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 137 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

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

A month later the Commons came before the Duke of York, as the king’s lieutenant, with two very urgent petitions. Defence of Calais. The first related to the defence of Calais and the safeguard of 138 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

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.

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

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

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 140 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. 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

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 141 object for compassion—all the more so because his chief feeling in the matter was not a selfish one. 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

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 142 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

‘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. 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 143 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. 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

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. 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 144 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

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 145 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. 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 146 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

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 147 country whenever there was a government that could make good use of them.

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!

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; 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, 148 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

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—

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. 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

Six days later it was agreed at another meeting of the 150 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

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. 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 Mauteby150.3 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

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 151 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 college151.2 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 152 wish he had been a priest, when he could have rewarded him with a living.152.1

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. 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 153 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

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. 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 154 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

Of this first wife of Stephen Scrope we know nothing,154.3 155 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 knight155.1 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!

Some years certainly elapsed after this before either Stephen Scrope found a wife or Elizabeth Paston a husband. The former ultimately married Joan, the daughter of Richard Bingham, judge of the King’s Bench; the latter was married to Robert Poynings, whom we have already had occasion to notice as an ally of Jack Cade in 1450, and a ringleader in other movements a few years later. This second marriage appears to have taken place about New Year’s Day 1459;156.1 before which time we find various other proposals for her hand besides that of Scrope.156.2 Among these it may be noted that Edmund, Lord Grey of Hastings, wrote to her brother to say that he knew a gentleman with property worth 300 marks (£200) a year to whom she might be disposed of. No doubt, as in similar cases, this gentleman was a feudal ward, whose own opinion was the very last that was consulted as to the lady to whom he should be united. But it is time that we return to the current of public affairs.156.3

The king’s recovery.

At Christmas, to the great joy of the nation, the king began to recover from his sad illness. He woke up, as it were, from a long sleep. So decidedly had he regained his faculties, that, first, on St. John’s Day (27th December), he commanded his almoner to ride to Canterbury with an offering, and his secretary to present another at the shrine of St. Edward. On the following Monday, the 30th, the queen came to him and brought with her the infant prince, for whom nearly twelve months before she had in vain endeavoured to bespeak his notice. What occurred at that touching interview we 157 know from a letter of Edmund Clere to John Paston, and it would be impossible to wish it recorded in other words. ‘And then he asked what the Prince’s name was, and the queen told him “Edward”; and then he held up his hands and thanked God thereof. And he said he never knew till that time, nor wist what was said to him, nor wist not where he had been whilst he hath been sick, till now. And he asked who was godfathers, and the queen told him; and he was well apaid. And she told him that the cardinal (Kemp) was dead; and he said he knew never thereof till that time; and he said one of the wisest lords in this land was dead.’157.1

A.D. 1455.

On the 7th of January, Bishop Waynflete and the Prior of St. John’s were admitted to speak with him, and finding his discourse as clear and coherent as they had ever known it, on coming out of the audience chamber they wept for joy.157.2

Joy was doubtless the prevailing sentiment among all ranks and classes of people; but there was one to whom the news of the king’s recovery must have afforded a delight and satisfaction beyond what any one else—unless it were Queen Margaret—could possibly derive from it. The Duke of Somerset had now lain in prison more than a year. The day appointed for his trial had passed away and nothing had been done. It certainly casts some suspicion upon the even-handed justice of the Duke of York, that his adversary was thus denied a hearing; but the fault may have been due, after all, to weakness more than malice. In cases of treason, when once a trial was instituted against a leading nobleman, a conviction was, in those days, an absolutely invariable result; but this made it a thing all the more dangerous to attempt when it was hopeless to expect the positive sanction of the king. The real cause, however, why Somerset was not brought to trial can only be a matter of conjecture. His continued confinement, however harsh, was, according to the practice of those days, legal; nor was it till six weeks after the king’s recovery that he was restored to liberty. A new day, meanwhile, and not a very early one, was fixed for the hearing of charges against him. On the morrow of All Souls—the 3rd of November following—he 158 was to appear before the Council. This was determined on the 5th of February. Four lords undertook to give surety in their own proper persons that he would make his appearance on the day named; and orders were immediately issued to release him from confinement.158.1

On the 4th day of March, he presented himself at a Council held before the king in his palace at Greenwich. The Duke of York was present, with ten bishops and twenty temporal peers, among whom were the Protector’s friend, the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Worcester, Treasurer of England, and the king’s half-brother, the Earl of Pembroke. His accuser, the Duke of Norfolk, was absent, probably not without a reason. In presence of the assembled lords, Somerset then declared that he had been imprisoned without a cause and confined in the Tower of London one whole year and more than ten weeks over, and had only been liberated on bail on the 7th of February. So, as he declared there was no charge made against him for which he deserved to be confined, he besought the king that his sureties might be discharged; offering, if any one would accuse him of anything contrary to his allegiance, that he would be ready at all times to answer according to law and like a true knight. Somerset released. His protestations of loyalty were at once accepted by the king, who thereupon declared that he knew the duke to be his true and faithful liegeman, and wished it to be understood that he so reputed him. After this, the mouths of all adversaries were of course sealed up. The duke’s bail were discharged. His character was cleared from every insinuation of disloyalty; and whatever questions might remain between him and the Duke of York were referred to the arbitration of eight other lords, whose judgment both parties were bound over in recognisances of 20,000 marks, that they would abide.158.2

The significance of all this could not be doubtful. The king’s recovery had put an end to the Duke of York’s power as Protector, and he was determined to be guided once more by the counsels of the queen and Somerset. On the 6th March, 159 York was deprived of the government of Calais which he had undertaken by indenture for seven years.159.1 On the 7th, the Great Seal was taken from the Earl of Salisbury and given to Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. These changes, or at least the former, promised little good to the country; and in the beginning of May we not only find that Calais stood again in imminent danger of siege,159.2 but that considerable fears were entertained of an invasion of England.159.3 But to the Duke of York they gave cause for personal apprehension. Notwithstanding the specious appointment of a tribunal to settle the controversy between him and Somerset, it was utterly impossible for him to expect anything like an equitable adjustment. A Council was called at Westminster in the old exclusive spirit, neither York nor any of his friends being summoned to attend it. A Great Council was then arranged to meet at Leicester long before the day on which judgment was to be given by the arbitrators; and it was feared both by York and his friends, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, that if they ventured to appear there they would find themselves entrapped. The ostensible ground of the calling of that council was to provide for the surety of the king’s person; from which it was fairly to be conjectured that a suspicion of treason was to be insinuated against persons who were too deservedly popular to be arrested in London with safety to the Government.159.4

York and his friends take arms.

York had by this time retired into the north, and uniting with Salisbury and Warwick, it was determined by all three that the cause assigned for the calling of the Council justified them in seeking the king’s presence with a strong body of followers. On the 20th May they arrived at Royston, and from thence addressed a letter to Archbishop Bourchier, as Chancellor, in which they not only repudiated all intention of disloyalty, but declared that, as the Council was summoned for the surety of the king’s person, they had brought with them a 160 company of armed followers expressly for his protection. If any real danger was to be apprehended they were come to do him service; but if their own personal enemies were abusing their influence with the king to inspire him with causeless distrust, they were determined to remove unjust suspicions, and relied on their armed companies for protection to themselves. Meanwhile they requested the archbishop’s intercession to explain to Henry the true motives of their conduct.160.1

Next day they marched on to Ware, and there penned an address to the king himself, of which copies seem to have been diffused, either at the time or very shortly afterwards, in justification of their proceedings. One of these came to the hands of John Paston, and the reader may consequently peruse the memorial for himself in Volume III.160.2 In it, as will be seen, York and his friends again made most urgent protest of their good intent, and complained grievously of the unfair proceedings of their enemies in excluding them from the royal presence and poisoning the king’s mind with doubts of their allegiance. They declared that they had no other intent in seeking the king’s presence than to prove themselves his true liegemen by doing him all the service in their power; and they referred him further to a copy of their letter to the archbishop, which they thought it well to forward along with their memorial, as they had not been informed that he had shown its contents to the king.

In point of fact, neither the letter to the archbishop nor the memorial to the king himself was allowed to come to Henry’s hands. The archbishop, indeed, had done his duty, and on receipt of the letter to himself had sent it on, with all haste, to Kilburn, where his messenger overtook the king on his way northwards from London. But the man was not admitted into the royal presence; for the Duke of Somerset and his friends were determined the Yorkists should not be heard, that their advance might wear as much as possible the aspect of a rebellion. York and his allies accordingly marched on from Ware to St. Albans, where they arrived at an early hour on the morning of the 22nd. Meanwhile the king, who had left 161 London the day before, accompanied by the Dukes of Buckingham and Somerset, his half-brother, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, the Earls of Northumberland, Devonshire, Stafford, Dorset, and Wiltshire, and a number of other lords, knights, and gentlemen, amounting in all to upwards of 2000, arrived at the very same place just before them, having rested at Watford the previous night. Anticipating the approach of the Duke of York, the king and his friends occupied the suburb of St. Peter’s, which lay on that side of the town by which the duke must necessarily come. The duke accordingly, and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, drew up their forces in the Keyfield, outside the barriers of the town. From seven in the morning till near ten o’clock the two hosts remained facing each other without a blow being struck; during which time the duke and the two earls, still endeavouring to obtain a peaceful interview with the king, petitioned to have an answer to their memorial of the preceding day. They were told in reply that it had not been received by the king, on which they made new and more urgent representations. At first, it would seem, they demanded access to the royal presence to declare and justify their true intentions; but when this could not be obtained, they made a still more obnoxious request. They insisted that certain persons whom they would accuse of treason should be delivered into their hands, reminding the king, as respectfully as the fact could be alluded to, that past experience would not permit them to trust to a mere promise on his part that a traitor should be kept in confinement.161.1

For the answer made to this demand, and for the details of the battle which ensued, we may as well refer the reader to the very curious paper (No. 283) from which we have already derived most of the above particulars. We are not here writing the history of the times, and it may be sufficient for us to say that York and his friends were completely victorious. The action lasted only half an hour. Battle of St. Albans. The Duke of Somerset was slain, and with him the Earl of Northumberland, Lords Clifford and Clinton, with about 400 persons of inferior rank, 162 as the numbers were at first reported. This, however, seems to have been an over-estimate.162.1 The king himself was wounded by an arrow in the neck, and, after the engagement, was taken prisoner; while the Earl of Wiltshire, and the Duke of York’s old enemy, Thorpe, fled disgracefully. When all was over, the duke with the two earls came humbly and knelt before the king, beseeching his forgiveness for what they had done in his presence, and requesting him to acknowledge them as his true liegemen, seeing that they had never intended to do him personal injury. To this Henry at once agreed, and took them once more into favour.162.2

Thus again was effected ‘a change of ministry’—by sharper and more violent means than had formerly been employed, but certainly by the only means which had now become at all practicable. The government of Somerset was distinctly unconstitutional. The deliberate and systematic exclusion from the king’s councils of a leading peer of the realm—of one who, by mere hereditary right, quite apart from natural capacity and fitness, was entitled at any time to give his advice to royalty, was a crime that could not be justified. For conduct very similar the two Spencers had been banished by Parliament in the days of Edward II.; and if it had been suffered now to remain unpunished, there would not have existed the smallest check upon arbitrary government and intolerable maladministration.

