Robert Catesby
Robert Catesby was the leader of a group of English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Warwickshire, Catesby was educated at Oxford University. His family were prominent recusant Catholics, and presumably to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy he left college before taking his degree. He married a Protestant in 1593 and fathered two children, one of whom survived birth and was baptised in a Protestant church. In 1601 he took part in the Essex Rebellion but was captured and fined, after which he sold his estate at Chastleton.
The Protestant James I, who became King of England in 1603, was less tolerant of Catholics than many persecuted Recusants had hoped. Catesby therefore planned a decapitation strike which he considered tyrannicide, aimed at the Government of England; by blowing up the King and the House of Lords with gunpowder during the State Opening of Parliament. The assassination of the King was to be the prelude to a popular uprising aimed at regime change, through which a Catholic monarch would be seated upon the English throne. Early in 1604, Catesby began to recruit other Catholics to his cause, including Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes. Over the following months, Fawkes helped to recruit a further eight conspirators into the plot, which, against the pleas of underground Jesuit superior Fr. Henry Garnet to cancel the plot, was scheduled to be carried out on 5 November 1605. Concerns about possible collateral damage caused an anonymous letter of warning to be sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, who alerted the authorities. On the night before the planned explosion, Fawkes was arrested underneath the House of Parliament while guarding 38 barrels of gunpowder. News of his arrest caused the other plotters to flee London, warning Catesby along their way.
With a much-diminished group of followers, Catesby made a last stand at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, against a 200-strong Sheriff's posse led by Richard Walsh. Catesby was mortally wounded by gunfire and later found dead inside Holbeche Hall, where he had died while contemplating a holy card of the Virgin Mary. As a warning to other potential regicides, Catesby's body was exhumed, posthumously executed, and his severed head on a spike was displayed outside the Houses of Parliament.
Early life
Origins
He was born after 1572, the third and only surviving son and heir of Sir William Catesby of Lapworth in Warwickshire, by his wife Anne Throckmorton, a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton, KG, of Coughton Court in Warwickshire. He was a lineal descendant of William Catesby, the influential councillor of King Richard III who was captured at the Battle of Bosworth and executed. His parents were prominent recusant Catholics; his father had suffered years of imprisonment for his faith, and in 1581 had been tried in Star Chamber alongside William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden, and his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Tresham, for harbouring the Jesuit priest Edmund Campion. The head of the Throckmortons, Sir Thomas Throckmorton, was also fined for his recusancy, and spent many years in prison. Another relation, Sir Francis Throckmorton, had been executed in 1584 for his involvement in a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots.Education
In 1586 Robert was educated at Gloucester Hall in Oxford, a college noted for its Catholic intake. Those either studying at university or wishing to take public office could not do so without first swearing the Oath of Supremacy, an act which would have compromised Catesby's Catholic faith. Presumably to avoid this consequence, he left without taking his degree, and may then have attended the seminary college of Douai. In 1588, at the time of the Spanish Armada, Robert was allegedly imprisoned at Wisbech Castle along with Francis Tresham.Adulthood
On 8 May 1592, he married Katherine Leigh, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire and Katherine Spencer, and granddaughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey and his wife Alice Barker, sometimes known as Coverdale, who was an heiress, thanks to her uncle Sir Rowland Hill, publisher of the Geneva Bible.Katherine came from wealthy and respected Protestant families and brought with her a dowry of £2,000, but also a religious association which offered Robert some respite from the recusancy laws then in effect. On the death of his grandmother Katherine in 1593, he came into the family property at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire. The couple's first son William died in infancy, but their second son Robert survived, and was baptised at Chastleton's Anglican parish church on 11 November 1595. When Catesby's father died in 1598, his estates at Ashby St Ledgers were left to his wife for life, while Catesby and his family remained at Chastleton. Catesby had seemed happy to remain a Church Papist but after his wife's death later that year he further embraced Catholicism.
In 1601 Catesby was involved in Essex's Rebellion. The Earl of Essex's purpose might have lain in furthering his own interests rather than those of the Catholic Church, but Catesby hoped that if Essex succeeded, there might once more be a Catholic monarch. The rebellion was a failure, however, and the wounded Catesby was captured, imprisoned at the Wood Street Counter, and fined 4,000 marks by Elizabeth I. Sir Thomas Tresham helped pay some of Catesby's fine and Catesby sold his estate at Chastleton afterwards. Several authors speculate about Catesby's movements as Elizabeth's health grew worse; he was probably among those "principal papists" imprisoned by a government fearing open rebellion, and in March 1603 he possibly sent Christopher Wright to Spain to see if Philip III would continue to support English Catholics after Elizabeth's death. Catesby funded the activities of some Jesuit priests, and while visiting them made occasional use of the alias Mr Roberts.
