1. With his particular concern for the precise language, Norman Davis talked about the question of how closely the letters mirror “real” speech: “The Language of the Pastons,” pp. 120–44. Janel M. Mueller, The Native Tongue and the Word: Developments in English Prose Style 1380–1580 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 90–94, and for a good example of Margaret moving from “indirect to direct representation” as she becomes more vivid in telling John I of the slanging match in the street (I, 129).
2. The whole topic of blessings is now treated at length by Derek Rivard, Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).
3. Following the lead of John Bossy, “Christian Life in the Later Middle Ages: Prayers,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 1 (1991), pp. 137–48.
4. For what I term the Pastons’ manichean view of the universe, Joel T. Rosenthal, Telling Tales: Sources and Narration in Late Medieval England (University Park, IL: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 149–54.
5. John L. Austin, “Performative Utterances,” pp. 233–52 of his Philosophical Papers (third ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)