When Rookwood had gone about three miles beyond Highgate, he overtook Keyes, and rode with him into Bedfordshire, where Keyes took a different road, as is conjectured by Jardine,[267] for “Lord Mordaunt’s house at Turvey, where his wife resided.”Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Brick-hill, a place not far from Fenny Stratford, Rookwood overtook Percy, the two Wrights, and Catesby, after which these five rode together to Ashby St Leger, Lady Catesby’s place in Northamptonshire, which was very near to Dunchurch. Roughly speaking, the course of the fugitives had been not very wide of the route of the London and North-Western railway from Euston to Rugby, and while all did it quickly, Rookwood’s pace was exceptionally fast, as he rode about eighty miles between eleven in the morning and six in the evening, averaging more than eleven miles an hour, including stoppages to change horses. He himself stated that he[268] “rode thirty miles of one horse in two hours,”and that “Percy and John Wright cast off their cloaks and threw them into the hedge to ride the more speedily.”
The five fugitives entered Lady Catesby’s house just as she and her party, which included Robert Winter and Acton, were sitting down to supper. The news of the arrest of Fawkes and the failure of the main design having been announced by the new arrivals, who, as Jardine says, were[269] “fatigued and covered with dirt,”—Father Gerard, again, in describing their ride, writes of[270] “the foulness of the winter ways”—no time was lost over the hurried meal, during which a short conference took place, ending in a decision that the whole party should ride off immediately to Dunchurch, taking with them all the arms that were in the house.
FOOTNOTES:
[231] Cal. Sta. Pa. Dom., 1603-10, p. 256.
[232] Ib., 1603-10, p. 297.
[233] Records S. J., Vol. iv. p. 83, footnote.
[234] S. P. Dom. James I., Vol. xix. n. 16
[235] S. P. Dom. James I., Vol. xix. n. 44.
[236] Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, p. 22.
[237] Father Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, p. 23. See also Lingard, Vol. vii. chap. i.