The Gunpowder Plot and Lord Mounteagle's Letter Part 47

[Footnote 170:--See Jardine's "_Criminal Trials_," vol. ii., p. 120, quoting "_Apologia_," p. 200.

Sir Everard Digby was the only conspirator who pleaded "guilty," and he was arraigned by a different Indictment from that which charged the rest of the surviving conspirators.]

[Footnote 171:--My contention is that the conclusion is inevitable to the discerning mind that the sphinx-like nescience--the face set like a flint--with which Oldcorne met Littleton's inquiry, displays indisputable evidence of a sub-consciousness on Oldcorne's part, of what? Of a _special_, _private_, _official knowledge_ (as distinct from a general, public, personal knowledge) of what had been intended to be the executed Gunpowder Plot, but which Oldcorne himself had thwarted, and so prevented everlastingly any one single human creature being able, even for the infinitesimal part of an instant, to contemplate "_post factum_"--after the fact--and in the concrete; which, indeed, judged "from the outside,"

and as the bulk of mankind are ent.i.tled to judge it, was the only side or aspect of the baleful enterprise that was of practical and, therefore, to them, of paramount personal consequence. The conspirator John Grant expressed the state of the case exactly when he said in Westminster Hall, after being asked what he could say wherefore judgment of death should not be p.r.o.nounced against him, "He was guilty of a conspiracy intended, but never effected."]

[Footnote 172:--See Butler's "_Memoirs of English Catholics_," vol. ii., p. 260. See also Gerard's "_Narrative_."--It is possible (according to Gerard) that Oldcorne may have been even still more cruelly tortured, namely, as Dr. Lingard says, during five hours for each of five successive days; but to me, humanly speaking, this is incredible.]

[Footnote 173:--Father Edward Oldcorne and Brother Ralph Ashley are both, along with others, now styled by Rome, "Venerable Servants of G.o.d." The Decree introducing the cause of these "English Martyrs," dated 1886, and signed by the present Pope, Leo XIII., is kept in the English College at Rome, where Oldcorne had himself entered as a student a little more than three hundred and four years previously, namely, in 1582.

Through the truly kind courtesy of the Right Rev. Monsignor Giles, D.D., President of the English College, Rome, the writer was privileged to see, along with the Rev. Father Darby, O.S.B., and some other gentlemen, this Decree in the afternoon of Sat.u.r.day, the 13th of October, 1900, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor, King of England. In the forenoon of the same day the first great band of the English Pilgrims for the Holy Year, the Year of Jubilee, had received, in St. Peter's, the Papal Blessing, amid great rejoicing, the apse or place of honour in this, the largest Church in Christendom, being graciously accorded to these fifteen hundred British Catholic subjects of Her late Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.]

[Footnote 174:--As to the precise teaching of the theologians of Father Oldcorne's Church respecting the famous dictum of St. Augustine of Hippo, "_Extra ecclesiam nulla salus_," see the book of the once celebrated Douay theologian, Dr. Hawarden, ent.i.tled, "_Charity and Truth; or Catholics not uncharitable in saying that none are saved out of the Catholic Communion, because the rule is not universal_" (1728). And, again, that great Yorks.h.i.+re son of St. Philip Neri, Dr. Frederic William Faber, an ultramontane papist of the ultramontane papists, has thus recorded his own potent testimony on this subject in his singularly able and beautiful work, ent.i.tled, "_The Creator and the Creature_," first edition, p. 368.

Dr. Faber says: "We are speaking of Catholics. If our thoughts break their bounds and run out beyond the Church, nothing that has been said has been said with any view to those without. I have no profession of faith to make about them, except that G.o.d is infinitely merciful to every soul; that no one ever has been, or ever can be, lost by surprise or trapped in his ignorance; and as to those who may be lost, I confidently believe that our Heavenly Father threw His arms round each created spirit, and looked it full in the face with bright eyes of love in the darkness of its mortal life, and that of its own deliberate will it would not have Him."]

[Footnote 175:--Either from the phonograph or even the shorthand scribe.]

