John Paston’s Latter Days

The chagrin and mortification inflicted upon John Paston by an injury like this may not unlikely have contributed to shorten his days. The correspondence is scanty from the end of October 1465 till some time after his death, which occurred in London in May of the following year. We know nothing of the nature of the illness which carried him off; but three imprisonments in the course of five years, accompanied with a great deal of anxiety about his newly acquired property, the intrigues of lawyers and the enmity of great men, must have exercised a depressing influence even on the stoutest heart. He appears to have been released from prison some time before his death, A.D. 1466. and was so far well in February that he had a conference in Westminster Hall with William Jenney, who desired at last to come to some agreement with him. But the great lawsuit about Fastolf’s will remained still undecided, and he left to his son Sir John an inheritance troubled by a disputed claim. He died on the 21st or 22nd May233.1 1466. His remains were carried down into Norfolk and buried with great magnificence in Bromholm Abbey.233.2

Of his character we see fewer indications than might have been expected in a correspondence extending over more than twenty years, and perhaps we are in danger of judging him too much from the negative point of view. A man of business habits and of little humour, but apparently of elastic spirits and thorough knowledge of the world, he was not easily conquered by any difficulties or overwhelmed by misfortunes. His early experience in that dispute with Lord Molynes about Gresham must have taught him, if he needed teaching, the crookedness of the times in which he lived, and the hopelessness of trusting to mere abstract right and justice for the protection of his own interests. But by unwearied energy, by constant watchfulness, by cultivating the friendship of Sir John Fastolf and the goodwill of the world in general, he succeeded in asserting for himself a position of some importance in his native county. That he was, at the same time, grasping and selfish to some extent, is no more than what we might be prepared to expect; and it would seem there were complaints to this effect even among the members of his own family.233.3 As a parent he appears to have been somewhat unamiable and cold-hearted. Yet it is mainly to his self-seeking, businesslike character that we owe the preservation of so valuable a correspondence. He knew well the importance of letters and of documents when rights came to be contested, and he was far more anxious about their security than about all the rest of his goods and chattels.234.1

Sir John Fastolf’s will.

Such being the nature of the man, and his personal history being as we have seen, what are we to say of the dark suspicion thrown upon his conduct in one important matter by his personal enemy Sir William Yelverton, and even by his quondam friend William Worcester? If their contention was true, the great addition made to the fortunes of the Paston family on the death of Sir John Fastolf was only due to a successful forgery. The will on which John Paston founded his claim to Caister, as well as to the manors of Drayton and Hellesdon, Cotton, Calcotes, and the whole of Fastolf’s lands in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, was denounced by them as a fabrication and not the genuine will of Sir John Fastolf. And we must own that there are many things which seem to make the imputation credible. We have, unfortunately, only a portion of the depositions taken in the lawsuit, and these are entirely those of the adverse party, with the exception of two separate and individual testimonies given in Paston’s favour.234.2 We ought, therefore, undoubtedly to be on our guard against attaching undue weight to the many allegations of perjury and corruption against Paston’s witnesses, as it is certainly quite conceivable that the interested testimony was on the other side, and it is truly shown in John Paston’s own comments upon the evidence that the proofs given were insufficient. But, on the other hand, it is a very suspicious circumstance that a will drawn up by Fastolf on the 14th June before his death, was altered on the 3rd November so as to confer special powers in the administration to John Paston and Thomas Howes, and to give a large beneficiary interest to the former.234.3 It is also singular that there should be three separate instruments of this latter date, each professing to be Fastolf’s will.234.4 And it by no means tends to allay suspicion when we find that two years after John Paston’s death, and very shortly before his own, the parson Thomas Howes, a Grey Friar, and partner with him in the principal charge of the administration of the alleged last will, made a declaration ‘for the discharge of his conscience’ that the document was a fabrication.235.1

This evidence might seem at first sight decisive and extremely damaging to the character of John Paston. But even here we must not be too precipitate in our conclusion. It is, for one thing, fairly open to remark that if this subsequent declaration of Sir Thomas Howes was an impeachment of Paston’s honesty, it was no less so of his own; so that it becomes a question whether he was more honest at the time he was acting in concurrence with Paston or at the time of his professed repentance when he made this declaration. But on the whole we may admit that the latter alternative is more probable, and we frankly own it as our belief that Sir Thomas Howes, in his latter days, felt scruples of conscience with regard to the part he had taken in defending for his master Paston the validity of what, after all, he considered to be a questionable document. Yet what are we to say, in this case, to the testimony of another Grey Friar, our old friend Dr. Brackley, who had drawn up the final agreement between Fastolf and Paston relative to the college, got it engrossed on indented parchment, read it to Sir John, and saw him put his seal to it?235.2 It was Brackley’s dying testimony, when he was shriven by Friar Mowth, and informed that there were serious imputations on his conduct in reference to this matter, that as he would answer before God, in whose presence he was soon to appear, the will which John Paston produced in court was the genuine will of Sir John Fastolf. This testimony, too, he repeated unsolicited when, after seeming to rally for a day or two, he sank again, and saw himself once more in the presence of death.235.3 Truly, if it seem hard to doubt the declaration of Sir Thomas Howes, it is harder still to cast suspicion on Brackley’s dying evidence.

