The Gunpowder Plot, and Robert Catesby

Robert Catesby, known to his friends as Robin, was born in 1573, into a notoriously recusant family (Catholics who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy recognising the incumbent Monarch as the supreme head of the Church in England). Recusants were considered to be of a traitorous hue because their allegiances lay elsewhere; namely, with the Pope, or as he had been known in England since the reign of Henry VIII, the Bishop of Rome. Catesby’s father had spent a considerable time in prison for harbouring the famous Jesuit, Father Edmund Campion. As a result the family fortune had been squandered paying innumerable fines.

Despite their straitened circumstances it had still been possible to send the young Robert to Oxford University. However, he failed to graduate because of his refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy, and he completed his education in Catholic France. He returned to England some years later as a committed and militant Catholic activist. In 1593, he married Catherine Leigh, a Protestant, which went some way to restoring the family fortune.

Dashing and charismatic, Robert Catesby induced an intense loyalty in his friends. He was described at the time as being 6 ft tall and well proportioned, grave in manner but attractively so, and handsome of countenance.

During the 1590’s, he took great risks in sheltering a number of high-profile Jesuit Priests including Father’s John Gerrard and Henry Garnet. Jesuits were banned from preaching, holding services, or providing Holy Communion in England. If caught they could expect to be executed, as could those sheltering them.

On 6 February, 1601, he marched with the Earl of Essex in his rising against Queen Elizabeth. Fighting valiantly with sword in hand through the streets of London, he was captured in what turned out to be a disorganised rout. Deemed a foot soldier and not a major conspirator he escaped execution. But the episode taught him that regimes could be opposed by force if necessary.

Robert Catesby

Catholics in England breathed a huge sigh of relief when Queen Elizabeth died in early 1603. The new King, after all, was the Scottish James VI, the son of the much-revered Catholic martyr, Mary Queen of Scots. They hoped, at the very least, for relief from the punitive measures imposed on them by the old regime, and was not James married to a Catholic, and had he not spoken of greater religious tolerance? They were to be sorely disappointed. James was an unequivocal Protestant and came down on hard on all forms of religious dissent, particularly Catholic requsancy. He increased their fines, expelled Catholic priests, and in what seemed the final straw, introduced a Bill to Parliament that would make all Catholics excommunicates. As excommunicates they would no longer be able to make their wills or dispose of their goods, no one would be obliged to repay debts to them, and they would no longer have the protection of the law. They had become effectively enemies of the State.