Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 5, 2012



Thomas Percy (c. 1560–1605) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Little is known of his life before 1596 when a distant relation, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, appointed him constable of Alnwick Castle. Percy acted as the earl's intermediary in a series of confidential communications with King James VI of Scotland. After James acceded to the English throne in 1603, Percy became disenchanted with him, supposing that the new king had reneged on promises of toleration for English Catholics. He met Robert Catesby in 1603, and the following year joined his conspiracy to kill James and his ministers by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder. Percy provided the group with funding and secured the leases to certain properties in London, including the undercroft directly beneath the House of Lords, into which the gunpowder was placed. When the plot was exposed on 5 November 1605, Percy fled to the Midlands. He and Catesby were killed on 8 November, during a siege of Holbeche House in Staffordshire, by the Sheriff of Worcester and his men. (Full article...)

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