Apart from such corrections, the letters are here reproduced as they are printed in previous editions, only in a better order. Fenn’s text has been followed, where no corrections have been found, in all the letters printed by him except those of his fifth volume. The exact transcript given on the left-hand pages of [20] Fenn’s edition has been strictly adhered to, except that contractions have been extended; and even in this process we have always been guided by the interpretation given by Fenn himself in his modern version on the right-hand pages. All the other letters in this publication are edited from the original MSS., with a very few exceptions in which these cannot be found. In some places, indeed, where the contents of a letter are of very little interest, it has been thought sufficient merely to give an abstract instead of a transcript, placing the abstract in what is believed to be its true place in the series chronologically. Abstracts are also given of documents that are too lengthy and formal to be printed, and, in one case, of a letter sold at a public sale, of which a transcript is not now procurable. In the same manner, wherever I have found the slightest note or reference, whether in Fenn’s footnotes or in Blomefield’s Norfolk—where a few such references may be met with—to any letter that appears originally to have belonged to the Paston correspondence, even though the original be now inaccessible, and our information about the contents the most scanty, the reader will find a notice of all that is known about the missing document in the present publication.
I wish it were in my power to make the present edition better still. But there have been always formidable obstacles to completeness during the thirty years and more since I first took up the business of editing the letters; and though many of these obstacles have been removed, my energies are naturally not quite what they once were. The publishers, however, have thought it time for a more satisfactory edition, and I hope I have done my best. It remains to say a few words about the original MSS. and the places in which they now exist.
Of those at Orwell Park I have already spoken. They are contained in three half-bound volumes, and are the originals of the letters printed by Fenn in his first and second volumes.
In the British Museum are contained, first of all, four volumes of the ‘Additional MSS.’ numbered 27,443 to 27,446, consisting of the originals of volume v. of Fenn’s edition which was published after his death, and a number of other letters first printed by me in the edition of 1872-75. The nine [21] volumes which follow these, viz. ‘Additional MSS.,’ 27,447-27,455, contain also Paston letters but of a later date, and papers relating to Sir John Fenn’s publication. There is also a separate volume of ‘Paston letters’ in ‘Additional MS.’ 33,597; but these, too, are mostly of later date, only eight being of the fifteenth century. Further, there are the Roydon Hall MSS. (including with, I believe, only two exceptions the originals of Fenn’s third and fourth volumes), which are contained in the volumes ‘Additional,’ 34,888-9. And finally there are two Paston letters (included in this edition) in ‘Additional MS.’ 35,251. These are all that are in the British Museum. Besides these there are, as above noticed, a few MSS. in a volume of the Douce Collection and the other stray MSS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford above referred to. At Oxford, also, though not strictly belonging to the Paston family correspondence, are a number of valuable papers, some of which are included in this edition, having an important bearing on the fortunes of the family. These are among the muniments contained in the tower of Magdalene College. As the execution of Sir John Fastolf’s will ultimately devolved upon Bishop Waynflete, who, instead of a college at Caister, made provision for a foundation of seven priests and seven poor scholars in Magdalene College, a number of papers relative to the disputes between the executors and the arrangement between the Bishop and John Paston’s sons have been preserved among the documents of that college. My attention was first called to these many years ago by Mr. Macray, through whom I obtained copies, in the first place, of some entries from an old index of the deeds relating to Norfolk and Suffolk, which had already been referred to by Chandler in his Life of Bishop Waynflete. Afterwards Mr. Macray, who had for some time been engaged in a catalogue of the whole collection, was obliging enough to send me one or two abstracts of his own made from the original documents even before he was able to refer me to his report on the muniments of Magdalene College, printed in the Fourth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission. It will be seen that I have transcribed several interesting entries from this source.
Further, there are just a few Paston letters preserved in Pembroke College, Cambridge.
What remains to be said is only the confession of personal obligations, incurred mainly long ago in connection with this work. The lapse of years since my first edition of these letters was issued, in 1872, naturally reminds me of the loss of various friends who favoured and assisted it in various ways. Among these were the late Colonel Chester, Mr. H. C. Coote, Mr. Richard Almack of Melford, Mr. W. H. Turner of Oxford, Mr. J. H. Gurney, Mr. Fitch, and Mr. L’Estrange of Norwich. On the other hand, I am happy to reckon still among the living Dr. Jessopp, Mr. Aldis Wright, Miss Toulmin Smith, and Mr. J. C. C. Smith, now a retired official of the Probate Office at Somerset House, who all gave me kindly help so long ago. And I have further to declare my obligations to Mr. Walter Rye, a gentleman well known as the best living authority on Norfolk topography and families, for most friendly and useful assistance in the way of notes and suggestions towards later editions. I have also quite recently received help (confessed elsewhere) from the Rev. William Hudson of Eastbourne, and have further had my attention called to significant documents in the Public Record Office by some of my old friends and colleagues there.
But among the departed, there is one whom I have reserved for mention by himself, not so much for any particular assistance given me long ago in the preparation of this work as for the previous education in historical study which I feel that I received from intercourse with him. I had been years engaged in the public service, and always thought that the records of the realm ought to be better utilised than they were in those days for the purpose of historical research; but how even Record clerks were to become well acquainted with them under the conditions then existing it was difficult to see. For each of us had his own little task assigned to him, and had really very little opportunity, if ever so willing, to go beyond it. Nor was there too much encouragement given under official regulations to anything like historical training; for the Record Office, when [23] first constituted, was supposed to exist for the sake of litigants who wanted copies of documents, rather than for that of historical students who wanted to read them with other objects. Besides, people did not generally imagine then that past history could be rewritten, except by able and graphic pens which, perhaps, could put new life into old facts without a very large amount of additional research. The idea that the country contained vast stores of long-neglected letters capable of yielding up copious new information to supplement and to correct the old story of our national annals had hardly dawned upon anybody—least of all, perhaps, on humble officials bound to furnish office copies of ‘fines’ and ‘recoveries’ and antiquated legal processes. Even the State Papers, at that time, were kept apart from the Public Records, and could only be consulted by special permission from a Secretary of State. No clerk, either of the Record or State Paper Department, knew more than was contained within his own particular province. But by the wise policy of the late Lord Romilly these red-tape bands were ultimately broken; and just at that time I had the rare privilege of being appointed to assist the late Reverend John S. Brewer in one of the great works which his Lordship set on foot to enable the British public to understand the value of its own MSS. It was to this association with Mr. Brewer that I feel I owe all my historical training, and I made some acknowledgment of that debt in 1872 when I dedicated to him my first edition of this work.
[1.1] Walpole’s Letters (Cunningham’s ed.), ix. 92.
[2.1] Roberts’s Memoirs of Hannah More, ii. 50.
[4.1] See Appendix after Introduction, No. I.