The true explanation of these discrepancies may, however, involve less serious charges against the character either of Paston, Brackley, or Howes than would at first sight appear inevitable. The question was not really one about the authenticity of a document, but about the exact nature of a dying man’s will. The document avowedly had not Fastolf’s signature attached; it seems that he was too ill to write. For some years before his death I do not find Fastolf’s own signature attached to any of his letters. The point in dispute was whether it really represented Fastolf’s latest intentions as to the disposal of his property. True, it bore Fastolf’s seal of arms, which Yelverton and Worcester at first endeavoured to prove must have been affixed to it after his death. But Paston seems to have shown most successfully that this was impossible, as Fastolf’s seal of arms was at his death contained in a purse sealed with his signet, and the signet itself was at that time taken off his finger, and sealed up in a chest under the seals of several of the executors.236.1 Moreover, Paston’s statements went to show that the terms of the will were settled in various conferences with Sir John during the months of September, October, and the beginning of November, and that corrections had been made in it by his express desire. With all this, however, it may have been a delicate question whether the latest corrections were truly in accordance with Fastolf’s mind, and doubts may have been fairly entertained on the subject by Sir Thomas Howes; especially when we consider that on the day the will was dated Fastolf was utterly unable to speak articulately, so that no one could hear him without putting his ear close to the mouth of the dying man.236.2 With regard to John Paston’s part in the matter, he was not present when Fastolf’s seal was put to the document, so that the validity of that act rested entirely upon the testimony of others, particularly Dr. Brackley. And as to the charge of his ‘fabricating’ the will, it was never denied that he drew it up, or took a considerable part in doing so; the only question is how far he did so in accordance with Sir John Fastolf’s own instructions.

Some important matters of fact, indeed, were asserted by Paston in support of his case, and contested by the opposite side. Among other things, it was contended that in the autumn of the year 1457, two years before his death, Sir John Fastolf had actually made estate to John Paston of the manor of Caister and other lands in Norfolk, and thereupon given him livery of seisin with a view to the foundation of the college:237.1 also that the will made in 1459 was an imperfect document, in which no executors were named, and to which no seal was attached.237.2 If these allegations were true, there was, after all, no great alteration in Sir John’s intentions during the last two years of his life. On the other hand, Sir Thomas Howes, in his later declaration, asserts that only a year before Fastolf’s death he had, at Paston’s desire, urged Sir John to allow Paston to buy three of his manors and live in his college; at which proposition the old knight started with indignation, and declared with a great oath, ‘An I knew that Paston would buy any of my lands or my goods, he should never be my feoffee, nor mine executor.’ But even Howes acknowledges that he was willing to allow Paston a lodging for term of his life within the manor of Caister.237.3

The whole controversy affords certainly an admirable illustration of the inconvenient state of the law before the passing of the Statute of Uses in the days of Henry VIII. The hearing of all causes touching the wills of dead men belonged to the spiritual courts of the Church, which did not own the king’s jurisdiction. The king’s courts, on the other hand, had cognisance of everything affecting real property. No lands or tenements could be bequeathed by will, because the courts of common law would not give effect to such an instrument. But legal ingenuity had found the means to enable wealthy persons to bequeath their lands as well as their goods to whomsoever they pleased. A man had only to execute a conveyance of his lands to a body of trustees, who thereupon became in law the owners, express provision being made at the same time that they were to hold it for his use so long as he lived, and after his death for the use of certain other persons named in his will, or for such purposes as might therein be indicated. By this indirect means a title in lands was very effectually conveyed to a legatee without any abatement of the original owner’s control over his own property so long as he lived. But the practice gave rise to a multitude of inconveniences. Private bargains, legal quibbles and subtleties, crafty influences brought to bear upon dying men, great uncertainty as to the destination of certain properties, were among its frequent results. At the very last moment, when the dying man, perhaps, was in imperfect possession of his faculties, mere words, or even a nod or sign, might affect the title to very large estates. And almost by the very nature of the case, wherever a trust was instituted like that of Sir John Fastolf, all the pettifogging devices of legal chicanery were necessarily brought into play, either to establish a title or to contest it.238.1