Note 123.1 — THE PASTON LETTERS Henry VII.

[From Fenn, iv. 310.] This letter is dated from Heningham, or Hedingham, one of the places which, as we have seen in No. 1031, the King was to have visited on his intended journey northwards in 1489. I have little doubt, therefore, that it was written in that year. The writer, according to Fenn, was William Paston, Sir John’s uncle; but it is remarkable that in this same year William Paston, Sir John’s brother, writes to him from Heningham, and as the signatures of the two Williams were not very unlike each other, one may fairly suspect that Fenn has here made an error. This suspicion is, moreover, confirmed by the fact that Mautby was the property of Margaret Paston, who died in 1484, and that it could not possibly have descended to her brother-in-law William, though her son William may have had an interest in it.

123.2 Fenn prints the name ‘Hokkys,’ but as the reading in the modernised version is Cocks, I presume this is a printer’s error.