This man, who appears to have been one of the most desperate and
unscrupulous of the conspirators, was the son of a Protestant clergyman
in Derbyshire, who is supposed to have been the Reverend Edward Kay of
Stavely, a younger son of John Kay of Woodsam, Yorkshire. His name is
variously rendered as Keyes, Keis, and Kay; he himself signs Robert Key.
His mother was a daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, a very
opulent Roman Catholic gentleman of Lincolnshire, and through her he was
cousin of Mrs Rookwood. The opulence of the grandfather did not
descend to his grandson, whose indigence was a great cause of his
desperate character. He lived for a time at Glatton, in
Huntingdonshire, but afterwards entered the service of Lord Mordaunt as
keeper of his house at Turvey, his wife being the governess of his
Lordship's children. He is described as "a young man with no hair on
his face." (Additional Manuscript 6178, folio 808.) It was about June,
1605, when Keyes was taken into the plot, and his chief work thereafter
was the charge of the house at Lambeth "sometimes called Catesby's,
afterwards Mr Terrett's, since Rookwood's," (_Ibidem_, folio 62), where
the powder was stored. His only other service was the bringing of the
watch from Percy to Fawkes just before the discovery of the plot. Keyes
left one son, Robert (Foley's _Records_, volume 1, page 510), who was
living about 1630, and was then a frequent visitor of his relatives the
Rookwoods (_Domestic State Papers_, Charles the First, 178, 43).