Sending dinners out.
A curious practice in relation to dining mentioned in Letter 423 has already been incidentally alluded to. It was the year after Sir John Fastolf’s death, and John Paston’s wife had gone out of Norwich to reside at Hellesdon. Paston’s increased importance in the county was shown by the Mayor and Mayoress of Norwich one day sending their dinners out to Hellesdon, and coming to dine with Margaret Paston. Of this kind of compliment we have another illustration in More’s History of Richard III. It is well known how, when just after the death of Edward IV. the Earl of Rivers and Lord Richard Grey were conducting the boy king Edward V. up to London, they were overtaken by the Duke of Gloucester at Stony Stratford, and placed under arrest. As the story is reported by More, Gloucester at first treated his prisoners with courtesy, and at dinner sent a dish from his own table to Lord Rivers, praying him to be of good cheer, for all [323] should be well enough. ‘And he thanked the duke,’ continues the historian, ‘and prayed the messenger to bear it to his nephew the Lord Richard with the same message for his comfort, who he thought had more need of comfort as one to whom such adversity was strange; but himself had been all his days in ure therewith, and therefore could bear it the better.’
Chivalry and courtesy.
The courtesies of life were certainly not less valued in those rough unquiet days than in our own. Although men like Caxton lamented the decline of chivalry, its civilising influence continued, and its most important usages were still kept up. Among the books which William Ebesham transcribed for Sir John Paston at the rate of twopence a leaf, was one which was called The Great Book, treating of ‘the Coronation and other Treatises of Knighthood,’ ‘of the manner of making joust and tournaments,’ and the like.[323.1] His library, or that of his brother John, contained also ‘the Death of Arthur,’ the story of Guy of Warwick, chronicles of the English kings from Cœur de Lion to Edward III., the legend of Guy and Colbrand, and various other chronicles and fictions suited to knightly culture; besides moral treatises, like Bishop Alcock’s Abbey of the Holy Ghost, and poetical and imaginative books, such as the poems of Chaucer—at least his Troilus and Cressida, his Legend of Ladies (commonly called The Legend of Good Women), his Parliament of Birds, the Belle Dame sauns Mercie, and Lydgate’s Temple of Glass. Books like these formed part of the recreations of a country gentleman. They contained, doubtless, the fund of ideas which fathers communicated to their children around the winter fire. And the children were the better qualified to appreciate them by an education which was entirely founded upon the principles of chivalry.
The training of the young.
It was in accordance with these principles, and to maintain a true sense of order in society, that the sons of knights and gentlemen were sent at an early age to serve in other gentlemen’s houses. Thus John Paston the youngest was sent to be brought up in the family of the Duke of Norfolk; and so [324] common was this practice, so necessary was it esteemed to a young gentleman’s education, that, as we have seen, his father was reproached for keeping his elder brother at home and unemployed. In a new household, and especially in that of a man of rank, it was considered that a youth would learn something of the world, and fit himself best for the place he was to fill in it. It was the same also, to some extent, with the daughters of a family, as we find Margaret Paston writing to her son Sir John to get his sister placed in the household either of the Countess of Oxford or of the Duchess of Bedford, or else ‘in some other worshipful place.’[324.1] This we have supposed to be his sister Margery, who (no doubt for want of being thus taken care of) shortly after married Richard Calle, to the scandal and disgust of the whole family. His other sister, Anne, was placed in the household of a gentleman named Calthorpe, who, however, afterwards desired to get rid of her, alleging that he wished to reduce his household, and suggested that she ‘waxed high, and it were time to purvey her a marriage.’ It is curious that the prospect of her being sent home again does not seem to have been particularly agreeable even to her own mother. Margaret Paston wonders why Calthorpe should have been so anxious to get rid of the young lady without delay. Perhaps she had given him offence, or committed some misdemeanour. Her mother therefore writes to her son John the youngest in London to see how Cousin Clere ‘is disposed to her-ward,’ that she may not be under the necessity of having her home again, where she would only lose her time, and be continually trying her mother’s patience, as her sister Margery had done before her.[324.2]
Want of domestic feeling.
And was this, the reader may well ask, the spirit of domestic life in the fifteenth century? Could two generations of one family not ordinarily live together in comfort? Was the feeling of older people towards children only that they ought to be taught the ways of the world, and learn not to make themselves disagreeable? Alas! I fear, for the most part it amounted to little more than this. Children, and especially daughters, were a mere burden to their parents. [325] They must be sent away from home to learn manners, and to be out of the way. As soon as they grew up, efforts must be made to marry them, and get them off their parents’ hands for good. If they could not be got rid of that way, and were still troublesome, they could be well thrashed, like Elizabeth Paston, the aunt of the last-mentioned young ladies, who, as will be remembered, was allowed to speak to no one, was beaten once or twice a week, and sometimes twice in one day, and had her head broken ‘in two or three places’ in consequence.[325.1]
Such a state of matters, however repulsive to our feelings, is by no means unaccountable. That age was certainly not singular, however much mistaken, in its belief that a sense of what is due to the State is more important than a sense of what is due to the family. Our ancestors forgot the fact—as we too, in this age of enforced schooling are too apt to leave it out of account—that the most important part of education, good or bad, must inevitably be that which a child receives at home. They were rewarded for their forgetfulness by a loss of natural affection, for which their high sense of external order afforded but imperfect compensation. Admirable as the feudal system was in maintaining the necessary subordination of different classes, it acted most injuriously upon the homes, where all that makes up a nation’s real worth must be carefully tended in the first instance. Wardships. The very foundation of domestic life was in many cases vitiated by a system which put the wardship and marriage of heirs under age at the disposal of their superior lords. In the case of an important landowner who held of the Crown, it was a regular matter of bargain and sale. The wardship and marriage were granted away to such a person as could offer the Treasury a satisfactory sum for the privilege; and if the heir took it upon himself to marry without licence of such person, he incurred a heavy fine.[325.2] Thus was the most sacred of all [326] human relations made a matter of traffic and sale, and the best feelings of the human heart were systematically crushed by considerations the most sordid.
Remarks of a Venetian on the English.