Picture Library - THE PASTONS AND THEIR WORLD

Picture Library - The Pastons and their World

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The Pastons and their World

The Pastons are the most well documented gentry family of late medieval England. Their celebrated collection of correspondence, now mostly in the British Library, London, opens a window onto the ambitions and anxieties of ordinary English men and women of the time. Margaret Paston was herself commemorated by a brass at Mautby. She made provision for this in her will, giving considerable detail about the design, though the brass does not survive. Her husband, John, who died in 1466, was also commemorated by a brass but it was laid down some years after his death; a number of her letters to her eldest son, including one as late as 1478, berate him for not having had his father's tomb made. A tomb of c. 1480 survives in Paston church, which is probably the much delayed monument to John Paston; unfortunately the brass has gone, leaving only an empty indent. But brasses to a number of the Pastons' associates survive in Norfolk and Suffolk. Among these is the brass of the slippery Judge Yelverton at Rougham.

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