Thomas Percy (Gunpowder Plot) - Failure and Death

Failure and Death

By then, the king knew about the letter. James felt that it hinted at "some strategem of fire and powder", perhaps an explosion exceeding in violence the one that killed his father, Lord Darnley, in 1567. The following day, the Privy Council told him that they had decided to undertake a search of Parliament, "both above and below". The first, headed by Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, was made on 4 November. In the undercroft beneath the House of Lords he noticed a tall man who appeared to be a servant, and a large pile of faggots—far too large to serve the small house Percy had subleased from Henry Ferrers. The house's owner, John Whynniard, told the search party that its tenancy was held by Percy. Monteagle, present during the search, immediately told Suffolk that he suspected Percy was the letter's author. The king ordered a second, more thorough search to be made, and at about midnight, Fawkes was discovered guarding the gunpowder, and was immediately arrested.

As Fawkes identified himself as John Johnson, servant to Thomas Percy, it was Percy's name which appeared on the government's first arrest warrant. It described him as a "tall, florid man, with a broad beard—'the head more white then the beard'—and stooping shoulders, being also 'long footed, small legged'". The celebrated astrologer Simon Foreman was employed to divine his whereabouts, a rider was sent to look for him in northern England, and a search was made of Essex House. All of this was in vain, however, as Percy had been warned of Fawkes's capture and had fled for the Midlands with Christopher Wright, telling a servant as he went, "I am undone." The two men met Catesby and the others (who had left for the Midlands uprising) and continued on to Dunchurch, at one point throwing their cloaks off to increase their speed. A relative of Lieutenant of the Tower of London William Waad encountered Percy leaving London, which led to Waad writing the following letter to Salisbury on 5 November:

It may please your good lordship my cousin Sir Edward York, being lately come out of the north and coming this afternoon to me, upon speech of the happy discovery of this most monstrous plot, he telleth me he met Thomas Percy, the party sought for, going down to the north disguised ... From the Tower in haste.

Accompanied by some of his fellow conspirators, Percy's flight ended at about 10:00 pm on 7 November, at Holbeche House on the border of Staffordshire. He was unharmed by a gunpowder accident that injured Catesby and a few of the others, but those who remained resolved to wait for the arrival of government forces, who were only hours behind. Thus at 11:00 am the following morning the house was besieged by the Sheriff of Worcester, Richard Walsh, and his company of 200 men. In the ensuing firefight, Percy and Catesby were reportedly killed by the same musket ball, fired by a John Streete of Worcester. News of the battle soon reached London, rendering superfluous a government proclamation made on the same day and which offered a rich reward for his capture. The survivors were taken into custody and the dead buried near Holbeche, but on the orders of the Earl of Northampton, the bodies of Percy and Catesby were exhumed and their heads displayed on spikes at "the side of the Parliament House".

With Thomas dead, there was nobody who could either implicate or clear Henry Percy of any involvement in the plot. His failure to ensure that Thomas took the Oath of Supremacy upon his appointment as a Gentleman Pensioner, and their meeting on 4 November, constituted damning evidence, and the Privy Council also suspected that had the plot succeeded, he would have been Princess Elizabeth's protector. With insufficient evidence to convict him he was charged with contempt, fined £30,000 and stripped of all public offices. He remained in the Tower until 1621.