Alnwick Castle’s Gunpowder Plotter
If you’ve been watching Gunpowder on BBC One over the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard the names ‘Thomas Percy’ and ‘Northumberland’ – one was a Gunpowder Plotter alongside Kit Harington’s Catesby, and the other part of King James’ council. But Northumberland – or Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland – and Thomas were also both strongly connected to Alnwick Castle. One was its lord and owner, and Thomas was its Constable.
Thomas, who was born in Yorkshire in 1560, was a distant cousin of the 9th Earl; they shared a great-great-grandfather, but while Thomas’ father was a country squire, he was proud of his Percy ancestry. Growing up near Beverley where the family had had great influence, he may have heard stories of famous rebellious forebears like Harry Hotspur, or another Thomas, beheaded for his Catholic faith by Elizabeth I.
He was probably given the role of Constable by the 9th Earl around 1594. Northumberland was looking for someone active, and high-profile, to be his most important northern official; the fact Thomas was a Percy was an advantage, but probably not the only reason for getting the job.
Being Constable of Alnwick Castle meant being an official at the highest level – the Constable was directly responsible to the Earl of Northumberland himself.
Thomas and the earl were similar ages, and both had been reckless and adventurous young men. Thomas once wrote to his cousin about “the errors and idle vanities of my youth”.
When Thomas arrived in Alnwick, he would have been a large, tall man with a blonde streak of hair. There was considerable trouble on the border between England and Scotland at this time, and so one of his first acts was ensuring the tenants of Alnwick had equipped themselves with helmets, shields, pikes and horses so they could defend their interests, and those of the earl, from Scottish attack. He also had to make sure Alnwick Castle had enough brewing, kindling, horse fodder, bedding and other supplies.
However, Thomas himself was suspected of allying with Scotland several times. One of his servants, a man called Davidson, was accused of joining with Scotland, and Thomas himself supposedly sold the bell of Warkworth Castle to the captain of a Scottish ship.
Eventually, Thomas became a messenger of the earl to the court of King James VI in Edinburgh on behalf of English Catholics.
Thomas’ religious beliefs were one reason to take on this role. Though probably not the most devout of the Gunpowder Plotters, he was a Catholic, and both he and the earl hoped for increased tolerance of private Catholic practices once James became King in England too.
(Northumberland himself is known to have said he did not trouble himself much over religion.)
Other reasons why Thomas became a messenger to the Scottish court included Alnwick’s proximity to Edinburgh, his great skill as a horseman, and the fact he had served with the earl’s predecessor as a young man – and the 8th Earl was likely a supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Thomas made the trip across the border several times, and it seems that assurances had been made that James would consider some kind of Catholic tolerance in England. Perhaps his failure to do so was what provoked Thomas to join Catesby and the Plotters.
Most of Thomas’ time as Constable of Alnwick Castle appears to have been spent on horseback, travelling around the earl’s territories, chasing thieves and collecting rents. He would write regularly to the earl – his last letter surviving in Alnwick Castle’s archives is dated 19th September, 1605, just a few weeks before Gunpowder, and mentions meeting Northumberland in London on Thomas’ next visit – but by 1602 the earl’s other officials were also writing to complain about Thomas’ behaviour.
Complaints included the unjust imprisonment of tenants in Alnwick Castle, taking bribes, and constantly interfering in matters beyond Alnwick that did not concern him.
The 9th Earl seems to have trusted Thomas, however; at least in his early years as Constable. Surviving letters have him described as “my trusty and well-beloved cousin” and “my loving cousin Thomas Percy esquire”.
Thomas’ letters were studied by former Alnwick Castle Archivist, Colin Shrimpton, for the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. Shrimpton describes Thomas as ‘a man of great mood swings. It is hard to put your finger on it, but there is an underlying feeling that he was up to something.’
He definitely was – as we know from the Gunpowder series, Thomas took a leading role in the plan to blow up King James and the Houses of Parliament. Star Chamber, the official court based in the Palace at Westminster at the time, described him as ‘one of the principal conspirators in this… abominable treason’.
(Thomas was also married to Martha Wright, the sister of two other Plotters, John and Christopher Wright.)
As seen in Gunpowder, Thomas leased the storerooms under the Lords’ Chamber where Parliament would meet on the 5th November, 1605, and gave Guy Fawkes (using the name John Johnson) to oversee storage of gunpowder and wood there. Thomas also had a watch delivered to Fawkes for correctly timing the lighting of the fuse, but this detail has been changed for the series, as you will see if you watch the final episode!
Thomas himself arrived in London on the 1st November, after collecting various rents in the north, and on the 4th November, he met the 9th Earl of Northumberland at Syon House, one of his London properties (and one that still belongs to the Percys today). Thomas and the earl ate together on the 4th, and probably discussed Border matters, but we don’t know if Thomas also warned his cousin and employer about the Plot and what was going to happen the following day.
Unfortunately for the 9th Earl, having dinner with Thomas the day before Fawkes was discovered underneath Parliament with the gunpowder implicated him in the Plot, whether he was actually involved or knew about it or not.
Evidence given against the earl in the court proceedings following the discovery of the Plot state that on “the Monday [Thomas] went to Syon and then had secret conference with the Earl. And that Monday at 11 o’clock at night Percy sent Robert Keyes, one other of the said traitors, with a clock or watch unto Fawkes”.
