Paston Family Letters

The Pastons: Who were they?

The story of the Pastons is a fascinating and compelling tale of a family on the make in the wake of the Black Death. They show first-hand testimony of the social benefits the plague brought to the peasantry, the chaotic effects of the Wars of the Roses on the general populace and the individual impact that the Black Death could have on a family.

Their story is one of visionary gamblers willing to stake all on massive throws of the dice, and to fight for what they win with the tenaciousness of terriers, be it against the carping villagers of their home manor or the overweening power of the local lord. Many of the properties they lived in still survive, as do the institutions of which they became benefactors. In fact, from humble peasant beginnings, their impact on the county became so great that even today, there is an old Norfolk saying: 'There was never a Paston poor, a Heydon a coward or a Cornwallis a fool'.

Meet the family

Clement Paston

The great-granddaddy of them all, Clement was a yeoman who took advantage of the Black Death to build up a substantial landholding in and around Paston. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, he had the foresight to borrow enough money to send his son, William, to school, where he was educated in the law. This farsighted gamble was to establish the fortunes of his family for generations to come. It is entirely possible that he began life tied to the land, since at least one letter in the Paston collection accuses him of being a peasant bondsman. He died on 17 June 1419 and was buried at Paston.

William Paston

Born in 1378, Clement's son, William, survived the many Plagues of Children to be educated in the law. This was the making of the Paston family. It is with William that the fortunes of the Pastons really take off, for William was able to use his position as a lawyer to become a Serjeant-at-arms and eventually a Judge of Common Pleas. His position allowed him to make a very judicious marriage to Agnes Berry, which substantially increased his family's land. Their favourite residence was the beautiful manor of Oxnead, which still nestles in a little nook of the Norfolk countryside, beside a church in which many members of the Paston family are buried.

John Paston Snr and Margaret Paston

William's oldest son was born on 10 October 1421 and grew up to be educated in the law at Cambridge and the Inner Temple. He, too, made a very advantageous marriage to Margaret Mauteby, gaining the manors of Mauteby and East Tuddenham, which still survives. John and Margaret were major figures in the county. He was both MP and JP for Norfolk, and together they endowed benefactions to various institutions within Norwich. The great hammer-beam roof of St Andrew's Hall and the church of St Peter, Hungate are the best examples. On either side of the window dedicated to them in St Peter Hungate, the two portrait busts of John and Margaret still smile down on us today.

It was John Snr who took the great gamble that almost destroyed his family, but which ultimately secured its position and lifted it beyond the ranks of the squirearchy. This had been achieved in just two short generations after peasanthood. As a lawyer, he spent a great deal of time in London, where he made friends with the local Norfolk knight and landowner, Sir John Fastolff - a Lollard sympathiser and the real-life Falstaff of Shakespeare's plays. It is probably no coincidence that, having wormed his way into the ailing knight's confidence and become his lawyer, John Paston miraculously found himself the main beneficiary of Sir John Fastolff's will! Sir John's cheated heirs, most notably Sir William Yelverton, Thomas Howes and the de la Poles, didn't believe in coincidence either, and contested the will. When John Paston Snr died in 1466, he was buried at Bromholm Monastery (where his tomb can still be found) with the legal wrangles still unresolved.

Younger and elder

John Paston the Elder and John Paston the Younger:

John Snr's two sons, both imaginatively named John (just to make our lives easier), inherited a legal nightmare centred on the manors of Caister Castle, Coton and Hellesdon (of which the beautiful hunting lodge at Drayton still remains). It is this part of the Paston story which is so colourfully illuminated by the many letters that passed between them and their mother, Margaret. She was still living in her beloved manor at Oxnead. Not only were Sir John Fastolff's heirs still contesting the will, but they were willing to take advantage of the turbulent times to try and get what they wanted by force. On several occasions, the Pastons were constrained to fight for what they now owned, the most dramatic contest being over control of Caister Castle which was resolved only three years before John the Elder's death from plague.

John the Elder was a bit of a dilettante. He spent most of his time hanging around the King's Court in London, for which his mother constantly berated him. It was not simply that his obsession with London lost them control of Caister, but she was also concerned for his safety. On more than one occasion, she urges him to be careful in the plague-infested city. This was especially after they lost their grandmother to the plague in 1479. She was proven right as John the Elder did die of the plague. His brother, John the Younger, tells his mother of the news in November 1479.

