Paston Letters

Paston Letters, the largest surviving collection of 15th-century English correspondence. It is invaluable to historians and philologists and is preserved mainly in the British Museum. Part is derived from the circle of the career soldier Sir John Fastolf (c. 1378–1459), and part is from the correspondence of the Paston family, Fastolf’s neighbours in eastern Norfolk.

One of Fastolf’s servants, William Worcester, collected material for personal historical research as well as evidence for several lawsuits involving Fastolf. The Pastons involved in the letters include William (d. 1444), who became a justice of the Court of Common Pleas; his son John I (d. 1466), a London lawyer; John’s two sons, John II (d. 1479) and John III (d. 1503), both of whom were knighted; and their respective wives and children. The collection of more than 1,000 items contains legal records, local and national news, and gossip; through all this, the characters of the writers emerge vividly.

Reasons for the initial preservation of the letters must include the desirability, in the litigious world of 15th-century Norfolk, of possessing all possible evidence that might be valuable in lawsuits; employees and estate managers too were eager to preserve their warrants for their expenditures and actions.

How the Paston Letters were kept from the 15th to the 18th century is unknown, but in 1735 Francis Blomefield explored the muniment room at Oxnead, the Paston family seat in Norfolk. He preserved letters judged “of good consequence in history,” these eventually being acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the British Museum. John Fenn of East Dereham, Norfolk, edited four volumes of Original Letters (1787–89); a fifth volume, completed by William Frere, was published posthumously in 1823. The collection was reedited by James Gairdner as The Paston Letters, 1422–1509 in six volumes in 1904.

The collection remains of outstanding interest to philologists as evidence of the English language at a crucial period in its development. For historians, the letters are a primary source for the political history of 15th-century England and also for the domestic history of medieval English provincial society.