At Coventry, Robert Winter was joined by Stephen Littleton, of Holbeach House, in Staffordshire, just over the borders of Worcestershire; and also by his cousin, Humphrey Littleton, brother to the then late John Littleton,[A] of Hagley House, Worcestershire, who had been engaged in the Essex rising.
[A] All the Littletons were descended from the great Judge Littleton, author of “Littleton on Tenures.” The present Lord Lyttelton belongs to the same family.
On the following Tuesday, November the 5th, the whole party proceeded towards Dunchurch, the armed cavalcade continually increasing in numbers.
The plan was, that at Dunsmore Heath, under a feigned hunting or coursing match, there should be a gathering of the Midland Catholic clans, then very numerous and powerful. Dunsmore Heath, in fact, was to be the rendezvous of the insurgents.
Robert Winter left the cousins Littleton at “the town’s end” of Dunchurch, and rode on to Ashby St. Legers, the ancestral seat of the Catesbies, where, indeed, the Dowager Lady Catesby was then residing.
Here Robert Winter hoped to meet Catesby, with whom, after the latter had reported progress with reference to things done in London on that Tuesday morning, Winter purposed to gallop off to the rendezvous at Dunsmore Heath.
Ambrose Rookwood was one of the latest to leave for the provinces. He owned many fine horses; and he had placed relays of horses all the way from London to Dunchurch. Rookwood rode one horse at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. Riding for dear life, he overtook Catesby, Percy, and the two Wrights, near Brickhill. Percy and John Wright cast off their cloaks and threw them into the hedge to ride the more swiftly.[155]
About six o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, just as Lady Catesby, Robert Winter, and some others were about to sit down to supper in the old mansion-house, there fell upon their ears a mingled din, occasioned by horses’ feet and men’s excited voices.
Soon in rushed, with scared faces and travel-stained garb, grievously fatigued and intensely agitated, the son of the house (Robert Catesby), Thomas Percy, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Ambrose Rookwood. Their announcement was the capture of Guy Fawkes early that Tuesday morning.
After holding a short council of war, the whole band of conspirators, snatching up all the weapons of warfare they could lay their hands on, took horse again and rode off to Dunchurch.