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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Thomas Wright was given access to Guy Fawkes soon after his arrest in the vault of the House of Lords. The authority for this interesting incident in his career is a statement of the priest Richard Broughton in his book “English Protestant Plea for English Priests and Papists” of 1621. “The Lords of the Council requested that a priest should be appointed to perswade and assure Fauxe (a chief agent in it) that he was bound in conscience to utter what he could of the conspiracie, and Mr Tho. Write a learned priest did hereupon come to the Councell and offer his best service herein, and had a warrant subsigned with 12 Privie Councellors hands, which he showed unto me, and I am witnesse of his having such a Warrant. (p. 59. cit. Dom Raymund Webster. The Downside Review. Oct. 1936. p. 503.)
(1) “Father Thomas Wright: a test case for toleration”, pp. 189–219 of the present volume of Biographical Studies.
(2) D.N.B. (1900) vol. LXIII p. 128.
(3) It forms part of a book entitled Two treatises. 1. The holy exercise of a true fast, described out of Gods word. Written by T.C. 2. The substance of the Lordes Supper. Written by T.W. London, for I. Harison and T. Man, 1610, 120. (S.T.C. 4314). Though I have not examined the book, it is certain that Wright would not have allowed to print a Catholic religious work openly In London, giving the names of the publishers. Besides, the works on the Blessed Sacrament mentioned by Pitts are satisfactorily identified below. Possibly the T.W. who wrote the Substance of the Lordes Supper was Thomas Walkington, who the year before, in 1609, had printed under those initials a book called Two learned treatises of the Lords Supper (S.T.C. 24972).
(4) John Pitts died in 1616, leaving the materials for a lengthy work on English history, out of which Thomas Worthington published in 1619 at Paris a single volume, Relationum historicarum de rebus Anglicis tomus primus, better known from its running title as De illustrious Angliae scriptoribus. The notice of Wright occurs on pp.812–3.
(5) Pitts quotes three further titles:
Academiam Protestantium, seu anatomiam symbolicae Cornae Joannis Calvini, Librura unum.
Davidis Threnos, seu de daranis peccati, Librum unum.
De beatifudine, Libros sex.
I have not managed to identify them, and they were perhaps never printed. Other works which are mentioned elsewhere but seem also to have remained unpublished are his Latin tract on the subject of Catholic allegiance, discussed by Mr.Stroud (pp. 193–5) and the alleged “tragedy against the Church of England” written in collaboration with William Alabaster (Stroud p.215). There is also the tract, written apparently anonymously in English in 1606 and translated into Latin as De audlendis concionlbus, which Father Persons refuted in the second half of his attack on Catholics attending Anglican sermons and services entitled Quaestiones duae de sacris alienls non adeundis, (St.Omers) 1607 (see especially p. 41). As I have not found any of the above in print, I do not treat them, further in the present article.
(6) Some copies of the 1604 edition of the Passions of the Mind have the name Thomas Wright in full (see bibliography, no.9). Otherwise, when Pitts wrote in 1611 Wright’s name had not appeared in print as an author.
(7) In his letter of 17 October 1598 to Anthony Bacon he refers to the book as already finished some while previously. (H.MSS.Com., Salisbury VIII. p. 395) and in his 1604 Epistle Dedicatory he says he was asked by friends to write such a book “some seaven yeares ago”, that is about 1597.
(8) Quoted from a Stonyhurst manuscript by John Gerard S.J. in “Contributions towards a life of Father Henry Garnet S.J.” (Month, vol. xci (1898) p. 367) though in a note he wrongly identifies “Mr. Wright” with another priest, Anthony Wright. Thomas attxibuted his own transfer from the Gatehouse to the more severe imprisonment of Bridewell not to this book but to his conversion to Catholicism of the young divine William Alabaster who had been sent to dispute with him (H.MSS.Com. Salisbury, VIII. p. 395). So also did “William Greenwell” (Oswald Tesimond S.J.) writing in June 1599, who adds that by Essex's favour he enjoyed great liberty, being allowed to “go with his keeper into the city where he pleased.” (Cal.S. P. Dom. Ells. 1598–1601 p.217). Garnet”s letters make frequent reference to the stir caused by Alabaster's conversion. It would be during his time in Bridewell that Wright got ready and had printed the sequel to the Treatise, next to be described.
(9) Other books in the group use further ornaments belonging to Short. Part of the large Crucifixion woodcut on the titlepage of the Treatise was used in another book secretly printed in England in 1602, Philip Woodward's Detection of divers notable untruthes (S. T.C. 18754).
(10) At some date after the death of Prior Arnold in 1589, and before the resignation of Prior Walter Pitts in 1596, they left Louvain for a house in Bleek Street, Malines. From here they moved in 1626 to Nieuport. See Dom Lawrence Henriks, The London Charterhouse pp. 313, 317.
(11) On leaf A4 of the Disposition.
(12) Its place is between X8 and Y1. Besides its interloping signature, the catchword “THE” on X8 shows that the new quire was an afterthought.
(13) Barlow did not discover his opponent's identity. But in his Sermon preached at Paules Crosse … Martij 1. 1600. London, 1601 (S.T.C. 1454), Barlow wrote “half a year after his return from Cadiz he (the Earl of Essex) sent for me about a matter of difference in some points of religion between a popish priest (marginal note “Wright”) and myself,” so that it appears that the two had disputed before, perhaps in the Essex household to which both owed allegiance.
(14) H.MSS.Com. Salisbury, X. p. 125.
(15) Ibid. pp. 135–6.
(16) Like William Barlow and Wright himself, Wotton was connected with the household of Essex, being for a time the Earl's chaplain. But he does not identify the author of the book he is attacking with Wright, whom he must have known. A. F. Pollard in his D. N.B. article on Wotton (LXIII. p.46) does not mention this Answer among his writings.
(17) Generally it was one of the Bishop of London's chaplains who did the censoring of books. The copy with the censor's signature would then be produced by the intending publisher at Stationers Hall to enter his copyright in the Register.
(18) This sonnet has been reprinted by Herford and Simpson in vol.VIII. p. 370 of their edition of Ben Jonson. Mr.Stroud in an article in the Journal of English Literary History XIV (1947) PP. 277–79 entitled “Ben Jonson and Father Thomas Wright” suggests that Wright was the unnamed priest who converted Jonson while in prison to Catholicism; this would help to explain the presence of this sonnet here.
(19) This printer is the subject of an article in the present volume of Biographical Studies, pp. 86–111.
(20) The disputation with Wright is mentioned by S.Lane–Poole in his article on Roe in D.N.B. (1897) vol. XLXX p.90.
(21) They are scattered through MS. Lansdowne 153.