Add MS 43488-43491

From the printed Catalogue of Additions 1931-1935 (1967):

'Correspondence and papers of members of the Paston family of Paston, co. Norf.; 1440-1489. The present MSS. comprise the letters published, with some omissions, by Sir John Fenn in vols. i and ii of his Original Letters written during the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard 111..., 1787. The letters in Fenn's vols. iii and iv (published 1789) were acquired by the Museum in 1896 and numbered Add. MSS.34888, 34889, while those in vol. v (prepared for publication by Fenn in 1791, but only published, posthumously, in 1823) were acquired in 1866 and numbered Add. MSS. 27443-27446. Thus, with a few exceptions, all the letters have been reunited in the Museum's collections. For other material, cf. Add. MSS. 33597; 35251, ff. 24-25; 36988; 39848, 39849; 52410; Add. Ch. 17217-17262. Papers relating to Fenn's edition are in Add. MSS. 27452- 27455. All the letters edited by Fenn have been reprinted, with additions, by James Gairdner, The Paston Letters (various editions, 1872-1904), in which Fenn's texts are reprinted with little or no revision (cf. 1904 ed., i, pp. 11-12). The Early English Text Society has undertaken a new edition of all the letters, to be edited by Prof. Norman Davis, who in 1958 published Paston Letters, a selection of 95 letters, edited from new transcripts, in the Clarendon Medieval and Tudor Series. On the vicissitudes of the Paston Letters (see also below) see Gairdner, op. cit., 1904 ed., i, pp. 1-23, and, for the present volumes, The Times, 7 July 1933, revised and reprinted in Friends of the National Libraries, Annual Report, 1933-1934, pp. 18-22 and pls. ii, iii. After arrival in the Museum, the present letters were bound up in four volumes. Vols. I-III remain in the order in which they were arranged (in principle chronologically), bound, and printed by Fenn (see further below), but a few letters of large size have been extracted from them to form vol. IV. The years covered by each volume, apart from some misattributions by Fenn of undated letters, are: vol. I, 1440-1461, n.d.; vol. II, 1461-1473, n.d.; vol. III, 1473- 1489, n.d.; vol. IV, 1448-1478, n.d. The names of correspondents will be found in the Index to this Catalogue. For lists of the letters in the present volumes in the chronological order in which they appear in Gairdner's editions, with references to the numeration in the editions of 1901 and 1904, see Catalogue of Additions 1931-1935 (1967), pp. 157-59.

Oblong and (vol. IV) upright folio. 1440-1489. Many of the letters bear notes and endorsements in an unidentified 16th-cent. hand and by Fenn; references to a few, which have also been annotated by the Rev. Francis Blomefield or Thomas Martin of Palgrave, will be found under their names in the Index to this Catalogue. According to Fenn, op. cit., i, pp. xix-xx, the collection was acquired by Peter Le Neve (d. 1729) from William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth, and later passed into the possession of his executor, Thomas Martin (d. 1771), who married Le Neve's widow. After Martin's death it came into the possession of John Worth, of Diss, from whose executors it was purchased by Fenn in 1774. After Fenn had published the letters, he had the originals mounted and bound in three volumes with descriptive titles. These volumes he presented to George III at St james's Palace on 23 May 1787 (Gairdner, op. cit., 1904 ed., i, p. 6), receiving a knighthood on the spot. The title-panels from the spines of these bindings are preserved inside the front covers of the modern bindings of vols. I-III, which also contain Fenn's bookplate. In 1889, after the death of Col. George Tomline, F.R.S., the three volumes were discovered in his library at Orwell Park, co. Suff., whither they are presumed to have been brought by his grandfather, Sir George Pretyman, afterwards Pretyman-Tomline, D.D., F.R.S., Bishop of Lincoln 1787, and of Winchester 1820, the friend and literary executor of William Pitt (Gairdner, op. cit., pp. 10-11). In 1931, when the papers were in the possession of the Rt. Hon. E. G. Pretyman, P.C., they were advertised for sale at Sotheby's (sale-cat., 1 Apr. 1931), but did not reach the reserve and were bought in. Purchased with the aid of contributions from the Friends of the National Libraries.'