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A Medieval Family
Frances Gies, Joseph Gies
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A Medieval Family
Frances Gies, Joseph Gies
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About This Book
The fascinating story of the fortunes of one medieval family over the course of a century, from bestselling historians Frances and Joseph Gies.
The Pastons were members of the English gentryâa tiny group of roughly 1, 000 households sandwiched between the ruling nobility and the peasants, and a rough analog for the contemporary "middle class." Their existence was fairly typical, but for the fact that it was recorded in an extraordinary collection of nearly 1, 000 letters which have survived to this day. Through these letters, which cover the years from 1421 to 1484, and the lives of three generations of Pastons, bestselling historians Frances and Joseph Gies provide a rare window into the day-to-day life of this family, and the broader political and social goings-on of medieval England.
A Medieval Family first tells the story of Judge William Paston (1378-1444), the patriarch of the family, a lawyer and judge who bought up land in Norfolk and left his son a sizeable estate, which was later forcibly seized by a neighboring baron. We then follow the family through its ups and downs over several generations, learning of their feuds with neighbors, the frequent instability of 15 th century England, and significant historical events, such as the Siege of Caisterand the Battle of Barnet. There are also many letters of more personal significance, including a series of Valentines sent to John Paston III.
The work of acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies has been used by George R.R. Martin in his research for Game of Thrones. In A Medieval Family, they have woven a compelling intergenerational saga that is essential reading for anyone seeking insight into the medieval period.
"The Gieses, who specialize in making the Middle Ages accessible to nonspecialists, have done a wonderful job of linking and amplifying the Pastons' words." â New Yorker
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Chapter 1
The Letters
The Paston Letters, written by a fifteenth-century family of the Norfolk landed gentry, their friends, and their associates, comprise more than a thousand letters and documents. Dealing with family and domestic problems, litigation and business affairs, they have no literary pretensions and only peripheral political significance. Their value to historians lies in the familyâs very ordinariness and the lettersâ consequent wealth of information about manners, morals, lifestyle, and attitudes in the late Middle Ages. Their existence itself reflects the increasing literacy of the gentry, as well as the troubled times that separated family members and imposed written communication.
The Paston archive first came to public notice in 1787 when a Norfolk gentleman named John Fenn, a member of the enthusiastic class of amateur historian-archaeologists known as antiquarians, published two volumes under the cumbersome title Original Letters, Written During the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III, By Various Persons of Rank and Consequence. The title was misleading. Most of the correspondence was not that of âpersons of rank and consequenceâ but of three generations of the Paston family and their compatriots, persons of only middling rank and consequence.
The publication was greeted by an accolade from Horace Walpole, earl of Orford, himself a famous composer of letters, which gave it an immediate boost. Walpoleâs appreciation was principally for the occasional letters of the âpersons of rankâ: âLord Rivers, Lord Hastings, the Earl of Warwick. . . . What antiquary would be answering a letter from a living Countess when he may read one from Eleanor Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk?â1 On the other hand, Hannah More, a prominent bluestocking, deplored the lettersâ want of elegance and their âbarbarous style.â She concluded that they might be of some use as a historical resource but that âas letters they have little merit.â2
Mrs. Moreâs (privately expressed) opinion was not generally shared, and the book was a success in court and literary circles, resulting in Fennâs being knighted by King George III. The first two volumes were followed by a third and fourth in 1789, while a fifth, left ready for publication by Fenn at his death in 1794, was published by his nephew William Frere in 1823.
The Fenn edition, like subsequent versions of the Paston Letters, was limited in time frame to the fifteenth century though the familyâs correspondence, after a break, continued through the seventeenth century. It is the letters and documents of the fifteenth century, by presenting a coherent record of three generations of the family, that constitute an incomparable resource for the social history of the time and a record of a pivotal class of the late Middle Ages. Sandwiched between the nobilityâa few score families, most of them very wealthyâand the upper (yeoman) tier of the peasant masses, the English gentry numbered only about a thousand households, filling the professions, especially the law, and owning enough property to ensure a decent standard of living.
