Long before the end of 1460 the plot had, indeed, thickened. I did not know it until discovering Fastolf Paper 59 (2) at Magdalen College. The shocks of history, even the minor ones, often come in such a fashion – out of a clear, blue, Oxford morning. Fastolf Paper 59 was not even what the catalogue entry had prepared me for, although (in retrospect) I should have been alerted by ‘Ipm of Sir John Fastolf at New Buckenham, 29 April 1460’.

Fastolf Paper 59 consists of three sheets of paper. The first recites the enfeoffments and feoffees of 25 May 1457. Where John, Lord Beauchamp occurs as a feoffee his name has also been written, by a different hand, in the margin. If the paper dates from 1460, as is almost certain, Beauchamp was being singled out for a purpose which was probably connected with the Chancery case of Fastolf Paper 59(3). The second is a copy of an inquisition held at New Buckenham, Norfolk, on 29 April 1460 by two commissioners, John Andrew and Roger Philpot, appointed by letters patent, for which no date is given: for the obvious reason that there had not been such a commission. The names of the jurors are unfamiliar. They stated that Sir John Fastolf held a number of manors in Norfolk, Caister among them, that he had died on 6 November 1459, and that Thomas Fastolf, aged twenty and a ward of the crown, was his heir.