Correspondence written for immediate practical purposes (collecting rents, pursuing lawsuits, arranging marriages) preserves social reality more reliably than documents composed for an audience, precisely because the writers were not performing for posterity. Reading such letters as a byproduct rather than a testimony reveals assumptions the writers never thought worth stating.
In fifteenth-century Norfolk, legal title to land was repeatedly decided less by documents than by who could occupy and hold a manor, sometimes by armed force, as when the Paston holdings were besieged and seized. Rightful ownership on paper was insecure without the capacity to defend it on the ground.
With her husband absent in London on legal business, Margaret Paston ran the household, gathered intelligence, requested weapons and crossbows, and defended family manors against rival claimants. The letters show a wife wielding practical authority delegated by distance and necessity, not by formal status.
A gentry family's rise depended on attaching itself to more powerful patrons, cultivating service relationships, and navigating the favor of magnates and the crown. Security came not from wealth alone but from one's position within a web of obligation and protection.