[Sidenote: Anne Paston engaged to William Yelverton.] An event in the family now claims our notice, although the allusions to it are but slight, and the manner in which it is referred to is quite in keeping with that strange absence of domestic feeling which is so painfully characteristic of the times. Anne Paston, Sir John's sister, had come to a marriageable age; and her mother disposed of her hand to William Yelverton, a grandson of the judge, although she had an offer from one of the family of Bedingfield.[284-2] The engagement had lasted at least a year and a half, when Sir John Paston in London heard news that she had been exceedingly unwell; on which he quietly remarks that he had imagined she was already married. It seems scarcely possible to attribute this ignorance to any unusual detention of letters between Norwich and London; so that we are almost driven to conclude that his sister's marriage was an event of which Sir John did not expect to receive any very special intimation. The news even of her sickness, I suspect from the manner in which he refers to it, was conveyed to him not by letters from home, but by Yelverton, her intended husband, who had come up to London. Nor must it be supposed that Yelverton himself was deeply concerned about her state of health; for it was certainly not with a lover's anxiety that he communicated the intelligence to Sir John. In fact the marriage, so far from being a thing already accomplished, as Sir John supposed, was a matter that still remained uncertain. 'As for Yelverton,' writes Sir John himself, 'he said but late that he would have her if she had her money, and else not; wherefore me thinketh that they be not very sure.' Still the old song of 'Property, property,' like Tennyson's 'Northern Farmer.' And how very quietly this cold-hearted brother takes the news that the marriage which he thought already accomplished might very likely never take place at all! 'But among all other things,' he adds, 'I pray you beware that the old love of Pampyng renew not.' What, another sister ready to marry a servant of the family? If she could not have Yelverton, at least let her be preserved from that at all hazards.[285-1]
[Sidenote: Married to him.] Such was the state of matters in November 1473. And it seems by the course of events that Pampyng was not allowed to follow the example of Richard Calle. Anne Paston remained unmarried for about three and a half years longer, and the family, despairing of Yelverton, sought to match her somewhere else;[285-2] but between March and June of the year 1477, the marriage with Yelverton actually took place.[285-3] Of the married life of this couple we have in the Paston Letters no notices whatever; but one incident that occurred in it we learn from another source. Yelverton brought his bride home to his own house at Caister St. Edmund's, three miles from Norwich. Some time after their marriage this house was burned down by the carelessness of a servant girl while they were away at the marriage of a daughter of Sir William Calthorpe. The year of the occurrence is not stated, but must, I think, have been 1480, for it happened on a Tuesday night, the 18th of January, the eve of St. Wolstan's Day.[285-4] Now the 18th of January did not fall on a Tuesday during their married life in any earlier year, and it did not so fall again till 1485, when William Worcester, in whose itinerary the event is recorded, was certainly dead.