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 POLITICAL HISTORY pursued, with the assistance of several gentlemen and the power and force of the country.' We made against them upon Thursday morning, and freshly pursued them until the next day, at which time about twelve or one of the clock in the afternoon we overtook them at the said Holbeche House, the greatest part of their retinue, and some of the better sort being dispersed and fled before our coming, whereupon and after summons and warning first given, and proclamation in his highness's name to yield and submit themselves, who refusing the same we fired some part of the house and assaulted some part of the rebellious persons left in the said house, in which assault one Mr. Robert Catesby is slain, and three others verily thought wounded to death as far as we can learn are Thomas Percy gentleman, John Wright and Christopher Wright, gentlemen ; and these are apprehended and taken, Thomas Winter, John Grant, Henry Morgan, Ambrose Rokewood, gentlemen, and six others of inferior degree. The rest of that rebellious assembly is dispersed. 261 Percy, John Wright, and his brother died of their wounds, so that only Fawkes and Thomas Winter of the original five fell into the government's hands alive. In the meantime Fawkes, under dreadful torture in the Tower, was telling the council the whole of the plot, and it was not long before the plotters were tried and punished. James I visited Staffordshire more than once ; his fondness for hunting attracted him to Needwood, where his favourite eminence for resting and looking at the scenery was called ' The King's Standing.' 263 In 1 6 1 7 he visited Stafford, and was received most loyally, and in 1619, 1621, and 1624 he was at Tutbury, the scene of so much of his mother's misery. In 1625 Staffordshire gentlemen were fined for their non-appearance at the coronation of Charles I to receive the order of knighthood, the qualifica- tion for which had been fixed in the reign of Henry VI at the annual income of 40, an increase from the 20 enacted by the Statute ' de Militibus.' The fines had been levied at the coronations of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, but not by James I. The average fine imposed upon a defaulter in Staffordshire was 10, whereas the average fee for knighthood was between 60 and 70. So wide was the net cast that in Staffordshire a yeoman was summoned. The coronation was on 2 February, 1625-6, but it was not until 1630 that decisive steps were taken to enforce the fines on defaulters residing at a distance from the capital, when special commissions were issued to prominent persons in each county, that relating to Staffordshire being addressed to Robert Earl of Essex, Walter Lord Aston, Sir Hugh Wrottesley, and Sir William Bowyer, kts., and Richard Weston, esq. Another commission was issued on 12 February, 16301, and another on 9 June, 1631. Altogether about 260 gentlemen compounded, the com- positions varying from 10 to $o, the former sum being that generally paid, and no doubt the far-reaching nature of these exactions helped to turn the country gentlemen against the king. The abolition of compulsory knighthood was one of the first Acts of the Long Parliament. 263 In 1636 the Roman Catholics in the county felt the benefit of Charles' more lenient treatment of their co-religionists, to which he was urged by Henrietta Maria and the Archbishop of York. Wentworth and others were commissioned to lease to recusants in Staffordshire and other northern counties M1 S. R. Gardiner, What Gunpowder Plot Was, 46-7 ; Cal. S.P. Dam. 1603-10, pp. 247, 255. 161 Mosley, Hist, of Tutbury, 207. * B 1 6 Chas. I, cap. 20. 255