The true leaders of the plot were Robert Catesby (1572-1605) a Warwickshire gentleman, and Thomas Percy (1560-1605) a member of the Percy family of northern nobles. Both of them were killed at the siege of Holbeche House in Staffordshire in a shootout with the Sheriff of Worcester's troops on 8th November 1605. Guy Fawkes got the notoriety because he was the first to be caught, he was the explosives expert who was also supposed to light the fuses, and because he was still alive at the time of the trial. The image of someone lurking with sinister intent in a vault beneath their feet also caught the public imagination.

The most accessible modern study of the plot and its organisation is probably Lady Antonia Fraser's The Gunpowder Plot (1996)