Thomas Winter came of a Worcestershire family. His father, George Winter
(or Wintour), had married Jane Ingleby, the daughter of Sir William
Ingleby, a Yorkshire knight of historic name, whose ancestral seat was
Ripley Castle, near Knaresbrough[24] in Nidderdale, one of the most
romantic valleys of Yorkshire.
Jane Winter’s brother, Francis Ingleby,[25] a barrister, and afterwards a
Roman Catholic priest, was hanged, drawn and quartered at York, on the 2nd
of June, 1586, for exercising his priesthood in York and his native
County.
He was a man of rare parts, and the heroic story of his life and death
must have often thrilled the hearts of his sister’s children.
Would that they had taken him as their model. For of all those many Roman
Catholic Yorkshiremen[A] who, of divers ranks and degrees, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, preferred “death” to (what to them)
was “dishonour,” none has left nobler memories than this self-sacrificing,
exalted soul.[26]
[Footnote A: At least 49 persons, priests and laymen, suffered death in
York alone for the Pope’s religion, between the reigns of Henry VIII. and
Charles II. inclusive. The place of execution was usually the Tyburn,
opposite Knavesmire, near Hob Moor Gate, in the middle of the Tadcaster
High Road. In the reign of Philip and Mary no Protestant was burned to
death in Yorkshire. Archbishop Heath, of York, like Bishop Tunstall, of
Durham, and the great Catholic Jurist, Edmund Plowden, who, for conscience
sake, declined the Chancellorship when offered to him by Elizabeth, did
not think they could “save alive” the soul of a “heretic” by roasting
“dead” his body at the stake. And they were right.]
Thomas Winter, the ill-fated nephew of him just mentioned, was a
courageous man and an accomplished linguist.
He had seen military service in Flanders, in behalf of the Estates-General
against Spain, and in France, and possibly against the Turk.
We are told by a contemporary that “he was of such a wit and so fine a
carriage, that he was of so pleasing conversation, desired much of the
better sort, but an inseparable friend of Mr. Robert Catesby. He was of
mean stature, but strong and comely and very valiant, about thirty-three
years old, or somewhat more. His means were not great, but he lived in
good sort, and with the best.”[27] He seems to have been unmarried.
Sir Everard Digby was a tall, handsome, singularly generous, charming
young fellow, and like Ambrose Rookwood, previously mentioned, had won the
loving favour of all who knew him. Digby had two estates in the County of
Rutlandshire (Tilton and Drystoke), also property in the County of
Leicestershire; and through his amiable and beautiful young wife, Mary
Mulsho, a wealthy heiress, he was the owner of Gothurst[A] (now Gayhurst)
in the parish of Tyringham, near Newport Pagnell, in the County of
Buckinghamshire, still one of England’s stately homes.[28]
Francis Tresham was married to a Throckmorton, and was connected with many
English families of historic name, high rank, and great fortune.
[Footnote A: Gothurst (now Gayhurst), resembles in its style of architecture, The
Treasurer’s House, York, on the North side of the Minster, the town-house
of Frank Green, Esquire. Walter Carlile, Esquire, now resides at
Gayhurst.]
He was a first cousin to Robert Catesby through his mother——a
Throckmorton. Tresham and the Winters were also akin.
Francis Tresham, like his cousin, Robert Catesby, had been involved in the
Essex rising, and his father, Sir Thomas Tresham, had to pay a ransom of
at least £2,000 to effect his son’s escape from arraignment and certain
execution. Powerful interest had been exerted in the son’s favour with
Queen Elizabeth by Lady Catherine Howard, the daughter of Lord Thomas
Howard, Lieutenant of the Tower, and afterwards Earl of Suffolk.[29]
John Grant was a Warwickshire Squire, who had married Robert and Thomas
Winter’s sister Dorothy. Grant’s home was at Norbrook, near Snitterfield,
a walled and moated mansion-house between the towns of Warwick and
Stratford-on-Avon.[30] Grant was a taciturn but accomplished man, who had
been likewise fined for his share in the Essex rising.
John Wright and Christopher Wright were younger sons of Robert Wright,
Esquire, of Plowland (or Plewland) Hall, Welwick, Holderness, in the East
Riding of Yorkshire.
They were related to the Inglebies of Ripley, through the Mallories of
Studley Royal near Ripon. Hence were they related to Thomas Winter, Robert
Winter, and Dorothy Grant.
