The Paston Letters, Volume I (of 6)

cation of t

who had not at that time attained any great degree of celebrity. Horace Walpole had described him, thirteen years before, as 'a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good sort of man.' What the great literary magnate afterwards thought of him we are not informed, but we know that he took a lively interest in the Paston Letters the moment they were published. He appears, indeed, to have given some assistance in the progress of the work through the press. On its appearance he expressed himself with characteristic enthusiasm:-'

n. What was thought of them by some. Miss Hannah More was less easily pleased, and she no doubt was the type of many other readers. The letters, she declared, were quite barbarous in style, with none of the elegance of their supposed contemporary Rowley. They might perhaps be of some use to correct history, but as letters and fine reading, nothing was to be said for them.2.1 It was

nterest i

itself must have excited curiosity still more. A whole edition was disposed of in a week, and a second edition called for, which, after undergoing some little revision, with the assistance of Mr. George Steevens, the Shakspearian editor, was published the same year. Meanwhile, to gratify the curious, the original MS. letters were deposited for a time in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries; but the King h

ced with his second edition that another series of the Letters was in preparation, which was to cover the same period as the first two volumes, and to include also the reign of Henry VII. Accordingly a third and fourth volume of the work were issued together in the year 1789, con

the head of the family, Sir Robert Paston, was created Earl of Yarmouth; but his son William, the second bearer of the title, having got into debt and encumbered his inheritance, finally died without male issue, so that his title became extinct. While living in reduced circumstances, he appears to have parted with a portion of his family papers, which were purchased by the great antiquary and collector, Peter Le Neve, Norroy King of Arms. 4 Le Neve was a Norfolk man, possessed of considerable estates at Witchingham and elsewhere in the county; and he made it a special object to collect MSS. and records relating to Norfolk and Suffolk. Just before his death in 1729 he made a will,4.1 by which he bequeathed his MSS

es. . . . There are innumerable letters of good consequence in history still lying among the loose papers, all which I laid up in a corner of the room on a heap which 5 contains several sacks full.'5.1 But Blomefield afterwards became the owner of a considerable portion of these papers; for he not only wrote his initials on several of them, and marked a good many others with a mark by which he was in the habit of distinguishing original documents that he had examined and noted, but he also made a present to a friend of one letter which must certainly have once been in the Paston family archives. He himself refers to his ownership of certain collections of documents in the Preface to his History of Norfolk, where he informs the reader that he has made distinct reference to the several authors and originals he had made use of in all cases, 'except' (these are his words) 'where the originals are either in M

ditors. Of the Paston MSS. which were owned by him, a few are now to be found in one of the volumes of the Douce Collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. These, it would seem, were 6 first purchased by the noted antiquary John Ives,6.1 who acquired a number of Le Neve's, Martin's, and Blomefield's MSS.; and after his library was sold by auction in March 1777, they became part of the collections relating to the co

at Diss, bought both the library and the other collections, as a speculation, for ￡630. The printed books he immediately sold to a firm at Norwich, who disposed of them by auction; the pictures and smaller curiosities he sold by auction at Diss, and certain portions of the MSS. were sent, at different times, to the London market. But before he

two printed volumes.6.2 Yet, 7 strange to say, these MSS. were afterwards lost sight of so completely that for a whole century nobody could tell what had become of them. They were not in the Royal Library afterwards given up to the British Museum; they were not to

that volume any more than those of the others. Strange to say, however, the originals of that volume were in his house all the time, and were discovered by his son, Mr. Philip Frere, in the year 1865, just after an ingenious littérateur had made the complete disappearance of all the MSS. a ground for casting doubt on the authenticity of the published letters. It is certa

mes iii. and iv. could not be found. The originals of volume v. could not be found. These last, however, after a time, came to light, as we have seen, in 1865, having been discovered in the house of the late Mr. Philip Frere at Dungate, in Cambridgeshir

ginals might even yet be discovered with a little further search, perhaps even in the same house. But a further search at Dungate, though it brought to light a vast quantity of papers of different ages, many of them very curious, did not lead to the