Such, we may be well assured, was the feeling of the city of London, which on the day following the battle received the victors in triumph with a general procession.162.3 The Duke of York conducted the king to the Bishop of London’s palace, and a council being assembled, writs were sent out for a Parliament to meet on the 9th of July following.162.4 Meanwhile the duke was made Constable of England, and Lord Bourchier, Treasurer. The defence of Calais was committed to the Earl of Warwick.162.5 There was, however, no entire and sweeping 163 change made in the officers of state. The Great Seal was allowed to continue in the hands of Archbishop Bourchier.

It remained, however, for Parliament to ratify what had been done. However justifiable in a moral point of view, the conduct of York and his allies wore an aspect of violence towards the sovereign, which made it necessary that its legality should be investigated by the highest court in the realm. Inquiry was made both in Parliament and by the king’s Council which of the lords about the king had been responsible for provoking the collision. Angry and unpleasant feelings, as might be expected, burst out in consequence. The Earl of Warwick accused Lord Cromwell to the king, and when the latter attempted to vindicate himself, swore that what he stated was untrue. So greatly was Lord Cromwell intimidated, that the Earl of Shrewsbury, at his request, took up his lodging at St. James’s, beside the Mews, for his protection. The retainers of York, Warwick, and Salisbury went about fully armed, and kept their lords’ barges on the river amply furnished with weapons. Proclamations, however, were presently issued against bearing arms. The Parliament, at last, laid the whole blame of the encounter upon the deceased Duke of Somerset, and the courtiers Thorpe and Joseph; and by an Act which received the royal assent, it was declared that the Duke of York and his friends had acted the part of good and faithful subjects. ‘To the which bill,’ said Henry Windsor in a letter to his friends Bocking and Worcester, ‘many a man grudged full sore now it is past’; but he requested them to burn a communication full of such uncomfortable matter to comment upon as the quarrels and heartburnings of lords.163.1

The Parliamentary elections.

But with whatever grudge it may have been that Parliament condoned the acts of the Yorkists, it seems not to have been without some degree of pressure that the duke and his allies obtained a Parliament so much after their own minds. Here, for instance, we have the Duchess of Norfolk writing to John Paston, just before the election, that it was thought necessary ‘that my lord have at this time in the Parliament such persons as long unto him and be of his menial servants (!)’; on which 164 account she requests his vote and influence in favour of John Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain.164.1 The application could scarcely have been agreeable to the person to whom it was addressed; for it seems that John Paston himself had on this occasion some thought of coming forward as a candidate for Norfolk. Exception was taken to John Howard, one of the duke’s nominees (who, about eight-and-twenty years later, was created Duke of Norfolk himself, and was the ancestor of the present ducal family), on the ground that he possessed no lands within the county;164.2 and at the nomination the names of Berney, Grey, and Paston were received with great favour.164.3 John Jenney thought it ‘an evil precedent for the shire that a strange man should be chosen, and no worship to my lord of York nor to my lord of Norfolk to write for him; for if the gentlemen of the shire will suffer such inconvenience, in good faith the shire shall not be called of such worship as it hath been.’ So unpopular, in fact, was Howard’s candidature that the Duke of Norfolk was half persuaded to give him up, declaring, that since his return was objected to he would write to the under-sheriff that the shire should have free election, provided they did not choose Sir Thomas Tuddenham or any of the old adherents of the Duke of Suffolk. And so, for a time it seemed as if free election would be allowed. The under-sheriff even ventured to write to John Paston that he meant to return his name and that of Master Grey; ‘nevertheless,’ he added significantly, ‘I have a master.’ Howard appeared to be savage with disappointment. He was ‘as wode’ (i.e. mad), wrote John Jenney, ‘as a wild bullock.’ But in the end it appeared he had no need to be exasperated, for when the poll came to be taken, he and the other nominee of the Duke of Norfolk were found to have gained the day.164.4

Besides the act of indemnity for the Duke of York and his partisans, and a new oath of allegiance being sworn to by the Lords, little was done at this meeting of the Parliament. On the 31st July it was prorogued, to meet again upon the 12th November. But in the interval another complication had arisen. The king, who seems to have suffered in health from 165 the severe shock that he must have received by the battle of St. Albans,165.1 had felt the necessity of retirement to recover his composure, and had withdrawn before the meeting of Parliament to Hertford; at which time the Duke of York, in order to be near him, took up his quarters at the Friars at Ware.165.2 He was well, or at all events well enough to open Parliament in person on the 9th July; but shortly afterwards he retired to Hertford again, where according to the dates of his Privy Seals, I find that he remained during August and September. The king again ill. In the month of October following he was still there, and it was reported that he had fallen sick of his old infirmity;—which proved to be too true.165.3

Altogether matters looked gloomy enough. Change of ministry by force of arms, whatever might be said for it, was not a thing to win the confidence either of king or people. There were prophecies bruited about that another battle would take place before St. Andrew’s Day—the greatest that had been since the battle of Shrewsbury in the days of Henry IV. One Dr. Green ventured to predict it in detail. The scene of the conflict was to be between the Bishop of Salisbury’s Inn and Westminster Bars, and three bishops and four temporal lords were to be among the slain. The Londoners were spared this excitement; but from the country there came news of a party outrage committed by the eldest son of the Earl of Devonshire, on a dependant of the Lord Bonvile, Disturbances in the West. and the West of England seems to have been disturbed for some time afterwards.165.4 From a local MS. chronicle cited by Holinshed, it appears that a regular pitched battle took place between the two noblemen on Clist Heath, about two miles from Exeter, in which Lord Bonvile having gained the victory, entered triumphantly into the city. A modern historian of Exeter, however, seems to have read the MS. differently, and tells us that Lord Bonvile was driven into the city by defeat.165.5 However this may be, the Earl of Devonshire did not allow the matter to rest. Accompanied 166 by a large body of retainers—no less, it is stated, than 800 horse and 4000 foot—he attacked the Dean and Canons of Exeter, made several of the latter prisoners, and robbed the cathedral.166.1

That one out of the number of those great lords who had been attached to the government of the queen and the Duke of Somerset should thus have abused his local influence, was pretty much what might have been expected at such a juncture. But the effect was only to strengthen the hands of York when Parliament met again in November. The situation was now once more what it had been in the beginning of the previous year. The day before Parliament met, the Duke of York obtained a commission to act as the king’s lieutenant on its assembling.166.2 The warrant for the issuing of this commission was signed by no less than thirty-nine Lords of the Council. The Houses then met under the presidency of the duke.166.3 The Commons sent a deputation to the Upper House, to petition the Lords that they would ‘be good means to the King’s Highness’ for the appointment of some person to undertake the defence of the realm and the repressing of disorders. But for some days this request remained unanswered. The appeal was renewed by the Commons a second time, and again a third time, with an intimation that no other business would be attended to till it was answered. York again Protector. On the second occasion the Lords named the Duke of York Protector, but he desired that they would excuse him, and elect some other. The Lords, however, declined to alter their choice, and the duke at last agreed to accept the office, on certain specific conditions which experience had taught him to make still more definite for his own protection than those on which he had before insisted. Among other things it was now agreed that the Protectorship should not again be terminated by the mere fact of the king’s recovery; but that when the king should be in a position to 167 exercise his functions, the Protector should be discharged of his office in Parliament by the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal.167.1

On the 19th of November, accordingly, York was formally appointed Protector for the second time. Three days afterwards, at Westminster, the king, whose infirmity on this occasion could scarcely have amounted to absolute loss of his faculties, committed the entire government of the kingdom to his Council, merely desiring that they would inform him of anything they might think fit to determine touching the honour and surety of his person.167.2 The business of the nation was again placed on something like a stable and satisfactory footing; and Parliament, after sitting till the 13th December, was prorogued to the 14th January, in order that the Duke of York might go down into the west for the repressing of those disorders of which we have already spoken.167.3

A.D. 1456.

Unluckily, things did not remain long in a condition so hopeful for the restoration of order. Early in the following year the king recovered his health, and notwithstanding the support of which he had been assured in Parliament, York knew that his authority as Protector would be taken from him. On the 9th of February, as we learn from a letter of John Bocking, it had been anticipated that he would have received his discharge in Parliament; but he was allowed to retain office for a fortnight longer. On that day he and Warwick thought fit to come to the Parliament with a company of 300 armed men, alleging that they stood in danger of being waylaid upon the road. The pretence does not seem to have been generally credited; and the practical result of this demonstration was simply to prevent any other lords from going to the Parliament at all.167.4

The real question, however, which had to be considered was the kind of government that should prevail when York was no more Protector. The queen was again making anxious efforts to get the management of affairs into her own hands; but the battle of St. Albans had deprived her of her great ally the Duke of Somerset, and there was no one now to fill his 168 place. It is true he had left a son who was now Duke of Somerset in his stead, and quite as much attached to her interests. There were, moreover, the Duke of Buckingham and others who were by no means friendly to the Duke of York. But no man possessed anything like the degree of power, experience, and political ability to enable the king to dispense entirely with the services of his present Protector. The king himself, it was said, desired that he should be named his Chief Councillor and Lieutenant, and that powers should be conferred upon him by patent inferior only to those given him by the Parliament. But this was not thought a likely settlement, and no one really knew what was to be the new régime. The attention of the Lords was occupied with ‘a great gleaming star’ which had just made its appearance, and which really offered as much help to the solution of the enigma as any appearances purely mundane and political.168.1

At length on the 25th of February the Lords exonerated York from his duties as Protector; soon after which, if not on the same day, Parliament must have been dissolved.168.2 Again discharged. An Act of Resumption, rendered necessary by the state of the revenue, was the principal fruit of its deliberations.168.3 The finances of the kingdom were placed, if not in a sound, at least in a more hopeful condition than before; and Parliament and the Protector were both dismissed, without, apparently, the slightest provision being made for the future conduct of affairs. Government, in fact, seems almost to have fallen into abeyance. There is a most striking blank in the records of the Privy Council from the end of January 1456 to the end of November 1457. That some councils were held during this period we know from other evidences;168.4 but with the exception of one single occasion, when it was necessary to 169 issue a commission for the trial of insurgents in Kent,169.1 there is not a single record left to tell us what was done at them.

