[A] I.e., the old Bishopthorpe Church. The present Bishopthorpe Church is a handsome structure of recent date, at the entrance to the village from York.
Mr. Camidge continues: “I found, a few years ago, rooted in the minds of the oldest inhabitants of Bishopthorpe, the positive assurance that Guy Fawkes was born at Bishopthorpe, and the site of the house was indicated by several persons. I found one of the descendants of the former owner of the house, who assured me that her father always held that Guy Fawkes was born in the
house; that my informant’s great grandfather maintained the same; and that for two or three generations they had shown the house as the place of Guy Fawkes’ birth. The site of the house is now a pleasure-garden; but a stone was put in the ground to mark the site.”
Now it is a remarkable fact that in almost all, if indeed not quite all, of those places where there has been a strong local tradition to the effect that the Gunpowder conspirators had some association with a particular spot, subsequent investigation has found the tradition to be well authenticated. (This was pointed out by David Jardine sixty years ago.)
Yet the strongest argument against the Bishopthorpe tradition is that Guy’s baptismal register is to-day found at the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, in the City of York.
Now, in the time of Elizabeth, as Dr. Elzé has pointed out in his “Life of Shakespeare,” a child would be baptized on the third day after birth. Hence, on the whole, I cannot personally accept the Bishopthorpe tradition as to the birthplace of Guy Fawkes.
It is, however, more than possible that as a babe in arms Guy Fawkes may have lived at Bishopthorpe. For the Act of Uniformity, whereby the York Court of High Commission had been established, would bring much legal work to his father, Edward Fawkes; and that the latter found it convenient to have a house in close proximity to his Grace the Lord Archbishop of York, a leading member of the High Commission, is one of the likeliest things in the world.
In these circumstances, then, the present-day inhabitants of Bishopthorpe may still lay the flattering unction to their souls (if they wish so to do) that Guy Fawkes drank in his mother’s milk in their picturesque Yorkshire village, on the banks of the noble Ouse.
Mr. J. W. Knowles, of Stonegate, York, another gentleman well versed in York’s antiquities, informed me in August, 1901, that a Mr. John Robert Watkinson, of Redeness Street, Layerthorpe, York, held a tradition that Guy Fawkes’ birthplace was in the house adjoining the Minster Gates.
Accordingly, some little time afterwards, I wrote to Mr. Watkinson, who at once kindly replied in a letter, dated 22nd October, 1901, as follows: —