Gunpowder Plot the spectators for forgiveness, and refused the attentions of a Protestant clergyman. He was stripped of his clothing, and wearing only a shirt, climbed the ladder to place his head through the noose. He was quickly cut down, and while still fully conscious was castrated, disembowelled, and then quartered, along with the three other prisoners. The following day, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes were hanged, drawn and quartered, opposite the building they had planned to blow up, in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster. Keyes did not wait for the hangman's command and jumped from the
Rookwood (novel) family of Hengrave Hall in Suffolk. John Gage of Hengrave, a descendant in his maternal line from Ambrose Rookwood, was Director of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 1829 to 1842. Gage, also a prominent Catholic, was therefore one of the most distinguished English Antiquaries at the time when Ainsworth published his historical romance of "Rookwood" in 1834. When Gage inherited the Rookwood estates in 1838 he assumed for himself the surname 'Rokewode', and he died in 1842 at the Fitzherbert family seat of Claughton Hall in Lancashire. "The Spendthrift" appeared in print some years later. The character Dick