PRIMARY DOCUMENT D
In this letter, the redoubtable Margaret Paston, matriarch of the Paston family, tells her son Richard that she has disowned his younger sister, Margery, for having a relationship with a family retainer, Richard Calle. The couple married without permission, and Margaret and her husband, John, tried to have the marriage dissolved, considering Calle unworthy to marry their daughter. They did not succeed, and the church declared the marriage valid. Margery and Calle had three sons.
On Friday the bishop he sent for her [Margery] by Ashfield and other[s] that are right sorry of her demeaning. And the bishop said to her plainly, and put her in remembrance how she was born, what kin and friends that she had, and should have more if she were ruled and guided after them; and if she did not, what rebuke, and shame, and loss should be to her, if she were not guided by them, and cause of forsaking of her for any good, or help, or comfort that she should have of them; and said that he had heard say that she loved such one [Calle] that her friends were not pleased with that she should have, and therefore he had her be right well advised how she did, and said that he would understand the words that she had said to him, whether it made matrimony or not.
And she rehearsed what she had said [in promising marriage to Calle], and said if those words made it not sure, she said boldly that she would make it surer ere than she went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound, whatsoever the words were. These lewd words grieve me and her grandam as much as all the remnant. And then the bishop and the chancellor both said that there was neither I nor no friend of her would receive her. . . .
I was with my mother at her place when she [Margery] was examined, and when I heard say what her demeaning was, I charged my servants that she should not be received in my house. I had given her warning, she might have been aware afore, if she had been gracious; and I sent to one or two more that they should not receive her if she came. She was brought again to my place for to have been received, and Sir James [Gloys] told them that brought her that I had charged them all and she should not be received; and so [the bishop has sent her to] Roger Best’s . . . I am sorry that [Best and his wife] are cumbered with her, but yet am I better paid that she is there for the while than she had been in other place, because of the sadness [i.e., seriousness] and good disposition of himself and his wife, for she shall not be suffered there to play the brethel [i.e., whore].
I pray you and require you that you take it not pensily [i.e., heavily] for I wot [i.e., know] well it goes right near your heart, and so does it to mine and to other[s]. But remember you, and so do I, that we have lost of her but a brethel, and set it the less to heart, for, an’ she had been good, wheresoever she had been, it should not have been as it is, for, an’ he [Calle] were dead at this hour, she would never be at mine heart as she was. . . . For wot it well, she shall full sore repent her lewdness hereafter, and I pray God she might so.
Source: Warrington, John, ed. The Paston Letters. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1924.