Welcome to the Mind of Meredith! My name is Meredith McKeever, and I have a problem. On the Safari app of my iPhone I have 480 tabs. Approximately 450 of these tabs are Wikipedia pages that I abandoned after reading a single sentence to answer a single question I had. I cannot bring myself to delete these tabs without fully reading them, so I am stuck in a constant stalemate. In this column, I will be attempting to clear my tabs, as I explore my Wikipedia history and glean the most important parts into a single article.
Today’s Wikipedia Article was the article of the day on November 5th. I was sitting on my couch, attempting to ignore the election, when I pulled up this tab as a distraction.
Thomas Percy (Gunpowder Plot)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Percy_(Gunpowder_Plot))
Thomas Percy was born around 1560 in England. We don’t know much more about his life, until he started studying at Cambridge in 1579, and married Martha Wright in 1581.
Thomas was related, albeit distantly, to the Earl of Northumberland. The Earl gave him a job (nepo babies existed this early?) collecting rent in the area, but he was not well liked. At one point, he killed a Scot and was imprisoned. After this, he WENT BACK and helped in a plot once again against the Scottish. It thus makes sense that Thomas was frequently described as “belligerent” or prone to fighting.
This helps to explain why our friend Thomas joined in the “Gunpowder Plot” for which he is remembered. This plot is situated in the historical context of the Protestant Reformation. For more information on this topic, I will refer you to the Wikipedia page English Reformation. But for our sake, you simply need to know that in England you did not want to be a Catholic, and Thomas was a Catholic. James, the King of England (and Scotland!) was a Protestant. This made dear Thomas unhappy, and as we know, Thomas is prone to violence. Thus, he joined a murder plot to eliminate not only the King, but also the whole House of Lords.
The plan was to wait until the King and the entire Parliament were in session together, and then blow up the entire House of Lords, using gunpowder stored underneath the floor. It was also decided that if the Prince was not in Parliament that day, Thomas himself would kill him, and the princess would become queen.
This plan obviously did not come to fruition, for if it had history would be very different. So what went wrong? The group of Catholic conspiracists feared that a specific Catholic, Monteagle, would die if the House of Lords were to be blown up (reasonable, in my opinion). However, Monteagle, upon receiving an anonymous letter telling him to stay away from Parliament, was obviously confused. He showed the letter to another Lord, who decided to wait it out. However, Thomas Percy went back to his cousin, from Northumberland (remember? The one who gave him the job), to investigate who had heard of this letter. Thomas was assured that all was well, and told his compatriots as such.
Well, Thomas was wrong. The King himself knew of the letter by the 5 of November. Parliament was thoroughly inspected, and Guy Fawkes (yes, that Guy Fawkes) was discovered. He gave a fake identity and claimed to be Thomas Percy’s servant. Percy heard of this and immediately fled London. He only lasted about two days before he was caught in County Staffordshire and killed by a musket. Thomas Percy’s body was exhumed, and his head was put on a spike and displayed beside Parliament.
What a happy ending to a happy story! Thank you for following along and helping me delete a tab on my Safari.