Yet the machine of state still moved, no one could tell exactly how. Acts were done in the king’s name if not really and truly by the king, and by the sheer necessity of the case York appears to have had the ordering of all things. But his authority hung by a thread. His acts were without the slightest legal validity except in so far as they might be considered as having the sanction of the king; and in whatever way that sanction may or may not have been expressed, there was no security that it would not afterwards be withdrawn and disavowed.

And so indeed it happened at this time in a matter that concerned deeply the honour of the whole country. The outbreak of civil war had provoked the interference of an enemy of whom Englishmen were always peculiarly intolerant. The Duke of Somerset slain at St. Albans was uncle to James II., the reigning king of Scotland, who is said to have resented his death on the ground of consanguinity. The King of Scots. In less than six weeks after the battle, ‘the King of Scots with the red face,’ as he is called in a contemporary chronicle, laid siege to Berwick both by water and land. But the Bishop of Durham, the Earl of Northumberland, and other Lords of the Marches, took prompt measures for the relief of the town, and soon assembled such a force as to compel James not only to quit the siege but to leave all his ordnance and victuals behind him.169.2 How matters stood between the two countries during the next ten months we have no precise information; but it is clear that England, although the injured party, could not have been anxious to turn the occasion into one of open rupture. Peace still continued to be preserved till, on the 10th of May 1456, James wrote to the King of England by Lyon herald, declaring that the truce of 1453 was injurious to his kingdom, and that unless more favourable conditions were conceded to him he would have recourse to arms.169.3 A message more 170 calculated to fire the spirit of the English nation it would have been impossible for James to write; nevertheless, owing either to Henry’s love of peace, or to his lack of advisers after his own mind, it was not till the 26th of July that any answer was returned to it. On that day the Duke of York obtained, or took, the liberty of replying in Henry’s name. To the insolence of the King of Scots, he opposed all the haughtiness that might have been expected from the most warlike of Henry’s ancestors. Insisting to the fullest extent on those claims of feudal superiority which England never had abandoned and Scotland never had acknowledged, he told James that his conduct was mere insolence and treason in a vassal against his lord; that it inspired not the slightest dread but only contempt on the part of England; and that measures would be speedily taken to punish his presumption.170.1

A month later the Duke of York addressed a letter to James in his own name, declaring that as he understood the Scotch king had entered England, he purposed to go and meet him. He at the same time reproached James with conduct unworthy of one who was ‘called a mighty Prince and a courageous knight,’ in making daily forays and suddenly retiring again.170.2 The end of this expedition we do not know; but we know that not long afterwards Henry changed his policy. The letter written by the Duke of York in the king’s name was regularly enrolled on the Scotch Roll among the records of Chancery; but to it was prefixed a note on the king’s behalf, disclaiming responsibility for its tenor, and attributing to the duke the usurpation of authority, and the disturbance of all government since the time of Jack Cade’s insurrection.170.3

The glimpses of light which we have on the political situation during this period are far from satisfactory. Repeated notice, however, is taken in these letters of a fact which seems significant of general distrust and mutual suspicion among the leading persons in the land. The king, queen, and lords were all separated and kept carefully at a distance from each other. 171 Thus, while the king was at Sheen, the queen and her infant prince were staying at Tutbury, the Duke of York at Sandal, and the Earl of Warwick at Warwick.171.1 Afterwards we find the queen removed to Chester, while the Duke of Buckingham was at Writtle, near Chelmsford in Essex. The only lord with the king at Sheen was his half-brother the Earl of Pembroke. His other brother, the Earl of Richmond, who died in the course of this year, was in Wales making war upon some chieftain of the country whose name seems rather ambiguous. ‘My Lord [of] York,’ it is said, ‘is at Sendall still, and waiteth on the queen, and she on him.’171.2 The state of matters was evidently such that it was apprehended serious outrages might break out; and reports were even spread abroad of a battle in which Lord Beaumont had been slain and the Earl of Warwick severely wounded.171.3

The king and queen.

The separation of the king and queen is especially remarkable. During May and June they were more than a hundred miles apart; and in the latter month the queen had increased the distance by removing from Tutbury in Staffordshire to Chester. It was then that she was said to be waiting on my Lord of York and he on her. The exact interpretation of the position must be partly matter of conjecture, but I take it to be as follows. The Duke of York, as we find stated only a few months later, was in very good favour with the king but not with the queen;171.4 and we know from Fabyan that the latter was at this time doing all she could to put an end to his authority. It appears to me that by her influence the duke must have been ordered to withdraw from the Court, and that to prevent his again seeking access to the king’s presence, she pursued him into the north. At Tutbury171.5 she would block his way from Sandal up to London; and though for some reason or other she removed further off to Chester, she still kept an anxious watch upon the duke, and he did the same on her. Very probably her removal did give him the opportunity she dreaded of moving southwards; for he must have been 172 with the king at Windsor on the 26th of July when he wrote in Henry’s name that answer to the King of Scots of which we have already spoken.

However this may be, Margaret soon after had recourse to other means to effect her object. In consequence of the Duke of York’s popularity in London, it was expedient to remove the king some distance from the capital.172.1 He appears to have been staying at Windsor during July and the beginning of August. In the middle of the latter month he took his departure northwards. By the dates of his Privy Seals we find him to have been at Wycombe on the 18th, at Kenilworth on the 24th, and at Lichfield on the 29th. In September he moved about between Lichfield, Coventry, and Leicester; but by the beginning of October the Court seems to have settled itself at Coventry, where a council was assembled on the 7th.172.2 To this council the Duke of York and his friends were regularly summoned, as well as the lords whom the queen intended to honour; but even before it met, changes had begun to be made in the principal officers of state. On the 5th, Viscount Bourchier, the brother of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was dismissed from his office of Lord Treasurer, and the Earl of Shrewsbury was appointed in his room. On the 11th, the archbishop himself was called upon to surrender the Great Seal, and Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, was made Chancellor in his stead. Laurence Booth, afterwards Bishop of Durham, was made Lord Privy Seal.

The new appointments seem to have been on their own merits unexceptionable,—that of Waynflete more especially. Whether the superiority of the new men was such as to make it advisable to supersede the old is another question, on which we would not attempt to pronounce an opinion, either one way or other. One thing, however, we may believe on the evidence of James Gresham, whose letters frequently give us very interesting political intelligence: the changes created dissatisfaction in some of the queen’s own friends, particularly in the Duke of Buckingham, who was half-brother to two of the discharged functionaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury and 173 Viscount Bourchier. Either from this cause or from a mere English love of fair-play, it would appear that Buckingham now supported the Duke of York, who, it is said, though at this time he had some interviews with the king and found Henry still as friendly as he could desire, would certainly have been troubled at his departure if Buckingham had not befriended him. About the Court there was a general atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. On the 11th October, the very day on which Waynflete was appointed Chancellor, an encounter took place between the Duke of Somerset’s men and the watchmen of the city of Coventry, in which two or three of the citizens were killed. And probably it would have gone hard with the duke’s retainers, had not Buckingham used his good offices here too as peacemaker; for the alarm-bell rang and the citizens rose in arms. But by the interposition of Buckingham the tumult was appeased.173.1

A.D. 1457.

For about a twelvemonth from this time we find that the Court continued generally at Coventry,173.2 occasionally moving about to Stafford, Coleshill, Chester, Shrewsbury, Kenilworth, Hereford, and Leicester.173.3 The queen evidently feared all the while to bring her husband nearer London, lest he should fall once more under the power of the Duke of York. Meanwhile the want of a vigorous ruler became every day more apparent. Not only was Calais again in danger of siege,173.4 but the coast of Kent was attacked by enemies, and within the kingdom a dangerous spirit of disaffection had shown itself in various places. On the Patent Rolls we meet with numerous commissions for keeping watch upon the coasts,173.5 for arraying the country against invasion,173.6 and for assembling the posse comitatus in various counties, against treasonable attempts to stir up the people.173.7 During April the Court had removed to 174 Hereford,174.1 apparently in consequence of some disturbances which had taken place in Wales under Sir William Herbert. Its sojourn upon the Welsh borders had an excellent effect, the burgesses and gentlemen about Hereford all declaring themselves ready to take the king’s part unless a peace were made. On the 1st of May it was reported in London that Herbert had offered, on being granted his life and goods, to return to his allegiance and appear before the king and lords at Leicester; so we may conclude the insurrection did not last long after.174.2

But though the personal influence of the king was doubtless great and beneficial within his own immediate vicinity, it could do little for the good order and protection of the country generally. Distrust, exclusiveness, and a bankrupt exchequer were not likely to obtain for the king willing and hearty service. Notwithstanding the commissions issued to keep watch upon the coasts, the French managed to surprise and plunder Sandwich. The French attack Sandwich. On Sunday, the 28th August, a large force under the command of Pierre de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy, landed not far from the town, which they took and kept possession of during the entire day. A number of the inhabitants, on the first alarm, retreated on board some ships lying in the harbour, from whence they began presently to shoot at the enemy. But de Brézé having warned them that if they continued he would burn their ships, they found it prudent to leave off. Having killed the bailiffs and principal officers, the Frenchmen carried off a number of wealthy persons as prisoners, and returned to their ships in the evening, laden with valuable spoils from the town and neighbourhood.174.3

The disaster must have been keenly felt; but if Englishmen had known the whole truth, it would have been felt more keenly still. Our own old historians were not aware of the 175 fact, but an early French chronicler who lived at the time assures us that the attack had been purposely invited by Margaret of Anjou out of hatred to the Duke of York, in order to make a diversion, while the Scots should ravage England!175.1 It was well for her that the truth was not suspected.

