Thomas Bates (1567 – 30 January 1606) was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Bates was born at Lapworth in Warwickshire, and became a retainer to Robert Catesby, who from 1604 planned to kill King James I by blowing up the House of Lords with gunpowder, and inciting a popular revolt during which a Catholic monarch would be restored to the English throne.

As he rode with Catesby to prepare for the group's planned uprising on 5 November 1605, Guy Fawkes was found guarding the gunpowder stored under the House of Lords and arrested.

Bates subsequently accompanied Catesby and his small group of fugitives to Holbeche House in Staffordshire, but left shortly before his master was killed there by government forces on 8 November.

In December 1604[nb 1] he was invited to his master's lodgings at Puddle Wharf in London, and questioned there by Thomas Wintour and Catesby, who had noted his suspicion.

During a secret meeting at Bath in August, at which he, Percy and Thomas Wintour were present, the plotters decided that "the company being yet but few" he was to be allowed to "call in whom he thought best".

Guy Fawkes would light the fuse and then escape across the Thames, while simultaneously a revolt in the Midlands would help to ensure the capture of Princess Elizabeth.

The following day while at Dunstable re-shoeing Catesby's horse, they were met by Rookwood, who delivered the devastating news that Fawkes had been discovered guarding the gunpowder and arrested.

[13] At some point between then and the arrival of the Sheriff of Worcester and his men, Bates left the house, possibly with his son and Digby.

In the opinion of author Antonia Fraser however, Bates's evidence is suspect; he was of a lower class than his co-conspirators, and could therefore reasonably have assumed he was at more risk of being tortured than the others.

On the morning of 30 January 1606 therefore, Bates was tied to a wattled hurdle and dragged by horse along the street, from the Gatehouse Prison to the western end of St Paul's Churchyard.