Part 2 — NOTES.
Reading edition
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 Yorkshire, 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 partnership, 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.