[309.3] No. 963.
[309.4] Nos. 970, 982, 983.
[309.5] No. 957.
[310.1] Nos. 852 and 853, which by inadvertence I have assigned to the year 1474. They are undoubtedly of the year 1479, the former being written just before Sir John Paston’s death, and the latter after it.
[310.2] No. 998.
[310.3] The exact date is given as the 4th November 1484 in a calendar prefixed to an old MS. missal in the possession of the late Mr. C. W. Reynell.
[311.1] No. 978.
[ Times of Richard III. and Henry VII.]
Richard III.
The personal interest of the correspondence is not altogether exhausted, although, as we have already remarked, it is very greatly diminished after the death of Sir John Paston. But the political interest of the remaining letters is so great, that they are almost more indispensable to the historian than the preceding ones. The brief and troubled reign of Richard III. receives illustration from two letters of the Duke of Norfolk to John Paston. The first was written in anticipation of Buckingham’s rebellion, requiring him to make ready and come to London immediately with ‘six tall fellows in harness,’ as the Kentish men were up in the Weald, and meant to come and rob the city.[311.2] Again, on the Earl of Richmond’s invasion, the duke desires Paston to meet him at Bury with a company, to be raised at the duke’s expense.[311.3] There is also a copy of King Richard’s proclamation against Henry Tudor,[311.4] of which, however, the text is preserved in other MSS.