Portal:University of Oxford/Selected biography/32

Robert Catesby (c.1572–1605) was the leader of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, but left without taking his degree, presumably to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy. He married a Protestant in 1593, but when in 1598 his father and wife each died, he may have reverted to Catholicism. Catesby planned to kill James I by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, the prelude to a popular revolt during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the English throne. Early in 1604 he began to recruit friends to his cause, including Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes. He helped bring a further eight conspirators into the plot, whose gestation was planned for 5 November 1605. An anonymous letter alerted the authorities, and on the eve of the planned explosion, during a search of Parliament, Fawkes was found guarding the barrels of gunpowder. News of his arrest caused the other plotters to flee London. Catesby made a final stand at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, where he was shot, and later found dead. As a warning to others, his body was exhumed and his head exhibited outside Parliament. (more...)