Gunpowder Plot

Gunpowder Plot, conspiracy to blow up King James I and the assembled two Houses of Parliament at the State Opening of Parliament in November 1605. It was the work of a small group of Roman Catholic gentry, mainly in the west Midlands, who were angry that James VI, king of Scotland, who had recently succeeded Queen Elizabeth I to the throne of England as James I, had not reversed her harsh policies towards their co-religionists. Catholics in England—no more than 5 per cent of the population—were subject to heavy penalties. The plotters hoped to exploit, in their attack, the widespread anti-Scottish feeling in England aroused by James’s numerous followers.

Robert Catesby, a 32-year-old Warwickshire country gentleman, who was an engaging and charismatic figure, but heavily in debt, persuaded his young cousin Thomas Winter, and his friends John Wright and Thomas Percy, to join him in the conspiracy. In Spain, Winter had met Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshire soldier in Spanish service. They planned to coordinate a rising in England when Spain could provide troops, but this so-called “Spanish treason” was vetoed by the government of Spain, anxious to restore friendly relations with the new regime in England. The conspirators then brought in other leading figures, principally Francis Tresham, Sir Everard Digby, and the brothers of Winter and Wright. They planned to place a large quantity of gunpowder under the Parliament building, and from May 1604 began to tunnel from a neighbouring house. Gunpowder was thought of then as a “devilish” invention, as destructive as nuclear warheads today.

Later the cellars under the House of Lords became vacant, and Percy, a well-connected courtier, was able to rent them without arousing suspicion. He and Fawkes brought in 36 barrels of powder under cover of darkness, and concealed them under firewood, to await the State Opening of Parliament in the autumn of 1605. The plotters planned to seize power after the deed, but needed to preserve leading Catholic figures. Consequently, Tresham sent a warning to his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, not to attend. Monteagle showed the warning letter to the government, however, and a search was made of the premises where the powder was stored. Fawkes was caught with the fuses in his hands on November 4 and tortured to extract the names of the other plotters. They, meanwhile, had fled to Holbeach House, on the Staffordshire borders, and were there captured, or, in the cases of Catesby and Percy, shot while resisting arrest. In January 1606 Fawkes and the others still alive were hanged, drawn, and quartered, the penalty for treason.

Had the plot succeeded, the royal family (including the heir to the throne), the members of the government, the bishops, and the judges might have perished. But it is difficult to see how, without foreign intervention on their behalf, the plotters could have taken over the country, which was solidly Protestant. The dramatic, last-minute discovery of a plot involving the potential destructive force of gunpowder had the opposite result. Catholics were further persecuted in England, and popular anti-Catholic feeling inflamed then and later. The annual celebrations in Britain of November 5, in which an effigy or “guy” is burned, commemorate, if only dimly, this infamous event (see Guy Fawkes’ Night).