Magistrate, and hero of the Gunpowder Plot. Peter was the younger son of Peter Heywood, one of the counsellors of Jamaica, by Grace, daughter of Sir John Muddeford, Knight and Baronet. The family owned Heywood Hall in Manchester. When the authorities were tipped off about the Gunpowder Plot, Peter - as a magistrate - formed part of a team led by Sir Thomas Knyvet, who lay in wait for the arrival of the conspirators in the cellars of Parliament. When Guy Fawkes appeared, it was Heywood who wrested the burning torch from his hand before the House could be destroyed. Heywood continued persecuting Papists during his career as a Justice Of The Peace, but while trying to persuade a Catholic called John James to swear an oath Of Allegiance at Westminster Hall, was stabbed fatally by James 'for persecuting poor Catholics'. His brother, Robert Heywood, presented a lantern to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in Peter's memory, and his original monument in St Anne's Church, Gresham Street, read: "Reader, if not a Papist bred,
Upon such ashes gently tred."

Magistrate, and hero of the Gunpowder Plot. Peter was the younger son of Peter Heywood, one of the counsellors of Jamaica, by Grace, daughter of Sir John Muddeford, Knight and Baronet. The family owned Heywood Hall in Manchester. When the authorities were tipped off about the Gunpowder Plot, Peter - as a magistrate - formed part of a team led by Sir Thomas Knyvet, who lay in wait for the arrival of the conspirators in the cellars of Parliament. When Guy Fawkes appeared, it was Heywood who wrested the burning torch from his hand before the House could be destroyed. Heywood continued persecuting Papists during his career as a Justice Of The Peace, but while trying to persuade a Catholic called John James to swear an oath Of Allegiance at Westminster Hall, was stabbed fatally by James 'for persecuting poor Catholics'. His brother, Robert Heywood, presented a lantern to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in Peter's memory, and his original monument in St Anne's Church, Gresham Street, read: "Reader, if not a Papist bred,
Upon such ashes gently tred."