At the time when Sir John Fastolf returned to England and to his Norfolk home, there was growing up in another part of the county a young girl whose letters as a married woman were to become famous in later centuries. Margaret Mauteby was the daughter of a Norfolk landowner of some importance—indeed of sufficient importance for the wealthy and distinguished judge, William Paston, of the Bench of Common Pleas, to look favourably on her family when he was seeking a bride for his son and heir, JohnPaston. The Pastons at this time were a rising family: William Paston had prospered in the law, and by a judicious marriage, and by the steady buying of manors, had become a considerable landowner. The Mautebys, on their side, were people of good family and wealth, and a union between the two houses had much to commend it from a worldly point of view—and such a point of view was ninetenths of the matter in fifteenth-century matchmaking.

The story begins soon after Easter, about the year 1440. A letter from Agnes Paston to her husband in London, where he was occupied on the Bench, told him of the first appearance of Margaret at their house. The judge had arranged for such a meeting before he left Norfolk, and Agnes delightedly writes: Blessed be God I send you good tidings of the coming and bringing home of the young gentlewoman that you know of from Reedham this same night…. And as for the first acquaintance between John Paston and the said gentlewoman, she made him gentle cheer in gentle wise, and said he was verily your son. And so I hope there shall need no great treaty between them.

No difficulties appear to have arisen: the desires of their parents were an overwhelming factor, and neither John nor Margaret proved unwilling, and thus began a marriage destined to last for twenty-five years, during which time Margaret's devotion to her husband and wholehearted service to his interests seem never to have flagged. In a remarkable series of letters written to him (and after his death to his sons), Margaret portrays for us what it meant to be the wife of a property-owner in the middle years of the fifteenth century, and what burdens and responsibilities she carried, both as a mother and as a housewife.