This collection has enjoyed a chequered history. Robert, the son of Ralph de Alderstead of Merstham in Surrey, probably assumed the surname Pashley only on his marriage to Sarah, the heiress of an estate centred on Pashley in Ticehurst, in about 1265. His son Sir Edmund Pashley pursued a career in the common law. Among the haul is a charter of free warren on all his demesne lands in Sussex and Kent, granted to Sir Edmund in 1317; it is the earliest and most spectacular element of the collection. During the 1450s, by a process not yet fully understood but which may be illuminated by these documents, the manor passed into the hands of the Boleyn family of Hever Castle in Kent. As well as a charter of feoffment of 1455, the collection includes court rolls compiled on behalf of its lords between 1455 and 1458. In 1540 the manor was sold to the May family of Combwell in Kent, in whose hands it descended until 1733. This period is marked by a number of manorial rentals, the most detailed dating from 1595, and a good number of deeds, recording both acquisitions by the lords and the freeing of former manorial tenements. During the 1930s the owner placed the archive on deposit at Hove Library, from which it was withdrawn after a decade. When in the 1960s a later owner moved away from Pashley, he took the documents with him, much to the consternation of his successors.
With the decisive break in the linkage between the documents and the house, we knew that this would almost certainly be our last opportunity to salvage the archive before its exposure to the centrifuge of the market. To cut a long and tortuous story short, with the aid of the Friends of the National Libraries and our own FESRO, our bid was successful.