and of Religious also.' In personal appearance he was, according to Father Gerard, 'above two yards high, and though slender, yet so well-proportioned to his height as any man one should see. He married, in 1592, Catherine Leigh, of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, but she died soon after the birth of their second son.[1]
From the date of his release from prison (after being fined three thousand pounds), in 1601, and after his recovery from his wounds incurred when fighting on behalf of Lord Essex, Catesby, compelled to sell his beautiful estate of Castleton to satisfy the fine, lived chiefly with his mother, at Ashby St. Legers.[2] Northamptonshire, till the year 1604, when he and Thomas Winter set about their preparations for the manufacture of the Gunpowder Plot. In asking others to help him, Catesby avowed that he was actuated only by the holiest and noblest motives in the cause of the Catholic religion; and, at his death, he 'protested solemnly it was only for the honour of the Cross, and the exaltation of that Faith which honoured the Cross, and for the saving of their souls in the same Faith, that had moved him to undertake the business; and sith he saw it was not God's will it should succeed in that manner they intended, or at that time, he was
