A Medieval Family: The Pastons of Fifteenth-Century England

The fascinating story of the fortunes of one medieval family over the course of a century, from bestselling historians Frances and Joseph Gies.

The Pastons were members of the English gentry—a tiny group of roughly 1,000 households sandwiched between the ruling nobility and the peasants, and a rough analog for the contemporary “middle class.” Their existence was fairly typical, but for the fact that it was recorded in an extraordinary collection of nearly 1,000 letters which have survived to...