One nobleman who was warned about the Gunpowder Plot was Lord Monteagle, who received a letter warning him not to attend Parliament on the 5th November. The Monteagle Letter ultimately led to the discovery and foiling of the Plot, and Thomas, who was an acquaintance of Monteagle, was at one time suspected of having written this letter. If this was true, it would follow that he had also warned his cousin the earl, and that even if the earl was not actively involved in the Plot, he was suspected of knowing about it.
However, Mark Nicholls of Cambridge University notes that the 9th Earl had travelled into London from Syon on the evening of the 4th, and his robes had been prepared for attending Parliament the following day, so perhaps he did not know anything about the Plot. It certainly appeared like he was not intending to avoid it.
When the Plot was discovered, Thomas and the other Plotters fled. On the 7th November, at Holbeach Hall in Staffordshire, a single shot killed both him and another Plotter. Some sources say this was Catesby; he and Thomas were standing back to back defending themselves, and the bullet went through one man and into the other, killing both. Thomas’ head was then cut off and exhibited in London.
When news of the Plot, and Thomas’ involvement in it, reached the region where he had been Constable, one man – George Whitehead, from Tynemouth Castle – proclaimed ‘I wish to God he had never been born.’
Thomas was now dead, but the Earl of Northumberland was still under suspicion. He was immediately suspected of involvement because, as Shrimpton states, he was ‘the Plotters’ likely chosen regent for the realm had the Plot succeeded’.
Nicholls agrees, noting that investigators were ‘convinced that so audacious a plan had wider ramifications’ and arrested several noblemen with known connections to the Plotters. The earl was one of these, and though Nicholls argues the Plotters had not definitively chosen a Lord Protector for their new realm (they had hoped to raise King James’ daughter Elizabeth as a Catholic Queen), Northumberland was a likely candidate. He was ‘a privy councillor, a member of the old nobility, a wealthy man and, though himself a Protestant, representative of one of the foremost Catholic families in England’.
Northumberland was arrested at Syon and taken straight away to Lambeth Palace for questioning before being transferred to the Tower of London (if you watch Gunpowder you may not see this take place on screen!). Star Chamber alleged he was part of the Plot because of his kinship with Thomas Percy, their meeting at Syon on the 4th November, and that while the Plotters were fleeing, the earl’s main concern was not that Thomas was apprehended, but that he didn’t steal his recently collected rents on the way!
The final charge against Northumberland was Thomas’ appointment as a Gentleman Pensioner, the select group of bodyguards that attended the King on ceremonial occasions. The earl was captain of the Gentleman Pensioners, and may have given Thomas the honoured role as reward for his journeys to James’ Scottish court. However, Thomas had never been made to swear the oath of loyalty that went with the position, and the fact that he, now a known would-be killer of the King, had been allowed to carry a poleaxe in James’ presence without having sworn any oath of loyalty was not favourable to Northumberland’s innocence.
(The fact Thomas’ appointment as a Gentleman Pensioner coincided with the time he committed himself to the Gunpowder Plot must not have helped the earl’s case.)
The Star Chamber report explains the situation: ‘he did either maliciously or negligently prefer Thomas Percy, an obstinate papist, into the king’s service to attend as a pensioner; and put an axe of defence into his hands that had formerly sworn to kill the king. To this the earl answered that he had trusted him long and knew no ill in him in that time.’
Thomas Percy was the only man who could clear Northumberland’s name – or condemn him – or in the words of the time, show him ‘clear as the day, or dark as the night’. In fact, the first messengers to reach London from Holbeach reported Thomas was only wounded, not dead. The 9th Earl asked for an immediate examination to take place to show his innocence – but Thomas was dead, and so this could not be done.
The report from Star Chamber declares that ‘some of the lords said that they had known some others convicted of treason upon lesser and more weak presumptions than these. And what this case deserved in regard of that most execrable powder treason, let all nations be mindful, for no tongue can express what ruin and desolation both nocent and innocent had tasted’.
Reports that Thomas had told one of the other Plotters that ‘if the business did miscarry, the Earl of Northumberland would curse him’ must have also counted against his cousin Henry. The 9th Earl of Northumberland was condemned to prison.
The 9th Earl spent nearly 17 years as a prisoner in the Tower of London, but maintained he was innocent throughout. He was also fined £30,000, an enormous sum of money to be raised from his estates.
However, he lived in very comfortable conditions for a prisoner. He could control his own diet, with everything from wine to lamprey pies being delivered to him from Syon. He had his library transferred to his cell, and built both a laboratory for his alchemy experiments and a schoolroom for his two sons to be educated in. His horse was brought up from his Sussex estate for him to inspect and ride, and he could go for walks on pathways he had re-gravelled. He could play games with his sons, bowl in the bowling alley made for his cell, and study military tactics with them using lead soldiers. He also set up a counting house for his auditors just outside the Tower, and could survey and map his lands, leading to a full involvement in the management of his estate that meant he could afford the £30,000 for his release.
By 1622, the earl was free, but confined to his estate in Sussex. He never visited Alnwick Castle again. The Gunpowder Plot, described at the time as ‘that most execrable and dampened powder treason, whereby the political head and many of the principal members of this commonwealth… should at one instant have been suddenly blown up and dismembered to the utter ruin of the whole monarchy’, had had a lasting effect on the castle, and its family. As the 9th Earl’s brother Josceline put it, there is ‘seldom treason without a Percy’.
The final episode of Gunpowder is broadcast on BBC One on Saturday 4th November, or is available to stream with the whole series on BBC iPlayer.
Gunpowder: Trailer - BBC One
