Returning to the house, Winter found his friends decidedly alive and “reasonable well.”
“What resolve you to do?” he asked them.
“We mean here to die,” was the answer.
“Well!” replied Winter, “I will take such part as you do.”
And John Wright said, “I will live and die among you.”
Not long afterwards, about noon, the Sheriff and his troops surrounded Holbeach House. After several ineffectual summonses to surrender, and the reading of a proclamation in the King’s name bidding the rebels to submit themselves, which met only with blunt refusals, the Sheriff fired the house, and led an attack upon the gates. The conspirators who were left showed no lack of courage. They walked out into the court-yard, set the gate open, and took up their stand in front of it, Catesby in the middle, with Percy and Thomas Winter on either side. At the first assault, an arrow from a cross-bow had struck Winter in the shoulder, and rendered his right arm useless. The second shot struck John Wright, the third Christopher Wright, the fourth Rookwood. The two Wrights fell, and were supposed to be dead.
“Stand by me, Tom,” said Catesby to Winter, “and we will die together.”
“Sir,” was the answer, “I have lost the use of my right arm, and I fear that will cause me to be taken.”
They were the last words of Robert Catesby. The next bullet passed clean through his body, and lodged in that of Percy at his side. Catesby fell, mortally wounded. He had just strength to crawl on his hands and knees into the vestibule of the house, where stood an image of the Virgin: and clasping it in his arms, he died.
Percy sank down, also wounded to death; he expired the following day. John Wright, recovering somewhat from his wound, called to Bates, and delivered him a bag of money, entreating him to fly and take it to Mrs Wright at Norbrook. Winter was seized; Grant, Rookwood, and Morgan, yielded themselves to the Sheriff: but the exasperated mob, rushing in, while the Sheriff’s men were lifting one of the wounded, seized upon the others, stripped and ill-used them, until wounds which might possibly have been healed were past cure. John and Christopher Wright died in two or three days.