Sir William Paston, 1st Baronet, (1528–1610) was an English benefactor, and the father of

Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth, FRS (29 May 1631 – 8 March 1683) was an English scientist and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1660 and 1673 when he was created Viscount Yarmouth. He was created Earl of Yarmouth in 1679 ...

.History of Parliament Online - Paston, Robert
/ref> Paston was educated at

Gonville Hall Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, in 1546. In 1554 he inherited the family estates. He was Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1565 and

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

ed on 22 August 1578. He founded

North Walsham North Walsham is a market town and civil parish in Norfolk, England, within the North Norfolk district. Demography The civil parish has an area of and in the 2011 census had a population of 12,634. For the purposes of local government, the pa ...

Grammar School in 1606.''A History of the Paston School'', Forder, C., p.6; North Walsham, The Governors of Paston School, 1975 - Charles Forder, second edition 1975. The school has a portrait of him by an unknown artist, which shows him "venerable in his civilian attire of sober black" (Forder, p. 11). He died on 20 October 1610.

References

1528 births 1610 deaths Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

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