Rookwood (novel) of "Rookwood" and many more added in later editions. Of the other songs, some were sung by gypsies about love, some were hymns, and some were used to further the gothic setting. The name Rookwood alludes to the old Recusant (Roman Catholic) family of that name, most famous of whom was Ambrose Rookwood, executed in 1606 for his part in the Gunpowder Plot (the conspiracy which forms the theme of Ainsworth's 1841 novel "Guy Fawkes"). Ainsworth, perhaps consciously, paid a double homage to this family, in that his later historical romance "The Spendthrift" concerns an eighteenth-century heir of the Gage
Robert Keyes later in Warwickshire. He was subsequently tried with his co-conspirators, found guilty, and in January 1606 hanged, drawn and quartered. Born in about 1565, Robert Keyes was the son of the Protestant Rector of Staveley in North Derbyshire. His mother was a daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby in Lincolnshire, and related to the Catholic Babthorpes of Osgodby. Keyes' first cousin Elizabeth Tyrrwhitt was married to another member of the plot, Ambrose Rookwood. By 1604, Robert had converted to Catholicism. His wife Christina, a widow when he married her, was the governess for the children of Henry Mordaunt, 4th