ites to his mother recommending
himself to her "good moderchypp," and asking for money. He has
received L5, 16s. 6d., and his expenses amount to L6, 5s. 5d. "That
comth over the reseytys in my exspenses I have borrowed of Master
Edmund and yt draweth to 8 shillings." He might have applied for a
loan to one of the "chests" which benevolent donors had founded for
such emergencies, depositing some article of value, and receiving a
temporary loan: but he preferred to borrow from his new tutor, (p. 154)
Edmund Alyard. By March 1479, Alyard was able to reassure the anxious
mother about her boy's choice of a career; he was to go to law, taking
his Bachelor's degree in Arts at Midsummer. His brother, Sir John, who
was staying at the George at Paul's Wharf in London, intended to be
present at the ceremony, but his letter miscarried: "Martin Brown had
that same tyme mysch mony in a bage, so that he durst not bryng yt
with hym, and that same letter was in that same bage, and he had
forgete to take owt the letter, and he sent all togeder by London, so
that yt was the next day after that I was maad Bachyler or than the
letter cam, and so the fawt was not in me." This is the last we hear
of Walter Paston. On his way home, on the 18th August 1479, he died at
Norwich, after a short illness. He left a number of "togae" to his
Oxford friends, including Robert Holler, the son of his Norfolk
neighbour, to whom he also bequeathed "unum pulvinar vocatum _le
bolstar_." The rest of his Oxford goods he left to Alyard, but his
sheep and his lands to his own family. The cost of his illness and
funeral amounted to about thirty shillings. No books are mentioned in
the will; possibly they were sold for his inception feast, or he may
never have possessed any. As a junior student, he would not have been
allowed to use the great library which Humphrey of Gloucester had (p. 155)
presented to the University; but there were smaller libraries to which
he might have access, for books were sometimes chained up in St Mary's
Church that scholars might read them.

APPENDIX (p. 157)

My attention has been called (too late for a reference in the text) to
a medieval Latin poem giving a gloomy account of student life in Paris
in the twelfth century. The verses, which have been printed in the
_American Journal of Philology_ (vol. xi. p. 80), insist upon the
hardships of the student's life, and c