page_title: Gunpowder Plot
section_title: Further recruitment
hierarchical_section_title: Gunpowder Plot / Plot / Further recruitment
caption_attribution_description: English: The east side of the House of Lords, and the east end of the Prince's Chamber
context_page_description: The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.
  The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which James's nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. His fellow plotters were John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives.
  The plot was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605.
context_section_description: Following their oath, the plotters left London and returned to their homes.  The adjournment of Parliament gave them, they thought, until February 1605 to finalise their plans.  On 9 June, Percy's patron, the Earl of Northumberland, appointed him to the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, a mounted troop of 50 bodyguards to the King. This role gave Percy reason to seek a base in London, and a small property near the Prince's Chamber owned by Henry Ferrers, a tenant of John Whynniard, was chosen.  Percy arranged for the use of the house through Northumberland's agents, Dudley Carleton and John Hippisley.  Fawkes, using the pseudonym "John Johnson", took charge of the building, posing as Percy's servant.  The building was occupied by Scottish commissioners appointed by the King to consider his plans for the unification of England and Scotland, so the plotters hired Catesby's lodgings in Lambeth, on the opposite bank of the Thames, from where their stored gunpowder and other supplies could be conveniently rowed across each night.  Meanwhile, King James continued with his policies against the Catholics, and Parliament pushed through anti-Catholic legislation, until its adjournment on 7 July.
  The conspirators returned to London in October 1604, when Robert Keyes, a "desperate man, ruined and indebted", was admitted to the group.  His responsibility was to take charge of Catesby's house in Lambeth, where the gunpowder and other supplies were to be stored.  Keyes's family had notable connections; his wife's employer was the Catholic Lord Mordaunt.  Tall, with a red beard, he was seen as trustworthy and, like Fawkes, capable of looking after himself.  In December Catesby recruited his servant, Thomas Bates, into the plot, after the latter accidentally became aware of it.
  It was announced on 24 December that the re-opening of Parliament would be delayed. Concern over the plague meant that rather than sitting in February, as the plotters had originally planned for, Parliament would not sit again until 3 October 1605.  The contemporaneous account of the prosecution claimed that during this delay the conspirators were digging a tunnel beneath Parliament.  This may have been a government fabrication, as no evidence for the existence of a tunnel was presented by the prosecution, and no trace of one has ever been found.  The account of a tunnel comes directly from Thomas Wintour's confession, and Guy Fawkes did not admit the existence of such a scheme until his fifth interrogation.  Logistically, digging a tunnel would have proved extremely difficult, especially as none of the conspirators had any experience of mining.  If the story is true, by 6 December the Scottish commissioners had finished their work, and the conspirators were busy tunnelling from their rented house to the House of Lords.  They ceased their efforts when, during tunnelling, they heard a noise from above.  The noise turned out to be the then-tenant's widow, who was clearing out the undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords—the room where the plotters eventually stored the gunpowder.
  By the time the plotters reconvened at the start of the old style new year on Lady Day, 25 March, three more had been admitted to their ranks; Robert Wintour, John Grant, and Christopher Wright.  The additions of Wintour and Wright were obvious choices.  Along with a small fortune, Robert Wintour inherited Huddington Court (a known refuge for priests) near Worcester, and was reputedly a generous and well-liked man.  A devout Catholic, he married Gertrude, the daughter of John Talbot of Grafton, a prominent Worcestershire family of recusants.  Christopher Wright (1568–1605), John's brother, had also taken part in the Earl of Essex's revolt and had moved his family to Twigmore in Lincolnshire, then known as something of a haven for priests. John Grant was married to Wintour's sister, Dorothy, and was lord of the manor of Norbrook near Stratford-upon-Avon. Reputed to be an intelligent, thoughtful man, he sheltered Catholics at his home at Snitterfield, and was another who had been i
caption: An early 19th-century illustration of the east end of the Prince's Chamber (extreme left) and the east wall of the House of Lords (centre)
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