[Footnote 176:--Are the Indictments in existence of Father Oldcorne and Ralph Ashley, who seem to have been tried in the s.h.i.+re Hall, Worcester, at the Lent a.s.sizes of 1606? If so, they and extracts from any Minute Books still extant bearing on the subject would be of great interest and value to the historical Inquirer, if published.]

[Footnote 177:--Oldcorne realized experimentally, in the final action of the great tragedy, what it means, as Goethe has it, for a man "to adjust his compa.s.s at the Cross."

And than Oldcorne no human creature ever lived that had a better right to antic.i.p.ate those magnificent words of triumph over death of one of Yorks.h.i.+re's supremest geniuses: "_If my barque sink, 'tis to another sea._"]

[Footnote 178:--In Morris's "_Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers_,"

third series, p. 325, we read: "In 1572 John Oldcorne is one of the four sworn men against the late rebels and other evil-disposed people suspected of papistry, for St. Sampson's parish."

Again, under date April 10th, 1577, we read: "And now also John Oldcorne, of St. Sampson's parish, who cometh not to the church on Sundays and holidays, personally appeared before these presents, and sayeth he is content to suffer the churchwarden of the same parish to take his distresses for his offence."

There is also for January, 1598, the following pathetic entry concerning the mother of Father Oldcorne:--

"Monckewarde Saint Sampson's, Elizabeth Awdcorne, alias Oldcorne, old and lame a recusant."

York is now divided into six wards for the purposes of munic.i.p.al government, namely: Bootham, Monk, Micklegate, Walmgate, Guildhall, and Castlegate. Until the nineteenth century there were only the first four wards, which, indeed, corresponded to the four great Gates or chief Ways for entering the City.

The writer remembers with pleasure that, now some years ago, his fellow-citizens of Micklegate Ward, on the west side of York, did him the honour of electing him to occupy a seat, for the term of three years, in the Council Chamber of his native City, which, he is proud to remember, was the City wherein first drew the breath of life Edward Oldcorne; one, he has every reason to believe, whose keen, sane mind, and ready, skilful hand were instrumental, under Heaven, in penning that immortal doc.u.ment which saved the life, certainly, of King James I., of His Royal Consort Queen Anne of Denmark, of Henry Prince of Wales, and Charles Duke of York, afterwards King Charles I., as well as the life of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the Gentlemen of the House of Commons, and many Foreign Amba.s.sadors, in the year of grace 1605, now well-nigh three centuries ago.

As some readers may be, perchance, interested in a few particulars concerning the ancient Parish of St. Sampson, which is in the heart of the City of York, close to the Market Place, I propose to mention a few. First of all, then, the ancient parish church which bears the name of the old British Saint, St. Sampson, is pre-eminently one of "the grey old churches of our native land," whereof in the reign of King Henry V. (Shakespeare's ideal English monarch) there were in the City of York and its suburbs no less than forty-one, though in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth the number was reduced. That forty-one was the number originally we know from a subsidy of Parliament which granted to King Harry, in 1413, two s.h.i.+llings in the pound leviable on all spirituals and temporals in the realm for carrying on the then war with France.--See Drake's "_Eborac.u.m_,"

p. 234.

St. Sampson's Church consists of a lower nave and chancel with north and south aisles to both, extending nearly to the west base of the tower. The architecture of the church is in the decorated and the perpendicular styles. King Richard III., in 1393, granted the advowson of this church to the Vicars Choral of York Minster. The present Vicar (1901) is the Rev.

William Haworth, one of the Vicars Choral of the Minster, to whom I am indebted for information respecting the Registers of St. Sampson's Church and the Church of Holy Trinity, King's Court, or Christ's.

Mr. Councillor John Earle Wilkinson, "mine host" of the "Garrick's Head"

Hotel, Low Petergate, York, who was the Guardian of the Poor for the old Parish of St. Sampson (as he is now the Guardian for Ward No. 2 of the United Parish of York), kindly informed me on the 10th July, 1901, that the following streets are in the Ecclesiastical Parish of St. Sampson.

Hence we may conclude that it was in a house in one of these streets that were spent the earliest years of Edward Oldcorne, the son of John Oldcorne, Tiler, and of Elizabeth, his wife:--

(1) Church Street, a street between the Market Place (which Market Place is formed by St. Sampson's Square and Parliament Street) and Goodramgate towards Monk Bar. Here is St. Sampson's Church.

