How letters from a 15th-century housewife unlock secrets of a forgotten England

God’s Own Gentlewoman is a biography of the late medieval landowner, housewife and letter writer, Margaret Paston. Born just over six centuries ago in rural Norfolk to a well-off family, Margaret was her father’s only child and heir. At the age of around 20 she married into the socially ambitious and emergent Paston dynasty.

Yet, despite her elevated social position, most traces of Margaret’s life would have disappeared into obscurity, had it not been for the almost chance survival of her correspondence alongside that of other family members in the Paston records and papers. In the 18th century, these documents were found rotting in the muniment room at Oxnead Hall, the crumbling former country home of the William Paston, the impoverished second Earl of Yarmouth, who had died a few years previously. Fortunately, they were rescued and preserved by a local antiquarian. They are now held in the British Library. 

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That this letter collection was not lost is something of a minor miracle. Margaret’s contribution consists of over 100 items, spanning the years immediately following her marriage to those leading up to her death.

In fact, more letters from Margaret have come down to us than from any other of the Pastons. She was an enthusiastic correspondent, who must have spent many hours of her day composing messages to members of her family and reading their replies. Her husband John was a lawyer who spent much of his time in London, while Margaret remained at home in Norfolk, managing their extensive estates, bringing up their seven children and overseeing their servants. Consequently, most of her letters were written to John, and then, after his premature death, to their two eldest sons. Yet it seems that Margaret had never been taught to write, so her sons and servants had to act as her scribe. 

Margaret’s letters provide us with a unique insight into the life of a well-to-do wife, mother and then widow in 15th century England. Within them, she describes how she longs for her husband during his extended absences, her concern for his health and wellbeing and her excitement at her pregnancies. Later, she writes about her disagreements with her children and frustration at their behaviour.

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After her husband’s death she increasingly turns to the family chaplain for support. She also records the challenges of managing and maintaining the family’s properties, and of defending them, quite literally, from the violent attacks of the Paston’s enemies. Well-informed about issues of national as well as local politics in the chaotic years leading up to and during the Wars of the Roses, she does not hold back from giving advice to her husband and sons. 

Margaret also tells a great story. She really does have the gift of narration and is often surprisingly forthright. In one letter she describes an incident in which she and her mother-in-law are insulted in the street and denounced as “strong whores”. She isn’t always economical with words. In fact, she revels in her writing, but despite this she certainly doesn’t think of herself as composing letters that will be preserved for posterity or read for their literary qualities. 

Each chapter of God’s Own Gentlewoman takes one or two of Margaret’s letters as the starting point for an exploration of her life at that moment. Because what first drew me to Margaret was the immediacy of her writing, I wanted her words to remain at the heart of my book. But I also discuss a range of material, from historical records and literary texts to artefacts and images, that helps make sense of the experiences and events that Margaret describes in her letters.

As a scholar whose work focuses on the Middle Ages, I also draw on recent historical and archaeological evidence to provide further context. In addition, I include accounts of the places where Margaret lived or to which she travelled based on impressions I have gathered in my visits to these sites. 

There is a personal aspect too, to my retelling of Margaret’s life. I started to think about writing this book in the weeks leading up to the death of my own mother, and working on it provided solace in the months that followed. I noticed aspects of my mother in Margaret, even though their lives were very different. And I realised that, in this, I was following in very distinguished literary footsteps.

Over a century ago, Virginia Woolf took Margaret as the inspiration for a short story, and subsequently she discussed her letters in an essay entitled The Pastons and Chaucer. Woolf was, of course, famously drawn to strong women, and she too revisited the memory of her mother in some of her work. As Woolf put it, in Orlando, “Happy the mother who bears, happier still the biographer who records the life of such a one”’, surely also a fitting epigraph for God’s Own Gentlewoman. 

God’s Own Gentlewoman by Diane Watt is out now (Icon, £20). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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