Gunpowder Plot under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. His fellow plotters were John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives. The plot was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605. During a search of the House of Lords at about midnight
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