Gun powder plotter Fawkes stole Catesby’s thunder
NOV 5, 1605
WE should really have celebrated Robert Catesby Night last night.
It was Catesby who was mastermind and ringleader of the Gunpowder Plot, not Guy Fawkes.
Fawkes was the one among the 13 plotters who had most military experience, having fought for a decade in the Spanish Netherlands, suppressing the Dutch Revolt.
As a result, he was put in charge of the 36 barrels of gunpowder that were intended to reduce the House of Lords to rubble during the State Opening of Parliament, killing the Protestant King James I and ushering in a new monarchy under his daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who was only nine years old, but would be married to a Catholic.
But one of the plotters, worried about casualties among other Catholics in Parliament, sent an anonymous warning letter to one of them, who in turn showed it to the King.
He ordered the House of Lords to be searched, whereupon the waiting Fawkes was discovered in a crypt, next to his cache of explosives hidden under piles of coal.
News of Fawkes’ arrest quickly spread and Catesby fled north.
He tried to convince people that an armed struggle was still a possibility, but his followers began to drift away and it was decided to make a last stand at Holbeche House in Staffordshire.
There, the remaining rebels spread their damp gunpowder out in front of the fire to dry but a stray spark ignited it, engulfing Catesby in flames.
Scorched, he was of little use when 200 of the King’s men arrived on the morning of November 8, and he was killed by a single shot. He was lucky. The plotters who survived were tortured and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Accordingly, they were put in
the noose, but cut down before they died to be castrated, disembowelled and chopped into four.
Fawkes escaped that grisly fate at least, leaping to his death from the scaffold, though his head, like all the others, was stuck on a spike outside the House of Lords.
The tradition of marking the spoiling of the Plot by ringing church bells and lighting bonfires started soon after its discovery, and fireworks were included in some of the earliest celebrations.
All of this has evolved into the Bonfire Night we know today.
In 2005, a TV programme investigated whether the Gunpowder Plot could have achieved its aim.
A replica of the chamber in the Palace of Westminster was built and the requisite amount of gunpowder detonated.
The skull of the dummy representing James I was found a considerable distance away from where he would have been sitting on his throne . . .