A New Era

Britain took one giant step towards the United Kingdom on the death of Queen Elizabeth I on 24th March, 1603, in Richmond Palace.  Messengers and their horses stood ready and waiting to carry the news to her appointed successor, James VI of Scotland. James, son of Mary Queen of Scots, met with the acceptance of the Privy Council and Parliament on account of his professed Protestantism.  There was a deep irony, however, in that the English Crown, the wearers of which had long coveted Scotland, would now be worn by a Scottish King, forever uniting the two Kingdoms under one Prince.

Catholic Optimism

Throughout England, many wealthy Catholic families would have kept a priest, complete with a hiding place, known as ‘the priest hole’, in case the authorities came searching. James’ strong Catholic roots would have given this hard-pressed community some optimism that change was coming.

Elizabeth, however, had reason to suppress the Roman Catholic faith.  When Pope Pius V excommunicated her in 1570, declaring her to be both a heretic and illegitimate – with no right to the throne of England, Elizabeth could expect no loyalty from those who adopted the old faith. She suffered several plots. Fears of assassination attempts were rife. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, who combined the mentality of the soldier with the devotion of a saint, were flooding priests into England and Ireland to destabilize the nation, in what became known as the ‘Counter Reformation’.  With their strategy of subversion, teaching that even assassination was right if it advanced the Church’s cause, they posed an immense threat to the peace.  

This Catholic assault on her Kingdom would culminate in Philip II of Spain’s audacious attempt to seize England with his impressive, but tragic, Armada. To the dismay of her Catholic subjects, however, the woman known as ‘Gloriana’ saw off her adversaries and established England as the leading Protestant nation in Europe.  Would the new era bring them a new dawn?

Jesuitical Conspiracy

The Catholics’ optimism, however, faded quickly away when James demonstrated a desire to please and work with his Protestant advisers and Parliament.  In Ireland, for example, James ordered the expulsion of all Jesuits – when it became obvious that Catholics were trying to expel Protestant clergy, restoring the Church to masses and priestcraft. While the Stuart Kings, of which James was the first, had an aversion to Puritan and Presbyterian Protestantism, and were deeply attracted by elements of the old faith, James preferred the prize of the English Crown as something more important than matters of religion. 

Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Pope Clement VIII wrote to warn the English clergy, nobility and laity, that on the death of the “miserable woman”, no King is allowed to ascend the throne of England but one who advances the Roman Catholic religion.[i] It is significant that these documents were conveyed in the first instance to Garnet, the Superior of the Jesuits in England. These foot soldiers of the Pope were therefore primed for what would be their most invidious assault upon the Protestant throne. They already had experience in this type of situation. Less than a decade earlier, the Jesuits had plotted and executed the fatal poisoning of the French King Henry III, who had been amenable to granting the Huguenots greater freedoms.  There was no depth to which this order would not stoop to advance the Papal cause.

Conspirators

A meeting of young resentful Catholics, very early in James I’s reign, in 1603, led by Robert Catesby, resolved that assassinating the King was insufficient. What was required was the removal of the entire royal family together with the Lords and the Commons. They consulted with Jesuit priests as to the morality of such action. One of their questions related to the inevitable deaths of Roman Catholics in the carnage, but the priests encouraged them, “because it is expedient at times that a few must die for the many”.[ii] 

One of Catesby’s closest supporters was Robert Wintour, who became the European envoy of the little group. He approached Philip II of Spain asking him to consider a Spanish invasion, while promising an uprising of English Catholics. But Philip was not minded, still stinging from the failure of his Armada fleet. While recruiting supporters in Flanders, however, Wintour sought out an army officer from York, fighting for the Spanish in the Netherlands, called Guido (‘Guy’) Fawkes. By November 1604, Thomas Percy and the Earl of Northumberland were enlisted in their number, as they started to think seriously about their big plan

Barrels of Gunpowder

The plan was simple – execute the most far-reaching attack on the English Crown since 1066. The target date would be 5th November 1605, the occasion of the State Opening of Parliament. A cellar would be rented below the House of Lords, packing it with barrels of explosives. Guy Fawkes would take charge of the gunpowder. He would have the dangerous, probably suicidal, task of lighting the fuse.

Eventually, 36 barrels of gunpowder were placed in this cellar and covered over with firewood, The notorious scheme went undetected for months. It seemed that nothing could prevent its execution. During these months, Protestants were deliberately misled by a Papal letter from Clement VII, urging all Catholics in England to ‘respect the peace of the nation’ and to prevent all commotions. Such duplicity did more, however, than merely lull England into a false sense of security. When the plot was discovered, Rome had the pretext to distance herself!

Anonymous Letter

One who was party to the conspiracy though, sent an anonymous letter to a Roman Catholic nobleman called Lord Monteagle. The letter was received when Monteagle was dining with his brother-in-law, Thomas Tresham, who had become one of the conspirators. For this reason, suspicion points to Tresham, and he certainly had motive in wishing that his relative be spared the blast. The letter itself was cryptic, although it contained a plea not to attend the State Opening of Parliament, the crucial word being “blow”; Parliament would suffer a “terrible blow”.

Monteagle took the letter to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. Cecil and his father William had been Elizabeth I’s closest advisors, with Robert playing a key role in uniting the crowns of England and Scotland under James. When King James saw the letter on 1st November, he discerned that gunpowder was intended by the word “blow”. A search was therefore instigated.

Guy Fawkes Discovered

The cellar containing a copious quantity of firewood and the barrels of gunpowder was not discovered until the early hours of the morning of 5th November.  Guy Fawkes, using the pseudonym of John Johnson, was discovered in his position as guard. The plot was foiled. Using modern techniques, experts have confirmed that an explosion of this magnitude would have destroyed all the buildings within 500 yards. The King and his ministers, the Lords and Commons, which included the Privy Council, would have been decimated. The loss of life inside the Palace of Westminster and in Whitehall would have been catastrophic. England would have suffered a constitutional crisis, a power vacuum. The plan was to kidnap James’ daughter, Princess Elizabeth, installing her as a puppet Queen under Catholic and Jesuitical control. Protestant England, due to God’s providential intervention, had received an eleventh-hour reprieve.

Catesby and Percy were tracked down to their safe house and killed, Catesby clutching an image of the Virgin in death. Tresham died in the Tower of London after being tortured and forced to confess. The others including Guy Fawkes suffered public execution in the manner prescribed for traitors, too gruesome to describe in detail. Garnet, the Jesuit, suffered the same fate, and was later proclaimed a martyr in Rome.

Gunpowder Treason Day

The immediate impact of the plot’s discovery was to make James more popular and consolidate his authority. This Scottish King, despite his strange accent and lack of experience in English life, had almost died with the entire English Parliament as the result of a Jesuit plot! This one fact reassured the Protestant population that Protestantism was here to stay, and that God was protecting the King. 

Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was known, was declared a holiday by Parliament and James was eulogised as “our most gracious sovereign…the most great learned and religious King that ever reigned”. [iii]

The centuries have rolled past, still the bonfires crackle, the Guy is incinerated as communities come together to “Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot”.  The event is also remembered in the National Anthem with the words from verse 2, which are effectively a prayer:

“Confound their politics,

Frustrate their popish tricks,

On thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all”.

Among that august assembly which met on that November day in 1605, senior Anglican clerics were present, a number of whom were scholars, tasked by James I to produce a new version of Scripture, the completion of which was still years away. If the Jesuitical plot had succeeded, it is unlikely that the King James Version would have been published in 1611. This greatly loved and enduring text is a direct outcome of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot. Perhaps the arch-fiend of the pit had this in his sights, also, when barrels of gunpowder were laid by Guy Fawkes directly beneath the Lords’ chamber. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Chichester, preached an annual sermon in memory of the foiled plot. At the gathering in Whitehall on the first anniversary of the plot, he told his hearers:

“This day of ours, this 5th November, a day of God’s making, that which was done upon it, was the Lord’s doing…this day (we all know) was meant to be the day of all our deaths; and we and many were appointed as sheep to the slaughter…And the very same day we (all know) the day, wherein that appointment was disappointed by God, and we are all saved, that we might not die but live and declare the praise of the Lord…”[iv]

A Bad Day Transformed

5th November 1605 was intended to be as disastrous for England as St Bartholomew’s Day was for France. Slaughter and carnage would have been executed throughout the nation as the Roman Catholic population rose up, buoyed by the removal of the Protestant leadership in Church and State. Pope Paul V had already, prior to the event, established 1605 as a Jubilee, in that it would witness “the rooting out of all the impious errors of the heretics”.[v] But God had other plans; that which was intended to destroy became an occasion of celebration and thanksgiving.

---

[i] Wylie, J.A.; History of Protestantism, Kindle Edition, Musaicum Books, 2018.  Page 3041.

[ii] Allen, David; The Jewel in the King’s Crown, Tentmaker Publications, 2010. Page 252.

[iii] Schama, Simon; A History of Britain, The British Wars, BBC, 2001.  Page 44.

[iv] Allen, David; The Jewel in the King’s Crown, Tentmaker Publications, 2010. Page 336-343.

[v] Allen, David; The Jewel in the King’s Crown, Tentmaker Publications, 2010. Page 254.