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
Robert and Thomas Wintour in Gloucestershire, and his wife Catherine, daughter of Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton in Warwickshire. As scions of the Throckmortons, they could therefore claim a kinship with plotters like Robert Catesby and Francis Tresham. Their maternal uncle Francis Ingleby, a Catholic priest, was hanged, drawn and quartered at York in 1586, a fact which in the opinion of historian and author Antonia Fraser, "could hardly have failed to leave a stark impression upon the Wintour family." The Wintours took their name from the Welsh Gwyn Tour (White Tower). 'Wyntour' was sometimes used in signatures, but not 'Winter' (as the brothers