1605 – Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is arrested in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, where he had planted gunpowder in an attempt to blow up the building and kill King James I of England.
Early one morning, King James I of England was informed that a plot to blow up the Parliament building had been thwarted, just hours before he was scheduled to convene with the rest of the British government for a general parliamentary session.
Early morning of November 5, around midnight, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, discovered Guy Fawkes hiding in a cellar beneath the Parliament building. He promptly ordered a search of the premises, where approximately 20 barrels of gunpowder were discovered. Fawkes was subsequently arrested. During a torture session on the rack, he confessed to being a participant in an English Catholic conspiracy aimed at annihilating England’s Protestant government and replacing it with Catholic leadership.
The Gunpowder Plot, as it came to be known, was orchestrated by Robert Catesby, an English Catholic whose father had been persecuted by Queen Elizabeth I for refusing to conform to the Church of England. Guy Fawkes, who had converted to Catholicism, was driven by his religious fervor to fight in the Spanish army in the Netherlands. Catesby and a small group of other plotters rented a cellar that extended beneath Parliament. Fawkes strategically placed the gunpowder there, concealing the barrels beneath layers of coal and wood.
As the November 5 meeting of Parliament drew near, Catesby recruited more English Catholics into the conspiracy. Among them was Francis Tresham, who warned his Catholic brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, against attending Parliament that day. Monteagle promptly alerted the government, and hours before the attack was set to commence, Fawkes and the explosives were discovered. Through torture, King James’s government obtained the identities of Fawkes’s co-conspirators. Over the ensuing weeks, English authorities executed or captured all the plotters, including a few innocent English Catholics.
Guy Fawkes himself was sentenced, along with the other surviving principal conspirators, to be hanged, drawn, and quartered in London. Just moments before the commencement of his gruesome execution on January 31, 1606, he leaped from a ladder while ascending to the hanging platform, resulting in his instant death by neck injury.
In 1606, Parliament designated November 5 as a day of public thanksgiving. Today, Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated annually across Great Britain on November 5 to commemorate the Gunpowder Plot. As dusk falls, villagers and city dwellers across the nation light bonfires, set off fireworks, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, commemorating his failure to blow Parliament and King James I to kingdom come.
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