is mind, and I received no answer to further inquiries repeated at various intervals. At last it appeared hopeless to wait longer and defer my edition of the Letters indefinitely on the chance of finding more originals anywhere. So the first volume of my edition went to press, and the second, and the third. But just after I had printed off two Appendices to vol. iii., a friend of Mr. George Frere's called upon me at the Record Office, and informed me that a number of original Paston letters had been discovered at Roydon, which he had conveyed up to London. After some further communicat

ade two Appendices already to that volume, the only thing to do was to add a third, in which the reader would find a brief note of the discovery, with copies of some of the unpublished letters, and as full an account of the others b

se described in my third Appendix. Of the former set there were only four letters wanting, viz. the two in volume iii. whose existence is accounted for elsewhere, and two in vo

collating the present collection with the printed volumes, it was found to contain four others of which no record exists either in Fenn's or Mr. G

hamber in the Temple. A well-known bookseller purchased the MSS. offered at Christie's for 500 guineas, and some years later (in 1896), sold them to the British Museum. They are thus, at length, available for general con

y showed them to me at his house soon after their discovery. They have come to him among family papers and heirlooms of which, being only tenant for life, he is not free to dispose until some doubts can be removed as to their past history; and I accordingly forbear from saying more on this point except that their place of deposit indicates that they may either have got mixed with the private papers and books of Pitt, of which a large number are in the Orwell library, or with those of his old tutor and secretary,

Letters had been defeated; and there seemed nothing for it but to let them remain even at the last in a general series, an Appendix and a Supplement. The present publishers, however, by arrangement with Messrs. Constable, were anxious to meet the wants of scholars who desired to possess the letters, now that the collection seems to be as complete as it is ever likely to be, in a single series, and in a more luxurious form than that in which they have hitherto appeared. I have accordingly rearrang

ve shown in previous editions, fairly satisfactory on the whole, and it is not to be supposed that a comparison of all the printed letters with the original MSS. would lead to results of very material consequence. A large number 12 have been compared already, and the comparison inspires the greatest confidence i

ings by the publication of historical sources and the greater accessibility of historical records. And secondly, the discovery of such a large number of unprinted documents belonging to the Paston Collection made it possible to stud

itor, whose work is indeed a perfect model of care and accuracy for the days in which he lived; but historical criticism has advanced since that time, and facilities abound which did not then exist for comparing one set of documents with another, and testing the accuracy of dates by public records. The completion of Blomefield's History of Norfolk, and the admirable index added to that work of late years by Mr. Chadwi

of Fenn

trated besides by numerous facsimiles of the original handwritings, signatures, paper-marks, and seals of the letters, was not likely to have been executed in a slovenly manner, in so far as the text is concerned. But we are not left in this case to mere presumptive evidence. The originals of the fifth volume have been minutely examined by a committee of the Society of Antiquaries, and compared all through with the printed text, and

nd also from the results of the examination of the fifth volume by the committee of the Society of Antiquaries,13.1 I have been led to the opinion that the manner in which Sir John Fenn prepared his materials for the press was as follows:- Mode in which Fenn prepared the letters for publication. Two copies were first made of every letter, the one in the exact spelling and punctuation of the original, the other in modern orthography. Both these copies were taken direct from the original, and possibly in the case of the first two volumes they were both made by Fenn himself. In vols. iii. and iv., however, it is stated that many of the transcripts were made by Mr. Dalton, while those of vol. v. were found to be almost all in his handwriting when that volume was sent to press in 1823.13.2 But 14 this statement probably refers only to the copies in the antique spelling. Those in modern spell

ng of the word "over" in ancient MSS., and he accordingly suggested that word as making better sense. His surmise turned out to be the true reading, and the passage stands corrected accordingly in the printed volume. In Letter xxiv. there was a discrepancy in the date between the transcript in ancient spelling and the modern version. In the latter it was "the 4th day of December," whereas the former gave it as the 3rd. On examination it appea

n which Mr. Dalton remarks as follows:-"I have added this on your copy as supposing it an oversight, and hope it is properly inserted." Thus it appears that Mr. Dalton's own transcript had the words which were 15 deficient in the other, and that, being tolerably certain they existed in the original, he transferred them to the copy made by Fenn. Now when it is considered that these words are written