(2) Patrick Pool, to the east of St. Sampson's Church.

(3) The right-hand side of Newgate, leading into High Jubbergate (formerly Jews-Gate).

(4) Little Shambles and Pump Yard.

(5) That part of Parliament Street on the south-west which includes the site of the York City and County Bank.

(6) That part of Parliament Street on the north-east which includes Mr. F.

H. Vaughan's "Clock" Hotel.

(7) Silver Street, to the west of St. Sampson's Church, connecting Church Street with High Jubbergate.

(8) On the north side of Church Street, opposite St. Sampson's Church, Swinegate.

Finkle Street.

(9) Back (or Little) Swinegate, between Swinegate and Finkle Street.

(10) That part of Little Stonegate which includes the back part of the premises of Messrs. Myers and Burnell, Coachbuilders, and the Model Lodging House opposite.

(11) Coffee Yard.

(12) The top part of Grape Lane (leading into Low Petergate), which adjoins Coffee Yard and the north end of Swinegate.

(13) St. Sampson's Square (forming part of the Market Place).

Some of the old Elizabethan dwelling-houses and shops in these streets and yards, built of oak (doubtless from the famous Galtres Forest, northward of York), with their projecting stories of lath and plaster, happily, are still standing, "rich with the spoils of time," and the eyes of Edward Oldcorne must have, many a time and oft, gazed upon them at that momentous period of life when "the child is father of the man."

Besides these ancient dwelling-houses and shops, relics of the Past, the grey old Parish Church of St. Sampson must have been one of the sights which, from the earliest dawn of reason, entered into the historic "imagination" of the great Elizabethan Englishman, who was destined to become a learned student at Rheims and Rome and "to see much of many men and many cities" before he came to England, in the year 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada.

Another familiar object to the future honoured friend and trusted counsellor of Mr. and Mrs. Abington and the highest in the land would be also the old Market Cross, which stood in the middle of St. Sampson's Square, then, and even still sometimes, called Thursday Market.--See Gent's "_York_."

The fact that during the month of December, 1901, the claim of the ancient City of York to be specially represented, through its Lord Mayor, on the occasion of the forthcoming Coronation of His Most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII., was considered by the Court of Claims next after the claim of the City of London, is interesting evidence to show that the City of Edward Oldcorne is still counted the second City of the British Empire, notwithstanding that such claim was disallowed.]

[Footnote 179:--Sir Edward Hoby was a man of parts, a learned diplomatist and able Protestant controversialist.--See "_National Dictionary of Biography_."]

[Footnote 180:--Nichols' "_Progresses of James I._," pp. 584-587. (The italics are mine.)]

_Sub-note to Note 178._

In 1572 John Oldcorne, we are told, was one of the four "sworn men against the late rebels and other evil-disposed people suspected of papistry, for St. Sampson's parish." This is very interesting; for on the 22nd day of August, 1572, at three o'clock in the afternoon, "the Blessed" Thomas Percy, "the good Erle of Northumberland," was beheaded in The Pavement, at the east end of All Saints' Church. He was buried in old St. Crux Church, adjoining The Pavement; and it is possible, I conjecture, that John Oldcorne may have been sworn in as a special constable to help to keep the peace on the occasion of the beheading of the Earl, who held the hearts of nine-tenths of the people of York and Yorks.h.i.+re, as well as of "the North Countrie" generally, at the time of his long and deeply lamented death.

The York "Tyburn," in the middle of the Tadcaster High-road, opposite Hob Moor Gate, Knavesmire, was abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

John Oldcorne, the father of Father Edward Oldcorne, is described as a Bricklayer as well as a Tiler. I think he was a "Master," in partners.h.i.+p, maybe, with his brother, Thomas Oldcorne, a great sufferer for the Catholic Faith, whose wife, Alice, died--a prisoner for her conscience--in the Kidcote, on Old Ouse Bridge, and whose body was buried on Toft Green, near to Micklegate Bar.--See Foley's "_Records_," vol. iv.--The name Oldcorne is not now found in the City of York.