1. Paston Letters and Papers, ed. Norman Davis, EETS, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1:257. We do not know the letter’s exact date. Norman Davis’s notes remarks that the epistolary forms are closer to Margaret’s letters, and the reference to Caister suggests the year 1459.
2. Christmas in the Middle Ages was full of amusements, carols, and game-playing. See Jean-Michel Mehl, “Games in Their Seasons,” in Custom, Culture, and Community in the hater Middle Ages, ed. Thomas Pettittand and Leif Sondergard (Odense: Odense University Press, 1994), pp. 71-83.
3. Catharine Perry Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1930; repr. New York: Dover, 1966), p. 169.
4. Nicholas Orme, “Education and Recreation,” in Gentry Culture in hate Medieval England, ed. Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 76 [63-83]. See also Nicholas Orme’s chapter, “Games and Education in Medieval England,” elsewhere in this book.
5. Deborah Youngs, “Cultural Networks,” in Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 119-33.