In today's Britain, there is remarkable ignorance about Guy Fawkes and what the Gunpowder Plot was all about. Nowadays it is just an excuse for a bonfire, drinks and a fireworks party and even that is increasingly under fire (deliberate pun intended) from the overbearing Health & Safety lobby. Originally, it was intended as an anti-Catholic propaganda exercise to warn people of the dangers to Protestant religious liberties represented by radical English Papists and scheming foreign Catholic powers (especially Spain). The only reason Guy Fawkes was discovered (a literal case of an "explosive revelation"
) was that his target King James I was paranoid about assassination attempts and demanded a second search of the Houses of Parliament to put his mind at ease after a tip off had been received by a Catholic member of Parliament who had reported it to the authorities.
Although Guy Fawkes would become synonymous with the 5th of November, he was not the ringleader of the Gunpowder Plot but just the man who was found holding the match. The real leader was Robert Catesby. Another of the key conspirators was Thomas Percy, a cousin of
Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (the "Wizard Earl"), who appointed him constable of
Alnwick Castle and made him responsible for the Percy family's northern estates - noting here that Laura is descended from the Percy family. Following James I's accession to the English throne in 1603, Percy, like Catesby, grew increasingly disenchanted with the new king, who to his mind had reneged on his promises of toleration for English Catholics. This disenchantment after decades of brutal religious persecution would lead to the Gunpowder Plot.
For those who might want to learn more about this fascinating event there are two dramas currently being shown on UK TV, which look at the Plot from the perspective of the plotters. The first is a new drama
Gunpowder Siege, which is currently airing on Sky History - see:
Gunpowder Siege. The second is the 2017 drama
Gunpowder, which featured Kit Harington in the role of Robert Catesby - see:
Gunpowder (TV series) - Wikipedia. Interestingly, Harington is a direct descendant of his character Robert Catesby.
I watched the first episode of
Gunpowder the other night and must warn you that it contains a gruesome scene of a woman being executed by being crushed to death under a wooden board and a young Jesuit being hanged, drawn and quartered - the normal penalty for High Treason. Being on the wrong side of the religious divide in those days could cost you your life.
One wonders how history might have differed if the Gunpowder Plotters had succeeded. Would the country have accepted a Catholic regency under Princess Elizabeth? Remember that most of the British aristocracy would have been killed along with King James if the explosives had been detonated at the opening of Parliament. The plot had also involved an insurrection in the Midlands. If the plotters had been successful, could they have moved quickly to take over all the main centres of power? Would the remaining Protestant lords and gentry have rallied behind Prince Henry, James's oldest son and heir apparent and, if so, would the English Civil War have broken out 37 years earlier than it eventually did? We can only speculate but if England had returned to being a Catholic realm, there may not have been a British Empire, since it was James I, his son Charles I and grandson Charles II who would back English expansion in the Americas and Caribbean, which would bring England into direct conflict with Catholic Spain and France. Would this mean there would have been no United States of America, recalling that modern America was really the vision and realisation of the Puritans who would emigrate from England in the latter part of the 17th century?
However, history is full of ironies. The Gunpowder Plotters had pinned their hopes on putting a young Princess Elizabeth Stuart on the throne. She would in time become the wife of
Frederick V of the Palatinate and briefly
Queen of Bohemia. After they fled Bohemia, the royal couple would spend several years in exile in
The Hague, whilst the Thirty Years' War raged across central Europe. With the demise of Elizabeth's great-niece,
Anne, Queen of Great Britain, the last Stuart monarch in 1714, Elizabeth's grandson by her daughter
Sophia of Hanover succeeded to the British throne as
George I, initiating the rule of the
House of Hanover, which continues to this day under King Charles III. The Hanoverian monarchs would ensure by force of arms that no Stuart pretender ever managed to reclaim the British throne.