The Paston Letters, A.D. 1422-1509. Volume 3 (of 6)

Note 87.2 — THE PASTON LETTERS Henry VI (continued 2)

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[From Fenn, iii. 278.] The date of this letter is doubtful. The two pieces of intelligence at the beginning were certainly both false rumours, as the writer, indeed, seems to have suspected. Henry VI. never went to Scotland in manner of war, and the Earl of Wiltshire never was made Chancellor. But the time when those rumours seem most likely to have arisen was in the year 1456, when the Duke of York had been deprived of the Protectorate. The Earl of Wiltshire, being of the opposite party to York, was not unlikely to have been talked of as Chancellor, although the Chancellorship was given on the 7th of March to the Archbishop of Canterbury. As to the rumoured expedition against Scotland, we know that in the preceding year James II., in defiance of the truce, laid siege to Berwick, which offered a gallant resistance (Nicolas’s Privy Council Proceedings, vi. 248). This, however, does not appear immediately to have led to open war between the two countries. Diplomatic relations were still carried on till, on the 10th of May 1456, James II. despatched Lyon Herald to the King of England to declare plainly that the Truce of 1453 was injurious to Scotland, and that he did not mean to abide by it (Lambeth MS. 211, f. 146 b). No reply was made to this message till the 26th of July, when an answer was despatched by the Duke of York in the King’s name (see Rymer, xi. 383); but there can be little doubt the desire to punish the insolence of the Scots must have been very general long before.

88.1 A law was passed in the eighteenth year of Henry VI. to put a stop to the abuse of persons having interest about the Court procuring antedated letters patent, by means of which they were enabled to claim the emoluments of lands or offices granted to them from a date anterior to the actual passing of the grant.—See Hardy’s Introduction to the Patent Rolls of King John, p. xxx.

88.2 Shere or Shore Thursday, Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday.

89.1 St. Matthew’s Gospel, chap. xviii. ver. 15, 16, 17, and ver. 21, 22.

89.2 This relates to papers sent with this letter, and accounts for there being no direction, as the whole was enclosed in a parcel.—F.

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