ABSTRACT
The Pastons liked to choose their tenants with care, since this type of husbandry called for knowledge which evidently not all small farmers possessed. In addition to its fertile soils eastern Norfolk had easy communications by sea to London and other east-coast towns. The Pastons usually sold their grain and malt through merchants, so that they would receive only the local price prevailing in Norfolk. Besides barley, the other main commercial product of the Paston estates, and of the region as a whole, was wool. In eastern Norfolk there were extensive natural pastures in the marshes of the rivers Waveney, Yare and Bure as well as numerous tracts of heath on higher lands. Low prices of grain in a number of years in the 1460s meant that the Pastons were earning less than they might hope from the sale of barley rents.
