Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot
On 5th November 1605 Guy Fawkes was caught red handed with 36 barrels of gunpowder in the storeroom beneath the House of Lords. His intention was to blow up King James I and Parliament the following day, during the State Opening of Parliament.
The Gunpowder Plot was the culmination of increasing Catholic unrest against their treatment under James’s Protestant rule.
So how was this treasonous plan intercepted just in the nick of time?
Although the government had an inkling of a plot, the first clear intelligence came with the anonymous warning given to a Catholic nobleman, Lord Monteagle, that he should not attend the opening of Parliament on 5 November.
My Lord…I would advise you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift your attendance at this Parliament for God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness of this time…though there be no appearance of any stir yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this parliament and yet they shall not see who hurts them.
Monteagle immediately passed the letter to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, the King's most important minister.
On the 4 November a search was made of the basement storeroom underneath the House of Lords. Guy Fawkes who claimed his name was John Johnson was found guarding a large pile of firewood. Initially his explanation was accepted, but suspicions were aroused, and later that evening a royal official, Sir Thomas Knyvett, and Edward Doubleday conducted a second search. Realising he was about to be caught red handed Fawkes was not prepared to give up without a fight.
He 'very violently gripped Master Doubleday by the fingers of the left hand. Through pain thereof Master Doubleday offered to draw his dagger to have stabbed Fawkes, but suddenly better thought himself and did not; yet in that heat he struck up the traitor's heels and withal fell upon him and searched him, and in his pocket found his garters, wherewith Master Doubleday and others that assisted him bound him'
So what happened to Guy Fawkes once he was captured?
Well, he was locked up in the Tower of London, where he spent the next three months being interrogated.
Initially he refused to divulge the names of his co-conspirators, so the King sent an order to the Tower on 6 November 1605 authorising the use of torture.
‘If he will not other wayes confesse, the gentler tortours are to be the first usid unto him’
The effect of this torture on Fawkes is clearly visible when the signatures on his two confessions are compared; the second signed on the 9 November is barely legible.
With Fawkes confession signed on the 27 January 1606 all of the surviving conspirators were tried in Westminster Hall and found guilty of treason.
On 30 January 1606 the four conspirators - Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John Grant and Thomas Bates - were executed in St Paul's Churchyard.
The following day the remaining four - Guy Fawkes, Thomas Winter, Ambrose Rookwood and Robert Keyes - were hung, drawn and quartered just outside Westminster Hall, in Old Palace Yard.
So relieved was Parliament at its lucky escape that in January 1606 the Thanksgiving Act was passed making services and sermons celebrating the discovery of the plot a regular annual feature each 5 November.
So where exactly in the basements was the cellar where Guy Fawkes with the barrels of gunpowder?
The current Palace basements are not the ones used by Guy Fawkes. These were destroyed when the House of Lords was remodelled by the architect Sir John Soane in 1822.
Contrary to popular belief the original basement storeroom in which Guy Fawkes was apprehended, was actually at ground floor level, this storeroom was adjacent to the present House of Lords and the spot is now marked with a brass plaque.
So how do they prevent plots like this from succeeding today?
An official search of the basements by the Yeoman of the Guard still takes place every year on the morning of State Opening, though with tightened security already in place at Parliament this is thankfully more of a ceremony.