Thomas Percy

Thomas Percy (born 1560, England—died Nov. 8, 1605, Holbeach House, Staffordshire, Eng.) was a participant in the Gunpowder Plot (1605), which aimed to blow up the Houses of Parliament (Palace of Westminster) during the state opening of Parliament, while James I and his chief ministers met within, in reprisal for increasing oppression of Roman Catholics in England.

Thomas Percy was a member of the powerful Percy family, which had played a notable role in English history in medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times. After attending Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, Percy is said to have spent much of his youth engaged in wild and violent behaviour. However, his conversion to Catholicism was seen by some as responsible for his turn to more virtuous actions. He served his cousin Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, in a variety of capacities, including acting as the receiver of the earl’s rents and also representing him in clandestine negotiations with James I (then still James VI as the king of Scotland) before he ascended the English throne.

Percy is best known, though, as one of the original conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. He rented the dwelling near Westminster from which the conspirators initially tunneled toward the palace. He later rented the vault under the Lords chamber where gunpowder was placed and in which fellow conspirator Guy Fawkes was arrested on the night of Nov. 4–5, 1605, when the plot was betrayed. On November 8 the plot’s instigator, Robert Catesby, along with coconspirators Percy and two of Percy’s brothers-in-law, were killed when the small rebellion they led in the Midlands in the wake of Fawkes’s capture was put down. The earl of Northumberland, who had provided Percy with access to Parliament by securing him a position as one of the king’s bodyguards and who had met with his cousin the day before Fawkes’s capture, was imprisoned for 15 years for his role, though it was never proved that he had any knowledge of the plot.