The final three conspirators are recruited in…
October 1605 CE
The final three conspirators are recruited in late 1605.
At Michaelmas, Catesby had persuaded the staunchly Catholic Ambrose Rookwood to rent Clopton House near Stratford-upon-Avon.
Rookwood is a young man with recusant connections, whose stable of horses at Coldham in Cambridgeshire is an important factor in his enlistment.
His parents, Robert Rookwood and Dorothea Drury, are wealthy landowners, and had educated their son at a Jesuit school near Calais.
Catesby on October 14 invites Francis Tresham into the conspiracy.
Tresham is the son of the Catholic Thomas Tresham, and a cousin to Robert Catesby—the two had been raised together.
He is also the heir to his father's large fortune, which had been depleted by recusant fines, expensive tastes, and by Francis and Catesby's involvement in the Essex revolt.
Catesby and Tresham meet at the home of Tresham's brother-in-law and cousin, Lord Stourton.
In his confession, Tresham will claim that he had asked Catesby if the plot would damn their souls, to which Catesby had replied it would not, and that the plight of England's Catholics required that it be done.
Catesby had also apparently asked for two thousand pounds, and the use of Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire.
Tresham declines both offers (although he did give one hundred pounds to Thomas Wintour), and tells his interrogators that he had moved his family from Rushton to London in advance of the plot; hardly the actions of a guilty man, he will later claim .
Everard Digby, a young man who is generally well-liked, and lives at Gayhurst House in Buckinghamshire, had been knighted by the King in April 1603, and had been converted to Catholicism by Gerard.
Digby and his wife, Mary Mulshaw, had accompanied the priest on his pilgrimage, and the two men are reportedly close friends.
Digby is an accomplished equestrian, and is asked by Catesby to rent Coughton Court near Alcester.
Digby also promises fifteen hundred pounds after Percy fails to pay the rent due for the properties he had taken in Westminster.
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