Robert Keyes, of Drayton in Northamptonshire, was the son of a Protestant
clergyman and probably grandson of one of the Key or Kay family of
Woodsome, Almondbury, near Huddersfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Through his Roman Catholic mother, Keyes was related to Lady Ursula
Babthorpe, the daughter of Sir William Tyrwhitt[31] of Kettleby, near
Brigg, Lincolnshire, and wife of Sir William Babthorpe, of Babthorpe and
Osgodby, near Selby, in the East Riding of Yorkshire Sir William Babthorpe
was “the very soul of honour,” one of the most valiant-hearted gentlemen
in Yorkshire, and himself, likewise, related to the Mallories, the
Inglebies, the Wrights, and the Winters. His sister was Lady Catherine
Palmes, the wife of Sir George Palmes, of Naburn, near the City of York.
Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall——an ivy-clad, mullion-windowed mansion
still standing——in the parish of Stanningfield, near Bury St. Edmunds,
Suffolk, was of an honourable and wealthy Suffolk family, who had suffered
fines and penalties for the profession of their hereditary faith.
His wife was a Tyrwhitt and sister to Lady Ursula Babthorpe. At the time
of the Plot he was twenty-seven years of age.[A]
[Footnote A: Edward Rookwood, of Euston Hall, Suffolk, was cousin to
Ambrose Rookwood. At Euston in 1578 Queen Elizabeth was sumptuously
entertained by Edward Rookwood.——See Hallam’s “_Constitutional History_,”
and Lodge’s “_Illustrations_.”]
Of the engaging Ambrose Rookwood a contemporary says, “I knew him well and
loved him tenderly. He was beloved by all who knew him. He left behind him
his lady, who was a very beautiful person and of a high family, and two or
three little children, all of whom——together with everything he had in
this world——he cast aside to follow the fortunes of this rash and
desperate conspiracy.”[32]
Guy Fawkes was also a Yorkshireman, being born in the year 1570, in the
City of York.
His baptismal register, dated the 16th day of April, 1570, is still to be
seen in the Church of St. Michael-le-Belfrey, hard-by the glorious
Minster.
Probably that one of four traditions is true which says that the son of
Edward Fawkes, Notary and Advocate of the Consistory Court of York, and
Edith, his wife, was born in a house situated in High Petergate. In fact,
in the angle formed by the street known as High Petergate and the ancient
alley called Minster Gates, leading into the Minster Yard, opposite the
South Transept of the Minster, and at the top of the mediæval street
called Stonegate.[A]
[Footnote A: The house I refer to is occupied by the Governors of St.
Peter’s School (where Fawkes was himself educated), by Mr. T. H. Barron,
and Mr. Matkins. It is still Minster property. It is a brick Elizabethan
house refaced. Fawkes’ grandmother, Mrs. Ellen Fawkes, almost certainly
lived in a house in High Petergate, on the opposite side of the road,
probably. His father may have had a house also at Bishopthorpe.——See
Supplementum I.]
Though the property Guy Fawkes inherited was small, his descent and
upbringing had made him the equal and companion of the gentry of his
native County.
In the thirty-third year of Elizabeth (1592), in a legal document dealing
with his property, Guy Fawkes is described as of Scotton, a picturesque
village in the ancient Parish of Farnham, between Knaresbrough and Ripley,
in Nidderdale.
Fawkes was a tall athletic man, with brown hair and an auburn beard. He
was modest, self-controlled, and very valiant. He left England for
Flanders most likely in 1593 or 1594. At the time of the conspiracy he was
about thirty-five years of age. He was unmarried.
Fawkes was highly intelligent, direct of purpose, simple of heart,
well-read, and, as a soldier of fortune in the Netherlands, not only
“skilful in the wars,” but, apart from his fanaticism, which seems to have
grown by degrees into a positive monomania, possessed of many attractive,
and even endearing, moral qualities.
Fawkes held a post of command in the Spanish Army when Spain took Calais
in 1596, and gave promise of becoming, like his friend and patron, Sir
William Stanley, an ideal “happy warrior,” and one of England’s greatest
generals.[A]
[Footnote A: It is interesting and instructive to compare the Forty Years’
War between Spain and the Netherlands with the present unhappy strife in
South Africa between Britons and the descendants of those that repelled
the arms of the once greatest soldiery in the world. The war between Spain
and the Dutch was not a religious war at the commencement of the struggle.
It arose out of a chafing under the sovereignty of Spain, and a dispute
about tenths. In fact, many Catholics fought against Philip II. in this
war at the beginning.
I visited Scotton for the first time on the day set apart in York as a
general holiday for the Relief of Mafeking (19th May, 1900).]
It is said by an old writer, “Winter and Fawxe are men of excellent good
natural parts, very resolute and universally learned.”[33] In the days of
their joyous youth these two gifted men may have many a time and oft
played and sported together in Nidderdale, with its purple moors, its
rock-crowned fells, its leafy woods, its musical streams, its flowery
ghylls, its winding river.
Guy Fawkes was a son of destiny, a product of his environment, a creature
of circumstances——always saving his free-will and moral responsibility.
But, dying, he must have remembered his dear York and sweet Scotton.