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 it was "a potentially dangerous statement of faith". Ambrose and two of his brothers, Robert and Christopher, were educated by Jesuits at Saint-Omer, then in Flanders. Both brothers became priests (Ambrose's elder brother, Henry, became a Franciscan), and his half-sisters Dorothea and Susanna became nuns. According to the Jesuit Oswald Tesimond, Rookwood was "well-built and handsome, if somewhat short", which he compensated for by his taste in extravagant clothing. In author Antonia Fraser's opinion, this affectation was somewhat inappropriate at a time when "clothes were supposed to denote rank rather than money". In or shortly before 1599 he married Elizabeth,