Winter were badly wounded, but recovered. It was thought also that one or two amongst the slain might also have survived but for the action of the country people,[1] who began stripping their bodies and handling them roughly, for the sake of plunder, before they could receive the attentions of a surgeon. In support of the Jesuit story that Percy was shot down by orders from Salisbury, who had given directions that he was not to be taken alive, because he was in the position of a man who knew too much about that minister's early knowledge of the plot, there exists not the very smallest original evidence. It surely was Lord Salisbury's object to capture rather than kill Percy,[2] who (as we have seen above) was the first person denounced in the royal proclamation, and whose capture might have helped to incriminate Salisbury's enemy, Lord Northumberland.
Rookewood, Thomas Winter, Grant, and Keyes were taken to London and lodged in the Tower. Keyes was not taken with the rest at Holbeach, but was captured in Warwickshire on November 9. He had parted with his friends at Dunchurch, but what he had been doing in the interval is unknown.
Of the thirteen conspirators originally engaged
