In a previous post I mentioned Guy Fawkes and in a comment a friend pointed out that they were unfamiliar with this reference. This post, on the anniversary of the discovery of the plot, offers a brief account of this history.
It was around midnight on November 4 1605, when Guy Fawkes was discovered in a cellar of the Palace of Westminster. He was surrounded by a ton of gunpowder. In a matter hours, at the state opening of parliament on the fifth of November, he would have detonated the powder in an attempt to blow up the king and the assembled protestant aristocrats of England.
Fawkes was only one member of the group of conspirators who had planned this audacious coup d'etat. He was doubtless given the task of igniting the dynamite due to his military experience, having been a soldier serving with the Spanish against the Dutch, and his relatively lowly position within the group. Yet, ironically, he is the only member of the conspiracy that most people can remember.
The leader of the group was Robert Catesby, a charismatic and wealthy Catholic member of the gentry, as indeed were most of the other members of the plot. He had hoped that James would restore England to the one true Church. The plot was born of the bitter disappointment, which doubtless attended the realisation that these hopes would never be fulfilled.
Fawkes was put to the question. This is polite language for tortured. The king, himself, authorised it. Of course, it was not long before the conspirators were caught and killed, in the most grisly manner.
The saving of the king from this attempt on his life was immediately established as a national celebration, which was made compulsory by an act of parliament. (It was not until 1859 that this legal compulsion was rescinded.) The celebration was marked by bonfires and street festivities.
The key elements of this annual celebration quickly became a tradition. They involved a large bonfire, upon which an effigy of Guy Fawkes was burned; the setting off of many fireworks; the ringing of church bells; the eating of particular foods such as baked potatoes and treacle toffee and parkin; and the reciting of doggerel verses, such as:
Remember, remember the fifth of November,
I see no reason why, gunpowder, treason and plot
Should ever be forgot.
It was, however, not long before this version of events was challenged. No sooner had the religious terrorists been subjected to the rigours of the law, than the ideological wing of this movement swung into action. The Jesuits immediately claimed that this was all a plot, not by Catesby and Fawkes et al, but by the state, a plot to discredit Catholics and justify their oppression. This version of events, although lacking any credible supporting evidence, has echoed down the centuries, and many people still to this day, take a view based upon their religious affiliations rather than the historical evidence. Which, I guess, just goes to show that when it comes to beliefs, evidence is invariably a poor second.
Indeed, even the anarchists have tried to claim him as one of their own, as the above poster illustrates. But this is of course a ridiculous idea, as the conspirators were not opposed to the authority of the state. On the contrary, they wished to institute a totalitarian theocracy, the millennial dream of believers down the ages.
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