'I shalle send word in writing': lexical choices and legal acumen in the letters of Margaret Paston

Medium Aevum, Fall-Winter, 2008 by Alison Spedding

Property: its administration and protection

It is not surprising that Margaret Paston, so often responsible for overseeing the family holdings, should have been fluent in the technical expressions necessary for the landowner and administrator, or that the extent of this category of her legal usage should reflect its importance. Beyond the thirteen terms associated with inheritance it is possible to identify a further twenty-six legal words in Margaret's vocabulary related to matters connected with property, as well as another three used in letters she received, giving property-related matters the largest number of specialist words in her legal lexicon after the procedural terms.

Margaret's first reference to property matters comes early in her correspondence, in a letter of 1444, about four years into her marriage and only a few weeks before the death of her father-in-law William. Whereas her first three letters had been concerned almost exclusively with domestic matters and local gossip, this fourth letter opens with the report of a non-payment, presumably of rent, which left Margaret short of money. It also emerges in this letter that Margaret had been entrusted with certain 'herrendys to myn modyr [by whom, as Davis points out, she meant her mother-in-law, Agnes (25)] and myn hunckyl' (127.8), including one concerning 'pe feffeys of Stokysby' (127.8f.), tasks which mark the first tentative beginnings of Margaret's activities in domestic administration.

Margaret's next letter follows a four-year gap (letter 128 discussed on pp. 54f.) and, as we have seen, is almost entirely concerned with matters of estate business. In her husband's absence she had met with Lady Morley, to whom the relief on Sparham manor was owed. (26) Despite Margaret's pleas that no action be taken against John in his absence, Lady Morley maintained that she had given John ample warning that the money should have been paid and seems determined to sue John for what is due--Margaret 'kwd not getyn no grawnth of here to sesyn' (128.26). Since the property in question had been acquired as part of Margaret's dower it is perhaps not surprising that she was aware of the finer points of its transfer and she may even have felt responsible for ensuring that the process was trouble free. Her use of the correct terms--relief, grant, and seisin--however, and the fact that she was willing to enter into negotiations herself, suggest that she was confident of her understanding of the legal procedure.

Nor was that quite all the trouble at Sparham. Money owed against property continued, as we learn in the same letter, to cause Margaret concern, although this time in her role as lady of the manor. The rather unstable Jon of Sparham was, apparently, determined to sell or mortgage his belongings in order to pay a debt, and Margaret had taken it upon herself to dissuade him. She reported that 'I entretyd hym so patt I sopose he wyl noper sellyn nere sett to morgage noper catel nere oper gode of hese' (128.63f.). It is possible that by reversing the common legal phrase 'goods and chattels' (one that, since it was used in a letter to her only about two years later, (27) was clearly in common parlance at the time and, indeed, also featured in her own will) (28) Margaret was making an accurate distinction between the two categories of belongings, applying them respectively to 'sellyn' and 'morgage' since at this time chattels implied moveable property that might be s old, while goods (or indeed good, since the terra could also be used in the singular) could still be taken to mean land, which might therefore be mortgaged as Margaret fears--another example of her understanding of the minutiae of property-related transactions, and her precise use of the correct technical vocabulary.