The desparate and incompetently executed plot by a number of Catholic Englishmen early in the reign of James I to blow up Parliament together with the King in hope they could establish a Catholic monarchy afterwards. The failure is still remembered and celebrated (mutedly in recent times) as Guy Fawke's Day every 5 November.
Mary Tudor had attempted to re-instate Roman Catholicism as the state religion after the death of her step-brother, Edward VI, but the English Reformation—for all its shortcomings—had already gone down too far down the road. The long rein of Elizabeth I had dimmed the prospects of religious change in favour of English Catholics even more, though Jesuit missions continued actively but secretly to keep the faith alive among the people. When James I (whose mother was the staunch Catholic Mary Queen of Scots) succeeded to the throne in 1603, there were initial hopes that he might bring about changes that would ease the restrictions on the practice of the Catholic faith in England. When such changes seemed unlikely the plot, with Guy Fawkes as one of the main conspirators, was hatched to blow up the Parliament and the king while it was sitting, and to establish a new Catholic regime. By December 1904 the conspirators managed to rent a room in the cellar of a house near parliament. The next session would begin in February. They began to dig towards the walls of parliament, which they soon reached. Then parliament was prorogued until October. When the time came they had packed the space beneath parliament with enough gunpowder to kill several thousand people.
By this time, however, thirteen persons were already into the plot. It needed only one of them for the secret to leak. One of them had a brother-in-law who was an MP and wrote the latter imploring him to keep away from parliament on the set day. Fortunately for everyone except the conspirators, the brother-in-law had better senses than his wife's brother. The alarm was raised (parliament prorogued again to allow time for further investigation). The room full of gunpowder, wtih Guy Fawkes guarding them, was discovered on the afternoon of 4 November and the plot snuffed out; they had planned to light the fuse the next morning when parliament would sit. All the known conspirators who were caught were executed.
©ALBERITH
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