Earl of Warwick severely wounded.^171.3
text has superfluous close quote

At length, it would seem, the Court found it no longer possible to remain at a distance from the metropolis. In October the king had removed to Chertsey,175.2 and soon after we find him presiding at a Great Council, which had been summoned to meet in his palace at Westminster in consequence of the urgent state of affairs. Though attended not only by the Duke of York, but by a large number of the principal lords on both sides, the meeting does not appear to have led to any very satisfactory results. All that we know of its proceedings is that some of them, at least, were of a stormy character,—one point on which all parties were agreed being the exclusion from the council chamber of Pecock, Bishop Pecock. Bishop of Chichester, an ardent and honest-minded prelate, who, having laboured hard to reconcile the Lollards to the authority of the Church by arguments of common sense instead of persecution, was at this time stigmatised as a heretic and sedition-monger, and very soon after was deprived of his bishopric. It augured little good for that union of parties which was now felt to be necessary for the public weal, that the first act on which men generally could be got to agree was the persecution of sense and reason. There were other matters before the council on which they were unable to come to a conclusion, and they broke up on the 29th November, with a resolution to meet again on the 27th January; for which meeting summonses were at once sent out, notifying that on that day not one of the lords would be excused attendance.175.3

It was, indeed, particularly important that this meeting 176 should be a full one, and that every lord should be compelled to take his share of the responsibility for its decisions. The principal aim was expressly stated to be a general reconciliation and adjustment of private controversies176.1—an object to which it was impossible to offer direct opposition. But whether it was really distasteful to a number of the peers, or obstacles started up in individual cases, there were certainly several who had not arrived in town by the day appointed for the meeting. A.D. 1458. The Earl of Salisbury’s excuse, dated at Sheriff Hutton on the 24th of January,176.2 does not refer to this, for it appears certainly to be of a different year. Fabyan says that he had already arrived in London on the 15th January. He made his appearance there at the head of 400 horse, with eighty knights and squires in his company. The Duke of York also came, though he arrived only on the 26th, ‘with his own household only, to the number of 140 horse.’ But the Duke of Somerset only arrived on the last day of the month with 200 horse; the Duke of Exeter delayed his coming till the first week of February; and the Earl of Warwick, who had to come from Calais, was detained by contrary winds. Thus, although the king had come up to Westminster by the time prefixed, a full Council could not be had for at least some days after; and even on the 14th of February there was one absentee, the Earl of Arundel, who had to be written to by letters of Privy Seal.176.3

A Great Council in London.

But by the 14th Warwick had arrived in London with a body of 600 men, ‘all apparelled in red jackets, with white ragged staves.’176.4 The town was now full of the retinues of the different noblemen, and the mayor and sheriffs trembled for the peace of the city. A very special watch was instituted. ‘The mayor,’ says Fabyan, ‘for so long as the king and the lords lay thus in the city, had daily in harness 5000 citizens, and rode daily about the city and suburbs of the same, to see that the king’s peace were kept; and nightly he provided for 3000 men in harness to give attendance upon 177 three aldermen, and they to keep the night-watch till 7 of the clock upon the morrow, till the day-watch were assembled.’ If peace was to be the result of all this concourse, the settlement evidently could not bear to be protracted. The Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had taken up their quarters within the city itself; but the young lords whose fathers had been slain at St. Albans—the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and his brother, Lord Egremont, and the Lord Clifford—were believed to be bent upon revenge, and the civic authorities refused them entrance within their bounds.177.1 Thus the lords within the town and those without belonged to the two opposite parties respectively; and in consequence of their mutual jealousies, conferences had to be arranged between them in the morning at the Black Friars, and in the afternoon at the White Friars, in Fleet Street.177.2 The king, for his part, having opened the proceedings with some very earnest exhortations addressed to both parties, withdrew himself and retired to Berkhampstead.177.3 The Duke of Somerset and others went to and fro to consult with him during the deliberations. Meanwhile the necessity of some practical arrangement for government must have been felt more urgent every day. Sixty sail of Frenchmen were seen off the coast of Sussex; and though Lord Falconbridge was at Southampton in command of some vessels (probably on his own responsibility), there was a general feeling of insecurity among the merchants and among dwellers by the sea-coast. Botoner had heard privately from Calais that the French meditated a descent upon Norfolk at Cromer and Blakeney.177.4 And the news shortly afterwards received from the district showed that his information was not far wrong.177.5

Terms of agreement.

At last it was agreed on both sides that old animosities should be laid aside, and that some reparation should be made by the Yorkists to the sons and widows of the lords who had fallen on the king’s side at St. Albans. The exact amount of this reparation was left to the award of Henry, who decided that it should consist of an endowment of £45 a year to the 178 Monastery of St. Albans, to be employed in masses for the slain, and of certain money payments, or assignments out of moneys due to them by the Crown, to be made by York, Warwick, and Salisbury, to Eleanor, Duchess Dowager of Somerset and to her son, Duke Henry, to Lord Clifford, and others, in lieu of all claims and actions which the latter parties might have against the former.178.1 With what cordiality this arrangement was accepted on either side we do not presume to say. Historians universally speak of it as a hollow concord, unreal from the first. But it at least preserved the kingdom in something like peace for about a twelvemonth. It was celebrated by a great procession to St. Paul’s on Lady Day, which must have been an imposing spectacle. The king marched in royal habit with the crown upon his head, York and the queen followed, arm in arm, and the principal rivals led the way, walking hand in hand.178.2

A sea fight.

The keeping of the sea was now intrusted to the Earl of Warwick, and it was not long before he distinguished himself by an action which probably relieved the English coasts for some time from any immediate danger of being attacked by the enemy. On the morning of Trinity Sunday word was brought to him at Calais of a fleet of 28 Spaniards, of which 16 were described as ‘great ships of forecastle.’ Immediately he manned such vessels as he had in readiness, and went out to seek the enemy. The force at his command was only five ships of forecastle, three carvels, and four pinnaces; but with these he did not hesitate to come to an engagement. At four o’clock on Monday morning the battle began, and it continued till ten, when the English obtained a hard-won victory. ‘As men say,’ wrote one of the combatants, ‘there was not so great a battle upon the sea this forty winter; and forsooth, we were well and truly beat.’ Nevertheless, six of the enemy’s ships were taken, and the rest were put to flight, not without very considerable slaughter on either side.178.3

A.D. 1459.

In the year following, the fire that had for some time smouldered, burst once more into a flame. About Candlemas, according to Fabyan—but an older authority says specifically on the 9th November preceding179.1—a fray occurred between one of the king’s servants and one of the Earl of Warwick’s, as the earl, who had been attending the Council at Westminster, was proceeding to his barge. The king’s servant being wounded, the other made his escape; but a host of retainers attached to the royal household rushed out upon the earl and his attendants, and wounded several of them before they could embark. With hard rowing they got beyond the power of their assailants and made their way into the city; but the queen and her friends insisted on imputing the outrage to the earl himself, and demanded his arrest. The earl found it politic to retire to Warwick, and afterwards to his former post at Calais. On this the queen and her council turned their machinations against his father, the Earl of Salisbury, whom Lord Audley was commissioned to arrest and bring prisoner to London. Audley accordingly took with him a large body of men, and hearing that the earl was on his way from Middleham in Yorkshire, journeying either towards Salisbury or London, he hastened to intercept him. Civil war renewed. The earl, however, had received notice of what was intended, and having gathered about him a sufficient band of followers, defeated Lord Audley in a regular pitched battle at Bloreheath in Staffordshire, where he attempted to stop his way, on Sunday the 23rd of September.179.2

The old elements of confusion were now again let loose. Commissions to raise men were issued in the king’s name, and the Duke of York and all his friends were denounced as 180 a confederacy of traitors. They, for their parts, gathered together the men of the Marches in self-defence. At Ludlow, the duke was joined by the Earl of Salisbury, and also by the Earl of Warwick, who had come over again from Calais. The king takes the field. On the other hand, the king himself entered into the strife in a way he had not done hitherto. He not only took the field in person against the rebellious lords, but exhibited a spirit in the endurance of fatigue and discomfort which seems to have commanded general admiration. Even at the time of Lord Audley’s overthrow, it would appear that he was leading forward a reserve. For about a month he kept continually camping out, never resting at night, except on Sundays, in the same place he had occupied the night before, and sometimes, in spite of cold, rough weather, bivouacking for two nights successively on the bare field. After the battle of Bloreheath, he could only regard Salisbury as an overt enemy of his crown. At the same time he despatched heralds to the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick, with proclamations of free and perfect pardon to themselves and all but a few of the leaders at Bloreheath, on condition of their submitting to him within six days.180.1

To Garter King of Arms, one of the messengers by whom these offers were conveyed, the confederate lords made answer, and also delivered a written reply to be conveyed to the king, declaring the perfect loyalty of their intentions, which they would have been glad to prove in the king’s presence if it had been only possible for them to go to him with safety. They had already endeavoured to testify their unshaken fidelity to Henry by an indenture drawn up and signed by them in Worcester Cathedral. This instrument they had forwarded to the king by a deputation of churchmen, headed by the prior of that cathedral, and including among others Dr. William Lynwoode,180.2 who administered to them the sacrament on the occasion. Again, after Garter left, they wrote from 181 Ludlow on the 10th of October, protesting that their actions had been misconstrued, and their tenants subjected to wrong and violence, while they themselves lay under unjust suspicion. Their enemies, they said, thirsted for the possession of their lands, and hoped to obtain them by their influence with the king. For their own part they had hitherto avoided a conflict, not from any fear of the power of their enemies, but only for dread of God and of his Highness, and they meant to persevere in this peaceful course, until driven by necessity to self-defence.181.1

