It hath been truly observed by one of the most knowing and candid of
modern students of Elizabethan biographical literature, that Sir William
Catesby, the father of the arch-gunpowder conspirator, Robert Catesby, in
common with the great majority of the country gentry throughout England,
who were resident upon their own estates, and unconnected with the
oligarchy which ruled in the Queen’s name (_i.e._, Queen Elizabeth’s) at
Court, threw in his lot with the Catholic party, and suffered in
consequence of his conscientious adherence to the old creed.[A]
[Footnote A: Dr. Augustus Jessopp: Article——“Robert Catesby,” “_National
Dictionary of Biography_.”]
While Sir Thomas Tresham (the brother-in-law of the last-mentioned Sir
William Catesby and father of Francis Tresham, one of the subordinate
conspirators), was so attached to the ancient faith of the English people
that, we are told, he not only regularly paid——by way of fines——for more
than twenty years, the sum of £260 per annum, about £2,080 a year in our
money, into the Treasury rather than not maintain what (to him) was “a
conscience void of offence,” but he also spent at least twenty-one years
of his life in prison, after being Star-Chambered in the year 1581 along
with Lord Vaux of Harrowden and his brother-in-law, Sir William Catesby,
on a charge of harbouring Campion.
The Fleet prison in London, Banbury Castle and Ely——his “familiar prison,”
as Sir Thomas Tresham pleasantly styled the last-named place of
incarceration——were the habitations wherein he was enabled to make it his
boast in a letter to Lord Henry Howard, afterwards the Earl of
Northampton, writ in the year 1603, “that he had now completed his triple
apprenticeship in direst adversity, and that he should be content to serve
a like long apprenticeship to prevent the foregoing of his beloved,
beautiful, and graceful Rachel; for it seemed to him but a few days for
the love he had to her.”[A]
[Footnote A: Quoted from papers found at Rushton in Northamptonshire, the
seat of Sir Thomas Tresham, which he himself designed, being an architect
of some skill.]
Well may the spiritual descendants to-day of these grand old Elizabethan
Catholics exclaim:——“_Their_ very memory is pure and bright, and our sad
thoughts doth cheer!”