Robert and Thomas Wintour is written about the Gunpowder Plot is derived from Thomas's confession, signed on 23 November 1605; details of the so-called Spanish Treason were added three days later. One of only two confessions printed in the "King's Book" (a highly partial contemporary account of the affair), Thomas Wintour's was the only account the government had of a plotter who had been involved from the beginning; Guy Fawkes, weakened by days of torture, may have been at the heart of the group, but he was not at its first meetings. However, Antonia Fraser views the document with suspicion, not least because Thomas's
Robert and Thomas Wintour 1600, however, he changed his mind and became a fervent Catholic. On several occasions he travelled to the continent and entreated Spain on behalf of England's oppressed Catholics, and suggested that with Spanish support a Catholic rebellion was likely. As momentum was building behind a peace settlement between the two countries, Thomas's pleas fell on deaf ears. Instead, in 1604 he decided to join with Catesby, who planned to restore England to Catholicism by killing the king, and inciting a popular revolt in the Midlands, during which James's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, would be installed as titular queen. Thomas returned to