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
Ambrose Rookwood Ambrose Rookwood Ambrose Rookwood (c. 1578 – 31 January 1606) was a member of the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to replace the Protestant King James I with a Catholic monarch. Rookwood was born into a wealthy family of Catholic recusants, and educated by Jesuits at Flanders. His older brother became a Franciscan, and his two younger brothers were ordained as Catholic priests. Rookwood, however, became a horse-breeder. He married the Catholic Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, and had at least two sons. He was enlisted into the plot in September 1605 by Robert Catesby, a religious zealot whose impatience with James's