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 body of executors. Howes, too, after Paston's death, declared the later will a fabrication. But his testimony is not free from suspicion, and was contradicted by others. The facts before us hardly justify Sir James Ramsay (ii. 345) in assuming without question that Paston was guilty of ‘forgery and breach of trust.’ The reopening of the civil war in the autumn of 1459 may very well have convinced Fastolf that unless he gave some one a strong personal interest in the foundation of his college his intentions were very likely to be defeated (Paston Letters, i. 491). For the rest of his life Paston's whole energies were devoted to retaining his hold upon the Fastolf estates against the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and the recalcitrant executors. Once his enemies laid a plot to carry him off into the north, and three times he was imprisoned in the Fleet, on the second occasion (1464) just after he had obtained Edward IV's license for the foundation of Fastolf's college. The suit against the will began in the spiritual court of Canterbury in 1464, and was still going on at his death. He was compelled to bring evidence to prove that he was not of servile blood. But the Fastolf succession had made Paston a man of greater importance than before; he sat in the last parliament of Henry VI and the first of Edward IV as knight of the shire for Norfolk, and had some influence with Edward, in whose household he seems for a time to have resided. He managed to retain possession of Caistor and most of the disputed estates down to his death, which took place at London on 21 or 22 May 1466 (ib. ii. 290). He was buried in Bromholm Priory.

Paston was somewhat hard, self-seeking, and unsympathetic. He grudged his younger brothers the provision which their father made for them, and his dealings with his own eldest son leave something to be desired. His letters reveal the cool, calculating, business temperament, which we have chiefly to thank for the preservation of the unique family correspondence, in which he is the central, though not the most interesting, figure (for the history of the ‘Paston Correspondence’ see under, where the reprint of Fenn's collection, edited by Ramsay in 1841 for Charles Knight, is not mentioned).

By his wife, Margaret Mauteby (d. 1484), daughter and heiress of John Mauteby of Mauteby, near Caistor, Paston had five sons and two daughters. The sons were: John the elder (1442–1479) [q. v.], who is separately noticed; John the younger (d. 1503), who was the father of Sir William Paston (1479?–1554) [q. v.]; Edmund, living in 1484; Walter, who took the degree of B.A. at Oxford in June 1479, and died a few weeks later; and William, who was at Eton in 1479, and was afterwards attached to the household of John de Vere, earl of Oxford [q. v.], until, some time after 1495, he became ‘crased in his mind.’ Paston's daughters were Margery, who married in 1469 Richard Calle; and Anne, who married in 1477 William Yelverton, grandson of William Yelverton [q. v.], the judge.

[Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner; Norfolk Archæology, vol. iv. (1855); Ramsay's Lancaster and York.] 

PASTON, JOHN (1442–1479), courtier and letter-writer, born in 1442, eldest son of John Paston (1421–1466) [q. v.], and his wife, Margaret Mauteby, may have been educated at Cambridge, like his father, who did not, however, intend him for his own profession of the law (Paston Letters, i. 433). On the accession of Edward IV he was sent to court to push the family fortunes and make interest in support of their retention of the disputed Fastolf estates. His want of success in this direction and the demands he made upon the not too well filled family exchequer gave great dissatisfaction to his father, who before long despised him as ‘a drane among bees’ without ‘politic demeaning or occupation’ (ib. iii. 481–2). Their relations were not perceptibly improved by the knighthood bestowed upon the younger Paston on his coming of age in 1463 (ib. ii. 135). At any rate, Sir John was withdrawn from court, and kept hanging about at home in Norfolk. But he soon grew weary of this life, and stole away from Caistor apparently to join the king on his northern expedition in May 1464 (ib. i. 438, ii. 141, 160, 257). His father was highly incensed, and for a time forbade him his house. But his mother interceded for him, and in the spring of 1465 he was back in Norfolk, and entrusted with the defence of Caistor Castle; in July he got ‘great worship’ by his resistance to the attempt of the men of John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk [q. v.], to enter upon the manor of Hellesdon (ib. ii. 177, 187, 205). His favour at court seems to have stood him in good stead after his father's death in May 1466, for within two months he obtained a royal recognition of the right of the family to the estates of Sir John Fastolf [q. v.] Once his own master, Paston basked in the sunshine of the court, and seldom appeared in Norfolk. Henceforth he lived chiefly in London at his ‘place in Fleet Street,’ and afterwards ‘at the George by Pauls Wharf.’ Among his friends the most congenial was Anthony Wydville, lord Scales, afterwards