On 3 and 8 July 1470 Sir John Paston put his plate into pawn with London goldsmiths: twenty silver dishes and a silver saucer with Edmund Sha, sixteen silver pottingers with Stephen Kelke. It is a clear indication of the hard time he was having; even clearer are the small sums he was having to raise: £50 and 40 marks.

On 6 and 15 July 1470 Margaret wrote to Sir John; her letters were short and to the point. The matters Margaret raised were the responsibilities of any head of any land-owning family – the marriage of the family's womenfolk and the maintenance of its property. Anne Paston ‘waxeth hygh’ wrote Margaret, ‘It were tyme to purvey here a mariage’; ‘your fermours’, she said, ‘have brought me a gret bille of reparacion’. The mundane aspects of Sir John's life, which at this time and in his circumstances we may be tempted to overlook and he may have wanted to forget, cost money. In other words, a sister's marriage and repairs to farm buildings meant the pawning of pottingers. At any rate, it did for Sir John in July 1470.

Yet, when Margaret wrote on 15 July in tones which were blunt even for her, rescue, which as we have noticed had been in sight for some months, had arrived: the agreement with Wainfleet was sealed on 14 July 1470.