Francis Tresham
Francis Tresham was a member of the group of English provincial Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He joined the Earl of Essex’s failed rebellion against the government in 1601, for which he was imprisoned. He died of natural causes on 23 December 1605, and was buried in Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire. He married Anne Tufton in 1593, and had three children, twins Lucy and Thomas, and Elizabeth.
About Francis Tresham in brief
Francis Tresham was a member of the group of English provincial Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He joined the Earl of Essex’s failed rebellion against the government in 1601, for which he was imprisoned. He died of natural causes on 23 December 1605, and was buried in Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire. He was the eldest son of Sir Thomas T Resham and Meriel Throckmorton. His father, born near the end of Henry VIII’s reign, was regarded by the Catholic community as one of its leaders. Francis is said to have been a fellow prisoner with Robert Catesby held in Wisbech Castle at the time of the Spanish Armada. He married Anne Tufton in 1593, and had three children, twins Lucy and Thomas, and Elizabeth. Thomas died in infancy, Lucy became a nun in Brussels, and Elizabeth married Sir George Heneage of Hainton, Lincolnshire. Author Antonia Fraser suggests that as a young man Francis became resentful of his father’s authority and profligate with his father’s money. He spent £12,200 on the marriages of six daughters, and when he died in 1605 his estate was £11,500 in debt. While in prison he spent time in prison for assaulting his pregnant daughter, claiming that their family owed him money. On 8 February 1601 he joined the open rebellion against Essex’s open ambitions, but the Jesuit Henry Garnet described the young men as being mostly interested in furthering the Catholic cause.
Captured and imprisoned, he appealed to Katherine Howard, but was rebuked by his sister, Lady Mounteagle, who turned him into an instrument for her own identity. He is buried at RushtonHall, Northants, with his wife Anne Tuftson, and their three children. His last will and testament is published in 1604. He had a son, Thomas, who was born in 1567, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who died in childbirth in 1602. He also had a daughter named Lucy, who married Sir John Tufts, of Hothfield in Kent, in 1583. He became involved in two missions to Catholic Spain to seek support for English Catholics, and finally with the Gunpowder plotters. According to his confession, Tres Ham joined the plot in October 1605 and was arrested on 12 November and confined to the Tower of London. An anonymous letter delivered to one of them, William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, found its way to the English Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, an event which eventually proved decisive in the conspiracy’s failure. Historians have long suspected that Tresam wrote the letter, a hypothesis that remains unproven. The plotter Thomas Wintour threatened to kill him, but he was able to convince them otherwise. He knew that if the plot was successful, two of his brothers-in-law would be killed.
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This page is based on the article Francis Tresham published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
