Thirty-six barrels of powder hidden in a rented undercroft beneath the House of Lords (1605)
The room had been leased by the conspirator Thomas Percy; the powder was covered with firewood
History · Early modern
The Gunpowder Plot
1605
A Catholic conspiracy to blow up James I and the English Parliament
A small group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby and disappointed by James I's failure to relax the recusancy laws, packed barrels of powder into a rented undercroft beneath the House of Lords, meaning to destroy king, lords and commons at the state opening on 5 November 1605. An anonymous warning betrayed them; the search party found Guy Fawkes with a lantern and a slow match.
How to spot them
- ▸1605: a plan to destroy the king and the whole political nation at a single state opening
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Catesby', 'Monteagle letter', 'undercroft', 'slow match', 'Holbeche House'
- ▸The reason bonfires and effigies still mark an English November night
- ▸James I, newly arrived from Scotland, is the intended victim
What happened
An anonymous letter warning Lord Monteagle to invent an excuse and stay away (26 October 1605)
Its author has never been established; Monteagle showed it to Robert Cecil
A man calling himself John Johnson, taken in the small hours with a lantern and touchwood (5 November 1605)
Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshireman who had fought for Spain in Flanders, where he used the name Guido
Robert Catesby shot down at Holbeche House in Staffordshire (8 November 1605)
He and Thomas Percy were reputedly killed by a single ball; the fugitives had soaked their powder in the rain
The Yeomen of the Guard still search the cellars before each state opening
A ceremonial search kept up since the seventeenth century
'Remember, remember the fifth of November'
A much later rhyme; the Observance of 5th November Act made the day a thanksgiving in 1606
The rack in the Tower, and a signature that trails away into nothing
Fawkes's confession is signed in a shattered hand after torture authorised by the king
Quick-fire facts
- •The leader was Robert Catesby, not Guy Fawkes; Fawkes was the explosives man because of his service in the Spanish army
- •Thirteen conspirators are usually counted, including Thomas Percy, Thomas and Robert Wintour, Jack and Christopher Wright, and Francis Tresham
- •The plot aimed to kill James I and install his daughter Elizabeth as a Catholic puppet queen
- •Fawkes's lantern is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
- •The survivors were tried in Westminster Hall in January 1606 and hanged, drawn and quartered; Fawkes jumped from the ladder and broke his neck, escaping the worst of it
- •The Jesuit Henry Garnet was executed in 1606 for knowing of the plot through confession
- •No treaty ended it; instead Parliament passed the Popish Recusants Act 1605 and an Oath of Allegiance in 1606, tightening the law on Catholics
- •The Observance of 5th November Act 1605 made the anniversary a compulsory thanksgiving; it was not repealed until 1859
- •Guy Fawkes's name gave English the word 'guy', first for an effigy, then for any man
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Gunpowder Plot
- Antonia Fraser — Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot