The Gunpowder Plot And Guy Fawkes

Víctor David Lucero Burgos Grado en estudios ingleses

GUY FAWKES AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT INTRODUCTION Remember, remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot. We see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot! Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent To blow up king and parliament. Three score barrels were laid below To prove old England's overthrow. By god's mercy he wascatch'd With a darkened lantern and burning match. So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring. Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king. And what shall we do with him? Burn him! (Traditional nursery rhyme)

The Gunpowder plot – also called Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason - was an attempt against the King James I, consisting in trying to make explode the British parliament, dueto religious and political reasons.
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In 1605, England was the head of the protestant church, and there were many religious persecutions, principally against the Catholicism. The failed plot was lead by Robert Catesby, not for Guy Fawkes, the better know character of this historical fact. He was discovered trying to blow up the parliament, and was considered as a sort of a scapegoat due tothat. And he’s also considered as a traitor and a terrorist for face the government and trying to destroy it. Although they where thirteen conspirators, Fawkes is the most associated with the plot, for example, until recently, was common burn figures of Fawkes every 5th November, in the Bonfire night, though this custom has become less common.

BRIEF HISTORICAL CONTEXT England in those ages wasreign by the King James I of England and VI of Scotland. Before, there were many frictions between England and the Vatican, especially after the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which said that anyone appointed to a public or church office to swear allegiance to the monarch as head of the Anglican Church and state. The Catholicism became marginalised, but despite the threat of torture or executionpriests continued to practise their faith in secret. Also after the designation of pope Pius V in 1556, and the bull of excommunication against the Queen Elizabeth in 1569, between this date and 1605, with news popes, Clement VIII, Leo XI and Paul V, there were many attacks to the British crown. And there was religious persecution against the Christians in

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England. Besides there was warbetween the catholic Spain and the Protestant England.

THE GUNPOWDER PLOT …Was an attempt by Roman Catholics to destroy both the place and the persons associated with the passage of "cruell Lawes (as they say) . . . against their Religion (King James I)

The objective of the catholic conspirators was principally to kill the King James I, the relatives and members of the Privy Council, theEnglish Protestant aristocracy, the senior judges of the English legal system, and the Anglican bishops together with the members of the House of Commons. They also wanted to kidnap the daughter of the king, the princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, the third in the succession line. For name her as a catholic queen. The leader of the conspiracy was Robert Catesby, who had early tried to work against theEnglish crown, in the Essex rebellion, together, with John Wright, Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, Robert Wintour, Christopher Wright, John Grant, Sir Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham planned the failed conspiracy. About Robert Catesby, Thomas Lathbury in his book “Guy fawkes” says: Catesby was the contriver of the conspiracy. He was a nativeof Leicestershire: a man of family and property, and of such persuasive eloquence, that he induced several of the
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conspirators to comply, who otherwise, in all probability, would not have been implicated in the treason. Some of them admitted, that it was not so much their conviction of the justice of the cause that led them to engage in the business, as the wily eloquence of Catesby. He...