Upon the accession of James to the throne, the fortunes of the family had seemed to revive. To George Percy's brother had been assigned the honour of announcing to him the death of Elizabeth. The present Earl of Northumberland (the eldest brother of George Percy) had rapidly risen in favour. Then the discovery of the fatal Gunpowder Plot--the treason of fanatic Catholics--had revealed a Percy among its most active ringleaders. Although a distant relative of the Earl, he was still a Percy; and all who bore the name suffered from unjust suspicion. The Earl of Northumberland was now a prisoner in the Tower, accused of no crime except a desire to be a leader of the detested Roman Catholics. George Percy could hope for no honour, no career, no home in England. Nor could he expect to find career, home, honour in the wilderness, but there he could at least hide his breaking heart! That he was a brave, honourable gentleman we know from the testimony of those who laboured with him for the good of the colony. Without doubt he held himself aloof from his fellows on the voyage. He was on the deck on the night of the 12th of February, and perhaps turning his longing eyes toward his northern home, when he saw a blazing star,--which flashed out of the sky for a moment and was as suddenly hidden in darkness,--fit emblem of the fallen fortunes of his house. He simply records the fact in his calm "Discourse of the Plantation," adding "and presently came a storm." The baleful "flames of envy and dissension" were not altogether quenched by good Master Hunt's "waters of patience." They broke out again and again during the long voyage of five months. John Smith appears to have angered his fellow-travellers in some way, and he was held in confinement during part of the voyage. It is even stated that when they arrived at the island of Mevis a gallows was erected for him, but "he could not be prevailed upon to use it." He was, by far, the ablest man among the first colonists. In the twenty-nine years of his life he had adventures enough for all the historical novels of a century. Perhaps he boasted of them too much, and thus excited "envy and dissension." Have they not filled nearly a thousand pages of a late story of his life? He could tell of selling his books and satchel when he was a boy to get money to run away from home; of startling events all along until he fought the Turks in Transylvania; of cutting off the heads, in combat, of three of them "to delight the Ladies who did long to see some court-like pastime"; of inventing wonderful fire-signals which were triumphantly successful in war; of beating out the brains of a Bashaw's head; of imprisonment and peril, in which lovely ladies succoured him. What wonder that all this, and more, told in a masterful way, should have aroused suspicion that he intended to seize the government of the colony, aided and abetted by conspirators already at hand in all three of the ships!