CHAPTER XII.
Who and what then, with more particularity, was Christopher Wright?
He was the third son of Robert Wright and Ursula his wife, who was the daughter of Nicholas Rudston, Esquire (of the Rudstons, Lords of Hayton,[A] near Pocklington, in the East Riding of the County of York, since the reign of King John). Ursula Rudston’s mother was Jane, the daughter of Sir William Mallory, of Studley Royal, near Ripon.[42]
[A] It is gratifying to the historic feeling to know that the Manor of Hayton is still owned by a member of this ancient family, the present possessor being T. W. Calverley-Rudston, Esquire, J.P., of Allerthorpe Hall, Pocklington.
Christopher Wright was born about the year 1570, the year after the Rising of the North[43] under “the Blessed” Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville Earl of Westmoreland, in which movement many of Christopher Wright’s mother’s relatives and connections (notably “old Richard Norton,” his sons, and the Markenfields) were implicated.[44]
Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, in the Parish of Welwick, in Holderness, was doubtless where Christopher Wright first beheld the light of the sun. Plowland Hall, or Great Plowland as it is sometimes called, is situated on the left of, and a little distance from, the high-road, on slightly rising ground, between the ancient town of
Patrington and the pretty village of Welwick. When Robert Wright and Ursula, his wife, and their sons, John and Christopher, and their daughters, Ursula and Martha, knew the place, now so historic, Plowland Hall was a fortified dwelling, surrounded by a deep moat and approached by a drawbridge, much after the fashion of Markenfield Hall, in the Parish of Ripon, the ancestral seat of the Markenfields, heroes of Flodden and kinsmen of the Wrights, Wards, Nortons, Mallories, and numberless others amongst the ancient and wealthy Yorkshire gentry.
Christopher Wright and his elder brother John were educated, along with Guy Fawkes and Oswald Tesimond, at the Royal Grammar School (as we have already stated) in the Horse Fayre, Gillygate, in the City of York.
Their master was the Reverend John Pulleyn, who probably belonged to the ancient and honourable West Riding family of the Pulleyns (or Pulleines), of Killinghall, near Bilton-cum-Harrogate, and of Scotton, in the Parish of Farnham, near Knaresbrough.