But the Pastons are more than a microcosm of a class: they are individuals with personalities and stories that are accessible to us, once the obstacle imposed by language has been overcome. With the exception of a few in French or Latin, the letters are written in a language somewhere between the Middle English of Chaucer (d.1400) and the Early Modern English of Shakespeare; in fact, they present, in addition to the raw material of social history, a record of an important stage in the history of the English language, just before and just after the introduction of printing. Geographically, the Paston idiom is located in the East Midlands. North, South, and Midland English differed on a scale that made Northern speech difficult for Southern speakers to understand; Midlanders understood both.3 East Midland speech, used by Court and government circles and by the Justices of Assize, was in the process of becoming modern English.4 In its transitional fifteenth-century state, it presents difficulties for the modern reader in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. Some words have since passed out of the language; others have changed their meaning; old verb and pronoun forms persist; word order is confusing.*
Spelling, however, is the greatest obstacle, differing not only from the modern but from letter to letter, within a letter, or even within a sentence. Evidently English readers of John Fennâs day were closer to Middle English than we are today; few modern readers would have the patience to read the Paston letters in their original form. In this book the prose is âtranslatedâ for the sake of intelligibility without, so far as possible, sacrificing contemporary flavor. For example, Margaret Pastonâs letter to her husband John, about a possible marriage for his sister, Elizabeth, reads in the original:
Right worshipfull hosbond, I recommawnd me to yow, praying yow to wete that I spak yistirday with my suster, and she told me that she was sory that she myght not speke with yow or ye yede; and she desyrith if itt pleased yow, that ye shuld yeve the jantylman that ye know of seche langage as he myght fele by yow that ye wull be wele willyng to the mater that ye know of; for she told me that he hath seyd befor this tym that he conseyvid that ye have sett but lytil therby, wherefor she prayth yow that ye woll be here gode brother, and that ye myght have a full answer at this tym whedder it shall be ya or nay. For her moder hath seyd to her syth that ye redyn hens that she hath no fantesy therinne, but that it shall com to a jape, and seyth to her that ther is gode grafte in dawbyng, and hath seche langage to her that she thynkyt right strange, and so that she is right wery therof, wherefor she desyrith the rather to have a full conclusyon therinne. She seyth her full trost is in yow, and as ye do therinne, she woll agre her therto.5 (See illustration here)
Translation:
Right worshipful husband, I recommend myself to you, praying you to know that I spoke yesterday with my sister [-in-law], and she told me that she was sorry that she could not speak with you before you went; and she desires, if it please you, that you should give the gentleman that you know of such an answer that he might feel that you will be favorable to the matter that you know of; for she told me that he has said previously that he thought that you have set but little importance by it, wherefore she prays you that you will be her good brother, and that you might have a full answer at this time whether it shall be yes or no. For her mother has said to her since you rode hence that it shall come to a joke; and says to her that there is good art in putting on makeup; and has language to her that she thinks very strange, so that she is very weary thereof, wherefore she desires rather to have a full conclusion of it. She says her full trust is in you, and whatever you decide to do, she will agree to it.
Letter from Margaret Paston to her husband, John, 30 January, probably 1453, asking his help in finding a husband for his sister, Elizabeth.
(British Library, MS. Add. 36888, f.91)
(British Library, MS. Add. 36888, f.91)
Numerals in the letters are almost exclusively Roman, although Hindu-Arabic notation had long been introduced in Europe. (For clarityâs sake, this book writes out the numbers, or substitutes Arabic for Roman.) The Pastons probably employed the counting board (a version of the abacus) for their computations. Margaret makes a reference to Johnâs âboard,â which, along with his coffers, required space âto go and sit beside.â6 The monetary system, inherited from the Romans, was universal in medieval Europe and preserved in England until the 1970s: in Latin, libri, solidi, and denarii, in English, pounds, shillings, and pence; twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound. Counting by dozens and scores of dozens apparently seemed natural to the Middle Ages. In the Paston Letters, pounds are expressed by the abbreviation li. (for libri, as for example, âxx li.â) for which this book substitutes the word âpoundsâ or the modern pound sign (ÂŁ); the abbreviations for shillings and pence are the same as in predecimal Britain: s. for shillings, and d. (denarii) for pence. In England another often-used unit was the mark, which equaled two-thirds of a pound, a relationship confusing to a modern observer but giving no trouble to the Pastons, who switched back and forth between pounds and marks with casual dexterity.
