Thomas Jermy to William Paston, Letter

Type: Letter

Date: 1565

Setting: City

Produced By/For: Written by Thomas Jermy, sent to William Paston

Contents: [unknown]

Shelf Mark: Ms.Eng.2

Location: Shelf 02/C/07 (Acc. 1985-005)

Description by Brenna Hussey as part of coursework for a manuscript studies class with Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin (ENGL), April 2015

Letter of Thomas Jermy to William Paston, England (Norfolk) 31 January 1565

Single sheet of paper 300 x 420 mm, folded to make bifolium, writing on one side only. Letter of Thomas Jermy to William Paston (d. 1610), 37 lines in English plus signature, with address and note of sender. Creasing and wear patterns suggest entire sheet was previously folded quite small with address on the outside. Letter and address are in one hand (Thomas Jermy’s); note on sender ("Jarmes laste lettre") is possibly in William Paston’s hand; initials and date notation of eighteenth-century Norfolk antiquarian Francis Blomefield are at foot of letter. Paper is somewhat stained and damaged, especially along fold lines, but damage has been stabilized by repairs, including grafted modern paper, notwithstanding minor text loss at lower right corner. The letter was donated to University of Victoria in 1985 by Dorothy Sweet. She found it among the belongings of her parents, who had unknowingly inherited it (in chests of drawers with other abandoned papers) when they purchased their Cornwall home in 1953. Ownership before 1953 is unknown, though the letter clearly came into the hands of Francis Blomefield sometime before his death in 1752. Documents related to ownership history are housed with the letter.

A large part of the wider archive of Paston Family Letters (mostly fifteenth-century, but some sixteenth-century) was digitized for open access by the British Library in April 2015. See: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/04/the-paston-letters-go-live.html

Transcriptions* and description by Brenna Hussey, as part of coursework for a manuscript studies class with Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin (ENGL), April 2015, is available here.

* Transcription practice follows Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca, 2007), pp. 75-77.

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