The Gunpowder Plot
The most famous plot in English history was foiled because of a letter, a cellar full of firewood and 36 barrels of gunpowder, and we still burn the man who guarded them.
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Quick Facts
- What happened
- A group of Catholic conspirators planned to blow up the House of Lords and King James I at the State Opening of Parliament
- Date of discovery
- Night of 4 to 5 November 1605
- Gunpowder
- Around 36 barrels, hidden in a rented undercroft beneath the House of Lords
- Man found guarding it
- Guy Fawkes, arrested just after midnight
- Ringleader
- Robert Catesby, killed at Holbeche House in Staffordshire on 8 November 1605
- Trial and executions
- Surviving plotters were tried in January 1606 and executed in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, and at St Paul's Churchyard
- The warning
- The Monteagle Letter, sent to a Catholic peer, Lord Monteagle, about a week before
- Legacy
- Bonfire Night on 5 November, kept since the Thanksgiving Act of 1606
The cellar, the barrels and the knock at midnight
In the early hours of 5 November 1605, a search party led by Sir Thomas Knyvet found a man in a cloak and boots beneath the House of Lords. He gave his name as John Johnson, a servant. He was Guy Fawkes, and behind the firewood he was guarding lay roughly 36 barrels of gunpowder. The plan was simple and monstrous: blow up Parliament as King James I opened it, killing the king, his ministers and the Lords in one go. The conspirators hoped to seize the king's children and spark a Catholic uprising. Fawkes had been on the Continent as a soldier in Spanish service. That made him useful, because he knew about explosives, and unknown in London, because few would recognise him.
Not Guy's plot: meet the real ringleader
The mastermind was Robert Catesby, a charismatic Warwickshire gentleman who had been involved in the Essex rebellion of 1601. Catholics had hoped for easier treatment when James came to the throne in 1603. When harsh penalties for recusancy stayed in place, Catesby's patience ran out. He recruited Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Fawkes, then widened the circle to include Robert Wintour, Christopher Wright, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Sir Everard Digby. Percy, a gentleman pensioner who could rent property in Westminster, helped secure the undercroft. The story we tell is Fawkes's because he was the one caught holding the matches, so to speak. Catesby's role is far less familiar.
The letter that gave the game away
About ten days before the opening of Parliament, Lord Monteagle, a Catholic peer, received an anonymous letter at his house in Hoxton. It urged him to stay away from Parliament, warning that "a terrible blow" would fall on it. He took it straight to Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury. Who wrote it has never been settled. Monteagle's brother-in-law, Francis Tresham, is often suspected, though he denied it. Some have argued that the government knew more than it said. Whatever the truth, the letter made the authorities search the cellars. The king was shown the letter and is said to have worked out for himself that it hinted at an explosion. The search followed, and Fawkes was caught.
Flight, siege and a gruesome end
Once word of the arrest spread, the surviving conspirators rode hard for the Midlands. They hoped to rally Catholic support and found little. At Holbeche House, on the Staffordshire border, they dried gunpowder in front of a fire, a spark ignited it, and some of the men were badly burned. On 8 November the sheriff's men arrived. Catesby and Percy were reportedly killed by the same shot, and Thomas Wintour was wounded and captured. Fawkes was interrogated in the Tower, where James is said to have authorised torture. His signature on his confession, shaky and cramped, survives. On 31 January 1606 he was due to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but he is recorded as having jumped from the scaffold, breaking his neck before the worst of it.
Myths, bonfires and why we still remember
Myth: Fawkes was the leader. Reality: he was an expert in the field, not the chief. Myth: this was the only Catholic plot. Reality: Elizabeth I's reign had seen several, which helps explain the severity of the reaction. Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act in 1606, ordering an annual day of thanksgiving. That requirement stayed on the books until 1859, but the bonfires never really went out. Effigies once burned were often of the Pope; today Guy is the usual figure, though Lewes in Sussex has famously kept the old flavour of its processions. The rhyme "Remember, remember, the fifth of November" still turns up each autumn. The plot also fed centuries of suspicion towards English Catholics, and Catholic emancipation was not achieved until 1829.
What you can still see
Parliament itself still follows a ritual: before each State Opening, the Yeomen of the Guard carry out a ceremonial search of the cellars. The undercroft where Fawkes was found was demolished in 1822, and the surrounding area was badly damaged in the Palace of Westminster fire of 1834, but the tradition lives on. The Tower of London holds the story of Fawkes's interrogation. The National Archives at Kew hold the original Monteagle Letter and Fawkes's surviving confessions. The Holbeche House site in the West Midlands, Coughton Court in Warwickshire and Harvington Hall in Worcestershire, with its priest holes, all connect to the world of the plotters. And each autumn, fireworks over Lewes and across the country carry on a 400-year-old habit.
Notable people
- Guy Fawkes
- Robert Catesby
- Thomas Wintour
- Thomas Percy
- Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury
- Lord Monteagle
- King James I
- Francis Tresham
- Sir Everard Digby
- Sir Thomas Knyvet
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