These earnest, solemn, and repeated expressions of loyalty have scarcely, I think, received from historians the attention to which they are entitled.181.2 Of their sincerity, of course, men may form different opinions; but it is right to note that the confederate lords had done all that was in their power by three several and distinct protests to induce the king to think more favourably of their intentions. It is, moreover, to be observed that they remained at this time in an attitude strictly defensive. But the king and his forces still approaching, they drew themselves up in battle array at Ludford, in the immediate vicinity of the town of Ludlow. Here, as they were posted on Friday the 12th October, it would almost seem that the lords were not without apprehension of the defection of some of their followers. A report was spread through the camp that the king was suddenly deceased, witnesses were brought in who swore to the fact, and mass was said for the repose of his soul. But that very evening, Henry, at the head of his army, arrived within half a mile of their position. The state of the country, flooded by recent rains, had alone prevented him from coming upon them sooner. Before nightfall a few volleys of artillery were discharged against the royal army, and a regular engagement was expected next day. But, meanwhile, the royal proclamation of pardon seems to have had its effect. One Andrew Trollope, who had come over with the Earl of Warwick from 182 Calais, withdrew at dead of night and carried over a considerable body of men to the service of the king, to whom he communicated the secrets of the camp. The blow was absolutely fatal. The Yorkists disperse. The lords at once abandoned all thought of further resistance. Leaving their banners in the field, they withdrew at midnight. York and his second son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, fled into Wales, from whence they sailed into Ireland. His eldest, Edward, Earl of March, accompanied by the two other earls, Warwick and Salisbury, and by Sir John Wenlock, made his way into Devonshire. There by the friendly aid of one John Dynham, afterwards Lord Dynham, and Lord High Treasurer to Henry VII., they bought a ship at Exmouth and sailed to Guernsey. At last, on Friday the 2nd of November, they landed at Calais, where they met with a most cordial reception from the inhabitants.182.1

They are attainted.

Then followed in November the Parliament of Coventry, and the attainder of the Duke of York and all his party. The queen and her friends at last had it all their own way, at least in England. It was otherwise doubtless in Ireland, where the Duke of York remained for nearly a twelvemonth after his flight from Ludlow. It was otherwise too at Calais, where Warwick was all-powerful, and whither discontented Yorkists began to flock from England. It was otherwise, moreover, at sea, where the same Warwick still retained the command of the fleet, and could not be dispossessed, except on parchment. On parchment, however, he was presently superseded in both of his important offices. The Duke of Exeter was intrusted with the keeping of the sea, which even at the time of the great reconciliation of parties he had been displeased that Warwick was allowed to retain.182.2 The young Duke of Somerset was appointed Captain of Calais, but was unable to take possession of his post. Accompanied by Lord Roos and Lord Audley, and fortified by the king’s letters-patent, he crossed the sea, but was refused admittance into the town. Apparently he had put off too long before going 183 over,183.1 and he found the three earls in possession of the place before him; so that he was obliged to land at a place called Scales’ Cliff and go to Guisnes.183.2 But a worse humiliation still awaited him on landing; for of the very sailors that had brought him over, a number conveyed their ships into Calais harbour, offered their services to the Earl of Warwick, and placed in his hands as prisoners certain persons who had taken part against him. They were shortly after beheaded in Calais.183.3

It would seem, in short, that ever since his great naval victory in 1458, Warwick was so highly popular with all the sailors of England, that it was quite as hopeless for the Duke of Exeter to contest his supremacy at sea as for Somerset to think of winning Calais out of his hands. Friends still came flocking over from England to join the three earls at Calais; A.D. 1460. and though in London in the February following nine men were hanged, drawn, and beheaded for attempting to do so,183.4 the cause of the Yorkists remained as popular as ever. In vain were letters written to foreign parts, ‘that no relief be ministered to the traitor who kept Calais.’183.5 In vain the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes endeavoured to contest his right to the government of that important town. All that Somerset could do was to waste his strength in fruitless skirmishes, until on St. George’s Day he suffered such a severe defeat and loss of men at Newnham Bridge, that he was at length forced to abandon all idea of dispossessing the Earl of Warwick.183.6

Not only were the three earls secure in their position at Calais, but there was every reason to believe that they had a large amount of sympathy in Kent, and would meet with a very cordial reception whenever they crossed the sea. To 184 avert the danger of any such attempt, and also, it would appear, with some design of reinforcing the Duke of Somerset at Guisnes, Lord Rivers and his son Sir Anthony Wydevile were sent to Sandwich about the beginning of the year, with a body of 400 men. Besides the command of the town, they were commissioned to take possession of certain ships which belonged to the Earl of Warwick, and lay quietly at anchor in the harbour.184.1 Lord Rivers at Sandwich. But the issue of their exploit was such as to provoke universal ridicule. ‘As to tidings here,’ wrote Botoner from London to John Berney at Caister, ‘I send some offhand, written to you and others, how the Lord Rivers, Sir Anthony his son, and others have won Calais by a feeble assault at Sandwich made by John Denham, Esq., with the number of 800 men, on Tuesday between four and five o’clock in the morning.’184.2

The exact mode in which Rivers and his son ‘won Calais’ seems to have been described in a separate paper. The truth was that a small force under the command of John Denham (or Dynham) was despatched across the sea by Warwick, and landing at Sandwich during the night, contrived not only to seize the ships in the harbour, but even to surprise the earl and his son in their beds, and bring them over as prisoners to the other side of the Channel.184.3 The victors did not fail to turn the incident to account by exhibiting as much contempt as possible for their unfortunate prisoners. ‘My Lord Rivers,’ writes William Paston, ‘was brought to Calais, and before the lords with eight score torches, and there my lord of Salisbury rated him, calling him knave’s son, that he should be so rude to call him and those other lords traitors; for they should be found the king’s true liegemen when he should be found a traitor. And my Lord of Warwick rated him and said that his father was but a squire, and brought up with King Henry V., and since made himself by marriage, and also made a lord; and that it was not his part to have such language of lords, being of the king’s blood. And my Lord of March rated him in like wise. And Sir Anthony was rated for his 185 language of all the three lords in like wise.’185.1 It must have been a curious reflection to the Earl of March when in after years, as King Edward IV., he married the daughter of this same Lord Rivers, that he had taken part in this vituperation of his future father-in-law!

By and by it became sufficiently evident that unless he was considerably reinforced, the Duke of Somerset could do no good at Guisnes. Instead of attempting to maintain a footing beside Calais, the queen’s Government would have enough to do to keep the rebels out of England. The capture of Rivers had excited the most serious alarm, and the landing of Warwick himself upon the eastern coast was looked upon as not improbable.185.2 A new force of 500 men was accordingly sent to Sandwich under the command of one Osbert Mountford or Mundeford,185.3 an old officer of Calais. His instructions were to go from Sandwich to Guisnes, either in aid of the Duke of Somerset, as intimated in Worcester’s Annals, or, according to another contemporary authority,185.4 to bring him over to England. But while he waited for a wind to sail, John Dynham again crossed the sea, attacked the force under the command of Mundeford, and after a little skirmishing, in which he himself was wounded, succeeded in carrying him off to Calais, as he had before done Lord Rivers. Mundeford’s treatment, however, was not so lenient as that of the more noble captive. On the 25th of June he was beheaded at the Tower of Rysebank, which stood near the town, on the opposite side of the harbour.185.5

Meanwhile the Earl of Warwick did not remain at Calais. He scoured the seas with his fleet and sailed into Ireland. Sir Baldwin Fulford, a knight of Devonshire, promised the king, on pain of losing his head, to destroy Warwick’s fleet; 186 but having exhausted the sum of 1000 marks which was allowed him for his expenses, he returned home without having attained his object.186.1 On the 16th of March, Warwick having met with the Duke of York in Ireland, the two noblemen entered the harbour of Waterford with a fleet of six-and-twenty ships well manned; and on the following day, being St. Patrick’s Day, they landed and were ceremoniously received by the mayor and burgesses.186.2 Warwick seems to have remained in Ireland more than two months, concerting with the Duke of York plans for future action. About Whitsunday, which in this year fell on the 1st of June, his fleet was observed by the Duke of Exeter off the coast of Cornwall, on its return to Calais. Exeter’s squadron was superior in strength, and an engagement might have been expected; but the duke was not sure that he could trust his own sailors, and he allowed the earl to pass unmolested.186.3

The Legate Coppini.

About this time there arrived at Calais a papal nuncio, by name Francesco Coppini, Bishop of Terni, returning from England to Rome. He had been sent by the new pope, Pius II., the ablest that had for a long time filled the pontifical chair, to urge Henry to send an ambassador to a congress at Mantua, in which measures were to be concerted for the union and defence of Christendom against the Turks. This was in the beginning of the preceding year,186.4 and, as he himself states, he remained nearly a year and a half in England.186.5 But the incapacity of the king, and the dissensions that prevailed among the lords, rendered his mission a total failure. Henry, indeed, who was never wanting in reverence for the Holy See, named a certain number of bishops and lords to go upon this mission, but they one and all refused. He accordingly sent two priests of little name, with an informal commission to excuse a greater embassy. England was thus discredited at the papal court, and the nuncio, finding his mission fruitless, at last crossed the sea to return home. At Calais, however, 187 he was persuaded by Warwick to remain. The earl himself was about to return to England, and if the legate would come back in his company he might use the influence of his sacred office to heal the wounds of a divided kingdom.187.1

The nuncio had doubtless seen enough of the deplorable condition of England to be convinced that peace was impossible, so long as the lords most fit to govern were banished and proclaimed rebels by the queen and her favourites.187.2 He was, moreover, furnished with powers, by which—the main object of his mission being the union of Christendom—he was authorised to make some efforts to compose the dissensions of England.187.3 But he certainly overstrained them, and allowed himself to become a partisan. Flattered by the attentions shown him by Warwick, he acceded to his suggestion, and when, on the 26th of June,187.4 the day after Mundeford was beheaded at Calais, the confederate lords crossed the Channel, the nuncio was in their company, bearing the standard of the Church. Archbishop Bourchier, too, met them at Sandwich, where they landed, with a great multitude of people; and with his cross borne before him, the Primate of England conducted the three earls and their followers, who increased in number as they went along, until they reached the capital. After a very brief opposition on the part of some of the citizens, the city opened its gates to them. They entered London on the 2nd of July.187.5

The Earls of March, Warwick, and Salisbury.

