Elizabeth Rookwood

Elizabeth,2 married Ambrose Rookwood, of Coldham Hall and Stanningfield, eo. Suffolk, Esq.., who ... was dragged on hurdles from the Tower to Palace Yard, and there beheaded for participating in the Powder Plot, 28th November, 1605.

Ambrose Rookwood was one of the "seven gentlemen of name and blood who worked in the mine under the parliament chamber." (See 13th vol. 'State Trials,' 139, and Jardine's 'Criminal Trials,' published in Knight's Library of Entertaining knowledge, 2nd vol., 35, 52, 78, 86, 183.) This unhappy and infatuated man had been bred among the most bigoted Romanists in England and Flanders. He had an ample estate, and his stud of fine horses served the conspirators on their various jourueys after the discovery of their plot had dispersed them into Warwickshire and elsewhere.

Father Greenway describes him as beloved by all who knew him and as blindly following Catesby, whom he entirely regarded, into that dangerous conspiracy ;—thus ending his notice of him :—

"Lascio quando muori della sua moglie la quale era et bella et di famiglia nobile; e duo o tre puttini; ai quali tutti insieme, con quanto in questo mondo havea, preferi la compagnia di questa infelicissima et temeraria conguira."

As the awful procession passed from the Tower along the Strand, Rookwood perceived his wife, a lady of beauty and merit, at a window, and called on her, as he lay on the hurdle, to pray for him. She replied in a clear voice, " I will, I will, and do you offer yourself with a good heart to your Creator. I yield you to Him with as full an assurance that you will be accepted of Him as when He gave you to me." Lord de Eos's 'Annals of the Tower of London,' page 127 (Murray, 1866).

Rookwood died with manly resignation, expressing his sorrow for having wished to shed blood, and beseeching the King's kindness to his wife and children. He

"protested to die in his idolatry a Romish Catholic," Jardine, ut supra, p. 183.

He left issue by his wife, Elizabeth Tyrwhiit

1. Sir Robert Rookwood, whose second son Robert, a captain in the army, was killed at Oxford, fighting for Charles I.

Sources

1. Notices and remains of the family of Tyrwhitt [signed R.P.T.]. Corrected and ... By Robert Philip Tyrwhitt. Page 113