For at Hindlip Hall, near the City of Worcester, there had dwelt for the
past sixteen years one who was not only the trusted spiritual guide of
Thomas Abington, Esquire, and the Honourable Mary (Parker), his wife,
daughter of the Lord Morley and sister to the Lord Mounteagle, but who by
reason of his remarkably zealous labours in that part of the country had
come to be accepted as a very Apostle of Worcestershire.
This was Edward Oldcorne, a Priest and a Jesuit.
He was the son of John Oldcorne, Tiler, a schismatic Catholic, of St.
Sampson’s Parish, in the City of York. His mother was Elizabeth Oldcorne,
a rigid Catholic recusant, who had suffered imprisonment “for the Faith.”
He was born about the year 1560, and proceeded to the English College at
Rome in 1582, aged twenty-one, for the higher studies. He was most
probably at the Royal School in the Horse Fayre, in York, and he may have
been there at the same time as Oswald Tesimond,[48] John Wright,[49]
Christopher Wright, and Guy Fawkes, though about ten years the senior of
the three latter. As already has been stated, before going beyond the seas
he had studied medicine. He was a man remarkable alike for mental acumen,
tranquillity of spirit, gentleness of nature, and strength of will. He was
one of those Jesuits who, realising a higher unity, were at once Mystics
_and_ Politicians. His equipoise of mind shows him to have been a very
great man——indeed, on account of his combination of mental gifts and
graces, I think the greatest, in reality, of _all_ the early English
Jesuits. For “he saw life steadily and saw it whole.”[A]
[Footnote A: Matthew Arnold.]
“All the chiefest gentlemen,” says Father Gerard, Oldcorne’s contemporary,
“and best Catholics of the county where he remained and the counties
adjoining depended upon his advice and counsel, and he was indefatigable
in his journeys.”[50] Again, a MS. Memoir[51] says, “so profuse was his
liberality in aiding others that he supplied the necessities of life to
very many Catholics. It was very evident his residence was well selected
in the midst of the Catholics of that district of the Society of Jesus, so
great and so promiscuous was the concourse of people flocking thereto for
his sermons, for his advice, and the sacraments.”[52][B]
[Footnote B: See Supplementum II.]
Now, Father Oldcorne was the spiritual adviser of Robert Winter, another
subordinate plotter, and also of Catesby, according to the statement of
one Humphrey Littleton, who knew Oldcorne well. And as John Wright was a
tenant of Catesby’s Mansion House, at Lapworth, in Warwickshire, about
twenty miles distant from Hindlip, Christopher Wright must have not only
heard of Father Oldcorne’s fame as a “counsellor of the doubtful” and a
“friend in need,” but it is at least possible he may have been among those
divers Catholics and Schismatics[53] in the country thereabouts who
flocked to him for conference and to have his exhortations.[54][C]
[Footnote C: Evidence of the practical side of Oldcorne’s mind is
furnished by the fact that we are told he often begged leave in Rome of
his superiors to visit the hospitals and serve in the kitchen. And when
the English College was in low water, owing to the parents of the scholars
not being able to pay for their sons through stress of the persecution,
Oldcorne was sent to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily to negotiate
pecuniary assistance. His business embassy was eminently successful, and
he brought back “a good round sum” to the College.——See Gerard’s
“_Narrative_,” p. 272.]
Again, Christopher Wright appears to have been especially friendly with
two other conspirators, namely, Thomas Winter and Ambrose Rookwood. And it
is worthy of notice that Huddington Hall, in Worcestershire, the seat of
Robert Winter (of which place Thomas Winter is also described), and
Clopton Hall, in Warwickshire, near Stratford-on-Avon (whither Ambrose
Rookwood removed soon after Michaelmas, 1605), were easily accessible to
and from Hindlip Hall, where Father Oldcorne was, in general, to be found
when not engaged at some other missionary station, such as Worcester City
or Grafton Manor, the seat of John Talbot, Esquire, then heir presumptive
to the Earldom of Shrewsbury and father-in-law to Robert Winter, who had
married Miss Gertrude Talbot.[A]
[Footnote A: The site of Shakespeare’s new residence, which he built and
called New Place, at Stratford-on-Avon, had belonged to the Clopton
family.
Clopton Bridge and Clopton Hall (or House) are still well known to all
visitors to the shrine of Shakespeare. It is to be remembered that Clopton
Hall, the property of Lord Carew, whither Ambrose Rookwood repaired for
temporary residence soon after Michaelmas, 1605, was by road twenty-three
miles from Hindlip Hall, where Father Oldcorne resided.
Ambrose Rookwood and Christopher Wright were particular friends. Rookwood
was a man of very tender conscience, which, however, unhappily failed him
at the most crucial moment of his life, namely, when he consented to join
in the Plot which proved his ruin. But indirectly he probably unknowingly
strengthened Christopher Wright’s resolve to reverse the Plot, by
revelation. The influence of “associating” (even if of not always
“according”) “minds” one upon the other is very subtle but very
powerful.]