Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/39

 CHAPTER III THOMAS WINTER AND JOHN WRIGHT HOMAS WINTER was a Worcestershire gentleman of good family. He was a relative of several of his fellow-conspirators, namely Catesby, Tresham, Grant, and of course (his elder brother) Robert Winter.

He was also a connection by marriage of Lord Mounteagle, to whom the famous letter, revealing the conspiracy, was addressed. He was, so Father Gerard boasts, 'a reasonable good scholar, and able to talk in many matters of learning, but especially in philosophy or histories very well and judicially. He could speak both Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. He was of mean stature, but strong and comely, and very valiant. He was very devout, and zealous in his faith.'

If this account be true—and there is some reason to doubt it—Winter must have been the most accomplished and capable of all the conspirators, for he was also a soldier as well as a