The Secrets of Crestwell Hall tells the story of two women. In the present day, there is Isabella Lacey who has moved to her aunt’s home Crestwell Hall in order to heal from a painful divorce and to build a new life with her daughter Emily. As she searches through old documents in Crestwell Hall, Isabella discovers the story of Bess Throckmorton, the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh and an extraordinary version of the Gunpowder Plot as told by the wives of the Plotters.
The instigator of the Gunpowder Plot was Robert Catesby and he gathered around him twelve men. These were friends, as well as cousins, and Catesby believed he could trust them all. Of these men, eleven were definitely married, one – Thomas Wintour – was not and there is speculation over Guy Fawkes.
To discover the names of their wives took a huge amount of painstaking research but they were (with their husband’s name in brackets):
Catherine Leigh (Robert Catesby)
Dorothy Scott (Jack Wright)
Mary Pulleine (possibly Guy Fawkes)
Martha Wright (Thomas Percy)
Martha (maiden name unknown) (Thomas Bates)
Gertrude Talbot (Robert Wintour)
Margaret Ward (Christopher Wright)
Dorothy Wintour (John Grant)
Christina Browne (Robert Keyes)
Elizabeth Tyrwhitt (Ambrose Rookwood)
Anne Tufton (Francis Tresham)
Mary Mulsho (Sir Everard Digby)
Each name I discovered offered more clues to the past, their surnames led me to their fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters. The names of their family homes were revealed and slowly the women began to emerge from the shadows.
Then, one day, I recognised a name: Tyrwhitt.
It is such an unusual name when I had added it to my own family many months earlier it had remained with me. It was a complete surprise to discover a direct blood link to Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, wife of Ambrose Rookwood, through my mother’s family.
However, things grew stranger when I remembered a Throckmorton in my paternal line. This threw up the biggest surprises. My ancestor is Mary Throckmorton, who was the sister of Anne Throckmorton, mother of Robert Catesby. There was also another Catesby, the wonderfully named Wilburga, who was a cousin on Robert Catesby’s paternal line. But with a link to the Throckmortons, this also meant I had a connection to Francis Tresham, the Wintour brothers and their sister Dorothy who was married to another Plotter, John Grant, and of course, to my main character, Bess Throckmorton herself.
Suddenly, this story was personal.
As I dug deeper, it transpired my family tree was crammed full of recusant traitors. It was a revelation and when I finally sat down to write this book, I felt the full weight of history on my shoulders as I gave the women from a turbulent period in British history and, my own past, a voice at last.