Gunpowder Plot
Background
Catholics had hoped that the persecution they suffered during Elizabeth's reign would end when she was succeeded in 1603 by James I. His mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, had been a devout Catholic, and James's attitude appeared moderate, even tolerant towards Catholics. Protestant rulers across Europe had, however, been the target of several assassination attempts during the late 16th century, and until the 1620s some English Catholics believed that regicide was justifiable to remove 'tyrants' from power. Much of James's political writing was concerned with such matters, and the "refutation of the argument that 'faith did not need to be kept with heretics. Shortly after he discovered that his wife Anne–who had been raised Lutheran and had abstained from the Anglican communion at her English coronation–had been sent a rosary from Pope Clement VIII, James exiled all Jesuits and other Catholic priests, and reimposed the collection of anti-Catholic fines. Catesby soon began to lose patience with the new dynasty.British author and historian Antonia Fraser describes Catesby's mentality as "that of the crusader who does not hesitate to employ the sword in the cause of values which he considers are spiritual". Writing after the events of 1604–1606, the Jesuit priest Father Tesimond's description of his friend was favourable: "his countenance was exceedingly noble and expressive... his conversation and manners were peculiarly attractive and imposing, and that by the dignity of his character he exercised an irresistible influence over the minds of those who associated with him." Fellow conspirator Ambrose Rookwood, shortly before his own death, said that he "loved and respected him as his own life", while Catesby's friend, Father John Gerard, claimed he was "respected in all companies of such as are counted there swordsmen or men of action", and that "few were in the opinions of most men preferred before him and he increased much his acquaintance and friends." Author Mark Nicholls suggests that "bitterness at the failure of Essex's design nevertheless seems to have sharpened an already well-honed neurosis."
Early stages
Despite the ease with which Catesby seems to have inspired his fellow conspirators, the fact it was he and not Fawkes who devised what became known as the Gunpowder Plot has largely been forgotten. The precise date on which he set events in motion is unknown, but he first likely had the idea early in 1604. Sometime around June of the previous year he was visited by his friend Thomas Percy. A great-grandson of the 4th Earl of Northumberland, Percy was reported to have had a "wild youth" before he became a Catholic, and during Elizabeth's final years had been entrusted by the 9th Earl with a secret mission to James's court in Scotland, to plead with the king on behalf of England's Catholics. He now complained bitterly about what he considered to be James's treachery and threatened to kill him. Catesby replied, "No, no, Tom, thou shalt not venture to small purpose, but if thou wilt be a traitor thou shalt be to some great advantage." Percy listened while Catesby added, "I am thinking of the surest way and I will soon let thee know what it is." During Allhallowtide on 31 October he sent for his cousin Thomas Wintour, who was at Huddington Court in Worcestershire with his brother Robert. Thomas was educated as a lawyer and had fought for England in the Low Countries, but in 1600 had converted to Catholicism. After the Earl of Essex's failed rebellion, he had travelled to Spain to raise support for English Catholics, a mission which the authorities later said comprised part of a 'Spanish Treason'. Although Thomas declined his invitation, Catesby again invited him in February 1601.When Wintour responded to the summons he found his cousin with the swordsman John Wright. Catesby told him of his plan to kill the king and his government by blowing up "the Parliament House with Gunpowder... in that place have they done us all the mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their punishment". Wintour at first objected to his cousin's scheme, but Catesby, who said that "the nature of the disease required so sharp a remedy", won him over. Despite Catholic Spain's moves toward diplomacy with England, Catesby still harboured hopes of foreign support and a peaceful solution. Wintour, therefore, returned to the continent, where he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the affable Constable of Castile to press for good terms for English Catholics in forthcoming peace negotiations. He then turned to Sir William Stanley, an English Catholic and veteran commander who had switched sides from England to Spain, and the exiled Welsh spy Hugh Owen; both cast doubt on the plotters' chances of receiving Spanish support. Owen did, however, introduce Wintour to Guy Fawkes, whose name Catesby had already supplied as "a confidant gentleman" who might enter their ranks. Fawkes was a devout English Catholic who had travelled to the continent to fight for Spain in the Dutch War of Independence. Wintour told him of their plan to "doe somewhat in England if the pece with Spaine helped us nott", and thus in April 1604 the two men returned home. Wintour told Catesby that despite positive noises from the Spanish, he feared that "the deeds would not answer". That was a response which in Nicholls's opinion came as no surprise to Catesby, who wanted and expected nothing less.
On Sunday 20 May in the well-to-do Strand district of London, Catesby met Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes, at an inn called the Duck and Drake. Percy had been introduced to the plot several weeks after Wintour and Fawkes's return to England. Alone in a private room, all swore an oath of secrecy on a prayer book, and then in another room celebrated Mass with the Jesuit priest John Gerard. Robert Keyes was admitted to the group in October 1604, and was charged with looking after Catesby's Lambeth house, where the gunpowder and other supplies were to be stored. Two months later Catesby recruited his servant, Thomas Bates, into the plot, after Bates accidentally became aware of it and by March 1605, three more were admitted: Thomas Wintour's brother Robert, John Grant, and John Wright's brother Christopher.