Before they crossed the sea, the three earls had sent over a set of articles addressed to the archbishop and the commons of England in the name of themselves and the Duke of York, declaring how they had sued in vain to be admitted to the 188 king’s presence to set forth certain matters that concerned the common weal of all the land. Foremost among these was the oppression of the Church, a charge based, seemingly, on facts with which we are unacquainted, and which, if known, might shed a clearer light upon the conduct of the legate and Archbishop Bourchier. Secondly, they complained of the crying evil that the king had given away to favourites all the revenues of his crown, so that his household was supported by acts of rapine and extortion on the part of his purveyors. Thirdly, the laws were administered with great partiality, and justice was not to be obtained. Grievous taxes, moreover, were levied upon the commons, while the destroyers of the land were living upon the patrimony of the crown. And now a heavier charge than ever was imposed upon the inhabitants; for the king, borrowing an idea from the new system of military service in France, had commanded every township to furnish at its own cost a certain number of men for the royal army; ‘which imposition and talliage,’ wrote the lords in this manifesto, ‘if it be continued to their heirs and successors, will be the heaviest charge and worst example that ever grew in England, and the foresaid subjects and the said heirs and successors in such bondage as their ancestors were never charged with.’188.1

Besides these evils, the infatuated policy into which the king had been led by his ill-advisers, threatened to lose Ireland and Calais to the crown, as France had been lost already; for in the former country letters had been sent under the Privy Seal to the chieftains who had hitherto resisted the king’s authority, actually encouraging them to attempt the conquest of the land, while in regard to Calais the king had been induced to write letters to his enemies not to show that town any favour, and thus had given them the greatest possible 189 inducement to attempt its capture. Meanwhile the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire and Viscount Beaumont, who directed everything, kept the king himself, in some things, from the exercise of his own free will, and had caused him to assemble the Parliament of Coventry for the express purpose of ruining the Duke of York and his friends, whose domains they had everywhere pillaged and taken to their own use.189.1

It was impossible, in the nature of things, that evils such as these could be allowed to continue long, and the day of reckoning was now at hand. Of the great events that followed, it will be sufficient here to note the sequence in the briefest possible words. The battle of Northampton. On the 10th July the king was taken prisoner at the battle of Northampton, and was brought to London by the confederate lords. The government, of course, came thus entirely into their hands. Young George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, was made Chancellor of England, Lord Bourchier was appointed Lord Treasurer, and a Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster for the purpose of reversing the attainders passed in the Parliament of Coventry. Of the elections for this Parliament we have some interesting notices in Letter 415, from which we may see how the new turn in affairs had affected the politics of the county of Norfolk. From the first it was feared that after the three earls had got the king into their hands, the old intriguers, Tuddenham and Heydon, would be busy to secure favour, or at all events indulgence, from the party now in the ascendant. But letters-missive were obtained from the three earls, directed to all mayors and other officers in Norfolk, commanding in the king’s name that no one should do them injury, and intimating that the earls did not mean to show them any favour if any person proposed to sue them at law.189.2 Heydon, however, did not choose to remain in Norfolk. He was presently heard of from Berkshire, for which county he had found interest to get himself returned in the new Parliament.

John Paston in Parliament.

John Paston also was returned to this Parliament as one of the representatives of his own county of Norfolk. His 190 sympathies were entirely with the new state of things. And his friend and correspondent, Friar Brackley, who felt with him that the wellbeing of the whole land depended entirely on the Earl of Warwick, sent him exhortations out of Scripture to encourage him in the performance of his political duties.190.1 But what would be the effect of the coming over from Ireland of the Duke of York, who had by this time landed at Chester, and would now take the chief direction of affairs?190.2 Perhaps the chief fear was that he would be too indulgent to political antagonists. Moreover, the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk had contrived to marry her son to one of York’s daughters, and it was apprehended her influence would be considerable. ‘The Lady of Suffolk,’ wrote Friar Brackley to Paston, ‘hath sent up her son and his wife to my Lord of York to ask grace for a sheriff the next year, Stapleton, Boleyn, or Tyrell, qui absit! God send you Poynings, W. Paston, W. Rokewood, or Arblaster. Ye have much to do, Jesus speed you! Ye have many good prayers, what of the convent, city, and country.’190.3

Such was the state of hope, fear, and expectation which the new turn of affairs awakened in some, and particularly in the friends of John Paston. The next great move in the political game perhaps exceeded the anticipations even of Friar Brackley. York challenges the Crown. Yet though the step was undoubtedly a bold one, never, perhaps, was a high course of action more strongly suggested by the results of past experience. After ten miserable years of fluctuating policy, the attainted Yorkists were now for the fourth time in possession of power; but who could tell that they would not be a fourth time set aside and proclaimed as traitors? For yet a fourth time since the fall of Suffolk, England might be subjected to the odious rule of favourites under a well-intentioned king, whose word was not to be relied on. To the commonweal the prospect was serious enough; to the Duke of York and his friends it was absolute and hopeless ruin. But York had now determined what to do. On the 10th of October, the third day of the Parliament, he came to Westminster with a body of 500 armed men, and took up quarters for himself within the royal palace. On the 191 16th he entered the House of Lords, and having sat down in the king’s throne, he delivered to the Lord Chancellor a writing in which he distinctly claimed that he, and not Henry, was by inheritance rightful king of England.191.1

The reader is of course aware of the fact on which this claim was based, namely, that York, through the female line, was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III., while King Henry, his father, and his grandfather had all derived their rights from John of Gaunt, who was Lionel’s younger brother. Henry IV. indeed was an undoubted usurper; but to set aside his family after they had been in possession of the throne for three generations must have seemed a very questionable proceeding. Very few of the lords at first appeared to regard it with favour. The greater number stayed away from the House.191.2 But the duke’s counsel insisting upon an answer, the House represented the matter to the king, desiring to know what he could allege in opposition to the claim of York. The king, however, left the lords to inquire into it themselves; and as it was one of the gravest questions of law, the lords consulted the justices. But the justices declined the responsibility of advising in a matter of so high a nature. They were the king’s justices, and could not be of counsel where the king himself was a party. The king’s serjeants and attorney were then applied to, but were equally unwilling to commit themselves; so that the lords themselves brought forward and discussed of their own accord a number of objections to the Duke of York’s claim. At length it was declared as the opinion of the whole body of the peers that his title could not be defeated, but a compromise was suggested and mutually agreed to that the king should be allowed to retain his crown for life, the succession reverting to the duke and his heirs immediately after Henry’s death.191.3

So the matter was settled by a great and solemn act of state. But even a parliamentary settlement, produced by a display of armed force, will scarcely command the respect that it ought 192 to do if there is armed force to overthrow it. The king himself, it is true, appears to have been treated with respect, and with no more abridgment of personal liberty than was natural to the situation.192.1 Nor could it be said that the peers were insensible of the responsibility they incurred in a grave constitutional crisis. But respect for constitutional safeguards had been severely shaken, and no securities now could bridle the spirit of faction: suspicion also of itself produced new dangers. The Duke of York, after all the willingness he had shown in Parliament to accept a compromise, seems to have been accused of violating the settlement as soon as it was made; for on that very night on which it was arranged (31st October), we are told by a contemporary writer that ‘the king removed unto London against his will to the bishop’s palace, and the Duke of York came unto him that same night by torchlight and took upon him as king, and said in many places that “This is ours by right.”’192.2 Perhaps the facts looked worse than they were really; for it had been agreed in Parliament, though not formally expressed in the Accord, that the duke should be once more Protector and have the actual government.192.3 But it is not surprising that Margaret and her friends would recognise nothing of what had been done in Parliament. Since the battle of Northampton she had been separated from her husband. She fled with her son first into Cheshire, afterwards into Wales, to Harlech Castle, and then to Denbigh, which Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, had just won for the House of Lancaster.192.4 Her flight had been attended with difficulties, especially near Malpas, where she was robbed by a servant of her own, who met her and put her in fear of the lives of herself and her child.192.5 In Wales she was joined by the Duke of Exeter, who was with her in October.192.6 From thence she sailed to Scotland, where the 193 enemies of the Duke of York were specially welcome. For James II., profiting, as might be expected, by the dissensions of England, a month after the battle of Northampton, had laid siege to Roxburgh, where he was killed by the bursting of a cannon. Margaret, with her son, arrived at Dumfries in January 1461, and met his widow, Mary of Gueldres, at Lincluden Abbey.193.1 Meanwhile her adherents in the North of England held a council at York, and the Earl of Northumberland, with Lords Clifford, Dacres, and Nevill, ravaged the lands of the duke and of the Earl of Salisbury. The duke on this dissolved Parliament after obtaining from it powers to put down the rebellion,193.2 and marched northwards with the Earl of Salisbury. A few days before Christmas they reached the duke’s castle of Sandal, where they kept the festival, the enemy being not far off at Pomfret.193.3 On the 30th December was fought the disastrous battle of Wakefield, The battle of Wakefield. when the Yorkists were defeated, the duke and the Earl of Salisbury being slain in the field, and the duke’s son, the Earl of Rutland, ruthlessly murdered by Lord Clifford after the battle.

The story of poor young Rutland’s butchery is graphically described by an historian of the succeeding age who, though perhaps with some inaccuracies of detail as to fact, is a witness to the strong impression left by this beginning of barbarities. The account of it given by Hall, the chronicler, is as follows:—

‘While this battle was in fighting, a priest called Sir Robert Aspall, chaplain and schoolmaster to the young Earl of Rutland, second son to the above-named Duke of York, scarce of the age of twelve years [he was really in his eighteenth year], a fair gentleman and a maiden-like person, perceiving that flight was more safeguard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly conveyed the Earl out of the field by the Lord Clifford’s band towards the town. But or he could enter into a house, he was by the said Lord Clifford espied, followed, and taken, and, by reason of his apparel, demanded what he was. The young gentleman, dismayed, had not a word to speak, but kneeled on his knees, imploring mercy and desiring grace, both with 194 holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance, for his speech was gone for fear. “Save him,” said his chaplain, “for he is a prince’s son, and peradventure may do you good hereafter.” With that word, the Lord Clifford marked him and said—“By God’s blood, thy father slew mine; and so will I do thee and all thy kin”; and with that word stack the Earl to the heart with his dagger, and bade his chaplain bear the Earl’s mother word what he had done and said.’

