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
Ambrose Rookwood daughter of William Tyrwhitt, of Kettleby in Lincolnshire, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Peter Frescheville, of Staveley in Derbyshire. The Tyrwhitts were another prominent Roman Catholic family and his wife was possibly a first cousin to his future fellow conspirator Robert Keyes. The couple had two sons, Robert and Henry. On his father's death in 1600, he inherited Coldham Hall, which subsequently became a refuge for priests. The following year he joined the Earl of Essex's abortive rebellion against the government, for which he was captured and held at Newgate Prison. In August 1605 Rookwood joined the Jesuits