pts were eliminated. In Letter xxxiv., at the bottom of pp. 144-5, occurs the name of Will or William Staunton. It appears this name was first transcribed as "Robert Fraunton" in the right or modern version; on which Mr. Dalton remarks, "It is William in orig." (Mr. Dalton constantly speaks of the transcript in ancient spelling as the "original" i

y one15.3 other letter in that volume had then turned up. I carefully compared both these papers with the documents as printed, and in both, as I remarked in the Preface to vol. ii., the exact spelling was given with the most scrupulous accuracy, so that there was scarcely the most trivial variation between the originals and the printed text. But a more caref

te from the text as spurious a heading printed by Fenn as if it were a part of the document which it precedes. Thus, in No. 19,16.1 I pointed out that the title, in which Judge Paston is called "Sir William Paston, knight," could not possibly be contemporaneous; and the document itself shows that this opinion was well founded. It bears, indeed, a modern endorsement in a handwriting of the last century much to the same effect as Sir John Fenn's heading; but this, of course, is no authority at all. In th

isread. It is printed in this edition16.4 as it stands in the first, Vadatur J. P., meaning apparently "John Paston gives security, or s

his, as no Parliament actually met in the 13th year of Henry VI. The original endorsement, however, is perfectly intelligible and consistent with facts, when once it has been accurately deciphered. The handwriting, indeed, is very crabbed, and for a considerable time I was puzzled; but the words are as follows:-"Falsa billa Will'i Dallyng ad parliamentum tempore quo Henric

revious volume. But the evidence seemed to me very strong that the William Paston who wrote this letter was not Sir John's uncle, but his brother. The inspection of the original letter itself has proved to me that I was right. The signatures of the two Williams were

an very occasional inaccuracy, and, generally speaking, in matters very immaterial. On the contrary, an inspection of these last recovered originals has greatly confirmed the opinion, which the originals previously discovered enabled me to form, of the scrupulous fidelity and care with which the letters were first edited. For the most part, not only the words, but the exact spelling of the MSS. is preserved, with merely the most trifling variations. Sir John, indeed, was not a trained archivist, and the

u keep this letter close, and lose it not; rather burn it." On comparing this letter with the original, the Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, some years ago, were amazed to find that there was no such postscript in the MS., and they were a good deal at a loss

e said about it. A more serious fault is, that in vols. iii. and iv. he has published occasionally mere extracts from a letter as if it were the whole letter. In vols. i. and ii. he avowedly left out passages of little interest, and marked the places where they occurred with asterisks; but in the two succeeding volumes he has not thought it necessary to be so particular, and he has made the omissions sub silentio. For this indeed no one can seriously blame him

on are not of very great interest. So also Letter 171 (Letter xxx. in Fenn's third volume)18.3 is a set of extracts. Letter 182 (vol. iii., Letter xxxix., in Fenn)

accounts, and a number of other matters of equally little interest, formed no part of his design; but the task that he had really set himself he executed with admirable fidelity. He grudged no labour or expense in tracing facsimiles of the signatures, the seals, and the watermarks on the paper. All that could serve to illustrate the manners of the period, either in the contents of the letters, or in the handwritings, or the mode in which they were folded, he esteemed most valuable; and for these things his edition

efully with the originals throughout, and in others I made special reference to passages where doubts were naturally suggested, either from the obscurity of the words or from any other cause as to the correctness

he 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

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,

ained in three half-bound volumes, and are the originals of

re 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 b

few Paston letters preserved

ner 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 t

thing 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 p

tters (Cunningha

emoirs of Hanna

ix after Intro

Reverend Francis Blomefie

Arch?ology,

's Literary Ane

at St. James's, and had the honour of presenting to His Majesty (bound in three volumes) the original letters of which he had before p

Princess Marie Liechte

ther noted by him as 'no longer in his possession.' The letters missing of the Appendix are only Nos. 997 and 1019. Of the four said to be missing in Christie's catalogue, 1016 is not a

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