[203.2] This perhaps may be a reason for supposing Letter 630 to have been written in the year 1461, notwithstanding the difficulty mentioned in the preliminary note.
[ The Beginning of Edward IV.’s Reign]
But notwithstanding the even-handed justice of the king, the times were wild and unsettled. The revolution by which Henry was deposed was not a thing calculated to bring sudden peace and quiet. Troubled times. On the Patent Rolls of this year we have innumerable evidences of the state of alarm, confusion, and tumult which prevailed continuously for at least a twelvemonth over the whole kingdom. Commissions of array,[203.3] commissions to put down insurrections,[203.4] and to punish outrages,[203.5] to arrest seditious persons,[203.6] to resist the king’s enemies at sea,[203.7] or to [204] prepare beacons on the coast to give warning of apprehended invasion,[204.1] are continually met with. Our Letters also tell the same tale. Margaret Paston writes at one time about ‘Will. Lynys that was with Master Fastolf, and such other as he is with him,’ who went about the country accusing men of being Scots, and only letting them go on payment of considerable bribes. ‘He took last week the parson of Freton, and but for my cousin Jerningham the younger, there would have led him forth with him; and he told them plainly, if they made any such doings there, unless they had the letter to show for them, they should have laid on[204.2] on their bodies.’[204.3] A still more flagrant instance of lawlessness had occurred just before, of which our old acquaintance Thomas Denys was the victim. Thomas Denys. He was at this time coroner of Norfolk. If not in Edward IV.’s service before he was king, he became a member of the royal household immediately afterwards, and accompanied the new king to York before his coronation. It appears that he had some complaints to make to the king of one Twyer, in Norfolk, and also of Sir John Howard, the sheriff of the county, a relation of the Duke of Norfolk, of whom we have already spoken,[204.4] and shall have more to say presently. But scarcely had he returned home when he was pulled out of his house by the parson of Snoring, a friend of Twyer’s, who accused him of having procured indictments against Twyer and himself, and carried him off, we are not told whither.[204.5] All we know is that in the beginning of July Thomas Denys was murdered, and that there were various reports as to who had instigated the crime. William Lomner believed that some men of the Duke of Norfolk’s council were implicated. Sir Miles Stapleton factiously endeavoured to lay the blame on John Berney of Witchingham. The parson of Snoring was put in the stocks, with four of his associates, but what further punishment they underwent does not appear. John Paston was entreated to use his influence to get them tried by a special commission.[204.6] The [205] most precise account of the crime is found in the records of the King’s Bench, which give us the date and place where it occurred. One Robert Grey of Warham, labourer, was indicted for having, along with others, attacked Denys on Thursday the 2nd July, and dragged him from his house at Gately to Egmere, not far from Walsingham, where they killed him on the Saturday following.
Elizabeth Poynings, too, John Paston’s sister, has some experience of the bitterness of the times. She has by this time become a widow, having lost her husband at the second battle of St. Albans, and her lands are occupied by the Countess of Northumberland and Robert Fenys, in disregard of her rights.[205.1] In times of revolution and tumult the weak must go to the wall.
Besides these illustrations of the social condition of the times, our Letters still abound with information not to be found elsewhere as to the chief political events. Political events. Here we have the record of the battle of Towton, of those who fell, and of those who were wounded;[205.2] after which we find Henry VI. shut up in Yorkshire, in a place the name of which is doubtful.[205.3] Then we hear of the beheading of the Earl of Wiltshire, and of his head being placed on London Bridge.[205.4] Then come matters relating to the coronation of Edward IV., which was delayed on account of the siege of Carlisle.[205.5] On this occasion, it seems, John Paston was to have received the honour of knighthood,[205.6] which he doubtless declined, having already compounded with Henry VI. not to be made a knight.[205.7] Two years later, however, his eldest son was made one, very probably as a substitute for himself, apparently just at the time when he attained the age of twenty-one.[205.8] To the father such an honour would evidently have been a burden rather than a satisfaction.
