The Gunpowder Plot and Rhos-on-Sea

Caught for his part in the Gunpowder Plot one of the prisoners in the Tower of London inscribed this message in 1606.

What does this have to do with Colwyn Bay?

Is the name familiar? Everard Digby?

Other members of his family were Caille (later spelt Cayley), Allanson and Kenelm. They originally came from Brompton in Yorkshire. Yes, these are all road names in Rhos-on-Sea, Colwyn Bay. But why was Everard Digby imprisoned in the Tower of London and later executed ? (and why are the roads named after members of the family? )

Everard (we presume to be an ancestor of the landowners of Rhos-on-Sea) was imprisoned for high treason, for his part in the gunpowder plot, along with Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes, Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Thomas Bates, Christopher Wright, Robert Wintour, John Grant, John Wright, Robert Keyes, Ambrose Rookwood and Francis Tresham.

To read more about his involvement visit the Gunpowder Plot Society website.

To read of Everard’s attempted escape and capture, how he wrote to his wife with lemon juice invisible ink from the Tower of London, and of the grisly details of his execution in a biography, written by one of his descendants visit “The Life of a Conspirator“.

More about the Digby family and their North Wales connections.

Kenelm Digby was the eldest son of the above Sir Everard Digby, who wrote the message on the wall of his prison. Everard was perhaps the most respectable, of the fanatic conspirators of the gunpowder treason. Kenelm’s mother, Mary, was daughter and co-heiress of William Mulsho, of Gothurst, in Buckinghamshire. Kenelm was scarcely three years of age when his father made amends for his crime upon the scaffold. The precise day of Kenelm’s birth has been the subject of far greater controversy than it deserved, but there can be no just grounds for doubting that was the 11th of June, 1603. As his father was attainted, he says he inherited nothing from him “but a foul stain in his blood”: but this was not strictly true; for two of Sir Everard’s manors, as well as his wife’s property was inherited.

The descendants of Sir Kenelm Digby are easily traced. By Venetia Stanley he had three sons and one daughter, Margery, who married Edward Dudley of Clopton in Northamptonshire, The sons were:

I. Kenelm Digby, born 6th October, 1625, killed at St. Neots, on the 7th of July, 1648. He died unmarried.

II. John. The only one who married.

III. Everard, born 12 January, 1629, died an infant.

IV. George, born 17 January, 1632, [query 1632–3.] but who appears to have died young.

John Digby, the second son, was born on the 29th December, 1627, and was twice married; first to Katherine daughter of Henry Earl of Arundel, who died childless; and secondly, to Margaret daughter of Sir Edward Longueville of Wolverton in Buckinghamshire, by whom he had two daughters. The elder daughter Margaret Maria became the wife of Sir John Conway of Bodrythen in Flintshire, and the younger, Charlotte Theophilia, who married Richard Mostyn of Penbeddw in the same county. Lady Margaret Conway, besides a daughter Margaret who was the wife of Sir Thomas Longueville, Bart., had a son Henry Conway, who died in his father’s lifetime, leaving a sole daughter and heiress Honora, who married Sir John Glynne, Bart., by whom she had a large family.

Their descendants are, however, fully treated of in Debrett’s Baronetage; hence it is only necessary to observe that Sir Stephen Glynne, Bart., the great grandson of Sir John Glynne and Honora Conway, is the present representative of Sir Kenelm Digby, and through Lady Venetia, of one branch of the illustrious houses of Stanley and Percy.

Find out more in “The Private Memoirs of Sir Kenelm Digby by Kenelm Digby“.