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, Wales. About this time, he met Robert Catesby, who planned to blow up the House of Lords with gunpowder, killing James I. Catesby then planned to incite a popular revolt, through which a Catholic monarch would be placed upon the English throne.
The full extent of Digby's knowledge of and involvement in the plot is unknown, but at 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.
Origins
The Digby family was of Leicestershire origin. 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 more positive reversal of fortune in 1485 when Sir Everard's sons fought for the victorious Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
Early life
Everard Digby was the eldest son of Everard Digby, Esquire (who died in 1592) and his wife Maria (née Neale), daughter of Francis Neale of Keythorpe in Leicestershire. The conspirator was a cousin of Anne Vaux, who for years placed herself at considerable risk by sheltering Jesuit priests such as Henry Garnet. He was probably a near kinsman of the 16th-century scholar Everard Digby, but it is clear that the scholar, who died in 1605, was not his father, because as a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge (a celibate calling) he could not have been married at the time when the young Everard and some of his 13 siblings were born, nor was he "Esquire", as the father is named in his inquisition post mortem of 1592.
In 1596, while still a teenager, he married Mary Mulshaw (or Mushlo), a young heiress who brought with her Gayhurst House in Buckinghamshire. By all accounts their marriage was a happy one, and they had two sons; Kenelm Digby was born in 1603 at Gayhurst, and John in 1605. Unlike other English Catholics, Digby had little first-hand experience of England's recusancy laws. Following the death of his father he had been made a ward of Chancery and was raised in a Protestant household.
Digby frequented the court of Elizabeth I, and became informally associated with the Elizabethan gentlemen pensioners.