MISRULE IN NORFOLK
LETTER TO PASTON FROM HIS WIFE, A.D. 1449
(Paston Letters, Vol. I, p. 82).
Right worshipful husband,
I recommend me to you and pray you to get some cross bows and windacs to bind them with, and quarrels; for our houses here be so low that there may no man shoot out with no long bow, though we had never so much need.
I suppose ye should have such things of Sir John Falstaff, if ye would send to him; and also I would ye should get ij or iij short pollaxes to keep within doors, and as many jacks, an ye may.
Partridge [one of Molyns’ men] and his fellowship are sore afraid that ye would enter again upon them, and they have made great ordinance within the house, as it is told me. They have made bars to bar the doors crosswise, and they have made wickets on every quarter of the house to shoot out at, both with bows and with hand guns; and the holes that be made for hand guns, they be scarce knee high from the plancher [floor], and of such holes be made five. There can no man shoot out at them with no hand bows.
I pray you that you will vouch save to do buy for me 1 lb. of almonds and 1 lb. of sugar, and that ye will do buy some frieze to make of your child his gowns; ye shall have best cheap and best choice of Hayes wife as it is told me. And that ye would buy a yard of broad cloth of black for an hood for me of XIIIjd or IIIjs a yard, for there is neither good cloth nor good frieze in this town. As for the child his gowns, an I have them I will do them maken.
The Trinity have you in his (sic) keeping, and send you good speed in all your matters.
PETITION OF JOHN PASTON, ESQ.
(Paston Letters, Vol. I, pp. 106-8)
To the King, our Sovereign Lord, and to the right wise and discreet Lords, assembled in this present Parliament.
Beseecheth meekly your humble liegeman, John Paston, that where [as] he and other ... have be peaceably possessed of the manor of Gresham, within the county of Norfolk xx year and more, till the xxij day of February, the year of your noble reign xxvi, that Robert Hungerford, Knight, the Lord Molyns, entered in to the said manor ... the said Lord sent to the mansion a riotous people, to the number of a thousand persons ... arrayed in manner of war, with cuirasse, briganders, jacks, salettes, glaives, bowes, arrows, pavyse (shields) pans with fire burning therein, long cromes (hooks) to draw down houses, ladders, pikes, with which they mined down the walls, and long trees with which they broke up gates and doors, and so came into the said mansion, the wife of your beseecher being at that time therein, and xlj persons with her; the which persons they drove out of the said mansion, and mined down the wall of the chamber wherein the wife of your said beseecher was, and bare her out at the gates, and cut asunder the posts of the houses and let them fall, and broke up all the chambers and coffers within the said mansion, and rifled, and in manner of robbery bare away all the stuffe, array, and money that your said beseecher and his servants had there, unto the value of ccli ... saying openly that if they might have found there your said beseecher and one John Damme, which is of council with him, and divers others of the servants of your said beseecher, they should have died. And yet [i.e. still] divers of the said misdoers and riotous people unknown, contrary to your laws, daily keep the said manor with force, and lie in wait.... And also they compel poor tenants of the said manor, now within their danger, against their will, to take feigned plaints in the courts of the hundred there against the ... servants of your said beseecher, who dare not appear to answer for fear of bodily harm, nor can get no copies of the said plaints, to remedy them by the law, because he that keepeth the said courts is of covyn with the said misdoers and was one of the said risers....
Please it your highness, ... to purvey ... that your said beseecher may be restored to the said goods and chattels thus riotously taken away ... and that the said Lord Molynes and his servants be set in such a rule, that your said beseecher, his friends, tenants and servants may be sure and safe from hurt of their persons, and peaceably occupy their lands and tenements under your laws without oppression or unrightful vexation of any of them; and that the said risers and causers thereof may be punished, that other may eschew to make any such rising in this your land of peace in time coming. And he shall pray to God for you.