Note 103 — Chapter XXXI

— Mary Ward, the daughter of Marmaduke Ward and Ursula Wright, lived with her grandmother, Mrs. Ursula Wright (née Rudston, of Hayton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire), between the years 1589-94 at Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, Holderness, Yorkshire; and between the years 1597-1600 at Harewell Hall, in the township of Dacre, Nidderdale, with her kinswoman, Mrs. Katerine Ardington (née Ingleby). Mrs. Ardington, as well as Mrs. Ursula Wright, had suffered imprisonment for her profession of the ancient faith. We have a relation by Mary Ward herself of her grandmother’s incarceration, which is as follows: — Mrs. Wright “had in her younger years suffered imprisonment for the space of fourteen years together, in which time she several times made profession of her faith before the President of York (the Earl of Huntingdon) and other officers. She was once, for her speeches to the said Huntingdon, tending to the exaltation of the Catholic religion and contempt of heresy, thrust into a common prison or dungeon, amongst thieves, where she stayed not long because, being much spoken of, it came to the hearing of her kindred, who procured her speedy removal to the Castle prison where she was before.” — See Chambers’ “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 13.

This common prison or dungeon would be, it is all but certain, the Kidcote, the common prison for the City of York and that portion of Yorkshire between the Rivers Wharfe and Ouse known as the Ainsty of the City of York. This dungeon was, according to Gent’s “History of York,” under the York City Council Chamber on Old Ouse Bridge, to the westward of St. William’s Chapel. — See also J. B. Milburn’s “A Martyr of Old York” (Burns & Oates). — The Old Ouse Bridge was pulled down in 1810. — See Allen’s “History of Yorkshire” — After the Kidcote was demolished, the York City prison called the Gaol, likewise now demolished (1901), was built on Bishophill, near the Old Bailie Hill. The prison for the County of Yorkshire was the Castle built by William the Conqueror, the tower of which, called Clifford’s Tower, on an artificial mound, is still standing. There was, moreover, in York, a third prison into which the unhappy popish recusants, as appears from Morris’s “Troubles” were sometimes consigned. This was the Bishop’s prison, commonly called Peter Prison. The writer is told by Mr. William Camidge, a York antiquary of note, that Peter Prison stood at the corner of Precentor’s Court, Petergate, near to the west front of the Minster. Mr. Camidge remembers Peter Prison being used as a City lock-up prison about the year 1836, soon after which year it was pulled down. The late Mr. Richard Haughton, of York, showed the writer, about Easter, 1899, a sketch of this interesting old prison, a sketch which Mr. Haughton had himself made. The building was a plain square erection, the door of which was reached by a flight of stone steps.

Again, we are told — “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 17 — that one day Mary came to her grandmother, “who was singing some hymns,” and the child asked the old lady whether she would not send “something again to the prisoners,” a question, we are told, which “pleased” Mrs. Wright “very much.”

Lastly, the gifted daughter of Marmaduke Ward, and the niece of Thomas Ward, bears this striking testimony concerning one aspect of her aged relative’s gracious life, that “so great a prayer was she” that during the whole five years that the child lived with her grandmother, the most of which time she lodged in the same chamber, she “did not remember in that whole five years she ever saw her grandmother sleep, nor did she ever awake when she perceived her not at prayer” (p. 15).