Sir Thomas Percy (c. 1504–2 June 1537) was a participant in the 1537 Bigod's Rebellion in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace, a Roman Catholic uprising against Henry VIII of England. He was convicted of treason and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.[1]

Biography

He was the second son of Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland and Lady Catherine Spencer, and was born c. 1504 in Alnwick, Northumberland, England.

He married Eleanor Harbottle, daughter of Guiscard Harbottle and Jane Willoughby, and they had 7 children together: Joan, Thomas, Henry, Guiscard, Richard, Mary (who married Sir Francis Slingsby) and Catherine.[1] His elder brother Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, who had long been failing in health, died 3 weeks later, having been persuaded to leave all his estates to Henry VIII. However the title was restored to Thomas' sons, and all later Earl and Dukes of Northumberland are descended from him.
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) notes that he "is considered a martyr by many".[2] An alternative view, reflected in the fictional portrait of Thomas in The Man on a Donkey by H. F. M. Prescott, is that he was hot-tempered, quarrelsome, and ambitious to take control of the Earldom of Northumberland from his invalid brother; while he and his youngest brother Ingelram may have been motivated partly by sincere religious beliefs, they were also largely moved by self-interest.