Robert and Thomas Wintour the continent and again failed to elicit Spanish support, but instead met Guy Fawkes, with whom he returned to England. Robert, a devout Catholic who inherited Huddington Court near Worcester, joined the conspiracy the following year. The plot began to unravel following the delivery of an anonymous letter to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, warning him to stay away from Parliament. Thomas and Catesby confronted Monteagle's brother-in-law, the recently recruited Francis Tresham, threatening to kill him, but Tresham managed to convince them of his innocence. At that stage Thomas reportedly asked Catesby to abandon the scheme, to no avail. When
Ambrose Rookwood (Jacobite) or assassinate William III. In February Thomas Prendergast, one of the conspirators, turned king's evidence, and the plot was revealed. On 27 March Rookwood was found in bed in a Jacobite alehouse, and committed to Newgate Prison. On 7 April a true bill of high treason was found against Rookwood at the Middlesex county sessions. He was brought before the King's Bench on 21 April. His case, tried with those of Robert Lowick and Charles Cranburn who was a Jacobite quartermaster, was the first treason trial to use the new system of procedure brought in by the Treason Act 1695,