Even Catesby now lost heart, expressed his fears that God disapproved of their proceedings,[331] and said that here he meant to remain and die. The other conspirators said they would do the same, and they seem now, for the first time, to some extent, to have realised the enormity of their sin. They perceived "God to be against them; all prayed before the picture of Our Lady, and confessed that the act was so bloody as they desired God to forgive them." Then, says Father Gerard,[332] "They all fell earnestly to their prayers, the Litanies and such like (as some of the company affirmed that escaped taking, being none of the conspirators, but such as joined with them in the country); they also spent an hour in meditation." It is satisfactory to know that they showed some contrition for their terrible iniquity and tried to make their peace with God; and, being Catholics, they would know what to do to this end. [331] Stephen Littleton's Confession--Rookwood's Examination--Jardine, p. 115. [332] _Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot_, p. 109. At eleven o'clock, the High Sheriff appeared with a large force and surrounded the house. Thomas Winter went out into the court-yard and was shot in the shoulder by an arrow from a cross-bow, just as Catesby, who followed him, exclaimed, "Stand by me, Tom, and we will die together." The two brothers, John and Christopher Wright, followed him, and both were mortally wounded. Rookwood, who had been severely burned by the explosion of gunpowder, was shot through the arm by a bullet from a musket and wounded in the body by a pike. Catesby and Percy stood back to back and were both shot through the body. Catesby died shortly afterwards in the house, after declaring "that the plot and practice of this treason was only his, and that all others were but his assistants, chosen by himself to that purpose, and that the honour thereof belonged only to himself." Percy died the next day. As soon as Catesby and Percy had fallen, the attacking party rushed into the court-yard, overpowered the feeble resistance offered to them, and made prisoners of the whole party. The besiegers of Holbeche House were little more orderly than the hue and cry which had chased Sir Everard Digby. Sir Thos. Lawley, who was assisting the Sheriff of Worcestershire, wrote afterward to Salisbury[333]:--"I hasted to revive Catesby and Percy and the two Wrights, who lay deadly wounded on the ground, thinking by the recovery of them to have done unto his Majesty better service than by suffering them to die. But such was the extreme disorder of the baser sort, that while I with my men took up one of the languishing traitors, the rude people stripped the rest naked; and their wounds being many and grievous, and no surgeon at hand, they became incurable and so died." [333] Additional MSS., British Museum, No. 617, p. 565.