Besides these ancient dwelling-houses and shops, relics of the Past, the grey old Parish Church of St. Sampson must have been one of the sights which, from the earliest dawn of reason, entered into the historic “imagination” of the great Elizabethan Englishman, who was destined to become a learned student at Rheims and Rome and “to see much of many men and many cities” before he came to England, in the year 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. Another familiar object to the future honoured friend and trusted counsellor of Mr. and Mrs. Abington and the highest in the land would be also the old Market Cross, which stood in the middle of St. Sampson’s Square, then, and even still sometimes, called Thursday Market.——See Gent’s “_York_.” The fact that during the month of December, 1901, the claim of the ancient City of York to be specially represented, through its Lord Mayor, on the occasion of the forthcoming Coronation of His Most Gracious Majesty King Edward VII., was considered by the Court of Claims next after the claim of the City of London, is interesting evidence to show that the City of Edward Oldcorne is still counted the second City of the British Empire, notwithstanding that such claim was disallowed.] [Footnote 179:——Sir Edward Hoby was a man of parts, a learned diplomatist and able Protestant controversialist.——See “_National Dictionary of Biography_.”] [Footnote 180:——Nichols’ “_Progresses of James I._,” pp. 584-587. (The italics are mine.)] _Sub-note to Note 178._ In 1572 John Oldcorne, we are told, was one of the four “sworn men against the late rebels and other evil-disposed people suspected of papistry, for St. Sampson’s parish.” This is very interesting; for on the 22nd day of August, 1572, at three o’clock in the afternoon, “the Blessed” Thomas Percy, “the good Erle of Northumberland,” was beheaded in The Pavement, at the east end of All Saints’ Church. He was buried in old St. Crux Church, adjoining The Pavement; and it is possible, I conjecture, that John Oldcorne may have been sworn in as a special constable to help to keep the peace on the occasion of the beheading of the Earl, who held the hearts of nine-tenths of the people of York and Yorkshire, as well as of “the North Countrie” generally, at the time of his long and deeply lamented death. The York “Tyburn,” in the middle of the Tadcaster High-road, opposite Hob Moor Gate, Knavesmire, was abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. John Oldcorne, the father of Father Edward Oldcorne, is described as a Bricklayer as well as a Tiler. I think he was a “Master,” in partnership, maybe, with his brother, Thomas Oldcorne, a great sufferer for the Catholic Faith, whose wife, Alice, died——a prisoner for her conscience——in the Kidcote, on Old Ouse Bridge, and whose body was buried on Toft Green, near to Micklegate Bar.——See Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv.——The name Oldcorne is not now found in the City of York. FINIS.