Another illustration which the chronicler goes on to give of Clifford’s bloodthirsty spirit may be true in fact, but is certainly wrong as regards time. For he represents Queen Margaret as ‘not far from the field’ when the battle had been fought, and says that Clifford having caused the duke’s head to be cut off and crowned in derision with a paper crown, presented the ghastly object to her upon a pole with the words:—‘Madam, your war is done; here is your king’s ransom.’ Margaret, as we have seen, was really in Scotland at the time, where she negotiated an alliance with the Scots, to whom she agreed to deliver up Berwick for aid to her husband’s cause. But soon afterwards she came to York, where, at a council of war, she and her adherents determined to march on London. So it may have been a fact that Clifford presented to her the head of York upon a pole with the words recorded. But never was prophecy more unhappy; for instead of the war being ended, or the king being ransomed, there cannot be a doubt these deeds of wickedness imparted a new ferocity to the strife and hastened on the termination of Henry’s imbecile, unhappy reign. Within little more than two months after the battle of Wakefield the son of the murdered Duke of York was proclaimed king in London, by the title of Edward IV., and at the end of the third month the bloody victory of Towton almost destroyed, for a long time, the hopes of the House of Lancaster. From that day Henry led a wretched existence, now as an exile, now as a prisoner, for eleven unhappy years, saving only a few months’ interval, during which he was made king again by the Earl of Warwick, without the reality of power, and finally fell a victim, as was generally believed, to political assassination. As for Margaret, she survived her husband, but she also survived her son, and the cause for 195 which she had fought with so much pertinacity was lost to her for ever.

And now we must halt in our political survey. Henceforth, though public affairs must still require attention, we shall scarcely require to follow them with quite so great minuteness. We here take leave, for the most part, of matters, both public and private, contained in the Letters during the reign of Henry VI. But one event which affected greatly the domestic history of the Pastons in the succeeding reign, must be mentioned before we go further. It was not long after the commencement of those later troubles—more precisely, it was on the 5th November 1459, six weeks after the battle of Bloreheath, and little more than three after the dispersion of the Yorkists at Ludlow—that the aged Sir John Fastolf breathed his last, within the walls of that castle which it had been his pride to rear and to occupy in the place of his birth. Death of Sir John Fastolf. By his will, of which, as will be seen, no less than three different instruments were drawn up, he bequeathed to John Paston and his chaplain, Sir Thomas Howes, all his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, for the purpose of founding that college or religious community at Caister, on the erection of which he had bestowed latterly so much thought. The manner in which this bequest affected the fortunes of the Paston family has now to be considered.

Under the feudal system, as is well known, on the death of any tenant in capite of the crown, his lands were seized in the king’s name by an officer called the escheator, until it was ascertained by a jury of the county who was the next heir that should succeed to the property, and whether the king had any right of wardship by reason of his being under age. A.D. 1459. But when Sir John Fastolf died, he left no heir, nor was he, strictly speaking, at his death a tenant in capite of the crown. The lands of Sir John Fastolf. He had at different times handed over all his landed property to trustees, who were to hold it to his use so long as he lived, and to apply 196 it after his death to the purposes mentioned in his will. For the greater part of his lands in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Surrey, he had appointed one body of trustees as early as the year 1449, ten years before his death.196.1 This body consisted of five bishops, including the two primates, three lords, two justices of the King’s Bench, two knights, and ten other persons. But of these original trustees a good number were already dead, when, in the year 1457, a new trust was created, and the greater part of the Norfolk and Suffolk property was vested in the names of Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, William Yelverton, Justice of the King’s Bench, John Paston, Esq., Henry Fylongley, Esq., Thomas Howes, clerk, and William Paston. In the preceding year he had already created these same persons, with the addition of William Jenney, his trustees for the manor of Titchwell, in Norfolk, and the same again, with Jenney, but without Bishop Waynflete, for the manor of Beighton. The trust-deed for the former manor was dated 1st April 34 Henry VI., and that for the latter 26th March 34 Henry VI.196.2

Thus it appears that as early as the month of March 1456, about a year and a half after Sir John Fastolf had taken up his abode in Norfolk, John Paston and his brother William were already named by him as trustees for some of his property. John and William Paston, trustees. From that time the influence of John Paston with the old knight continued to increase till, as it was evident that the latter drew near his end, it became a subject of jealousy and suspicion. Of course, these feelings were not diminished when it was found after Fastolf’s death that, subject only to the obligation of founding his college at Caister, and paying 4000 marks to his other executors, he had in effect bequeathed to John Paston the whole of his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Yet it does not appear that in Fastolf’s latter days John Paston was about him more than usual. He was just as frequently away in London as he had been in any 197 previous year.197.1 But even when absent, he had a very staunch and hearty friend in Friar Brackley, who frequently visited the sick chamber, and took every opportunity to preserve and augment the high esteem that Fastolf entertained for him. At the last Brackley wrote to urge him to come down to Norfolk, as the patient evidently could not live much longer. ‘It is high time; he draweth fast homeward, and is right low brought, and sore weakened and feebled.’ Paston must bring with him a draft petition to the king about the foundation of the college at Caister, and an arrangement with the monks of St. Benet’s, for the dying man’s satisfaction. ‘Every day this five days he saith, “God send me soon my good cousin Paston, for I hold him a faithful man, and ever one man.” Cui ego: “That is sooth,” &c. Et ille: “Show me not the meat, show me the man.”’ Such is the curious report written by Dr. Brackley to Paston himself of the anxiety with which the old knight expected him shortly before his death.197.2

William Worcester.

On the other hand, William Worcester, who had so long acted as Fastolf’s private secretary, was perhaps a little jealous at the closer intimacy and greater influence of Paston with his master. At least, if this was not his feeling before Sir John Fastolf’s death, he expressed it plainly shortly afterwards. It was, he considered, owing to himself that John Paston had stood so high in Fastolf’s favour;197.3 and it seemed scarcely reasonable that Paston should have the principal share in the administration of the property while he, who had been so long in Fastolf’s service, so devoted to his interests, and yet so ill rewarded during his master’s life, found no kind of provision made for him in the will. It was, indeed, perfectly true that Fastolf had named him one of his executors. But this executorship, as it turned out, was not a thing likely to yield him either profit or importance. For by the last will, made immediately before the testator’s death, a body of ten executors was constituted, of whom two were to have the sole and absolute administration, the others having nothing whatever to do except when those two thought fit to ask for their 198 advice. The two acting executors were to be John Paston and Thomas Howes. William Worcester was one of the other eight.198.1

Yet, at first, he refrained from expressing dissatisfaction, and showed himself ready to co-operate with John Paston. Within a week after Fastolf’s death, he accompanied William Paston up to London, and joined him in an interview with Bishop Waynflete, at that time Lord Chancellor, who was one of the other executors. In accordance with Bishop Waynflete’s advice, he and William Paston proceeded to collect and sequester the goods of the deceased in different parts of London until the time that John Paston could have an interview with the bishop. They managed to have goods out of the Abbey of Bermondsey that no one knew about, except William Paston and Worcester themselves, and another man named Plomer. In short, William Worcester acted at this time as a most confidential and trusty friend to John Paston’s interests, being either entirely ignorant how little provision was made for his own, or trusting to Paston’s benevolence and sense of justice for that reward which was not expressly ‘nominated in the bond.’ And William Paston felt his claims so strongly that he could not help insinuating to his brother that he was bound in honour to make him a provision for life. ‘I understand by him,’ wrote William Paston, ‘he will never have other master but his old master; and to my conceit it were pity but if he should stand in such case by my master he should never need service, considering how my master trusted him, and the long years that he hath been with him in and many shrewd journeys for his sake.’198.2

But very shortly afterwards the manner in which Worcester spoke of Paston revealed a bitter sense of disappointment and injustice. He asserted that Fastolf had actually granted him a portion of land to live upon, and that Sir Thomas Howes, Fastolf’s confessor, who was his wife’s uncle, had been present in the chapel at Caister when this gift was conceded. Worcester’s wife had in fact asked Sir Thomas to choose the land. Nevertheless, when he came to demand of Paston that to which he considered he had a lawful claim, the latter was displeased 199 with him; nor did the two come to a good understanding again during Paston’s life.199.1

It was but nine days after Sir John Fastolf’s death, and three days after his first interview with the chancellor, Bishop Waynflete, that William Paston, in writing to his brother, expressed his intention of going to the bishop again for writs of diem clausit extremum. These writs were the ordinary authority under which the escheators of the different counties wherein the deceased had held lands would proceed to inquire what the manors were, and to whom they ought to descend. Claimants of Fastolf’s property. That many pretenders would lay claim to the different portions of those rich domains, John Paston and his brother knew full well. The Duke of Exeter had already set up a claim to Fastolf’s place in Southwark, on what grounds it is impossible to say. Others, who had no hope of proving title to any part of the property themselves, expected to win favour at court by offering to establish the rights of the crown in all the goods and chattels. William Paston accordingly endeavoured to secure the friendship of the Lord Treasurer, James, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond; but though the earl gave him fair words, William Paston was advised to put no trust in him.199.2 In point of fact, soon after Christmas, the earl entered Sir John’s mansion in Southwark, and occupied it for a time as if it had been his own dwelling-house.199.3

The escheator of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk was Richard Southwell, a friend of John Paston’s, and if the writs of diem clausit extremum had been issued at once, the latter doubtless hoped that the rights of Fastolf’s trustees would have been immediately acknowledged by two different juries, the one in Norfolk and the other in Suffolk. But the efforts 200 of William Paston were not crowned with such speedy success as he and his brother could have wished. Already, on the 10th November, writs of diem clausit extremum had issued without his applying for them, but they were only for the counties of Surrey and Essex, in which John Paston was not interested. Special commissions to the same effect for the counties of Wilts and Yorkshire were procured from the king at Coventry eighteen days later. A.D. 1460. But for Norfolk and Suffolk the writs were not issued till the 13th May in the following year.200.1 The delay was most probably owing to representations on the part of Paston’s enemies; and to the same cause we may attribute the fact that even after the writ was issued it was not acted on for five months longer, so that nearly a whole year had elapsed since Sir John Fastolf’s death before the Norfolk and Suffolk inquisitions were held. But at length the opposition was overcome. ‘A great day’ was holden at Acle before the under-sheriff and the under-escheator, in presence of some of the most substantial gentlemen of Norfolk; ‘and the matter,’ wrote Margaret Paston to her husband, ‘is well sped after your intent.’200.2

Already John Paston’s increased importance in his native county had come to be acknowledged. He was at this time knight of the shire for Norfolk. His wife was living at Hellesdon, on the Fastolf estates, two miles out of Norwich; and the mayor and mayoress paid her the compliment of sending thither their dinners and inviting themselves out to dine with her. The mills at Hellesdon and the lands at Caister were let by his agents, and apparently, in spite of his opponents, whoever they may have been, he had succeeded in obtaining quiet possession of all Fastolf’s lands in Norfolk.200.3 Equally little resistance seems to have been made to his claims in the county of Suffolk, where an inquisition was taken at Bungay nine days after that which had been taken at Acle. In each county the jury limited themselves to declaring the names of the trustees in whose hands the property remained at Fastolf’s death, and nothing was said about the will. A will, 201 in itself, could convey no title to lands, and the juries had nothing to do with it. But in both counties John Paston, either as executor or as one of the trustees, was allowed to assume at this time the entire control of the property.

