Everyone knows what the Gunpowder Plotters looked like. However, there was a more obscure sequel. Garnet was tried separately on March 28th, and executed in May. The peers were tried in the court of Star Chamber: three were merely fined, but Northumberland was imprisoned in the Tower at pleasure and not released until The leader of the plot was Robert Catesby, a Northamptonshire gentleman who lived at Chastleton House, the now well-known National Trust property in Oxfordshire, during the s.
Most of the others, with the exception of Fawkes a late recruit , were related to Catesby or to each other. All that could be established was that in May Catesby had devised a plan to mine the House of Lords during the next opening of Parliament.
Thanks to the fact that nothing actually happened, it is not surprising that the plot has been the subject of running dispute since November 5th, The Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, observed at the trial that succeeding generations would wonder whether it was fact or fiction. The two official accounts published in were patently spins. One, The Discourse of the Manner, was intended to give James a more commanding role in the uncovering of the plot than he deserved.
But Catesby had form. This raises the central question of what the plot was about. The primary focus of Catholic discontent was what had become known by as the penal laws. On one level they included all the Elizabethan religious legislation back to the Supremacy and Uniformity Acts of , but the term was usually applied to a specific series of statutes passed between and The acts involved an oath to the royal supremacy over the church and obligatory attendance at a parish church every Sunday.
Absence, soon described as recusancy disobedience, hence recusant , incurred a one shilling fine. The penal laws were not the product of a clearly articulated policy, each of the statutes was a compromise of greater or lesser incoherence.
Their target, however, was clear: the Catholic missionary clergy and those who sheltered them. Their dominance was intellectual and moral rather than numerical, for the Society was not large. There were only about five Jesuits in England at any one time during the s, rising to fourteen in Legislation was one thing, enforcement another.
Although it had its enthusiastic priest hunters, the Elizabethan government was not a bloodthirsty regime. Catholic polemic which very successfully portrayed the Elizabethan persecutions in a similar fashion to the way John Foxe had portrayed the Marian made the Elizabethan elite who knew their Foxe well very uncomfortable. The use of torture was a particularly controversial issue. It was not part of the Common Law process, but was permitted in treason cases, to force the suspect to reveal his accomplices, though not incriminate himself.
The relatively minor role torture played in the Gunpowder Plot investigation is a good example of the myths that surround this emotive subject. A security sweep failed to spot the significance of the pile of firewood and barrels that had accumulated in the cellar.
The letter reached James I, who ordered a second search. Only then was the plot revealed, preventing nearly a tonne of gunpowder from tearing through parliament. English Catholics had looked to Spain for support since the reign of Elizabeth I. In , a rebellion of the northern earls had hoped to depose Elizabeth with Spanish naval backing — although the ships never arrived. Later on, English Catholic naval pilots had sailed with the Spanish Armada.
But a generation after this, the political landscape had changed. For them, the accession of James I created an opportunity to end the costly war with England — and, in August , Spanish and English delegations met at Somerset House in London to sign a peace treaty.
Their plans to achieve all this were hazy at best. Britain was a monarchy, so royal rule would have had to have continued under a new Catholic regime. But Catesby favoured capturing the nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth, appointing a protector and marrying the puppet monarch to a Catholic husband. Catesby invited the local Catholic gentry to hunt with him on 5 November, hoping they could use this as cover.
But when the gunpowder plot failed, his support network melted away. Around midnight on November 4, , one of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes , was discovered in the cellar of the Parliament building with barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes and other men involved in the plot were tried and executed for treason.
At about midnight on the night of November , Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found Guy Fawkes lurking in a cellar under the Parliament building and ordered the premises searched. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were found, and Fawkes was taken into custody. What became known as the Gunpowder Plot was organized 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 had converted to Catholicism, and his religious zeal led him to fight in the army of Catholic Spain in the Protestant Netherlands. Catesby and the handful of other plotters rented a cellar that extended under the House of Lords building, and Fawkes planted the gunpowder there.
However, as the November 5 opening meeting of Parliament approached, Lord Monteagle , the brother-in-law of one of the conspirators, received an anonymous letter warning him not to attend Parliament on November 5.
Monteagle alerted the government, and hours before the attack was to have taken place Fawkes and the explosives were found. During the next few weeks, English authorities killed or captured all the plotters and put the survivors on trial. Fawkes and the other surviving chief conspirators were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered in London. Using her as a figurehead, they would rule the country and restore the rights of Catholics. However, their explosives expert was disturbed as he arrived to light the fuse.
The trial of the eight surviving conspirators was held in the same room they had tried to blow up: Westminster Hall, within the Parliament building. All eight were found guilty and by the end of January , all eight had been executed. The plotters were hung, drawn and quartered. Their heads were then set upon poles as a warning to others. As result of the plot, James I became more popular having survived an attempt on his life. However, it became harder for Catholics to practise their religion or play a part in society.
Finally, there is no doubt that Guy Fawkes is remembered incorrectly as the main plotter, a myth perpetuated as generations of children celebrate Bonfire Night. It is worth getting students to try and read the document, however transcripts and additional simplified transcripts are also provided.
The second source is an extract from the examination of John Johnson, also known as Guy Fawkes. A government proclamation then details the search for the plotters and the last source explains what happened to some of them. Teachers may wish to use the lesson for a group-based activity or pair working. Work on the topic could be extended by the following activities:.
The Gunpowder Plot More background and resources on the plot produced by Parliament. Civil War and Revolution What if the gunpowder plot had succeeded? Key stage 1 An event beyond living memory that is significant nationally; Significant people.
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