The two Wrights’ parents were stanch Roman Catholics, and their mother had suffered imprisonment “for the Faith” in York for the “space of fourteen years together,” during the time when Henry Hastings Earl of Huntingdon was Lord President of the North, i.e., between the years 1572 and 1599. (Henry third Earl of Huntingdon was one of the few members of the ancient nobility who accepted whole-heartedly the Calvinistic Protestantism then gradually taking root in England.)
One of Christopher Wright’s sisters, Ursula, was married to Marmaduke Ward, Gentleman, of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon; another, named Martha, was married to Thomas Percy, Gentleman, the Gunpowder conspirator.
It is said of John Wright, Christopher Wright’s brother, and of his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy, that they were formerly Protestant, and became Catholic about the time of the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. But it is certain John Wright and Thomas Percy[45] must have been both brought up Roman Catholics in the days of their childhood; although they probably ceased to practise their duties as such until about the year 1600. For it is incredible that the son and son-in-law of Robert Wright and Ursula, his wife, should have been brought up as children and youths anything other than rigid Catholics, whatever else for a season they might, in the days of their early manhood, have become, either from conscientious conviction or reckless negligence, whereof the latter alternative is doubtless the more probable.
From the account of the Gunpowder conspirators given by Father John Gerard, the friend of Sir Everard Digby, and, it is highly probable, the friend of the Wrights also, it would seem that Christopher Wright was a taller man than his brother John,[A] fatter in the
face and of a lighter-coloured hair. “Yet,” says Gerard, “was he very like to the other in conditions and qualities and both esteemed and tried to be as stout a man as England had, and withal a zealous Catholic and trusty and secret in any business as could be wished.”[46]
[A] It is, however, possible that John Wright may have come under the influence of the Blessed William Hart (styled the Apostle of York and the second Campion), a priest who suffered death at the York Tyburn in 1583. Because Hart was indicted for (amongst other things) “reconciling” a “Mr. John Wright and one Cooling.” — See Challoner’s “Missionary Priests.” If so, John Wright would then be about fourteen years of age. It, however, may have been another John Wright; perhaps of Grantley and one of the brothers of Robert Wright, the father of John Wright, the conspirator. Cooling was probably Ralph Cowling, of York, a shoemaker, the father of Father Richard Cowling (certainly of York), a Jesuit and relative of the Harringtons, of Mount St. John, and, therefore, of Guy Fawkes. See Note 147, where will be found a letter under the hand of this Father Cowling (or Collinge) to a gentleman in Venice — possibly Father Parsons or someone else of authority among the Jesuits — respecting the Harringtons and Guy Fawkes. Ralph Cowling, the father, died in York Castle a captive for his Faith, and was buried under the Castle Wall — I think facing the Foss towards Fishergate.
Christopher Wright was married. His wife’s name, we know, was Margaret.[A][47] I strongly suspect that Mrs. Christopher Wright was a sister of both Marmaduke Ward and Thomas Ward, of Mulwith, in the Parish of Ripon; yet of this there is only, perhaps, slight evidence, so that no positive argument can be grounded upon it, considered by itself; though the evidence of Mistress Robinson, Christopher Wright’s landlady in London, indirectly tends to confirm such a suspicion. — See Evidence of Dorathie Robinson, postea, where she says that Wright had “a brother” in London.
[A] See “Life of Mary Ward,” vol. i., p. 89.
When Guy Fawkes was examined in the Tower of London, in the forenoon of the 6th of November, he said, in answer to a question — “You would have me discover my friends; the giving warning to one overthrew us all.”
Now, if Guy Fawkes eventually revealed the conspiracy by reason of the agony caused by the physical pains of the rack, when after the first racking he was told he “must come to it againe and againe, from daye to daye, till he should have delivered his whole knowledge,” is it, I ask, a thing incredible that the son of a Yorkshire Catholic mother that had spent fourteen years of her life in “durance” for her profession of her forefathers’ ancient Faith, should have revealed the conspiracy itself, by reason of the agony caused by the moral pains of a pricking conscience, goading him to madness for having committed in act (in the case of the unlawful oath), in desire (in