The one basic, universal coin circulated throughout medieval Europe was the silver penny. In England there were multiples, 4d. and 2d. coins (groats and half-groats), and fractions, half- and quarter-pennies, but there were no large silver coins. The pound and the shilling, as well as the mark, were only âmoneys of account,â used for convenience in dealing with large amounts but not existing as actual coins. There was no paper money. A few English gold coins existed: the noble, worth a third of a pound, and the half- and quarter-noble. In 1464 the old noble was renamed the âangel,â and the new noble, also called the âroyal,â became a half-pound.
The Paston collection reflects the growth of literacy in the late Middle Ages, as well as the emergence of English as a written language. But the letters also indicate that writing was hard work, which often devolved on servants, secretaries, and amanuenses. Several smaller English collections survive from the same period, notably those of the Celys, the Plumptons, and the Stonors.7
Many of the male Pastonsâ letters are in the hand of the sender; some were dictated to or even composed by clerks and usually but not always signed by the sender. Most of the womenâs letters are dictated, implying that though the women could read, they were not proficient at writing or at least found it a chore.
The correspondence among Paston family members consists mostly of originals; letters sent to persons outside the family exist in drafts or in copiesââdoubles,â as Sir John Fastolf, a leading figure in the Paston story, called them, directing his clerks to make and keep them.8
The survival of the large Paston archive owes something to luck. However, the content of the letters at least partially explains why the family took such pains to preserve them: much of the substance has to do with the ferocious disputes over property that constituted a large part of the activity of gentry and nobility in the fifteenth century. The first John Paston (designated in this book as John Paston I, or simply John Paston) was a lawyer by profession and through the last several years of his life engaged in the most bitterly fought of all the Paston battles, that over the estate of Sir John Fastolf.
John Pastonâs wife Margaret, one of the central figures in the correspondence, recalled the value that her late husband attached to the written document when she counseled her eldest son, âKeep wisely your writings that are of charge [important], that they come not into the hands of those that may hurt you hereafter. Your father, whom God assoil [pardon], in his troubled season set more [store] by his writings and evidence than he did by any of his movable goods. Remember that if they were taken from you, you could never get any more such as they are.â9
Second only to land dealings as a theme of the letters are family affairs: marriage prospects and arrangements, visits, the discipline of children being educated away from home, pregnancies, sickness, death. Letters became of paramount importance as families of the gentry were geographically separated, the daughters marrying and joining their husbands, the sons going off to train for careers in law, service to lords, or in the Church. Family feeling extended to uncles, cousins, and in-lawsâthe last customarily referred to simply as âbrother,â âsister,â âmother,â or âfatherâ and in many ways treated as blood relations. Stretching the custom further, friends were often addressed as âcousinâ even when there was no question of kinship. (Johnâs letters to his wife were usually addressed âto my cousin Margaret Paston,â though she was certainly no blood relation.) Sometimes, indeed, it is difficult to distinguish between real and courtesy cousins, so complex were relationships thanks to shortened life spans and frequent remarriages. Sir John Fastolfâs mother was married three times, his wife twice; no wonder everyone seemed to be his cousin. One historian comments, âI am inclined to believe that everybody who was anybody in England in the late middle ages, and especially those âat court,â had kinships or alliances of one degree or another with everyone else.â10
However extended and sometimes artificial the compass of relationship, family feeling was genuine and strong. F. R. H. DuBoulay describes it as âan eagerness for letters and news from distant members every bit as ardent as that displayed among Victorian families.â11 Many letters include the phrase âI think it long ere I heard from you.â For a woman like Margaret Paston to provide the nexus of communication for husband, children, kinsmen, and friends was natural.
The lettersâ salutations, not written on a separate line but as part of the opening sentence, follow accept...