Recent Blog Posts

Blog Post Archives

Subscribe to Blog via Email (Version 1: Wordpress)

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog via Wordpress and receive notifications of new posts by email. You will receive emails every time—and as soon as—a new post is made.

Subscribe to Blog via Email (Version 2: Feedburner)

Use this link to subscribe to this blog via Feedburner and receive notifications of new posts by email:

You will receive just one email at the end of the day (around 11:00 PM Eastern Time) summarizing all the posts made during the day.

You may also use the “By Email” link in the upper right hand corner of the page.

Explosions celebrate the “gunpowder plot”

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot!

I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

The English have recently celebrated what I calculate to be the 408th anniversary of the infamous Gunpowder Plot—a failed attempt to blow up the English Parliament during its State Opening ceremony.

The plotters’ aim was to slaughter, in one fell swoop, King James I, his Privy Council, the Bishops of the Church of England, as well as the members of both the Houses of Lords and Commons.

The conspirators were all influential English Roman Catholics who had sworn an oath on the Blessed Sacrament to carry out the mass assassination. This, they hoped, would pave the way for a regime more favorable to England’s Roman Catholics.

The powder was to be fired off by a professional soldier named Guy Fawkes, who had spent more than 10 years fighting for Spain in the regiment of English Roman Catholic exiles.

They succeeded in renting a cellar under Parliament itself, in which they carefully hid a huge quantity of explosives—6 barrels of gunpowder—under billets of wood and pieces of iron.

On the 26th of October 1605, 10 days before Parliament was to be opened, a letter was delivered to Lord Monteagle, a formerly staunch Roman Catholic who had recently obtained favor with the new regime. It warned him not to attend the opening of Parliament. Monteagle at once delivered the letter to Robert Cecil, England’s intelligence chief.

On the night of November 4th, 1605, the day before Parliament was scheduled to open, Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellar beneath the Parliament buildings with the powder and tools necessary to fire the powder train. He was immediately arrested.

Under torture in the Tower of London, he revealed the names of his fellow conspirators, and by November 8th the major plotters had either been killed or rounded up. At their trial, none denied the charge of treason, and all were condemned to be executed.

Sir Everard Digby, Robert Wintour, John Grant, and Thomas Bates were executed in St Paul’s Churchyard. Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes were executed in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster.

All eight men were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as was customary for traitors. In a grisly side note, the conspirators who died fighting were exhumed and their heads removed to be displayed on pikes.

The Gunpowder Plot was one of many plots hatched against English monarchs in the violent years of late 16th/early 17th centuries. But the enormity of this one caught the English imagination in a way none of the others have done.

To this day it is marked with fireworks and huge neighborhood bonfires upon which effigies of Guy Fawkes are ceremonially burned.

Moreover, for days prior to November the Fifth, it has been a tradition for small boys to tote Guy Fawkes effigies around the streets, chanting “Penny for the Guy” to raise money for fireworks.

Cries of “Penny for the Guy!” are generally accompanied by a blood curdling rhyme that goes “Guy! Guy! Stick him in the eye! Hang him on a lamp post, and there let him die!”

Many years ago, a gang led by a boy (who not long after became one of my closest friends) tried to burn me on a bonfire, on the grounds I was not an effigy but the real thing.

I managed to fight my way, unharmed, off the bonfire. Later, I and my friend Reubin (who had an equally embarrassing name) caught the ringleader and liberally painted him with whitewash we found in my grandfather’s tool shed. In a boy’s world, of such are lasting friendships made!

That said, the unfortunate Mr, Fawkes is not without his supporters. It is not uncommon to encounter bumper stickers that read: “Here’s to Guy Fawkes! The only man to enter Parliament with honourable intentions!” Sometimes it’s hard to argue with that. GUY HAWTIN✠

Comments are closed.