Under the Sealing Wax: Fifteenth-Century Parenting with Agnes Paston

A few weeks ago on Last Comic Standing, my favorite contestant Joe Machi joked about how his married friends said they didn't want to bring a child into the world the way it is now. Joe says, "What do you mean, the way it is now? The best it's been in history? Back in the day, people would be having 15 kids, and most of them would die. Most of your life was having kids, then watching them die. Then you would die. Of something they'd prevent by washing your hands."





Andrea Mantegna,
The Virgin with the
Sleeping Child,
1465/70.

It's true that child rearing and acceptable parenting practices have changed a lot since the Middle Ages. Documents like the Paston letters give a rare glimpse at how parents and children interacted half a millenium ago. The Paston letters are a collection of medieval letters and documents exchanged between members of the Paston family in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While their primary value is to legal and historical scholars, there is a wealth of detail about family relationships. To learn more about the Paston letters, visit 

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/paston.htm.

Medieval historians are still debating how childhood was viewed in the pre-modern era. Were children treated as miniature adults, expected to conform to the same standards of behavior? In a time with such high infant mortality rates, how did parents cope with the reality of losing their children? Did parents cherish their children in the same ways that many modern parents do? Evidence from art, literature, and historical documents like the Paston letters doesn't present a singular answer to those questions. One thing is for sure: the phrase "spare the rod and spoil the child" was taken literally.

 

Agnes Paston was the matriarch of the upwardly mobile Paston family in the mid-fifteenth century. As her family grew and left her nest, she had strong opinions about how her five children should conduct their lives. In the letter below, she instructs Greenfield, the tutor of her fifteen-year-old son Clement, to whip him if he is not being diligent at his studies:

 

Errands to London of Agnes Paston, the 28th day of January, 1457, the year of King Henry VI. the 36th.

 [...] To pray Greenfield to send me faithfully word by writing how Clement Paston hath done his endeavour in learning.

And if he hath not done well, nor will not amend, pray him that he will truly [whip] him till he will amend; and so did the last master, and the best that ever he had, at Cambridge.

That's some tough love. But just wait, Agnes' next instruction is to check the condition of her son's clothes:

 

[S]ee how many gowns Clement hath, and that they be bare, let them be raised (let them have a new nap set upon them.)

 

From this we may deduce that even in the fifteenth century, moms were still taking care of their kids' laundry. Some things never change.