This man, who appears to have been one of the most desperate and unscrupulous of the conspirators, was the son of a Protestant clergyman in Derbyshire, who is supposed to have been the Reverend Edward Kay of Stavely, a younger son of John Kay of Woodsam, Yorkshire. His name is variously rendered as Keyes, Keis, and Kay; he himself signs Robert Key. His mother was a daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettleby, a very opulent Roman Catholic gentleman of Lincolnshire, and through her he was cousin of Mrs Rookwood. The opulence of the grandfather did not descend to his grandson, whose indigence was a great cause of his desperate character. He lived for a time at Glatton, in Huntingdonshire, but afterwards entered the service of Lord Mordaunt as keeper of his house at Turvey, his wife being the governess of his Lordship's children. He is described as "a young man with no hair on his face." (Additional Manuscript 6178, folio 808.) It was about June, 1605, when Keyes was taken into the plot, and his chief work thereafter was the charge of the house at Lambeth "sometimes called Catesby's, afterwards Mr Terrett's, since Rookwood's," (_Ibidem_, folio 62), where the powder was stored. His only other service was the bringing of the watch from Percy to Fawkes just before the discovery of the plot. Keyes left one son, Robert (Foley's _Records_, volume 1, page 510), who was living about 1630, and was then a frequent visitor of his relatives the Rookwoods (_Domestic State Papers_, Charles the First, 178, 43). HUMPHREY AND STEPHEN LITTLETON.