What are the Paston Letters?
There's an old Norfolk saying.
'There's never a Paston Poor, a Heydon a coward or a Cornwallis a fool.'
These are old Norfolk Families who made good.
We are interested in the Pastons. They were a family on the make at the time of the Black Death, they gambled high and fought like tigers to keep what they made.
Their name lives on in 'Paston College' and 'Paston Barn' some 500 years later.
One of the amazing things about them is a series of letters that survive to this day.
It all started with Clement Paston, a peasant, who had a 100 acres of land and the sense to send his son William to study law. Then as now lawyers understand something that most of us don't.
The Law.
That was worth money, as it is today.
Other snippets from the Paston Letters
