Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/14

  of them being nearly obliterated by damp, and the writing very bad, it remains possible that an exhaustive search through them might lead to the discovery of some details concerning the capture of St. Blanchard, which is equally unknown to French and naval histories.]  PASTON, EDWARD, D.D. (1641–1714), president of Douay College, born in Norfolk in 1640, was the son of William Paston, esq., of Appleton in that county. He was sent to the English College at Douay when only ten years of age, arriving there on 24 Sept. 1651; and he was ordained priest at Bruges on 10 April 1666. Afterwards he was appointed professor of divinity at Douay. On 5 Feb. 1680–1 he was created D.D. On 11 June 1682 he set out for England, with the intention of remaining here as a missioner; but he returned to Douay in May 1683, and was employed in teaching divinity, as before. On the accession of James II he revisited this country, and lived privately in London till June 1688, when he was chosen president of Douay College in the place of Dr. James Smith, who had been raised to the episcopal dignity. He arrived at Douay on 22 July, governed the college with success for about twenty-six years, and died on 21 July 1714.

[Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 479; Husenbeth's Colleges and Convents on the Continent, p. 4; Panzani's Memoirs, p. 402.]  PASTON, JOHN (1421–1466), letter-writer and country gentleman, the eldest son of William Paston [q. v.] the judge, born in 1421, was brought up to the law in the Inner Temple, and by 1440 was married by his parents to a Norfolk heiress. We may infer that he had been at Cambridge from his residing for a time in Peterhouse, even after his marriage (Paston Letters, i. 42). After his father's death in 1444 he divided his time between his Norfolk estates and his London chambers in the Temple. The great additions which the judge had made to the Paston lands were viewed with jealousy, and John Paston incurred the further hostility of Sir Thomas Tuddenham and other officers of the duchy of Lancaster in Norfolk, of which he held some of his land in Paston. He was perhaps already seeking to round off his patrimony there, and secure the manorial rights at the expense of the duchy (ib. iii. 420). Tuddenham and his friends, who had the ear of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk [q. v.], the minister in power, prompted Robert Hungerford, lord Moleyns [q. v.], to claim and take possession (1448) of the manor of Gresham, near Cromer, which Judge Paston had purchased from the descendants of Thomas Chaucer [q. v.] Paston's title was legally unassailable, but the times were such that he thought it useless to go to law, re-entered on the manor after vainly trying diplomacy, was driven out by an armed force, and only recovered possession when the fall of Suffolk brought in a ‘changed world.’ But the new ‘world’ was so unstable that he failed to get a judgment against Moleyns for the damage he had sustained, and the indictments which he and others brought against Tuddenham and his supporters likewise fell to the ground. His friends had advised him to get elected as knight of the shire; but his patron, the Duke of Norfolk, forbade him to prosecute his candidature. Shortly after this he came into close relations with Sir John Fastolf [q. v.], which had important effects upon his fortunes and those of his family. His wife was a cousin of Fastolf, the connection being probably through the Berneys of Reedham, and in 1453 we find him exercising a general oversight of the building of the great castle at Caistor, near Yarmouth, where Sir John had decided to spend his declining years. After he had taken up his residence there in the summer of the next year, Paston transacted much legal business in London for his kinsman, who frequently thanked him for the zeal he showed in his ‘chargeable matters.’ Fastolf was childless, and had set his heart on disappointing the Duke of Norfolk and other great lords who turned covetous eyes on Caistor by founding in it a college for ‘seven priests and seven poor folk.’ But such a prohibitive sum was demanded for the mortmain license that he died (5 Nov. 1459) before any arrangement had been arrived at. There was nothing, therefore, inherently improbable in the will, dated two days before his death, propounded by Paston, which gave the latter all his Norfolk and Suffolk estates on condition that he secured the foundation of the college, and paid four thousand marks into the general estate. Ten executors were named, but the actual administration was confined to Paston and Fastolf's Norfolk man of business, Thomas Howes. How far the objections which were presently raised by two of the executors were prompted by the Duke of Norfolk, who seized Caistor Castle before June 1461, and other claimants to the estates, it would be hard to decide; but there was certainly a prima facie case against the will, which was obviously nuncupative at best, bore signs of hasty drafting, and cancelled a will made only five months before, leaving the foundation of the college and the administration of the estate to the whole