SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
Notice n this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.]
The Pastons and their England. By H. S. Bennett. (Cam- bridge University Press. 15s. net.)—Mr. Bennett has made a most interesting book by taking the Paston Letters and, as it were, rearranging the abundant material under different heads so as to illustrate the social life of fifteenth-century England. Even those who know the Paston Letters well will be surprised, we fancy, at the amount of instructive and entertaining detail which is here collected in chapters on "Women's Life," "Parents and Children," "Houses and Furniture," "Letters and Letter-writing," and other topics. Mr. Bennett justly observes that the correspondence of the Norfolk family must not be regarded as a complete picture of the age ; some authorities have gone too far in assuming, for instance, that most Englishmen of the time could write, whereas even the
Pastons found letter-writing a slow and arduous task. Again, the state of the roads is seldom mentioned, though Mr. Bennett, from other sources, shows that travel was difficult because the highways were in a deplorable condition. It was possible for a carrier with packhorses to travel thirty or thirty-five miles a day. Great personages on business of State might travel perhaps fifty miles in the day. But ordinary folk stayed at home rather than face the miry roads, the perilous fords and the bandits who beset the wayfarer. One gains a vivid idea of what England was like at the close of the Middle Ages from this very readable book.
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