But now came the renewal of civil war—the battle of Wakefield, soon avenged by the proclamation of Edward IV. as king, and the bloody victory of Towton. A.D. 1461. The kingdom was convulsed from end to end, and there was little chance for doubtful titles and disputed claims, except when supported by the strong arm of power. Long before the time at which we have now arrived, The Duke of Norfolk. the Duke of Norfolk had set covetous eyes upon Sir John Fastolf’s magnificent new castle of Caister, and he had spread a report in the country that the owner had given it to him.201.1 But it would seem that Sir John himself had never entertained such an idea, and if ever in conversation with the duke he had let fall something that might have encouraged the hope, he had taken special care before his death to show that it was unfounded. For the duke had visited Sir John in September before he died, and had proposed to purchase of him the reversion of the manor; but Sir John distinctly told him he had given it to Paston for the purpose of founding a college.201.2 Indeed, it is perfectly clear that for years he had intended it to be turned into an abode of priests, and not made a residence for any such powerful nobleman. And this intention, which is apparent enough in several of the letters written during his lifetime, was expressed in the most unambiguous language in the document which John Paston declared to have been his last will.201.3 Indeed, if we believe John Paston’s testimony, interested though it no doubt may be, it was chiefly from a fear that his executors might sell the place, not, indeed, to the duke, of whom he seems at that time to have ceased to entertain any apprehension, but to the Viscount Beaumont, the Duke of Somerset, or the Earl of Warwick, that the old knight determined to make Paston his principal executor.201.4 So, ‘to avoid that no lord, nor great estate, should inhabit in time coming within the great mansion,’ he made a covenant with Paston by which the 202 latter was to have in fee-simple all his lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, subject only to the payment of a sum of 4000 marks and the duty of establishing in Caister Castle ‘a college of seven religious men, monks, or secular priests, and seven poor folk, to pray for his soul and the souls of his wife, his father, and mother, and other that he was behold to, in perpetuity.’ And if in endeavouring to carry out this object John Paston was interfered with by any one attempting to obtain possession of the place by force, he was enjoined to ‘pull down the said mansion, and every stone and stick thereof, and do found three of the said seven priests or monks at St. Benet’s, and one at Yarmouth, one at Attleborough, and one at St. Olave’s Church at Southwark.’202.1

Yet, notwithstanding all this, the Duke of Norfolk, within three months after the accession of Edward IV., and little more than a year and a half after Sir John Fastolf’s death,202.2 had certainly taken possession of the great mansion of Caister. The confusion of the time undoubtedly favoured the act, and redress might well have been a troublesome matter, as the Duke of Norfolk was a nobleman whom perhaps even the king would not care to displease. But Edward was a king who, with many faults, was most honourably anxious from the first to do justice even to the meanest of his subjects.202.3 Paston repaired to the royal presence, and obtained letters from the king to the duke, which his servant, Richard Calle, 203 conveyed to Framlingham. They were delivered to his lordship at the lodge of his demesne, but the messenger was not admitted to his presence. The duke, however, wrote an answer to the king, promising shortly to repair to Court, when he offered to prove that some of the statements in Paston’s letters were erroneous, and that he himself was the person who had the best claim to the manor. It appears there was one other claimant besides, viz. Thomas Fastolf of Cowhaw; but he, not expecting to make his title good against Paston himself, and having need of a powerful friend in some other matters, gave up his claim to the duke, and brought documents to justify the latter in taking possession by the right derived from him.203.1

In the end, however, Paston’s appeal to the king must have been successful. Caister was certainly restored to him, and in all probability it was restored within a month or two before the Duke of Norfolk’s death, which occurred that same year, in the beginning of November.203.2

But notwithstanding the even-handed justice of the king, the times were wild and unsettled. The revolution by which Henry was deposed was not a thing calculated to bring sudden peace and quiet. Troubled times. On the Patent Rolls of this year we have innumerable evidences of the state of alarm, confusion, and tumult which prevailed continuously for at least a twelvemonth over the whole kingdom. Commissions of array,203.3 commissions to put down insurrections,203.4 and to punish outrages,203.5 to arrest seditious persons,203.6 to resist the king’s enemies at sea,203.7 or to 204 prepare beacons on the coast to give warning of apprehended invasion,204.1 are continually met with. Our Letters also tell the same tale. Margaret Paston writes at one time about ‘Will. Lynys that was with Master Fastolf, and such other as he is with him,’ who went about the country accusing men of being Scots, and only letting them go on payment of considerable bribes. ‘He took last week the parson of Freton, and but for my cousin Jerningham the younger, there would have led him forth with him; and he told them plainly, if they made any such doings there, unless they had the letter to show for them, they should have laid on204.2 on their bodies.’204.3 A still more flagrant instance of lawlessness had occurred just before, of which our old acquaintance Thomas Denys was the victim. Thomas Denys. He was at this time coroner of Norfolk. If not in Edward IV.’s service before he was king, he became a member of the royal household immediately afterwards, and accompanied the new king to York before his coronation. It appears that he had some complaints to make to the king of one Twyer, in Norfolk, and also of Sir John Howard, the sheriff of the county, a relation of the Duke of Norfolk, of whom we have already spoken,204.4 and shall have more to say presently. But scarcely had he returned home when he was pulled out of his house by the parson of Snoring, a friend of Twyer’s, who accused him of having procured indictments against Twyer and himself, and carried him off, we are not told whither.204.5 All we know is that in the beginning of July Thomas Denys was murdered, and that there were various reports as to who had instigated the crime. William Lomner believed that some men of the Duke of Norfolk’s council were implicated. Sir Miles Stapleton factiously endeavoured to lay the blame on John Berney of Witchingham. The parson of Snoring was put in the stocks, with four of his associates, but what further punishment they underwent does not appear. John Paston was entreated to use his influence to get them tried by a special commission.204.6 The 205 most precise account of the crime is found in the records of the King’s Bench, which give us the date and place where it occurred. One Robert Grey of Warham, labourer, was indicted for having, along with others, attacked Denys on Thursday the 2nd July, and dragged him from his house at Gately to Egmere, not far from Walsingham, where they killed him on the Saturday following.

Elizabeth Poynings, too, John Paston’s sister, has some experience of the bitterness of the times. She has by this time become a widow, having lost her husband at the second battle of St. Albans, and her lands are occupied by the Countess of Northumberland and Robert Fenys, in disregard of her rights.205.1 In times of revolution and tumult the weak must go to the wall.

Besides these illustrations of the social condition of the times, our Letters still abound with information not to be found elsewhere as to the chief political events. Political events. Here we have the record of the battle of Towton, of those who fell, and of those who were wounded;205.2 after which we find Henry VI. shut up in Yorkshire, in a place the name of which is doubtful.205.3 Then we hear of the beheading of the Earl of Wiltshire, and of his head being placed on London Bridge.205.4 Then come matters relating to the coronation of Edward IV., which was delayed on account of the siege of Carlisle.205.5 On this occasion, it seems, John Paston was to have received the honour of knighthood,205.6 which he doubtless declined, having already compounded with Henry VI. not to be made a knight.205.7 Two years later, however, his eldest son was made one, very probably as a substitute for himself, apparently just at the time when he attained the age of twenty-one.205.8 To the father such an honour would evidently have been a burden rather than a satisfaction.

But on the whole John Paston stood well with his countrymen, and the change of kings was an event from which he 206 had no reason to anticipate bad consequences to himself. Since the death of Sir John Fastolf he had become a man of much greater importance, and he had been returned to Parliament in the last year of Henry VI. as a supporter of the Duke of York. He was now, in the first year of Edward IV., returned to Parliament again. John Paston returned to Parliament. He was apparently in good favour with the king, and had been since the accession of Edward for a short time resident in his household.206.1 The king also obtained from him the redelivery of the jewels pawned by his father, the Duke of York, to Sir John Fastolf,206.2 in consideration of which he granted John Paston an assignment of 700 marks206.3 on the fee-farm of the city of Norwich, and on the issues of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. But his election as knight of the shire for Norfolk did not pass altogether without question. Paston’s wife’s cousin, John Berney of Witchingham, whom Sir Miles Stapleton accused of being implicated in the murder of Denys, had taken a leading part in the proceedings, and Stapleton alleged that he was meditating further outrages. The people had appeared ‘jacked and saletted’ at the shire house, the under-sheriff was put in suspicion of Berney, and the sheriff, Sir John Howard, conceived it would be necessary to have a new election. To this neither Berney nor Paston very much objected. Berney was willing to give every assurance that he would do the under-sheriff no bodily hurt, but he considered his conduct that at the election had not been creditable, and he desired that he would either intimate to the people that the election should stand, or procure a new writ, and publicly announce the day on which another election should be holden. As for Paston, he was perfectly satisfied, provided that he were not put to further expense, as he believed it was the general desire of the people to ratify what they had done; he only wished that it might be 207 on a holiday, so as not to interfere with the people’s work. The matter was discussed before the king himself, John Paston and the under-sheriff being present, each to answer for his part in the affair, and a writ was finally granted for a new election on St. Laurence’s Day. But from what he had seen of the conduct of the under-sheriff, Paston seems to have been afraid the day might yet be changed, to his prejudice; so, in a personal interview with that functionary, he got him to place the writ in his hands, and sent it down to his wife to keep until the new day of election came round, charging her to see that the under-sheriff had it again that day.207.1