John Paston

John Paston I (10 October 1421 – 21 or 22 May 1466) was an English country gentleman and landowner. He was the eldest son of the judge William Paston, Justice of the Common Pleas. After he succeeded his father in 1444, his life was marked by conflict occasioned by a power struggle in East Anglia between the dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, and by his involvement in the affairs of his wife's kinsman, Sir John Fastolf. Between 1460–1466 he was Justice of the Peace for Norfolk, and was elected as a member of parliament in 1460 and again in 1461. A number of his letters survive among the Paston Letters, a rich source of historical information for the lives of the English gentry of the period. Family John Paston, born 10 October 1421, was the eldest son and heir of William Paston, Justice of the Common Pleas, and Agnes Barry (d. 18 August 1479), daughter and coheir of Sir Edmund Barry (d. 1433) of Horwellbury, near Therfield and Royston, Hertfordshire. He had three younger brothers, two of whom, Edmund and Clement, died without issue. Another brother, William, married Anne Beaufort, third daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. He also had a sister, Elizabeth Paston (1 July 1429 – 1 February 1488), who married firstly Sir Robert Poynings, slain at the Second Battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461, and secondly Sir George Browne of Betchworth Castle (beheaded on Tower Hill, 4 December 1483). Career Paston was educated at Trinity Hall and Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge, and like his father, became a lawyer. He was admitted to the Inner Temple by 1440, and succeeded his father, when only 22 years of age, in 1444.