Gunpowder Plot under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. His fellow plotters were John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives. The plot was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605. During a search of the House of Lords at about midnight
Robert and Thomas Wintour Thomas was the first to mount the scaffold. It was customary to grant the condemned a speech, but Thomas, "a very pale and dead colour", said it was "no time to discourse: he was come to die". He absolved the Jesuits of any involvement in the plot, asked for Catholics to pray for him, and declared his adherence to the Roman religion. He was hanged for only a few seconds, and then taken to the block for the remainder of his grim sentence. Their half-brother John was executed at Red Hill near Worcester, on 7 April. Robert and Thomas Wintour