Everard Digby

Gunpowder Plot

Everard Digby
Portrait of Digby
Details
Parents	Sir Everard Digby Maria Neale
Born	c. 1578
Spouse(s)	Mary Mulsho
Children	Kenelm Digby, John Digby
Plot
Role	Uprising
Enlisted	21 October 1605
Captured	8 November 1605
Conviction(s)	High treason
Penalty	Hanged, drawn and quartered
Died	30 January 1606 Westminster, London, England

Sir Everard Digby (c. 1578 – 30 January 1606) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Although he was raised in a Protestant household, and married a Protestant, Digby and his wife were converted to Catholicism by the Jesuit priest John Gerard. In the autumn of 1605 he was part of a Catholic pilgrimage to the shrine of St Winefride's Well in Holywell. About this time he met Robert Catesby, a religious fanatic who planned to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, killing James I. Catesby then planned to incite a popular revolt, during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the English throne.

The full extent of Digby's knowledge of and involvement in the plot is unknown, but on Catesby's behest Digby rented Coughton Court and prepared a "hunting party", ready for the planned uprising. The plot failed however, and Digby joined the conspirators as they took flight through the Midlands, failing to garner support along their way. Digby left the other fugitives at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, and was soon captured and taken to the Tower of London.

Digby was tried on 27 January 1606. Despite an eloquent defence, he was found guilty of high treason, and three days later was hanged, drawn and quartered.

Everard Digby was the son of Everard Digby, and Maria Digby (née Neale), daughter of Francis Neale of Keythorpe in Leicestershire. He was also a cousin of Anne Vaux, who for years placed herself at considerable risk by sheltering Jesuit priests such as Henry Garnet. According to author Roy Digby Thomas, the Digby family may have been founded during the Norman conquest of England, when William the Conqueror was accompanied by Almar, who settled at Tilton in Leicestershire. Sir John Digby (d. 1269) served on two crusades, and by 1418 Sir Everard "Greenleaf" Digby was Lord of Tilton and owner of the manor at Drystoke (Stoke Dry), and Rutland's member of Parliament. Sir Everard lost his life (and his family much of their fortune) fighting in 1461 for Henry VI against Edward IV. The family had a reversal of fortune in 1485 when Sir Everard's sons fought for the victorious Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Digby may have been related to the 16th-century scholar Everard Digby.