#holbeach house

[illustratus]

The Gunpowder Plot: the conspirators' last stand at Holbeach House by Ernest Crofts

[illustratus]

The Gunpowder Plot: the conspirators' last stand at Holbeach House (detail)

by Ernest Crofts

[thedudleywomen]

The Siege of Holbeach House - 08 Nov 1605

On This Day (08 Nov) in 1605, 200 men led by Robert Walsh, Sheriff of Worcester, converged on Holbeach House, near Kingswinford, on the Staffordshire border, where many of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators had gathered, including plot mastermind Robert Catesby and 'belligerent' Thomas Percy.

The men were tired, wet and demoralised. Their plot to blow up Parliament had been foiled, an arrest warrant had immediately been issued for Percy, and the Catholic support they hoped to gather in the Midlands did not materialise. Some of the plotters, including Catesby, had been injured by gunpowder accidentally setting alight the previous day. Regardless, the men refused to surrender, being prepared to die for their cause.

Catesby and Percy were reportedly killed by the same bullet; he reportedly crawled into the house, grasping a picture of the Virgin Mary before dying. Percy's wounds do not appear to have been immediately fatal, but succumbed to his injuries due to lack of medical intervention. Also killed that day were Percy's brothers-in-law and fellow co-conspirators Jack and Kit Wright.

Their corpses were stripped, and their bodies initially buried at Holbeach; however, on order of the Privy Council, the bodies of Percy and Catesby were later exhumed, and subject to post-mortem punishment, as if they were convicted traitors. Their quartered bodies were exhibited in the places where they were known to have resided, with their decapitated heads displayed on iron spikes on the roof on the House of Commons.

Survivors, including original plotter Thomas Wintour, were taken into custody and down to London for 'interrogation'. Surviving conspirators were found guilty of high treason following a trial in Jan 1606, and sentenced to a traitor's death.