Education, nevertheless, was making undoubted progress, both among high and low. Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, had been founded by Henry VI. only a few years before old Judge Paston died. His grandson and namesake, William Paston, as we have seen, was sent to the former place for his education, and was learning to construct Latin hexameters and pentameters there in 1479. His progress, it is true, seems to have been but indifferent. What was to be expected of a young gentleman of nineteen, whose attention, even while at school, was distracted by the thought that he had already met with one who might be a partner for life? Nevertheless, in that same letter in which he writes to his brother John what he knows of Mistress Margaret Alborow, he sends him also a specimen of his performances in Latin versification. It is not a very brilliant production, certainly, but the fact of his sending it to his elder brother shows that John Paston too had gone through a regular classical training on the system which has prevailed in all public schools down to the present day.
Oxford.
It has, moreover, been remarked that the illustrations both of Eton and of Oxford life in the fifteenth century bear a [320] striking resemblance to the well-known usages of modern times. It is true Walter Paston’s expenses at Oxford were not great, even if we take into consideration the much higher value of money in that day. For a period of probably half a year they amounted to no more than £6: 5 s.: 5¾ d.[320.1] Yet when he became B.A. he gave a banquet, as graduates have been accustomed to do since his day, for which he was promised some venison from Lady Harcourt, but was disappointed.[320.2] Even the expenses attending the graduation, however, do not appear to have been very heavy. ‘It will be some cost to me, but not much,’ wrote Walter Paston in his own case, though he had been disappointed in the hope of passing at the same time as Lionel Woodville, the queen’s brother, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, who apparently would have borne a portion of the expenses of his fellow-graduates.[320.3]
From the letters just referred to we are reminded that it was at this time usual for those who received a liberal education not only to take a degree in arts but to proceed afterwards in the faculty of law. At the universities, unfortunately, law is studied no longer, and degrees in that faculty are now purely honorary.
Mode of computing dates.
Some other points may be suggested to us, even by the most superficial examination of the contents of these volumes. The mode in which the letters are dated by their writers shows clearly that our ancestors were accustomed to measure the lapse of time by very different standards from those now in use. Whether men in general were acquainted with the current year of the Christian era may be doubted; that was an ecclesiastical computation rather than one for use in common life. They seldom dated their letters by the year at all, and when they did it was not by the year of our Lord, but by the year of the king’s reign. Chronicles and annals of the period, which give the year of our Lord, are almost always full of inaccuracies in the figures; and altogether it is evident that an exact computation of years was a thing for which there was considered to be little practical use. As to months and days, the same remark does not apply. Letters were very [321] frequently dated in this respect according to what is the general usage now. But even here, as the reader will not fail to observe, there was a much more common use of Festivals and Saints’ days, and when a letter was not written on a day particularly marked in the Calendar, it was frequently dated the Monday or Wednesday, or whatever day of the week it might happen to be, before or after such a celebration. Agnes Paston even dates a letter during the week by the collect of the Sunday preceding:—‘Written at Paston in haste, the Wednesday next after Deus qui errantibus.’[321.1]
Mode of reckoning.
Of their modes of computing other things we have little indication in these volumes except in money accounts, which are always kept in Roman figures. No separate columns are set apart in MSS. of this date (although for the convenience of the reader this has sometimes been done in print) for the different denominations of pounds, shillings, pence, and marks, so that it would have been impossible for the best arithmetician easily to cast up totals after the modern fashion. The arithmeticians of that day, in fact, had a totally different method of reckoning. They used counters, and had a counting-board or abacus, on which they set up the totals.[321.2] An instance of this occurs in the first volume, where John Paston, in superintending the works at Caister Castle, or, as we now rather suspect, at Mautby, thought it advisable to change the room in which his coffers and his ‘countewery’ should be set. In connection with this incident one other point is worthy of observation. On taking the measure of the new room, John Paston’s wife reported that he would find it less convenient than the former one. ‘There is no space,’ she wrote, ‘beside the bed, though the bed were removed to the door, to set both your board and your coffers there, and to have space to go and sit beside.’[321.3] When it is considered that the room in question was a ‘draught chamber,’ that is to say, that it contained a privy in [322] addition to the furniture which Paston intended to introduce, want of space ought certainly to have been a very serious objection.
Manner of living.
The neglect of sanitary considerations in domestic architecture—indeed, in domestic matters generally—was no doubt a prolific source of disease and pestilence. Yet the general plan of daily life pursued by our ancestors was, it must be owned, more wholesome than that of the nineteenth century. It is well known that they were early risers. Innumerable patent kinds of artificial light did not tempt them to waste the natural hours of rest either in study or in dissipation. Their meals too were earlier. Their dinner was at noon, if not before; and after dinner, in the long summer days, it was customary to take some additional repose. Thus Henry Windsor concludes a letter to John Paston—‘Written in my sleeping time at afternoon, on Whitsunday.’[322.1] This practice of sleeping in the daytime was so universal that in the case of labourers it was only thought necessary to keep it within certain limits, and to restrict it by Act of Parliament to a quarter of the year, from the middle of May to the middle of August.[322.2]