Note A — Chapter XVIII

The fact that a Christopher Wright who lived at Newbie in 1596, and at Skelton (Newbie itself is in the Parish of Skelton) in 1601, when he called one of his children “Marmaduke,” raises a strong presumption, I maintain, that this Christopher Wright was the brother-in-law of Marmaduke Ward.

At this time there was also a Francis Wright at Newbie, and a John Wright at Grantley. They may have been the children of John and Christopher Wright, the uncles of John and Christopher Wright, the Gunpowder plotters. And, of course, it is possible that the Christopher Wright who lived in Bondgate, Newbie, and Skelton between the years 1589 and 1601 may have been a cousin or other kinsman of Christopher Wright the plotter, or even of different families altogether. But in the Register of Welwick Church are the following entries of Burials: “13 October 1654 ffrauncis Wright Esquire and 2 May 1664 ffrauncis Wright Esquire” (communicated by the Rev. D. V. Stoddart, M.A., Vicar of Welwick), entries which tend to prove that the Newby Wrights and the Plowland Wrights were one and the same persons, and, therefore, of one and the same clan.

There seem, from the “Memorials of Ripon,” vol. iii. (Surtees Soc.), to have been “Wrights” in Ripon and the neighbourhood for many generations, certainly long before the reign of Henry VIII., when the grandfather of the plotters is said to have come from Kent into Yorkshire. — See Foster’s “Glover’s Visitation of Yorkshire.” Possibly the Wrights of Kent originally sprang from Yorkshire.

“A Christopher Wright” lived at South Kilvington, near Thirsk, in the nineteenth century. — See the tablet to his memory in the church of that parish.