November 1479: Margaret learns of her son's death:

November 1479:

December 1479:

By this, we can be reasonably certain that John the Elder died of the same plague that took his grandmother. He left an illegitimate daughter by Anne Haute, to whom he was betrothed for years but never married.

The rise of the Paston family to the top, and the changes of medieval Society, are shown in stark relief by their decades long battle for Caister Castle.

Caister Castle

Caister Castle © The wrangle over Caister is a wonderfully dramatic incident which demonstrates how the tables were turning on the great lords who sought to use the chaos of the Wars of the Roses to feather their nests. It is a tale of David taking on Goliath with the slingshot of the law, and eventually proving through sheer legal tenacity that the pen of the gentry squire had become mightier than the noble's sword.

Caister Castle was the jewel in the crown of Sir John Fastolff's estates, and fell to John Paston Snr through the Fastolff will. The legal wrangles and conflict over its ownership were then to haunt the Paston family for the next 20 years, almost ruining them in legal expenses and putting the life of his sons in mortal jeopardy. For Fastolff's heirs, Yelverton and Howes, refused to accept the Paston ownership, forcing Margaret to take up residence in the castle for a while. She complained bitterly about this to her son John the Elder, as she found Oxnead to be a much more comfortable and less draughty home. Eventually, John the Younger took her place, at about the time that Yelverton and Howes sold their rights to Caister to the Duke of Norfolk, who had always coveted it. Somewhat ironically, John the Younger had once been a servant in the household of this same Duke of Norfolk.

In 1469, as warfare ripped the land, the Duke of Norfolk took advantage of this new 'tempus werre' (time of war) to try and seize Caister, besieging it with 3,000 men. The urgent letters which passed between Margaret and her two sons at this time provide graphic testimony to the violence of the attempt, and her impatience with John the Elder's lackadaisical attitude. We are left in no doubt as to whom she blames for the loss of the castle:

Loss of the prize: Paston letters on Caister Castle

Caister Castle © Margaret Paston to John the Elder, 12 Sept. 1469:

John the Elder to Margaret Paston, 15 Sept 1469:

Margaret Paston to John the Elder, 22/30 Sept 1469:

John the Younger to John the Elder, late Sept 1469:

King of the castle: Paston letters on Caister Castle

Somewhat belatedly, John the Elder woke up to what he had stupidly thrown away, and spent the next 11 years dragging Norfolk through the courts in his attempts to get it back. All of this was happening during a time of political anarchy, when in an earlier period, the likes of the Pastons would have been forced to stand by and watch the great lord simply take what he wanted. But not now. Now, the Pastons had recourse to the courts, but also felt able to join the political conflict themselves. They fought against Norfolk on the side of Henry VI at the Battle of Barnet, where John the Younger was wounded in the arm by an arrow (letter dated 18 April 1471). Norfolk died in January 1476, and John the Elder hastily moved to reoccupy Caister Castle, as a letter from John the Younger indicates:

23 Jan 1476:

The gambit worked. The King granted the patent of Caister on John the Elder, and the Duke of Norfolk's wife, tired of the whole affair, gave up her dead husband's claim. The Pastons were exceptional only in that they risked everything upon gaining Caister Castle. This elevated them from the ranks of the lesser squirearchy into the big league of Knights and King's retainers who hung around the court. Yet prior to this, there was nothing inherently unusual about the rise of the Pastons. They were simply one of the more successful peasant families to take advantage of the post-plague situation to lift themselves out of the mire. The Caister incident is a graphic example of the anarchy of the times; but it is finally resolved by law, not force. Ironically, John Paston the Elder only lived to enjoy Caister for 3 years before he died of the plague in 1479.

The Paston family had arrived.

Find out more

Further Links

Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts A huge repository of UK archives and documents.

Public Libraries on the Web Directory of on-line libraries throughout the UK.

History of the UK - Primary Documents Translations of historical documents from British History including Anglo Saxon Chronicles and the Declaration of Arbroath.

Index of Medieval Governmental, Administrative and Legal Documents Translations of key documents including links to medieval legal statements.

Description of Manor House at Chingford, Essex (1265) 'An account of the manor house made for the chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral in London at a time when it was granted to Robert Le Moyne in 1265.' From the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.

About the author

Dr Mike Ibeji is a Roman military historian who was an associate producer on Simon Schama's A History of Britain.