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 (Jacobite) Ambrose Rookwood (Jacobite) Ambrose Rookwood (1664–1696) was an English Jacobite soldier, a conspirator and commander in the assassination plot of 1696 intended to kill William III of Great Britain. He was convicted and executed. Born on 20 September 1664, he was the son of Ambrose Rookwood (1622–1693) and Elizabeth Caldwell of Dunton, Essex, and great-grandson of Ambrose Rookwood the Gunpowder Plot conspirator. He entered the army, in which he rose to be brigadier under James II. Rookwood remained an adherent of the House of Stuart, and early in 1696 Sir George Barclay enlisted his services in the plot to kidnap