But on the whole John Paston stood well with his countrymen, and the change of kings was an event from which he [206] had no reason to anticipate bad consequences to himself. Since the death of Sir John Fastolf he had become a man of much greater importance, and he had been returned to Parliament in the last year of Henry VI. as a supporter of the Duke of York. He was now, in the first year of Edward IV., returned to Parliament again. John Paston returned to Parliament. He was apparently in good favour with the king, and had been since the accession of Edward for a short time resident in his household.[206.1] The king also obtained from him the redelivery of the jewels pawned by his father, the Duke of York, to Sir John Fastolf,[206.2] in consideration of which he granted John Paston an assignment of 700 marks[206.3] on the fee-farm of the city of Norwich, and on the issues of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. But his election as knight of the shire for Norfolk did not pass altogether without question. Paston’s wife’s cousin, John Berney of Witchingham, whom Sir Miles Stapleton accused of being implicated in the murder of Denys, had taken a leading part in the proceedings, and Stapleton alleged that he was meditating further outrages. The people had appeared ‘jacked and saletted’ at the shire house, the under-sheriff was put in suspicion of Berney, and the sheriff, Sir John Howard, conceived it would be necessary to have a new election. To this neither Berney nor Paston very much objected. Berney was willing to give every assurance that he would do the under-sheriff no bodily hurt, but he considered his conduct that at the election had not been creditable, and he desired that he would either intimate to the people that the election should stand, or procure a new writ, and publicly announce the day on which another election should be holden. As for Paston, he was perfectly satisfied, provided that he were not put to further expense, as he believed it was the general desire of the people to ratify what they had done; he only wished that it might be [207] on a holiday, so as not to interfere with the people’s work. The matter was discussed before the king himself, John Paston and the under-sheriff being present, each to answer for his part in the affair, and a writ was finally granted for a new election on St. Laurence’s Day. But from what he had seen of the conduct of the under-sheriff, Paston seems to have been afraid the day might yet be changed, to his prejudice; so, in a personal interview with that functionary, he got him to place the writ in his hands, and sent it down to his wife to keep until the new day of election came round, charging her to see that the under-sheriff had it again that day.[207.1]
His suspicions of unfair dealing were probably too well founded. At all events, the new election did not pass over peacefully any more than the previous one, perhaps not so much so. We do not, indeed, hear any more of John Berney and Sir Miles Stapleton; John Paston and Sir John Howard. but the sheriff, Sir John Howard, had a violent altercation with Paston himself in the shire house, and one of Howard’s men struck Paston twice with a dagger, so that he would have been severely wounded but for the protection of a good doublet that he wore on the occasion.[207.2]
The occurrence was an awkward one. The feuds in the county of Norfolk had already occupied the king’s attention once, and that which it was supposed would have been a settlement had proved no settlement at all. Perhaps Edward had been too lenient towards old offenders; for Sir Miles Stapleton was but an ally of Sir Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon, of whom we have heard so much in the days of Henry VI., and these two personages were almost as influential as ever. Some time before the king’s coronation, they had received a royal pardon, on the strength of which, as we learn by a letter at that time, they intended going up to London with the Duchess of Suffolk to be present at the ceremony.[207.3] And very soon afterwards we have a renewal of the old complaints that ‘the world was right wild, and had been sithence Heydon’s safeguard was proclaimed at Walsingham.’[207.4] But [208] whoever was in fault, it was a serious thing for John Paston—who by this time hoped that he was in favour with the king, and had actually got his eldest son introduced into the king’s household[208.1]—that royal influence itself could not still the angry feelings that had arisen about his election. The dispute must now once more come before the king, and his adversary, in consequence of his relation to the Duke of Norfolk, was doubtless a man of considerable influence. Paston himself, it is true, was in the position of the injured party, but he forbore to complain. The subject, however, was brought by others under the notice of the king, who commanded both Paston and Howard to appear before him, and was even incensed at the former for delaying to obey his summons. On the 11th of October the king said to one of John Paston’s friends: ‘We have sent two privy seals to Paston by two yeomen of our chamber, and he disobeyeth them; but we will send him another to-morrow, and, by God’s mercy, if he come not then, he shall die for it. We will make all other men beware by him how they shall disobey our writing. A servant of ours hath made a complaint of him. I cannot think that he hath informed us all truly. Yet not for that we will not suffer him to disobey our writing; but sithence he disobeyeth our writing, we may believe the better his guiding is as we be informed.’[208.2]
These terrible words were reported to John Paston by his brother Clement, then in London, who urged him to come up from Norfolk in all possible haste, and to be sure that he had some very weighty excuse for having neglected the previous messages. But besides great despatch in coming, and a very weighty excuse, one thing more was very necessary to be attended to, and this further admonition was added: ‘Also, if ye do well, come right strong; for Howard’s wife made her boast that if any of her husband’s men might come to you, there should go no penny for your life, and Howard hath with the king a great fellowship.’[208.3]
It was clear this advice was not to be neglected. Paston seems to have been detained in Norfolk by a dispute he had [209] with his co-executors Judge Yelverton[209.1] and William Jenney, who refused to acknowledge his claims as chief administrator of Fastolf’s will, and had entered on the possession of some of Sir John’s manors in Suffolk, near the borders of Norfolk.[209.2] But his absence from London had done great mischief. Not only Howard, but the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were endeavouring to put him out of the king’s favour; and it was said that Caister would be given to the king’s brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester.[209.3] Worst of all, however, was the fact that the king, who had evidently had a good opinion of Paston hitherto, was beginning to alter his tone so seriously. John Paston imprisoned. No time, therefore, was to be lost in going up to London, and no marvel though, when he got there, he was immediately committed to the Fleet.[209.4]