11/05/2024
Happy bonfire night! 🔥
Today we remember the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes and fellow Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up Parliament and assassinate James I of England.
Guy was born in York on 13th April 1570 but despite being involved in a Catholic plot to kill the king he was originally a protestant and only converted later in life.
He joined the Spanish army and changed his name to Guido, which is how he signed his confession.
Guy Fawkes’s future took a fateful turn when he met Englishman Thomas Wintour in Spain. Wintour was scouting around for allies to join a group of Catholic conspirators based in England, led by his cousin Robert Catesby.
Catesby’s plan was to blow up Parliament during its State Opening on 5 November, when James I, the Queen and his heir would also be present, and would be killed.
The plan very nearly succeeded. It was only thanks to an anonymous letter to the authorities, received in late October, that the King, his family and his Protestant ministers were not all murdered.
Guards searched The House of Lords at midnight and in the early hours of 5 November Fawkes was discovered in the cellars, with a fuse, a small lamp, a box of matches and 36 poorly-hidden barrels of gunpowder. When asked his name guy used the alias John Johnson.
Fawkes was brought to the Tower of London to be imprisoned and interrogated.
James I himself wrote the royal warrant: ‘If he will not other ways confesse, the gentler tortures are first to be used upon him, and then step by step you may employ the harsher, and so speede youre goode work.’
When the "so called" ‘gentler tortures’ failed, it’s highly likely that Fawkes was racked, probably in the White Tower dungeons.
The rack was a horrible device, designed to inflict excruciating pain as a prisoner’s limbs were pulled in opposing directions until the joints were dislocated or separated.
Fawkes held out bravely for several days, but eventually named his co-conspirators and signed a confession.
Fawkes was tried with the other surviving conspirators on 27 January 1606 and sentenced to be executed in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, on 31 January.
They were dragged behind a horse along the streets of London to Old Palace Yard, Westminster where, one by one, they were hanged, drawn and quartered.
Guy was the last to go up the gallows.
According to a contemporary account:
‘Last of all came the great devil of all, Guy Fawkes, alias Johnson, who should have put fire to the powder. His body being weak with the torture and sickness he was scarce able to go up the ladder, yet with much ado, by the help of the hangman, went high enough to break his neck by the fall.'
After hanging his privy parts were removed and burnt, he was disemboweled, beheaded and had his limbs removed.
The head was placed on London Bridge and the remains of the traitors were displayed in prominent places across the country to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors.
