Our Aberdeen: Wanted poster starts fireworks in Aberdeen archives

By Phil Astley, Archivist, Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives

November 5 2019, 2:17 pm

This wanted poster from

One of the most charismatic documents held in the Charter Room at the Town House is surely this printed ‘wanted’ poster, dated the “fifth day of November 1605”.

Dispatched from the Palace of Westminster, it seeks the whereabouts of Thomas Percy, one of Guy Fawkes’s co-conspirators in the infamous Gunpowder Plot.

On that day, many such posters would have been sent out from London to all four corners of the kingdom. This particular one was addressed to the Town Council of Aberdeen where it was retained with the records of the burgh and survives to this day in the archive as a tangible connection to this turbulent episode in the nation’s history.

This wanted poster from 1605 was retained with the records of the burgh

In the first line of the document, Thomas Percy is described as a “Gentleman Pensioner to His Majesty”. This meant that he was part of an elite group of personnel drawn mainly from the nobility who acted as bodyguards to the King. The trust originally placed in him therefore made his treason all the more shocking.

When Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding the stash of gunpower at Westminster, he initially gave his name as John Johnson who was a servant of Thomas Percy. Consequently, it was Percy who was initially the ‘most wanted’ of the conspirators, with his name appearing on the arrest warrant.

The description of Percy on the wanted poster is both vivid and amusing: “The said Percy is a tall man, with a great broad beard, a good face, the colour of his beard and head mingled with white hairs, but the head more white than the beard, he stoupeth somewhat in the shoulders, well coloured in the face, long footed and small legged”.

Forewarned of the discovery of Guy Fawkes, Percy fled London to the Midlands to meet with the leader of the Gunpowder Plot, Robert Catesby, along with their co-conspirators. During a siege at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, both Percy and Catesby were shot and subsequently buried close by. Their bodies were later exhumed and transported to London where their heads were displayed outside parliament as a warning to others.