[Footnote 277-2: His name does not appear in any of the original returns preserved in the Record Office; but they are certainly very imperfect, and some of them are not very legible. The two burgesses returned for Maldon were William Pestell and William Albon. I find, however, that William Paston, probably Sir John's uncle, was returned for Newcastle-under-Lyne.]
[Footnote 277-4: He could scarcely have returned from Calais in time for the opening of that session on the 8th February, as he was at Calais on the 3rd, and says nothing about coming home at that date.--No. 826.]
[Footnote 277-6: Patent, 7th March, 12 Edw. IV., p. 1, membs. 25 and 26 _in dorso_; and 10th May, p. 1, m. 13 _in dorso_.]
[Footnote 277-7: Even on the 1st June, four months before Parliament met, we find commissions issued to certain masters of ships to take sailors for the army going over sea.--_Patent Roll_, 12 Edw. IV., p. 1, m. 10 _in dorso_.]
[Footnote 278-1: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 4.]
[Footnote 278-3: _Rolls of Parl._ vi. 39.]
[Sidenote: Family jars.] At this time we find that there was some further unpleasant feeling within the Paston family circle. Margaret Paston had several times expressed her discontent with the thriftless extravagance of her eldest son, and even the second, John, did not stand continually in her good graces. A third brother, Edmund, was now just coming out in life, and as a preparation for it he too had to endure continual reproofs and remonstrances from his mother. Besides these, there were at home three other sons and one daughter, of whom we shall speak hereafter. The young generation apparently was a little too much for the lone widow; and, finding her elder sons not very satisfactory advisers, she did what lone women are very apt to do under such circumstances--took counsel in most of the affairs of this life of a confidential priest. In fact, she was a good and pious woman, to whom in her advancing years this world appeared more and more in its true character as a mere preparation for the next. She had now withdrawn from city life at Norwich, and was dwelling on her own family estate at Mautby. Bodily infirmities, perhaps--though we hear nothing explicitly said of them--made it somewhat less easy for her to move about; and she desired to obtain a licence from the Bishop of Norwich to have the sacrament in her own chapel.[279-1] She was also thinking, we know, of getting her fourth son Walter educated for the priesthood; and she wished her own spiritual adviser, Sir James Gloys,[279-2] to conduct him to Oxford, and see him put in the right way to pursue his studies creditably. She hoped, she said, to have more joy of him than of his elder brothers; and though she desired him to be a priest, she wished him not to take any orders that should be binding until he had reached the age of four-and-twenty. 'I will love him better,' she said, 'to be a good secular man than a lewd priest.'[279-3]