"Please you to send for me for I think
long since I lay in your arms." If we turn to another wife of the Paston
family, a little earlier in the century, Margaret Paston, whose husband's
name also was John, we find the same attitude even more distinctly
expressed. She always addressed him in her most familiar letters, showing
affectionate concern for his welfare, as "Right reverent and worshipful
husband" or "Right worshipful master." It is seldom that he writes to her
at all, but when he writes the superscription is simply "To my mistress
Paston," or "my cousin," with little greeting at either beginning or end.
Once only, with unexampled effusion, he writes to her as "My own dear
sovereign lady" and signs himself "Your true and trusting husband."[12]

[12] We see just the same formulas in the fifteenth century letters of
the Stonor family (_Stonor Letters and Papers_, Camden Society), though
in these letters we seem often to find a lighter and more playful touch
than was common among the Pastons. I may refer here to Dr. Powell's
learned and well written book (with which I was not acquainted when I
wrote this chapter), _English Domestic Relations 1487-1653_ (Columbia
University Press).

If we turn to France the relation of the wife to her husband was the same,
or even more definitely dependent, for he occupied the place of father to
her as well as of husband and sovereign, in this respect carrying on a
tradition of Roman Law. She was her husband's "wife and subject"; she
signed herself "Vostre humble obeissante fille et amye." If also we turn
to the _Book of the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry_ in Anjou, written at the
end of the fourteenth century, we find a picture of the relations of women
to men in marriage comparable to that presented in the _Paston Letters_,
though of a different order. This book was, as we know, written for the
instruction of his daughters by a Knight who seems to have been a fairly
average man of his time in his beliefs, and in character, as he has been
described, probably above it, "a man of the world, a Christian, a parent,
and a gentleman." His book is full of interesting light on the customs and
manners of his day, though it is mainly a picture of what the writer
thought ought to be rather than what always was. Herein the Knight is
sagacious and moderate, much of his advice is admirably sound for every
age. He is less concerned with affirming the authority of husbands than
with assuring the happ