Note 148 — Chapter XLV

— Jardine, in his “Narrative” p. 37, has the following exceptionally interesting paragraph: “Sir William Waad in a letter to Lord Salisbury, reporting a conversation with Fawkes, says, ‘Fawkes’s mother is alive and re-married, and he hath a brother in one of the Inns of Court. John and Christopher Wright were school-fellows of Fawkes and neighbours’ children. Tesimond, the Jesuit, was at that time schoolfellow also with them. So as this crew have been brought up together.’” — State Paper Office, Add. Papers No. 481, Jardine (now Record Office).

Probably what Fawkes said was that he (Fawkes) and Tesimond were neighbours’ children; for John and Christopher Wright’s parents were of Plowland Hall, in the Parish of Welwick, in Holderness, as we have seen. Two explanations, however, are possible, which will reconcile this statement that, after all, Fawkes may have said that he and the Wrights were neighbours’ children. One is that possibly the young Wrights boarded with some citizen dwelling in St. Michael-le-Belfrey’s Parish, York, whilst they were at the Royal School of St. Peter, then in the Horse Fayre, Gillygate (but now in Clifton), York; the other explanation is that possibly a portion of the fourteen years during which the mother of John and Christopher Wright was (as we have seen already ante) imprisoned for her resolute profession of the Catholic religion was spent in company with her husband, Robert Wright, in some private gentleman’s house in the Belfrey Parish, in the City of York — a thing then very common. For example, Dr. Thomas Vavasour, a physician, of Christ’s Parish, who — or whose wife, Mrs. Dorothy Vavasour — favoured Campion, and probably harboured him in 1581, was for a time imprisoned in the house of his brother. This was probably Mr. Edward Vavasour, a Protestant gentleman, who resided in “the Belfray” Parish, and was a freeman of York and one of its tradesmen, being, I find, a hatter. In the York “Subsidy Roll for 1581” Edward Vavasour’s name appears as being assessed in goods at £8. Dr. Thomas Vavasour’s name does not appear in the Subsidy Roll. I believe he was then in prison, at Hull, for his persistent refusal to conform to the Queen’s demands in matters of faith.

Query — Did Father Oldcorne learn his “medicine” from Dr. Vavasour, of the Parish of Christ? What was the system of medical training in the “golden days”?