Robert Catesby

Sir Robert Catesby
from print of the group
Occupation	Landed Gentry
Criminal status	Gentry
Spouse	Catherine Leigh
Children	William and Robert
Parent(s)	William Catesby, Anne Throckmorton
Criminal charge	Conspiracy to assassinate King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) and members of the Parliament of England
Penalty	never arrested

Sir Robert Catesby (1573 – 8 November 1605), born in Lapworth, Warwickshire, or possibly in Northamptonshire, to a rich strongly Catholic family, was the leader of the Gunpowder Plot. This was a conspiracy by a group of Catholics to blow up King James I of England and Parliament.

Family

Robert Catesby was the only surviving son of Sir William Catesby of Lapworth and Anne Throckmorton, daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton, his elder brother William having died in infancy. He had an ancient and illustrious lineage, including being sixth in descent from Sir William Catesby, the influential councillor of Richard III of England, immortalised not only by Shakespeare, but in the famous satirical rhyme of Colyngbourne:

"The Cat, the Rat and Lovel our Dog, Rule all England under a Hog"

Robert's father, Sir William Catesby, was a conscientious adherent to the Catholic faith, a prime supporter of the Jesuit mission and one of the leaders of the Catholic cause, for which he suffered greatly. In 1581, when Robert was only eight years old, he saw his father arrested for the first time and tried in Star Chamber, along with William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden and his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Tresham II, for the harbouring of Father Edmund Campion SJ, and spent most of the rest of his life in and out of prison for various offences connected with his recusancy. At one time, his recusancy fines amounted to one fifth of his considerable estate. The effect of these events on young Robert can only be guessed at.

Sir William Catesby was later assigned a project, which met with the approval of Queen Elizabeth, of founding a Catholic colony in America, but this plan was later abandoned in the face of Spanish hostility.

Through his mother, Robert was related to the major recusant families of Throckmorton, Tresham, Vaux, Monteagle and Habington, and was raised in the atmosphere of secrecy and devotion that surrounded this close-knit, staunchly Catholic community.

Education

Robert entered Gloucester Hall, Oxford in 1586 but left before taking his degree in order to avoid taking the Oath of Supremacy. He probably went on to attend the seminary college of Douai, then located at Rheims. This school, founded by Cardinal William Allen for the training of clergy for the English mission but extended to education of the laity, provided an austere and rigorous course of education in scholastic and moral theology, classical languages and the history of the English church. At the time the college used a textbook by the Jesuit Martín de Azpilcueta that dealt with the subject of casuistry, the employment of moral theology to particular cases, and with the circumstances that might excuse a normally forbidden course of action. This may have laid the foundation for Catesby's later theological questions and resolutions regarding the morality of the Plot.

Marriage and later life

Template:Gunpowder plottersIn 1593 Robert married Catherine Leigh, the daughter of the Protestant Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. She brought a considerable dowry of £2,000 per year and connected him with the fast-rising family of the Spencers. The following year upon the death of his grandmother, he came into the large estate of Chastleton, Oxfordshire, making him a man of considerable means in his own right. By Catherine he had two sons, William, who died in infancy, and Robert.

Much has been made of this marriage by writers to claim that Robert Catesby fell away from the church in his youth (and indeed his son Robert was baptised in the Anglican church at Chastleton in Nov 1595), and that he returned to the church in grief at his father's and wife's death in 1598, following shortly on the death of his eldest son).

However, although this shows that he may have compromised at certain times, it is indisputable that he always remained active in the Catholic cause. As early as 1594, the year after his marriage, he was sheltering Father Henry Garnet and other priests at his house, Morecrofts in Uxbridge at considerable risk. It was to here that Father John Gerard fled for sanctuary after his dramatic escape from the Tower of London in 1597, and where Father Persons' mother was living in 1598, which indicates that Catesby was at all times a highly trusted member of the Catholic community.

As a man, Robert Catesby, in spite of his religious inclinations, was rich in friends and patrimony, loved and esteemed not only by Catholics but by Protestants for his many unusual qualities both physical and mental, and was part of the glamorous circle that surrounded the court, although in his youth he "was very wild, and ...he spent much above his rate".

Before the Gunpowder Plot, Catesby was involved with the Earl of Essex in the failed attempt to remove Elizabeth I from power in 1601. He was not executed because of his small role, but was heavily fined, costing him his manor house in Chastleton.

After the plot

Following the discovery of the plot, Catesby and the other conspirators fled to the Midlands. He died three days after the discovery of the plot, at Holbeach House near Kingswinford in Staffordshire, when the house was stormed by constables and deputies. Catesby, Sir Ambrose Rookwood, Lord John Grant and Grant's friend, Henry Morgan all died in the ensuing shootout.