[1] He was born at Dimples Hall, Garstang, Lancashire, the son of Robert Plessington, a Royalist and Catholic, and his wife Alice Rawstone, a family thus persecuted for both their religious and political beliefs.

Upon arrest in Chester during the Popish Plot scare caused by Titus Oates, he was imprisoned for two months, and then hanged, drawn and quartered for the crime of being a Catholic priest.

There is a memorial tablet to him located in the entrance porch of St Werburgh's Catholic Church, Grosvenor Park Road, Chester, just a short distance from where he was executed.

They had been found in the late 19th century, wrapped in 17th-century clothing, in a pub in Holywell, Flintshire, which had been known to be a secret gathering place for the Catholics of the region to worship covertly.

Showing signs of violence, the bones had been considered those of some anonymous martyrs of the period and entrusted to a community of the Society of Jesus in nearby Tremeirchion.