[263.2] No. 778.
[263.3] Nos. 793, 795.
[264.1] Nos. 781, 796, 802.
[ The Paston Brothers]
Royal pardon to John Paston.
John Paston obtained a ‘bill of pardon’ signed by the king, on Wednesday the 17th July. This, however, was not in itself a pardon, but only a warrant to the Chancellor to give him one under the Great Seal. The pardon with the Great Seal attached he hoped to obtain from the Chancellor on the following Friday. Meanwhile he wrote home to his mother to let no one know of it but Lady Calthorpe, who, for some reason not explained, seems to have been a confidante in this particular matter.[264.2] Perhaps this was as well, for as a matter of fact the pardon was not sealed that Friday, nor for many a long week, and even for some months after. It seems to have been promised, but it did not come. At Norwich some one called John Paston traitor and sought to pick quarrels with him; and how far he could rely upon the protection of the law was a question not free from anxiety. His brother, Sir John, urged him to take steps to have the pardon made sure [265] without delay; but it was only passed at length upon the 7th of February following, nearly seven months after the king had signed the bill for it. His brother, Sir John, obtained one on the 21st December.[265.1]
The appeal of the widows.
But John Paston stood in another danger, from which even a royal pardon could not by law protect him. The ‘appeal’[265.2] of the two widows still lay against him. The blood of their husbands cried for vengeance on the men who had defended Caister, and especially upon the captain of the garrison. Their appeal, however, was suspected to proceed from the instigation of others who would fain have encouraged them to keep it up longer than they cared to do themselves. Sir John Paston had information from some quarter which led him to believe that they had both found husbands again, and he recommended his brother to make inquiry, as in that case the appeals were abated. With regard to one of them, the intelligence turned out to be correct. A friend whom John Paston asked to go and converse with this woman, the widow of a fuller of South Walsham, reported that she was now married to one Tom Steward, dwelling in the parish of St. Giles in Norwich. She confessed to him that she never sued the appeal of her own accord, ‘but that she was by subtle craft brought to the New Inn at Norwich. And there was Master Southwell; and he entreated her to be my lord’s widow[265.3] by the space of an whole year next following; and thereto he made her to be bound in an obligation. And when that year was past he desired her to be my lord’s widow another year. And then she said that she had liever lose that that she had done than to lose that and more; and therefore she said plainly that she would no more of that matter; and so she took her an husband, which is the said Tom Steward. And she saith that it was full sore against her will that ever the matter went so far forth, for she had never none avail thereof, but it was sued to her great labor and loss, for she had never of my lord’s council but barely her costs to London.’[265.4]
The other widow, however, had not married again as Sir John had imagined. With her the right of appeal still remained, and she was induced to exercise it. In this she seems to have been encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk, simply for the sake of giving trouble to Sir John Paston; for though it was his brother and the men with him who were the most direct cause of her husband’s death, the appeal was not prosecuted against them, but against him only. In the following January the widow went up to London, and 100 shillings were given her to sue with. What came of the affair then we have no further record. Sir John Paston was warned of his danger both by his mother and by his brother; so perhaps he found the means to induce her to forbear proceeding further. An argument that has often enough stopped the course of justice would doubtless have been efficacious to put an end to such a purely vexatious prosecution. But it may be that the case was actually heard, and Sir John Paston acquitted.[266.1]
Great mortality.